Stories at Happy Hour. A.M. Hoot
did, was she at the party? What the hell was she thinking? He had a surprising look on his face and laughed and then he squeezed her ass. He said, “Oooo…you like playing a little grab-ass too. I think we are going to get along just fine.”
Alex and Darius did hit it off, for about 10 minutes, and then his cell phone rang. He ignored it, and then it rang again, and again. Alex didn’t know if it was a girlfriend or a buddy calling. Or maybe he was a drug dealer, and someone needed some “candy” for Halloween. He looked at his phone and apologized to Alex. He looked at Alex like he didn’t want to answer the phone; he didn’t want to stop talking to her but obviously, it must have been urgent, the person kept calling him. He answered the phone and got real quiet, he hung up quickly. He looked at Alex and said, “I gotta go – but I need your number. We are not done yet.” Alex was disappointed but didn’t want to come across that way, and said: “Oh your girlfriend calling and wanting you back home?” Darius looked at Alex and said he didn’t have a girlfriend; worse he had a mother and he wasn’t supposed to be out at the party. Alex sharply responded, “Well, how old are you? Holy crap!” He laughed and said he was 24, but he had to go, he would explain later, could he just have her number? Alex being the tough bird she liked to pretend she was, playing hard to get and all, rattled off her digits. He said, “Wait, say it again, I need to put it in my phone.” Alex rattled it off again, and Darius repeated it and started putting it in his phone. He turned to walk away, and then came back to Alex for one more ass squeeze, smiled, and ran out of the shed. Alex kept thinking he better have gotten my fucking number right. Ugh…he probably didn’t. He was too pretty to listen and type at the same time. HA! She laughed to herself. She was hoping she would hear from him, but she was betting she wouldn’t.
When she returned home that night from the party, she had a message on her phone. It was Darius. He left three numbers for her to reach him. He wanted to see her again as soon as he could, and the feeling was mutual. They decided to meet at the Outback Steak House at 7:00 on Tuesday night. Alex was so nervous about the date. She knew he was hot, way too hot for her. The night of the Halloween party was the first and only time they had seen each other. He was dressed up as himself, while Alex was dressed up as a pregnant nun. The only thing he could see of her was her face, not her hair, not her body, her face, her big ass eyes, and her big ass nose. UGH!!! Why was he even interested in her? She decided to dress casually but cute. She didn’t want it to appear like she was trying too hard. She went with her “go-to” pair of jeans. They were light-colored denim boot-cut jeans. They hugged her in all the right places, showed off her cute little ass, and her lean legs. She always felt good in those jeans. She wore a black Taking Back Sunday t-shirt and a short black leather jacket. She also wore black, chunky heeled booties to give her some height. She showed up at Outback at 6:55, not too early but not late. She hated it when people showed up late, it was a sign of them being inconsiderate and rude. She walked in and walked straight up to the bar. She figured if he wasn’t there yet she could order herself a drink, calm her nerves, chill up at the bar and wait for him to show up, but as she was walking up to the bar she saw him at the corner of her eye sitting in a booth. She looked directly at him and their eyes locked. He smiled. She felt her face flush. He was wearing light-colored blue jeans and a button-down plaid shirt, un-tucked. Holy shit he was so fucking hot! She was nervous and needed that drink. He stood up right away and said, “Sorry, I got here early, I didn’t know if they were going to be busy and I wanted to make sure we got a booth seat by the bar.” He smiled and went on to say, “I guess I am a little nervous. I ordered a Captain. Can I get you a drink? What would you like?” Alex smiled with relief, holy crap he was here early, admitted he was nervous and was drinking a captain. She was starting to feel better already. “I’ll have what you’re having,” she said. He looked at her and smiled, “A Captain Diet with a lime on the side it is then.” Alex thought could this guy get any dreamier, what’s the catch?
