Jake walks through the door of his parents' house, and his dad greets him with "Sue, I told you he'd move back in before the end of the month!"
"Uh, Mom invited me to dinner actually," Jake says, wiping off the snow from his boots on the doormat.
"What's the matter? How come your girlfriend doesn't cook for you?" Dad says, giving Jake a quick hug and kiss.
"Uh, because I'm a grown man and I can do it for myself," Jake says, taking off his coat.
"So are you making us dinner then?" Dad says.
"Uh, no. I thought Mom was making dinner."
"That's good. I didn't want toast or breakfast cereal."
They go into the dining room. "Where's my baby?" Mom says and gives Jake a slow hug and kiss.
"Smells good," Jake says, sniffing the air.
"It's pizza, your favorite."
"Thanks, Mom," Jake says, sitting down at the dining room table, "Do you need me to do anything?"
"No, just sit. You probably had a hard day."
"Hey, I had a hard day too. Can I just sit?" Dad says.
"No, you have to set the table."
"I should move out too. Apparently, that's what it takes to get treated well around here," Dad says, heading into the kitchen.
"Oh, hush, I treat you well," Mom says, following him in the kitchen.
Jake watches his parents playfully bicker as they get dishes out of the cupboard and take the pizza out of the oven, and he wonders if he and Francine will be like that someday. Will they even be together in twenty years? In a year? For as much as his parents like to complain about one another, it's hard to imagine one without the other. What kept them together? Him? His sister? Love? Fear of starting over? A mixture of everything?
"So, did you find a permanent job yet?" Dad says, coming back in the dining room with a set of dishes and some silverware, "Or are you still planning on being a professional wrestler? I saw one of those guys on tv the other day flipping through the channels. He was talking about how he was going to do this and that to his opponent. Hey, why do those guys always look like they're about to shit their pants when they give a speech?"
It certainly wasn't his dad's sense of humor.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.
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