A Light on in Chicago

Scout woke up pleasantly enough the next morning. That is, until Marcelle’s jumping on the bed landed her right on top of the only-just-awake woman. “Happy Birthday!” the lively addition to the bedroom yelled. “Now that that’s said, we have to talk. You’ll get a present for me later, but right now…. Holy crap, Scout, we’re really here! With these people! These famous people!”

Scout recognized the signs of a full Marcy meltdown immediately. She had had no time to adjust to the new people – people they were fans of, at that – and had been too preoccupied with other things to really get used to them. Marcelle needed a few fangirl moments to get them out of her system. So Scout obliged her. They gossiped about the boys, comparing what they expected to the actual people. Marcelle drooled over Joe a little, and Scout spoke sweetly of everyone she had met the day before.

After Scout and Marcelle talked for quite a while, the former remembered how she had been greeted that morning. “Wait,” she interrupted her friend in the middle of her rambles. “What’s today?”

Marcy was put off-guard, but answered quickly. “Friday.” When that didn’t get the response she was looking for, she expounded. “It’s the eleventh. Happy birthday. How do ya feel, old-timer?” She grinned at her friend and ran out of the room before she could be tackled. Another typical Marcelle/Scout fight had begun. Their running and giggling woke the slumbering men up, and soon they were all gathered in the kitchen, laughing as Scout chased the other girl around appliances and bodies.

“Hey, hey, what’s all the commotion about? Why’d you have to go and wake me up?” When Patrick didn’t get an answer, he just grabbed Scout to make her stop. Joe got the picture and did the same for Marcy. “Okay. So. What’s the dealio?”

Scout finally stopped struggling to laugh at his choice of words and answer his questions. “Well, Little Marcelle here tried to suggest that I was old just because I’m a year older today. Mean little bitch.” She looked over for her friend, but she had left the room, taking Joe with her.

“Oh! Well, happy birthday. That makes you what, 23? You got a while before you’re old. At least a couple of years, ‘cause I’m not old yet. Am I?” She assured him that he was, in fact, not old, and they talked as they fixed breakfast.

Meanwhile….

“Joe.” What a lovely introduction.

“Marcy.” He was just as talkative.

“I need your help with Scout’s birthday. I kinda forgot about it until sometime yesterday, and I don’t think she remembered either. Can you drive the van?” She got straight to the point, as always.
Joe just laughed. “You forgot your best friend’s birthday until the day before? Marcelle, you are some friend, you know that?” He shut up quickly when she glared up at him.

“Joseph you will help me or so help me God I will do something that your offspring will still be able to feel thirty years from now.” Hey, whatever works, right?

The man quickly agreed, and they prepared quickly to head out the door quickly and into Patrick’s borrowed Civic to run their errands. “So where to first? What do you need to get?” Joe asked, since he was driving.

Marcelle thought for a few moments before saying, “Well, I don’t have anything for her, so I need a cake and something to give her. What do you recommend?”

Now it was Joe’s turn to think. “There’s a bakery I know of that could probably get us something on short notice. We could go order the cake, get everything else, and then go pick it up on our way back to Pat’s?” The pair did just that.

Marcelle ordered a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, Scout’s favorite, while Joe text everyone to clue them in to the birthday plan. Once the cake was on its way to creation, they left to find presents. Joe parked the car at a record store and the scoured the shelves for a few albums. They worked well, finding several to give her in record time (pun kinda intended). They stopped by another store to buy wrapping supplies and cheesy party decorations then wrapped the albums awkwardly on the hood of the car.

Joe called the bakery for a cake update, but it would take another couple of hours before it would be ready. To waste time, the couple stopped into a diner to get some breakfast. As they laughed over pancakes and coffee, Joe found out that Marcelle loved Indiana Jones and had been in the Boy Scouts when she was younger. Marcelle learned things about Joe as well, like that he wished he could draw better and that he had played trombone as a kid. They talked until their plates were clean and their cups were empty.

After quite a while, they paid and left the diner to pick up the cake. The guys had gathered at Pete’s, leaving the pair to set up a birthday surprise for Scout. Marcelle took the cake to the kitchen and found candles. She also set out plates, forks, and a serving knife so they could actually eat it later. Joe set up the decorations, blowing up balloons and hanging streamers. Marcy finished in the kitchen and walked into the living room, watching Joe struggle to tie a balloon closed.

“Lookin’ good, Joey! I would only change one thing,” Marcelle told him as she picked up a few streamers to help out.

“Oh? And what wo-,” he tried to say before he was attacked by an atomic flying woman, armed to the teeth in party supplies. In no time, he was wrapped in streamers. Lucky for him, they had gotten paper ones, so it was easy to escape. “You’re gonna get it now,” he threatened before running after her. They landed on the couch together, him trapping her underneath a mess of limbs, “You know what?” he asked her.

“What?” she said quietly, no longer laughing so much.

“You’re really pretty,” he told her before leaning down the little bit to kiss her. It was meant to be short, but neither one really wanted to pull away. The kiss was only interrupted by Joe’s cell phone singing the Cantina Song from Star Wars. “Hello?” he answered it pretty quickly.

“You nerd,” Marcelle said before sitting up on the couch, letting him do the same while he spoke.

She could only hear Joe’s end of the conversation. “Oh, hey.... No, we’re done, you can come over…. See you in a few then.” When Marcelle looked at him curiously, he explained the conversation. “Pete’s bringing everybody here so we can celebrate.”

“Oh. We better clean up a little then, huh?” he agreed, and they tidied up the main rooms some before everyone arrived, smiling shyly at each other every once and a while. Scout walked in first with Patrick’s hands over her eyes so she couldn’t see anything. Everyone else filed into the room and gathered around the cake Marcy had brought into the living room.

When Patrick let go, her eyes lit up like a small child’s. She looked around at the decorations in awe, smiling widely. Everyone wished her a happy birthday, a few people yelled “Surprise!” but Scout was too busy hugging Marcelle to notice. She opened her gift and was even happier with the albums than she had been with the surprise. This girl was having a great day.

A while later Marcy was having trouble cutting up the cake. The candles were all blown out and removed, but the woman couldn’t handle the knife well enough to cut neatly. “Stupid bloody cake...,” she muttered to herself and was shocked to hear laughter close behind her. “What? It’s a stupid cake,” she defended her statement to Joe.

Once he stopped laughing, he explained. “Well, you said the cake was bloody, and it’s red, and with all the crumbs you’re making and mixing with the icing, it looks like it’s bleeding and…” he couldn’t talk anymore from laughing. His cackles attracted attention until Scout noticed the problem and cut up her own cake. Patrick watched the process, and when she kept pushing her hair out of her face, he got an idea.

Once he was back from his short trip to his room, he walked up to Scout and presented her with a gift. It wasn’t wrapped, so she could immediately see the hat he was giving her. “Happy birthday, Scout. This was one of my favorite hats, but I don’t wear it much anymore and I figured you might want it so you don’t have to steal mine anymore?” he said in one breath. She just smiled, nodded, put it on her head, and went back to the cake.