"Jake!"
The moment my rental pulled into his driveway, Hal came bounding out to greet me, calling my name. When I stepped out of the car, he grabbed my hand and pumped it fiercely before using it to pull me into a rough embrace, which I returned enthusiastically. Two men in their mid-thirties hugging like old lovers right smack in the middle of Suburbia, U.S.A. might have proven to be a strange sight to anybody watching, but I didn't care; I hadn't seen my best friend in over five years. Besides, they weren't my neighbours.
Hal leaned back, still clasping my arms, and took a look at me. "Jesus Christ, you look like shit," he said. He didn't lie, I did look like shit. The past month had been a teaser trailer of Hell β from the first critical raping of my new book to the moment I walked in on my soon to be ex-wife fucking her golf instructor, her female golf instructor, to the five hour, plus delays, flight across the continent and the rush hour traffic and labyrinthine residential roads that took me here β and I felt like I wore every second of it on my face. But I was finally here, and I was going to feel better.
Hal, on the other hand, looked great. Or about as great as a 35 year old insurance salesman with 2 teenage children and a 25 year mortgage can look. He looked as though he had dropped about twenty pounds from his stocky frame since the last time I saw him, and a mouthful of recently capped teeth grinned at me from his tanned face. Sure, some more of his blonde hair had vacated the top of his head, probably migrating to his back, but he looked better than I had ever seen him look before, and I told him so.
"Well, business is good, and the kids are old enough that they don't hassle me too much anymore," he said. "Besides, I gotta keep looking my best, otherwise Sarah's going to run off with the pool guy."
"Nah, his dick's too small. The gardener, on the other handβ¦" The feminine voice coming from the front door alerted me to Sarah's presence, and I quickly strode over to Hal's wife and crushed her in my arms.
"Same old Sarah," I said, kissing her on the cheek. "Still talking like a sailor and shocking the neighbourhood."
"Same old Jake, still pretending to be shocked." Blonde and petite, with huge brown eyes, she was still a stunner. For not the first time in my life, I wished I was Hal.
"C'mon buddy", Hal said, as he walked towards the house carrying my bags, "let's get you inside and pour some beer down your throat."
"Actually," I replied, "what I could really use is a boiling hot shower to sear the airport grime from my skin. Do you mind?" I looked at them with exhausted, pleading eyes.
"Of course," Sarah said. "Plenty of time for you boys to get shit-faced and make asses of yourself later. I'll show you to your room, and there's a shower right across the hall".
"Or we could kill two birds with one stone," said Hal.
The only thing better than a piping hot shower after a day of air travel is a piping hot shower with an ice cold beer in your hand. Hal Lassiter sure knew how to treat his houseguests. And as the sweat and travel dirt was cleansed from my body, so too it seemed was the stress and tension that I had been carrying around for the past month. When I stepped out of that shower, I felt like I was a new man. All my troubles were behind me. I was with family now.
Wiping the fog from the mirror, I looked myself in the eye.
Not completely shitty
, I thought,
just tired. And old.
I was only beginning to show a bit of a belly on my once rail-thin body, and I still had most of my hair, even if the side follicles were beginning to join the grey team.
Distinguished, it's distinguished.
My favourite hobby these days seemed to be trying to convince myself that my faults were really advantages. I sucked at it. But even the world's best spin doctor was not going to convince me that the days worth of salt-and-pepper growth on my cheeks looked good.
I threw a towel around my waist in preparation to dart across the hall into my room and retrieve my shaving kit. I had taken not one step when my journey was interrupted by a loud squeal.