‘There’ll be plenty for your vodka,’ Stevie assured with a mouth filled with cotton. And that was when he caught her staring, right into his eyes. Jeri’s eyes widened into two zeroes before she started laughing. ‘What?’ Stevie asked, shrugging.
‘Your eyes are burning,’ Jeri accused. ‘How long have you been smoking pot?’
‘I’ve not been…’
‘You’re stoned, don’t lie to me. I know more than you think, you know,’ his mom pressed, but she wasn’t angry. ‘So what are you — possessed? How long?’
‘Since college,’ Stevie shrugged again. ‘Are you going to make a big deal out of nothing?’
‘I am if you’re not sharing,’ she said, which caused Stevie’s eyes to dart back at hers. ‘I haven’t had a smoke in ages. You got any?’
Praise Baby Jesus for zip-lock bags. Not only great for sealing in freshness, but also for not dampening your horny mom’s Saturday night.
If Stevie thought his night couldn’t get any more surreal, he was in for one hell of a life lesson, because he had no idea what monster he was about to awaken in his ten years single mom, who had gone from party animal, to single mother, and then to social wallflower within such a short space of time.
‘This should be interesting,’ Stevie said as he retrieved the baggie from his bedroom computer desk drawer and traversed the stairs back down to the living room once more.
‘Do you want something else on?’ she asked courteously. Now Rayveness was munching some teen girl’s rug. Wonders might never cease, but Stevie was trying not to smirk for how hard he wanted to laugh in defence of his own shrinking sanity.
‘No, I’ll just make you a joint and then I want to go to bed,’ he excused.
‘That’s no fun,’ Jeri said, still a little drunkenly, and with a childish hint to her dulcet tone. ‘I don’t wanna smoke alone. I doubt I could handle a whole one now anyway.’
‘I don’t know if I want to sit here and get stoned with my mom to porn. It’s a bit weird!’
‘You watch porn and you get stoned,’ she interjected disarmingly, but it wasn’t working. ‘It doesn’t seem weird to you otherwise. Please, son. Come on, it’ll be something…’
She didn’t finish that sentence. Or did she? When you’re stoned it’s hard to tell what’s really being said, between the line, and even the littlest silences could feel like something had been left unsaid. Right now there seemed too much left unsaid, even if it should have been for the better.
Stevie didn’t answer her. He was already too enthralled by his own craftsmanship as he flaked together a little tobacco and green — two parts herb to one part filler — and carefully rolled the joint. He and his mom had their own leather recliners facing the TV, right next to each other.
He couldn’t begin to rationalise with himself just how surreal it was that he was rolling a joint, to smoke with his mom, while people were fucking for real right in front of them. Something squirmed uneasily in his abdomen, and it wasn’t the urge to pee.
4
Over the space of another hour Jeri’s youth seemed to return like a long-lost friend, and it was then that she recalled why she loved pot so much once upon a time. Stevie, though, might not have been the man to tell it to, because how and why do you tell your son — the other closet stoner — that being high makes you outrageously horny.