Singed Synapses and Deranged Dendrites

Dinner Time (#excuses)

The deidentified stolen car exploded with its buyer inside. Metal and fire rained down on the otherwise deserted city street and Max walked calmly away from the mayhem, two million dollars richer. He smiled with satisfaction.

"Yes!" said Max.

"You are on fire!" said Max's friend Julius over the Discord channel they shared. "At this rate you are going to be a billionaire by midnight."

The mention of time made Max's stomach rumble. He realized it was already dark. 

"Look I gotta go," said Max. "When Lorin left she made it clear it is my turn to make dinner." He slammed through an intersection and caused a major collision picking up a few more points. 

"Tell her you have a headache," said Julius, "that's what Kelly always does when she doesn't want to do something."

Max thought back to when Lorin had left eleven hours earlier in her nursing scrubs for the hospital. When the door had slammed, despite being already engrossed in his game, a nagging thought in the back of his mind had suggested that she might be annoyed with him.

"Do you think you can age gracefully playing 30 hours of Grand Theft Auto?" asked Max.

"What?" asked Julius.

"Never mind," said Max. "I don't think she is going to take any more of my excuses so I'm signing out." Julius continued to protest but Max turned off his Discord, his gaming console and screens. He stretched his stiff muscles. It had been a great session with Julius, but he felt sore from sitting for so long, despite his plush gaming chair.

The house felt extremely dark and quiet now and, well, rather lonely. A cord of anxiety struck him. Had Lorin left him? Was she simply not coming home from work?

No, he told himself, she probably had a twelve hour shift. He needed to make dinner. 

Shuffling over to the kitchen in his pajamas and slippers, he opened the fridge. It was pretty bare. He'd better run to the store.

He threw a jacket over his pajamas and exchanged his slippers for some laceless sneakers. 

'I'm a real loser,' he thought. 'Lorin could really do better.'

He got into his beat-up Honda and turned the key in the ignition. The engine whined but the car did not start. Max tried it ten more times. 

"Ugh! Piece of shit!" he said, slamming his fist on the dashboard. Then he smiled wryly thinking of the millions of dollars of fancy cars he had stolen playing Grand Theft Auto only to be stuck in his own driveway in a hunk of junk. If only he had the same skills in real life. 

The thought made him anxious again that Lorin might leave him for some rich doctor at the hospital, so he opened the garage and pulled out his bicycle. 

'Of course the tires have to be flat,' he thought. 

Pumping them up he looked at his phone. He had just enough time to order a pizza, pick it up on the bicycle and make it home before Lorin. He dialed as he sped down the street nearly running into a parked car while looking down at his phone. 

'That was close,' he thought. 

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up to Tommy's pizza. Rain had begun to fall. Max swore under his breath and ran in to pick up the pineapple pizza he had ordered, Lorin's favorite.

He set off back home, precariously holding the pizza in one arm. It was now pitch black. His phone rang. It was Lorin. He fumbled to answer it while steering with the arm holding the pizza box. 

"Yep, babe. I got dinner taken care of," said Max.

Suddenly headlights blinded him, a car horn sounded and Max found himself afloat in midair.

'I'm too old for this shit,' he thought as his body collided with the hood of a car.

Thirty minutes later Lorin walked in the door. Max sat at the kitchen table soaked to the skin in his pajamas and holding a bag of frozen peas on his elbow. She noticed his knee looked dirty and bloody. 

"Oh, honey," she said, "are you ok?"

"I'm fine," said Max, though his back wished to say otherwise. "Dinner is in the oven."

"It smells great," said Lorin, walking over to the stove. "I'm starving." She opened the oven and frowned. "I'm sure it will taste good but that is one sorry excuse for a pizza in there."