before she and her mom moved into forest hills, max had a rule about lucas not calling her house, she would call him when she could. and more often than not “when she could” was the middle of the night. lucas was obviously not crazy about this, but he knew enough about max’s home life to figure the slap on the wrist he’d get for one of his friend’s calling late was disproportionate to whatever would happen if neil or billy caught max. max was never caught, lucas’ parents slept through the phone ringing the first two nights, but the third night the ring woke them up and lucas’ nonexistent volume control gave him away. his mom got up to tell lucas to get off the phone, but when she arrived at his door it was immediately clear lucas wasn’t talking to one of his party members. he was audibly nervous and throwing out shy compliments left and right. he called his mystery friend pretty, then apologized a moment after. “oh sorry, how about beautiful? handsome? cool? tubular?” he laughed, they agreed on cool then continued their conversation about video games. he was so respectful and kind and smitten and sue wanted to be upset but honestly couldn’t have been more proud of her son. she just went back to her room and explained it all to charles, they’d have normally been more strict about that sort of behavior but it was so sweet and lucas was such a little gentleman, it reminded them of the start of their relationship, if they’d called him out he’d just get more secretive. so they let it slide, shook their heads and laughed whenever they overheard lucas’ scrambling for the phone at two in the morning, exchanged glances when he alluded to the “cool new girl” he may or may not have liked and when he introduced them to his mystery caller sue cashed in her bet for what her personality would be like. after the summer starcourt mall burned down they stopped hearing ringing in the night, mystery caller stopped showing up around the house, but again, lucas was grown, he would come to them when he was ready.