NaNoWriMoDay 29- The Shoes of Baltimore

Mickey wasn’t happy with the way they left things.

Actually, that was an understatement. Mickey thought that was the worse dinner of him life. And even though it was unnecessary, he put most of it on himself. At the end of dinner, Lauren only offered a limp wrist for Mickey to shake when he put out his hand.

The brother shook his hand like a normal person, but he the conversation with the brother had been stilted. It was hard to think what he would think of Mickey because all Jen’s brother talked about was himself. Mickey didn’t

know how he would form an opinion about the person his sister was dating.

He was going to go in for a kiss with Jen, but he thought better of it in front of her mother. He knew he didn’t win her over, and was already on thin ice with Jen before any of this happened. He just offered her a weird defeated nod, told everyone it was a lovely night, and escorted himself out.

Mickey went up to his apartment and poured himself gin over ice in a styrofoam cup. He went outside to sit on his stoop. He would have to run into someone to tell this story about.

Mickey’s roommate was spending less and less time in the apartment because of how mopey and drunk Mickey had been lately. So all he had was a few texts back and forth with his roommate about the situation. He still wanted to talk to him in person. There is only so much sadness you can fit in a text message.

It took an hour, but Mickey finally ran into one of his neighbors.

“Dude, Jen.” Mickey got right to the point. He had waited long enough. Small talk would just not do at this moment.

“Oh hey, man.” The neighbor was hoping it wouldn’t run into this guy. He had ran into him a few weeks ago and he ran his ear off. All he talked about was how he had to get Jen back and how he’d marry her.

“Dude, Jen.”

Mickey’s neighbor was going to try and keep this as brief as possible.

“Oh your old girl? Dude that sucks. I’m sorry if things aren’t working out. That sucks man.”

Mickey shoved a phone in front of his neighbor’s face. The neighbor reluctantly looked at the phone and looked at the text Mickey was trying to show him.

He looked it over.

Jen’s Phone: Well that was interesting. I guess it could have gone worse. Mother actually said some of the other guy’s I’ve dated have been worse than you which is a good thing. Mother holds a grudge, and should would have not approved of you if she thought you were the worst of the worst. I’m not supposed to talk to those boys. Well, like I’ve said, I’ve been thinking. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad having you around. I mean, don’t get me wrong Mickey, tonight was terrible. We are going to have a lot of work to do before anything gets too official. But after talking it over with mother, I’ve decided that I would want to reestablish the relationship. You can go back to calling me your girlfriend. I will go back to calling you my boyfriend. But don’t make anything official again on Facebook. I want my mother to be able to tell her friends what she wants to tell them about you after they see we are back together again. So again, don’t rush out there and put our relationship on the internet right away.

The neighbor didn’t know how to take this. On the one hand, he was glad he wouldn’t have to deal with this idiot getting hammered and trying to hang out with him. But on the other hand, if it went just like the last time they dated, he didn’t feel like hearing the screaming matches and listening to her act like a child.

Mickey stumbled over the trash can next to their town home and puked. He had chunks of pasta stuck on his face.

“What’d say?”

Mickey’s neighbor then decided it was better for Mickey to get back together with this girl.

When he thought about the fighting or having to walk on pins and needles when he got home so Mickey wouldn’t hear him enter his apartment, he decided he could handle the girlfriend than Mickey without her.

“Dude, you are going to be happy. Trust me. It’s good. But you need to get to sleep so you can read it in the morning.

“Sa good?”

“Yea,” the neighbor said. He interoperated it as, “So it’s good news?”

He tried to help him inside without the throw up touching him. Before getting to his door, Mickey hugged his neighbor. “Sa good news. Sa news.”

The neighbor pretty much threw him to the front door. He went back to the front door and threw his shirt on top of the trash can.

“Asshole,” he said to Mickey. His neighbor went inside his apartment and slammed the door.

Mickey started trudging up the steps.

“Call me no ashil. How he no call? No call. Not me. Me.”

Mickey somehow had the sense about him to plug in his cellphone. It was almost dead.

If it had died, Mickey wouldn’t have seen the message when he woke up a few hours later. He felt like he was in a mix of being hungover but somehow still drunk.

He stumbled over to the toilet, grabbed his phone before he made it, and tried his best to balance himself on the toilet with one hand and look at his phone on the other. Eventually, he decided to just sit on the toilet and pee will he looked at his phone.Everything looked a little blurry to him and he started to instantly feel like he had a headache when he was trying to stare at the screen. When he saw the message the first time, he thought he had to be drunk. But when he saw it a second time and then a third time, he knew it was real. He couldn’t believe it. He and Jen were back together. This was it. This was the moment he had been asking for. It was the moment he knew would happen.

And for Mickey, it was also a sign that he needed to lock Jen down as quick as possible. He couldn’t stand being apart like they were before. Getting engaged doesn’t mean the fighting will stop. In fact, there might be even more fighting before the engagement. But Mickey reasoned that there was no way Jen would breakup with him again if he proposed to her.

He went back to the couch and fell asleep with a grin on his mouth. Despite the fact that he was starting to feel more hungover than drunk, it was the best sleep he had in weeks.

They patched things up and it was a few months in. Mickey decided not to go to physical therapy school. He started to believe that Jen was really right about working on his brand. She told him once he had the money and had them all set, he could do whatever he wanted. But she would only stay with him if he didn’t leave to go to school. He knew he was going to agree to that now. There was no way he was going to lose her again.

This party is tricky. How long would you consider Mickey and Jen have been together? If you start it from when they got together after they had broken up, it would be five months. If you counted all the time except the time for when they broke up, it would be a out nine months. That’s the number Jen used when people asked her how long her and Mickey had been together.

That’s also an important number, because Mickey followed that logic as well. Since he thought it could technically be considered nine months they were together, that was close to a year.

Know where this is going?

Mickey told his parents that he had been dating this girl for roughly a year and he knew he wanted to spend the rest of their life together.

When his parents heard it, it sounded better when he said about a year when telling them how long they had been dating.
Mickey went out and put $20,000 from his savings on the ring. He also put another $25,000 on his business credit card. He would pay the business back, slowly and surely. His personal cards just had a $10,000 limit, so he had to use the business card to make sure he could pay for exactly what Jen wanted. Mickey had actually went to the jewelry store with Jen’s mom the weekend before.

“She wants that one,” Lauren said. “She didn’t say it happy. She didn’t say it annoyed. She just said it like she was telling someone where the bathroom in her house.

Mickey looked at the price tag and nodded. If that was the one Jen wanted, then that was the one Jen was going to get.

Still knowing their history, none of Mickey’s friends told him he was making a big mistake. None of Jen’s friends did so either.

So you have to really question of the people around them were friends or just people they spent time with. How could none of them question what they were doing? How could not one of them come forward and be real with them? Why couldn’t one of their friends bring up the fact that this was probably the worst mistake of either of their lives? It wasn’t great for Jen because this guy was too quick to try and please her and she would grow tired of him. It was absolutely terrible for Mickey and the worst decision he would make. He was already giving up going to school for this person, as well as putting $20,000 on his credit card. She wasn’t going to work more, so it was going to be up to Mickey to work more to pay that off.