They sat opposite of each other. Alex was relieved to get a drink in hand and start sipping. Darius smiled at Alex and said, “So you’re a blonde? I was wondering what color of hair you had.” He smiled and Alex started laughing and went on to say she realized that he probably had no idea what he was agreeing to when they decided to meet up for dinner. For all he knew she could have been a pregnant skinhead. He laughed and said, “A smoking hot pregnant skinhead.” Alex flushed again. He thought she was hot, not just hot but smoking hot. YES! She laughed.
They started talking about anything and everything. They talked about the party a bit. Apparently, it was his cousin’s party. Alex didn’t know who his cousin was and admitted that her brother dragged her out to the Halloween party. They talked a bit about Braxton. Alex ended up sharing with Darius that she and her brother were super close. They grew up in a really strict, religious home and they only had each other to turn to. She admitted she was devastated when her brother left home to go off to college. Brax asked his friends who were still in town, to keep an eye on his kid sister. Alex was invited to a lot of college parties and was able to get booze easily. She admitted that she drank a lot after her brother moved away. She was about 15 when Braxton left. Braxton was the only one who could truly relate to her.
Alex said that she was more of a daddy’s girl when it came to her parents. Her dad worked as a heating and cooling guy, on his spare time he loved to tinker out in the garage, working on cars or building things. Alex found herself hanging out with her dad a lot if she wasn’t hanging out with her brother. She would help her dad with doing little things like holding a flashlight or handing him tools. He usually had the radio on, and they listened to Elvis and Johnny Cash. As Alex grew older, she realized why her dad spent so much time in the garage. Her mom was a little hard to be around. She remembered as a child she would watch her dad grab her mom’s ass and her mom snapped at him. When someone snaps at you every time you touch them, you eventually stop. After a while, he stopped touching her at all. There didn’t seem to be any love or affection between her parents. Her parents fought a lot and her dad would retreat to the garage. At least he could find peace there. Her mom was constantly going off to church; there was Monday night fellowship with the church ladies, Wednesday night bible study, and Friday night was choir practice for Sunday’s church service, and it seemed like she was at church all day on Sunday. A lot of the conversation in the house was about church and what the pastor was preaching about. There was no conversation about what anyone else was doing or anyone else’s interests.
Alex laughed and said when she thinks of her mom, she thinks of Carrie’s mom. Carrie, from the movie, Carrie. Darius laughed, Alex said no she was serious. She identified with Carrie on multiple levels. Her mom was a nut. Her name was Sharon and Alex referred to her as Psycho Sharon. Alex said Sharon was off her rocker. Alex told him a story of when she was a little kid, maybe 6, she loved unicorns. She had unicorns hanging from her ceiling, and stuffed animal unicorns, unicorn everything. One weekend her parents went to some church revival thing and when they came back home, her mom went into Alex’s room and ripped the horns off of every unicorn she owned, saying that they were of the devil, because they were magical creatures. Alex cried. She had no idea what she did wrong or what was wrong with the unicorns. Just the day before the unicorns were fine and her mom was ok with it, but one or two nights at some church revival thing and her mom comes back acting like a monster. Braxton, being around 10-years-old at the time, ran into his sister’s room and yelled at his mom. He thought it was cruel and he didn’t know why she was doing such a crazy thing. He hugged Alex and told her it would be ok, the unicorns were just horses now, the same thing just missing the horns. Alex didn’t want plain horses. She liked the unicorns because they were magical and made the horses special and pretty. Braxton told her he would fix them. Braxton did too. He tried to put the horns back on the stuffed animals, he sewed the horns on the best he could. Alex laughed. Braxton was a good brother.
Alex said her mom was bat shit crazy and depending on which preacher she was following that month; her mom would switch her beliefs. Alex was surprised her mom never ended up in a cult-like the Jim Jones cult, where Jones coerced a mass suicide/murder of over 900 cult members, 300 of them being children. Murder by Kool-Aid. Yep, Alex thought for sure that’s how Sharon would get her, murder by food or drink.
Alex said her family had a rule that no matter what, they ate dinner as a family. The whole family had to be there, and it was required that everyone ate all the food on their plate. She laughed