The Boy Who Wore Boat Shoes

TL⎜The Loss

This is what was going to be the first chapter of the other story I was planning on writing with Ari. Ari's the one speaking here. Yeah.

TL ⎜The Loss

           “Dad!” I called from the living room, too lazy to get up and walk over to him in the kitchen. It was, like, a good ten feet, and I wasn’t in the mood to exercise. I had already walked downstairs, so as far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled my required physical activity for the day.

           “What?” he yelled back. If Mom (well, Mel, but same thing) had been home, she would’ve scolded us both for the way that we were communicating, because she absolutely hated when we didn’t use our “indoor voices.”

           “What’s for dinner?” I asked in the same loud volume.

           “Food,” he answered, which really meant one of two things: frozen pizza or delivery pizza from the pizza place a few minutes away. Since I didn’t smell anything burning in the oven, I figured that the doorbell would soon be ringing, and we would be sharing the greasy food together as we watched a football game on TV.

           It was Sunday night, and because high school football only took place during the weekdays (practices not included), my dad was home, ready to watch more football. It didn’t really make sense to me, because he already spent five and a half (Saturday practices didn’t really count) days a week coaching the sport, but for some reason, he felt the need to constantly be immersed in it. Football was, like, his religion. Actually, scratch that. Football was his religion (no “like” needed).

           I stared at the screen of pixels in front of me, commercials for products that I would never use blaring on. Advertisements were so stupid. They were a waste of time, and nobody actually cared about them. Sure, some of them were funny or cute or informative (like the ones about diseases and stuff), but for the most part, they were just boring. I didn’t turn on the TV to watch people try to sell me something—I turned it on to watch what I wanted to watch. Currently, I wanted to watch football.

           The doorbell rang, and I hopped up off of the sofa to go answer it, but my dad beat me to it, which was probably for the best. He always got annoyed when I answered the door, scared that the person on the other side would be a kidnapper or an axe murderer. Thankfully for me, it never was.

           I rushed over to the front entrance of the house, watching as Dad opened the tall red door, a single green bill in his hand. He stepped aside after saying something to the person on the other side, and allowed them in. Standing in my house was the Jeremy Jones. He was holding a box of pizza, but still. He looked so cute.

           Jeremy Jones played on my dad’s team and he was junior or something. I wasn’t in high school, but I was pretty sure that a guy like Jeremy Jones was probably among the most popular kids in school. He was so cute. With a football player’s body, a buzz cut that somehow managed to not look dumb, and a smile that made my heart sprint, he was definitely the cutest guy I had ever seen. He was nice, too.

           Jeremy worked for the pizza place, and one of his shifts was on Sunday nights. Sometimes when we ordered pizza while watching football, Jeremy would bring it, and other times it would be this weird guy with a goatee in his mid thirties who shouldn’t have been working at a pizza place. I liked it better when Jeremy brought our pizza because, well, he was Jeremy Jones.

           “Hey, Ari! Wassup?” Jeremy asked as he nodded his head in my direction, noticing me. Oh, and to add to the list of things amazing about Jeremy Jones, he actually knew my name. How cool was that?