Back home, Max's mom was mentally preparing to enter her contaminated crafts room to sort through her soiled treasures.
When Max's jock father had been around, she had relied on a potent nasal numbing spray just to function, but the long term use of the spray came with debilitating side effects. It made her extremely drowsy and forgetful, it caused nose bleeds and headaches as well as throat irritation and intermittent bouts of sickening dizziness. Ever since he went away, she had been relieved to be able to stop using it. When Max started developing his father's odor problem, she vowed she would find some other way to cope, ultimately outfitting the garage for his private use.
Now she found herself clawing through closets and cabinets, looking through bins of old prescriptions trying to find a single bottle of the wretched stuff so she could stand a chance of tolerating her son's awful stink.
Finally she was able to find a bottle, and even though it was nearly empty it would be enough to numb her for at least a little while, so she applied the spray and got to work. While she was digging through the main pile of craft items, she came across a set of patches from her husband's old varsity jackets. They were vintage and pretty cool to look at. She was indulging in old memories when she had the great idea to sew a couple patches onto Max's jacket. She had just seen it hanging in the entryway closet when she was looking for her meds... Max was sure to appreciate the gesture, and it would go a long way to smoothing things out between them... Not that he necessarily deserved it, of course, but anger and frustration hadn't been getting her anywhere with Max, so maybe it was time to extend an olive branch...
She fetched the jacket right away and started getting together her supplies, leaving the cleaning for later... This was more important.
First thing she needed to do was get the patch placement right. She tried positioning the patches while the jacket was laying flat but wasn't happy with the results. Normally she would drape the jacket over the sewing doll, but that was out of the question at the moment, so without much thought she foisted her arms into the heavy leather sleeves and scooped the jacket snugly around herself, zipping it up tight to get the most accurate shape. She pinned a couple patches in place on the front and then removed the jacket to arrange the lettering on the back. W-A-R-N-E-R. She had selected both a La Crosse patch and a gridiron patch that she just new he'd love. She had to put the jacket off and on a few times to get everything just right, but she was becoming more and more satisfied with the overall look. Once all the patches were pinned in place she put the jacket on one final time. She put her hands in the pockets and pulled the front of the jacket flat against her front, turning from side to side inspecting each patch...
When she pulled her hands out of the pockets a small piece of paper came out with them. It was folded up and crumpled looking. Out of curiosity she unfolded the note and read it to herself.
-----------------------------
Hey we gotta do that david coperfeeld thing tonite, your place?
Na, my moms home tonight
So wut? You got the garage.
Shes the wurst. Id rather spend time at your house. your famly is so chill.
To bad your Dad left insted of your mom, rite?
You have no idiuh.
KK. :) Ditch the bitch, see you at 7?
Ya. Tnx.
-----------------------------
Max's mom crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash. She was livid! What had she been thinking?! She stripped the jacket off and looked at it in her hand feeling like a giant chump, a complete, doe eyed fool for thinking the onus was on HER to extend an olive branch. Her son was an irredeemable ASSHOLE who didn't appreciate her and all the sacrifices she'd made for him his entire life! She trudged out of the room in a huff throwing the jacket toward the door in the entryway, the beginnings of a pile of her son's things that she was now determined to throw away.
She wasn't sure if the nasal spray was wearing off or if it was just too old to be effective, but she'd distinctly smelled strong scents of grass and leather coming from the jacket, so she decided it was time to go for broke and opened the seal on a new pair of filters, and loaded up her seldom used respirator. She'd just gotten herself fully equipped when the doorbell rang.
She strode over to the door, ready to peel the skin off whoever she found on the other side, and swung the door open to find a young pair of slack-jawed idiots.
“May I help you?” She said recognizing the boy as one of her son's sport obsessed friends.
“Ummm….I was just looking for Max. My bro and I were gonna give him a ride to school this morning and…”
“Look, I don’t care where that little shit is,” She replied. “He’s in so much trouble right now…But since you’ll see him, be sure to give him this.” She retreated back into the house and returned holding the Jock Jacket like it was poison. She tossed the jacket down on the ground. “Tell that ass if I find anything else of his in my house, it’s going in the dumpster.” She closed the door without waiting for a response and returned to her craft room to stew in her negative feelings and disinfect her treasures.