The next chapter will be the last. I hope you all enjoyed my story and thank you to those who reviewed!
They had been in town for a month when Jamie got invited to a party. He stumbled in the front door at two in the morning and promptly stumbled into the coat rack, sending it crashing to the ground. Luke strode in from the living room where he'd been pacing for the last three hours and flicked on the light. Jamie grimaced and put a hand up to his eyes.
"Jeez, Uncle Lucas," mumbled Jamie drunkenly. "You scared me."
"I scared you? James Lucas Scott, do you have any idea what time it is?" Lucas demanded, furious.
"No," giggled Jamie, "But I think you're gonna tell me."
"It's two 'o clock in the morning, James! Now tell me what in the hell a sixteen –"
"Almost seventeen." Broke in Jamie.
"Sixteen" repeated Luke, "Year old is doing out until two in the morning!"
"Welllll," began Jamie, with a drawn out slur, "I was invited to this party, see, and it just ended. Come on, Uncle Luke, didn't you ever have fun when you were my age?"
Lucas frowned. Bar sluts named Nikki and various pool halls ran through his mind. He remembered taking Peyton upstairs at one party their senior year and getting caught making out with Brooke by his Uncle Keith. Yeah, Lucas realized, he really wasn't one to talk. And he found himself copying Keith when he finally spoke again to Jamie. "Go to bed, sleep it off. We'll talk about this in the morning."
Luke burst into Jamie's room at ten the following day and snapped up Jamie's window shades. "Up," he barked. "Time to talk, James."
Jamie pulled a pillow over his head and burrowed under the blankets. "Later, Luke," he groaned. "And close the curtains. The light is hurting my eyes."
Lucas laughed sardonically and shook his head. "Well that's your own damned fault then, isn't it Jamie? Now, get up. Your sisters have been up since six." With the briefest pang of guilt as he remembered his mother doing the same, Lucas ripped off Jamie's blankets, leaving him shivering in his boxers on the bed.
"What the hell?" argued Jamie, annoyed and hungover.
"Jamie. Now. Talk." Lucas' tone left no room for argument.
Grimacing, Jamie sat up. "Can you at least pull down the shades?" he asked, squinting. With a small amount of sympathy, Lucas agreed. Jamie sighed. "Thanks," he muttered. "It was just a party, Uncle Lucas. I know that it was stupid to get drunk and I should have had better judgment, but the guys were finally starting to accept me, you know? If it makes you feel any better, I called DUnotI for a ride home."
"It doesn't," replied Lucas, but that was a lie. He hid a smile as he thought about how proud Brooke would be of the program she started. "Listen, Jamie. I don't want to be the bad guy here. But next time if you're going to be late, you call. I don't want you drinking, although I know that I can't stop you. We need to discuss a curfew, because two o'clock is way too late for a sixteen year old to be out partying, however close you are to turning seventeen." He added, before Jamie could break in again. "And, listen up now, Jamie, you never ever drive drunk. You call me, or DUnotI, or someone. I would much rather get a midnight phonecall from you, Jamie, than an EMT. Understood?" Jamie looked Lucas in the eye and nodded, gently so as to not shake his already dizzy head. "Good. Now that that's cleared up, take a shower and get dressed. You stink."