Page 163 of Happy Hour

“I don’t want to go with her!” Lucas wailed to Charlie.

I don’t know what made him think Iactuallywanted to go in public with him anyways. I was completely against this.

Charlie grumbled with a roll of his eyes looking over at me. “Do you even want to take him with you?”

“No.” I admitted but smiled despite my anger. “Not really.”

He turned to Lucas. “There you have it,” he said. “Apparently you’re no goddamn peach to be around either.”

Lucas immediately brought out the tears.

“He’s mad at me!” he wailed once again but this time with a tremendous amount of water and snot coming from his nose and eyes climbing inside the Expedition with me.

“Stop it!” I yelled as he buckled himself in. “Stop crying.”

“I can’t help it and you can’t tell me not to cry!” he yelled back. “I can cry if I want to!”

“I’m not concerned with you crying,believe me.” I told him. “My only concern is with the snot coming out of you. Where does it go? On your hands? Your shirt? Your pants? Where is it all going?”

Lucas hiccupped. “My sleeve, I guess.”

I looked down, sure enough; his sleeve was slimmed like Turner from Hooch. “That’s no good.”

And then he started crying again. I didn’t have the heart to tell him at that point all this crying wasn’t making me like him anymore. In fact, I didn’t like him at all right then.

Amazingly, we made it back from the store,both of us, alive.

On Saturday morning, I went out to get the mail. Mostly junk mail but one letter from the Washington State Department of Licensing stood out so I opened it. Charlie was sitting in his chair watching NASCAR qualifying while simultaneously reading the paper, his usual Saturday morning activity before he left to the track.

“Dad, what is this from Department of Licensing?” I held up the envelope.

“How the fuck should I know.” He grumbled straightening his paper with a flick of his wrists. “You opened it.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I looked down at the letter. “It says here that you hit another car.”

As if this was war, he finally looked up from the paper, his eyes narrowing from across the room. “I didn’t hit that car,theyhit me. There’s a difference.”

“What do you mean they hit you?” I stared at him, slightly perplexed because the letter said the car was parked at the time. “How can a parked car hit you?”

He got up throwing the paper on the chair. “It’s exactly what I mean. I didn’t hit that car. End of story.”

“Apparently it’s not the end of the story.” I laughed. “They’re taking your license away.”

He didn’t say anymore, just stomped to his room mumbling incoherent profanities towards the Department of Licensing.

I loved crazy people. They were so entertaining to me and made me feel more a part of society, one with my own.

Picking through the rest of the mail, still laughing at Charlie, my phone vibrated on the counter. I glanced at the number and smiled instantly.

“Hello handsome.” I answered balancing the phone on my shoulder. “How are you?”

Jameson sighed contently. “God I miss you, honey.” I could literally hear the longing in his voice. “You don’t have any idea how much I hate not having you here with me.”

“Oh, I have a pretty good idea. How’s qualifying?” I looked over at the TV to see what position he got but couldn’t distinguish the numbers.

“I qualified tenth, not very good, but not bad either.” The muffled noises of engines broke through before I heard the raucous voices and the Spencer’s laughter.

“You’ll do fine.” I reassured him.

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