Just an Average Wednesday Night at the Ol' Hacienda

It all started when PhillyTwo decided to accompany her old friend Van to an office party at Mitchell's. I knew in my bones that things would not go smoothly. Very wisely, I went to bed with the chickens, so to speak. I woke up at 3 a.m. and decided to watch a little t.v. Shortly thereafter, I heard the garage door open and close. I was feeling relief at that moment. It wouldn't last long. I didn't hear her come into the house but I figured she was just being quiet, and she was probably downstairs on her computer. Then I heard some noises and I figured she was raiding the fridge. But the banging noises were unusually loud. Rachael Ray at this hour? After a while, I decided to go downstairs and see what all the ruckus was about. There were no lights on. Then I realized she was outside on the deck. I opened the back door and found myself face-to-face with Van. It scared the be-jesus out of me. He smelled like a brewery and kept apologizing for waking me up. I didn't bother to tell him that he hadn't. He wanted to talk to PhillyTwo, so I said, "Hold on, let me go find her." I started to shut the door and he said, "I'm freezing out here." It was probably a ploy, but I'm not that hard-hearted. I told him to come on in and wait right there. (This was a perfect opportunity for one of my favorite movie lines, "Come on in and try not to ruin everything by being you"....but I refrained) So off I went to find PhillyTwo. I went to her room and just as I got there the phone rang. I should mention that her bed was empty. I picked up her phone and the caller i.d. showed her cell phone number. But just as I pushed the button to answer, it stopped ringing. I knew right then that Van had answered it downstairs. Not good. I was already on my way back to the kitchen. I told him I couldn't find her. He said, "She just called here." I said, "I know, but I don't know where she is." He said, "Her car is here." I said, "Well, maybe she's still in it. Go look." I don't think he believed me, but he went back outside and I quickly locked the door behind him. I went upstairs and looked out the window. At this point he was shining a flashlight into her car. I saw her moving around inside the car and I could hear him trying to get her to open the door. I was pretty sure it wasn't a good situation, so I went back downstairs and opened the garage door. As I came outside she opened her car door and said, "I want him to leave." He, of course, didn't want to leave. He wanted to talk to PhillyTwo. I stepped in between them (Mmmmmm...the smell of second-hand booze) and said, "I'm taking her inside. You're going to have to go." He was still apologizing to me and asking her "just to talk to him" when we walked into the garage and closed the door behind us. I made sure the front and back doors were locked and we went upstairs. I got the whole drunken story. Apparently he had followed her home, uninvited, so she had hidden out in her car, hoping he would just leave. This had gone on for about twenty minutes, which felt like an eternity to someone scrunched into a floorboard. All of the noise I had heard was him banging on the back door because he thought she had gone into the house. When she realized that he was peering into her car, she acted like she had just passed out there. She didn't know I had let him into the house, so when she had called for my assistance earlier, and he had answered the phone, she had just hung up. I don't know how she'll ever explain that part, or if she'll even bother. I just hope Van made it home okay. And I hope he wasn't still standing in the driveway when the laughter started.