47...

There were a couple of drunks milling about on the steep stairs up to the attic apartment, nuisances to most trying to gain access what with their wobbly drinks and slowly widening circles that made up their version of standing still. But this was a delight the likes of a boat cruise to blow job heaven compared to the sheer blast of humanity to be met at the landing.
What had probably been designed as a “quaint” version of an attic had been turned into a loft bedroom. The bedroom was the central party room, revelers naturally spilling out into other rooms of the flat, and it was filled with well-dressed individuals. Frank mentally pictured his thrift store button down and torn jeans and put on a fortifying, and slightly contentious, smile.
A wave of heat and a variety of colognes slapped Frank in the face as he entered the room. He looked back behind him at Bryan as if for affirmation that he really had to go through with this. Bryan smiled, certainly knowing how much Frank hated this sort of thing. Frank pushed on though, Evelyn was up here somewhere and he needed to make his appearance.
Frank carefully pushed past a variety of attractive people who ignored him as much as he had wanted them to. He looked around the room and noticed that it was done in a lot of peaches and lavenders.
“Where do you work out?”
The voice sounded nearly as lame as the come on line. Frank thought it might be joke when he’d heard the first time, but now he saw the guy. Lascivious eyes and a tight, short sleeved and collared pullover roamed the room. Those eyes would rarely rise above the breast line of his attempted conquests.
“Wherever I can press 270, man,” Bryan said in the same deep and thick tongued tone as the nimrod who asked the question to begin with.
Frank threw out a quick snort of surprised laughter and looked back at Bryan with genuine gratitude. When he brought his eyes forward again, he spied Evelyn towards the back of room. She spoke to another young woman and her hands flailed about like delicate and frightened birds.
Evelyn had dated this cat Scotty that Frank had worked with at the video store when he first moved to the city. She had never said it, but Frank got the feeling that she was slumming it, that she was dating bad boy Scotty for the rebel factor, for story fodder after the breakup, to piss off certain friends as well as her parents.
They got to know each other when the three of them would hang out at The Foxhole, the local dive bar, and he and Evelyn became closer when she would use his ear to complain about Scotty. He was fine with that, Scotty was an asshole.
Scotty was one of those guys that still looked and acted like the bully from third grade. He had small, angry eyes and his idea of a good time was drinking a large number of tall boys in a parking lot and starting an argument with anyone who looked like a challenge. If you looked closely, you could see that anger and emptiness carving out a larger hold within him. One night, Scotty took a pocket knife to the throat outside The Foxhole and died on the sidewalk.
Evelyn looked over and caught Frank’s eye with a surprised little smile that was somehow both completely endearing and completely false. She gave him a small wave over.