It's Just That Crazy

Chapter 5- Found the Pot

Chapter 5- Found the Pot

My mom is at home when I get to the apartment. She is sitting on the couch in front of the TV with a fleece red blanket and bag of barbeque potato chips. She looks very comfortable.

I look for signs that maybe her date didn’t go so well tonight, but there isn’t any. She just smiles and seems content.

“Hey,” she says to me when I close the apartment door behind me. Her smile lights up the room. I smile back and make my way over to the couch and plop down beside her. I steal a chip in the process.

“So,” I say. “How did it go?”

She grins even wider and pops another chip in her mouth. “Good. Really good.”

I like the sound of that.

“So is it time to invite him over and call him dad yet?” At my mom’s semi worried expression I laugh and shake my head. “I’m kidding.”

She bumps her shoulder with mine, laughs and takes another chip.

“What’s he like?” I ask.

She turns down the volume on the TV and looks at me. “Well….he’s very good looking, funny, likes kids and travels often.”

“You should have married him,” I say. Mom knows I’m joking by now and only rolls her eyes. I dig into her bag of chips again.

“He’s leaving for Australia in a month.”

I frown. “A month? That’s soon.”

She nods. “Yep. He’s really excited about it.”

“Who’s he going with?” This doesn’t seem like an out of the way question. He was single up until the point of dating my mom. He may have had previous plans with someone else. Though, I hope that is not the case.

Mom stares at the TV, but answers me. “Some friends. He told me I was welcome to come too.”

I eyes grow so big and I feel they might pop out of my skull. “He said that after just one date? Wow. I think he likes you. Are you gonna go?”

She stares at me in disbelief. “We don’t know each other that well, Summer. I’m not gonna go off to another country with I guy I just met. They make lifetime movies about things like that.”

I giggle and she giggles too.

“Besides,” she adds. “It’s not like I can get the time off work. We’re pretty busy right now.”

“Tell me you’re going out again at least?” I don’t know why I’m so insistent on her going out with him again. I suppose it has to do with her being alone for so long. I just want her to have something else to do besides work and be a mom. She needs fun and male company. She needs a life.

“He asked me to go out again next weekend. I told him I’d get back with him on it.”

I smile. “Well. It’s a start.”

Mom and I watch TV on the couch for another hour and at some point I fall asleep on her. When I wake up again it’s six-thirty in the morning and I can’t seem to go back to sleep. Mom is still out cold so I get up and place the blanket back over her.

I look at the open bag on chips on the coffee table in front of me and sigh. Stale chips, yum. I close the bag and return it to the kitchen pantry.

My stomach rumbles so I make me a quick breakfast and of cereal and milk and head to my bedroom. Along the way I hear noises coming from the other side of my brother’s bedroom door. The banging, shooting and shouting continues as I stand there listening.