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“Hello?”
“Hi, is Jennifer there?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Jack, from the bar.”
“Uh huh, hold on a second.”
The phone went silent for a few seconds before Jack heard faintly on the other end of the line.
“Some guy from a bar.” “Who?” “John, Jack?”
“Hello?” Jennifer said.
“Hey it’s Jack, from the watch shop.”
“Yeah, hey Jack, what’s up?”
“Not much, my friends got a couple tickets to go see the Bears, but he couldn’t go, so he gave them to me. You want to go with me?”
“Ahhh, I’d love to, but I have to study, midterms are in a week.”
“Umm, okay, some other time I guess.”
“Sure, definitely, call me in a week, I’ll be free after all these tests are over with.”
“Okay, see you in a week I guess. Good luck with your midterms.”
“Thanks. At least you got the tickets for free, right?”
“Yeah, good thing. Bye”
“Bye. *click*”

 

A few days prior to this phone call, Jack took a cab to Soldier Field and bought two upper-level tickets to watch the Chicago Bears play the New York Giants.

Jack didn’t know why he told Jennifer that a friend had given him the tickets. It was a pointless lie. He pondered what aspect of his subconscious made this superfluous sentence come out of his throat. “Maybe I wanted to come off like some guy who was too cool to buy tickets for a date? That’s pretty stupid,” he thought. Jack kept thinking about this for an hour, although he recognized the futility of the exercise.

The sound of keys being jingled in a door lock broke Jack’s self-destructive thought loop.
“Jaaaaaaaaackkkkkiiiiiieeee! I’m home brudaaaaaaaah!” Marion yelled. The door slammed behind him. Jack got off his chair in the kitchen to see Marion with blood shot eyes and a big grin on his face.

 

“I was at, I was at my cousins place,” Marion managed to stutter out.
“I thought your cousin lived in Jamaica.”
“What? Ohh hahaha! No man! This is a different cousin! Haha, cause you t’ought, my cousin who sent me the Bob Marley poster…haha, no man! Different person all toget’er mon!”
“You okay Marion?”
“I smoked, just, just a little bit.”
“So I smell.”
“Haha, so I smell! Dat’s funny mon! So I smell, haha, I’ll remember dat. Don’ you worry though, I’ll give you credit, hundred percent man.”
Marion’s antics put a smile on Jack’s face and he stopped over analyzing the conversation between him and Jennifer.
“Hey Marion, do you like football?” Jack asked.