Charlie's Lucky Charm

6: Going on Vacation

"You guys! You're never gonna believe what I just got!" Mac rushes into the bar with determination and a large smile on his face.

"What?" I ask out loudly as does Dee, even though she doesn't seem interested, keeping her eyes on the magazine she's reading.

Dennis doesn't even look up or respond to him. Max asks "where's Charlie and Frank?"

I say "Charlie's working in the basement and I have no shit where Frank is." I sip the beer I'm drinking, scrolling through my phone doing some work. I repeat the words I just said out loud in my head and then shake it, telling myself I've been hanging around these guys enough that I'm starting to talk like them.

Mac replies "I need everyone here! Dennis, go get Charlie! Dee, call Frank!"

Dennis then looks up from whatever he was doing to Mac and casually says "excuse me? I am not going to go into the basement, you go into the basement. Who knows what that bastard is doing down there. He's probably masturbating to the rats he caught."

"Eww." Dee exclaims.

I also comment out at the visual "gross!"

Dee adds on "and I'm not calling Frank."

Mac looks over to me with hopeful eyes and I roll mine in response, getting out of my seat as I say "well, since I refuse to let Frank have my number I guess I'll go find Charlie." I make my way to the basement, walking down slowly and casually calling out to him. I really do hope they were just making up the masturbation comment and not just saying that out of experience. I get in the basement and the lights off, putting me a little on edge. "Charlie?" I call out again. There's no answer and I call out again as I walk further in, trying to find the light switch "Charlie, you down here?" I manage to find the switch but when I flick it on, nothing happens. I flick it up and down a few times but the light stays off. I look around and find a small amount of light coming out of the bottom of a closed door. I go over to it, and slowly pull it up as I knock "Charlie?"

"oh, what!?" I manage to see him quickly jolt up from whatever he was doing on the floor and stand to meet my eye contact. He exhales out "oh, it's just you."

"What are you doing in here?" I question, seeing a magazine on the floor.

He shrugs "I'm practicing my reading."

"In a small room in the basement? Why?" I smirk, wondering why.

He replies "ehhh, the gang isn't crazy about me learning to read and shit so if I want to really get some time practicing, I come down here and they just assume I'm working."

I then ask "well, I'm happy you're working on reading but I have to ask you-- do you ever actually do any work here?"

He throws his hands around and just makes random sounds for a few moments before just stopping and leaving us standing quietly. He suddenly asks "why are you down here?"

"Oh, right! Sleeves has some news for us, seems pretty excited about it." I tell him.

He says back "maybe he's gonna come out of the closet, already!"

I laugh and reply as we start to walk back up to the bar "that would be nice."

When we get upstairs, I am bit surprised to see Frank already there. However, I have no time to comment on it as Mac quickly jumps up "good, we're all here! You guys! I got us all a ticket on a 4 day cruise!"

"What!?" I shout out along with Dee and Dennis.

Charlie says something like "no way!"

And Frank utters "a cruise?"

Mac explains, clearly giddy with the news "yeah! We got two rooms for a 4 day cruise. There's a pool, entertainment, and babes!"

"Babes!!!!!!" All three other men comment out together.

Charlie then yells "we're going on a cruiseee!!! Yah! Delaware water cruise!"

"What? No" Mac throws back.

"Charlie, there are no cruises out of the Delaware." Dennis tells him.

I then look to Mac "but good point, where is this cruise out of?"

He explains "We'll leave from Miami, spend 1 day at a Caribbean beach"

"Yes! This sounds awesome!" Dee smiles.

Dennis and Frank also agree, happy to go on the cruise.

Charlie seems skeptical as do I, just wondering where the hell he got these tickets from. I ask "how'd you get these tickets?"

"I won them!" He answers quickly.

I eye him, trying to read him but eventually just give up and say "fuck it, that'll be fun."

A week later and we're all squished into Dennis' SUV and driving down to Miami to get on the cruise. As we get closer, Mac has us stop a liquor store. We all buy a bottle or two but we notice Mac piling beers into a cart "what are you doing?" Frank questions him.

"Stocking up, drinks on cruises are super expensive. We can just get wasted on our own." Mac replies, throwing another 12 pack into the cart.

Dennis replies "no dude, Frank will buy us drinks. Get him drunk enough and he'll open a tab for all of us."

Mac gives us a strange grin and Dee pushes "God Dammit, what did you do?"

"Dammit!" Charlie yells back.

"What's going on?" Frank comes sauntering over, drinking straight out of a bottle of whiskey.

I explain to him "Mac's hiding something."

Mac argues "I'm not hiding anything. Nothing at all, just want us to have enough booze."

"Why wouldn't we have enough?" Charlie questions, all of us stepping closer to put the pressure on him.

We end up cornering him against a cooler fridge as he tries to stutter his way out of this but he eventually caves and yells "it's a Christian cruise!"

All of us start to yell out our confusion, anger and frustration for him tricking us. After a few minutes of us yelling, even myself included, Dee calms us down "fine, fine! Alright! I'm still going to go, I just need some time away from you guys. So why don't the rest of you go home and I'll enjoy some time to myself."

"I'm in too, it's still a cruise." I say standing next to Dee and nodding. The rest of the guys then all start to talk with one another and eventually everyone decides they are going to go on the cruise and buy a ton of beer.