carl@fire

"Carl! Long time no see!"

"Hi, Cheryl." Carl, again wearing socks and sneakers to cover his feet, stepped in and received a hug from his wife's long-time best friend.

"Annie! Great to see you! Carl, too! Hey, man, how you been?" Ted called as he wandered in from the den. The sound of a sportsball game—football, Carl guessed based on the commentating style and his prior knowledge of Ted's interests—echoed from the den nearby.

"Ted, hi!" Annie gave her friend's husband of twenty years a quick hug before she was tugged off by the barrel-like Cheryl towards the kitchen.

"I've got this new one you've gotta try," Cheryl was saying, "and I wanna hear all about how your classes are going!"

"Good," Carl said, accepting the somewhat portly man's friendly handshake. "How 'bout you? Reid doing okay at school?"

"Eh, he's still finding his way," Ted said, shrugging. He waved, then turned towards the den off to the side of the entrance. "C'mon in, I've got the game on."

The last Carl had heard, Cheryl and Ted Dawson's only child, the nineteen year-old Reid, was nearing the threshold for being put on academic probation just after starting his second year as a result of video game addiction. That Carl worked for the company that made the same game "causing" their focus-lacking son to perform poorly in his academics had been a source of conflict over the past few months since the problem began—though obviously not between him and his loving, amazing wife.

Annie would never side with anyone over him, Carl knew.

Excepting Bobby and Sammy on occasion, of course, but he couldn't hold that against her.

They were just too cute.

Carl followed after the man, an electrician by trade, who had slid quickly out of his college football-playing and subsequent armed forces training shape and into a slight beer gut within the first decade of his son being born. "Hope he figures it out," Carl said, trying to close the awkward conversation gap. It was a case of being screwed either way, he thought: he could either choose not to ask about the boy and then have Cheryl complain to his wife that he didn't care about the problem that he was most certainly responsible for causing, or he could ask and then personally deal with the same awkwardness that had ensued the previous month when they'd entertained the other couple at their own house.

Carl made the obvious choice in an attempt to support his wife's continued friendship with her oldest friend.

"Yeah, we'll see, won't we," Ted said in a slightly accusatory tone.

Carl sighed inwardly. The boy's so-called condition wasn't uncommon, but it was clear that it was the result of both lacking focus and strongly wanting to escape reality. He had some sympathy for the latter reason, at least; it was surely difficult to remain motivated about the future when the country's economic depression only seemed to worsen each year.

They split off once they entered the carpeted den. Ted made for his seat, a large leather recliner, and Carl headed to the couch, since it was the only other choice. The giant QD-LED television hung on the wall, showing what was, Carl recognized from his earlier research, a game that had aired two days prior.

"Wow, this is closer than I expected," Carl lied once he'd taken his seat.

It wasn't closer than he'd expected, of course, since he'd read the score of the game and even skimmed through some of the highlight clips earlier that day given his experience in how Ted always loved to talk about the declining sport of football—a better alternative than the subtle, passive-aggressive undertone he anticipated being the—

"Yeah, I'll say," Ted remarked, lowering his can of beer from his mouth. "You want a beer or anything?"

"No thanks, I'm—"

"Ah shit, sorry," Ted said, sounding genuinely apologetic.

"It's cool," Carl said.

Ted wasn't a bad guy, Carl knew, but he'd been in a vehicle that had run over an IED while on deployment twenty-something years earlier, and his memory had been a little fuzzy around the edges ever since.

It was at that moment that Annie, Carl's amazing, unbelievably sweet, doting wife entered the room carrying a glass of ice water. "Thought you could use this if you're gonna be watching the game."

"Thanks, Annie," Carl said, giving his beloved a smile as he accepted the glass.

She smiled back, giving him a meaning-filled look.

Yes, Carl understood that look. That was the look Annie was giving him to let him know how much she appreciated him putting in the time to keep himself knowledgeable enough to converse and show vague interest in a sport that he had no personal interest in for the sole purpose of smoothing over—

"We'll come out and join you in a bit," Annie said while she walked back towards the kitchen, "you know how antsy Cheryl gets when she misses too much game-time."

Carl took a sip of water, then sighed.

He might not have wanted to spend time with Annie's friends, but she'd asked, and he would do anything to make her happy.