“Why do I hear a humming sound coming from Sam’s pants?” Nicholas questions, moving his head lower until his eyes are right by my belly button.

  Shit, shit, shit! Don’t think of ANYONE dry-humping!

  “HOW COME YOU CAN DO ALL THIS OTHER GREAT SHIT, BUT YOU CAN’T LIE THE FUCK DOWN AND SLEEP?!” I scream irrationally, leaning to the side to look around Nicholas’ face so I can scowl down at my lap.

  It’s no use. No matter how much I yell, no matter how hard I try to picture Nicholas giving me a blow job (shut up, I’m doing whatever I can to gross myself out and make my dick go the fuck to sleep), nothing works. My balls are tighter than ever, and with each tremor of the phone in my pocket rattling against my dick as Alex continues to call me, I can feel my orgasm getting closer and closer. I clench my teeth so hard I’m pretty sure I hear one of them crack, and the visions of Nicholas bobbing up and down on my dick that I try to hold on to, while disturbing, are immediately replaced with images of Noel wearing that little blue lace number, straddling my lap.

  “Is your phone in your pocket? Has it been in there this whole time, you ass-fucker?” Nicholas asks with a huff of irritation, reaching his hand into my pocket and fishing around.

  My hips automatically jerk forward when his hand in my pocket wraps around the still-vibrating phone. His head whips down to my lap and the unavoidable tent in my pants, then back up toward my face with wide, stunned eyes as I try to explain to him that what is happening right now has nothing to do with his hand in my pocket and his knuckles brushing up against my hard-as-a-rock dick.

  “IT’S THE DRY-HUMPING AND VIBRATING! THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR MAN HANDS IN MY PANTS OR JIZZY JESSICA! CLOSE YOUR EYES, CUT THE CRAP, SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!” I screech, spitting out more lines from the children’s book.

  Nicholas hurriedly yanks his hand out of my pocket and scrambles backward until he bumps into the kitchen counter, not understanding that I’m still reciting words from the book and not talking directly to him.

  “Did you just tell me to close my eyes so you could dry-hump your dick against my hand? What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Nicholas shouts, quickly turning toward the sink.

  His hands fumble with the faucet, shaking and slipping until he finally gets it turned on. He leans forward and sticks his whole head under the flow, turning his face up toward the water.

  “MY EYES! OH, MY GOD, MY EYES!” he moans in misery, pulling his face back to cup his hands under the fall of water.

  He splashes handfuls of water against his face repeatedly, cursing and shouting about being blind. Turning his head to the side, he then sticks his ear right under the flow of water, flipping his head from one side to the other to drown both of them.

  “I thought I heard you moan when I got closer! I can never un-hear that sound!” he wails.

  “IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!” I argue, pushing my chair back from the table and standing on unsteady legs. “I HAVEN’T COME IN SEVENTY DAYS, TWELVE HOURS, AND FIFTEEN MINUTES!”

  Not that I’ve been counting. FUCK YOU, STUPID DICK THAT CHOOSES THE WORST TIME EVER TO START WORKING AGAIN!

  “I don’t know what the fuck is happening right now, but Sam, I’m calling your phone one last time. One of you fuckers better find that thing. I’ve got poetry to write,” Alex complains, pulling his phone back from his ear to look at the screen, his finger hovering over the redial button.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! DON’T CALL MY PHONE AGAIN!” I shout like a mad man as I dive toward him to smack it out of his hands.

  My body jerks and freezes in place like it was hit with a Taser when Alex ignores me and presses the button. The vibration from the first silent ring brings my dick back to life just like voice of Kid Rock did to Turd Ferguson. My hands fly to my crotch, pressing as hard as I can to restrain the fucking thing, but each vibration makes it pulse against my palms, refusing to GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP.

  I drop to my knees next to the kitchen table, groaning in misery because I can’t stop moaning in pleasure and my fucking hips won’t stop rocking against my palms. Sweat drips down my face as I grit my teeth and let out a war cry and move one shaking hand into my pocket, pulling the phone out as carefully as possibly so it doesn’t graze against my sensitive dick. I feel like I’m playing the most twisted version of Operation and if this phone touches any part of my anatomy, a loud buzzer will sound, indicating I just came in my pants and lost the game.

  “Are you kidding me? The phone was in your pants this whole time?” Alex complains as I slowly pull the still-vibrating phone out of my pocket and toss it away from me.

  The phone slides across the floor and smacks against the opposite wall, rattling against the tile for a few more seconds before Alex finally ends the call and shakes his head at me.

  “MOM! BRING ME SOME BLEACH!” Nicholas screams from under the faucet, still showering his face, eyes and ears with cold water. “BLEACH, GASOLINE, LIGHTER FLUID…BRING ME SOMETHING, ANYTHING!”

  I try to remind Nicholas that Bev isn’t here to help him since her, Noel, Scheva, and Aunt Bobbie went to lunch, but I’m too drained. With a shuddering, exhausted breath, I drop the rest of the way to the floor onto my stomach, pressing my cheek against the cold tile with my arms and legs sprawled out around me.

  The kitchen door that leads out to the backyard suddenly flies open and quickly slams shut. My limited view from the floor has me staring at a pair of dark blue, men’s slippers as they stomp across the room and stop right in front of my face.

  “What the devil is happening in here? I’m outside trying to do a few practice runs with some of last year’s leftover fireworks to start making Max piss his pants in fear, and I can hear you three girls screaming over the explosions,” Reggie complains.

  “Sam lost his phone and got a hard-on for Nicholas. You know, the usual,” Alex informs him from his seat at the table.

  “I want my mommy!” Nicholas cries from the sink.

  “Really, if you think about it, this is all your fault, Mr. Holiday,” Alex states. “The groom is dying from lack of dairy. I think he should get a one-day reprieve and be allowed a glass of Vitamin D milk. None of that water-like skim shit, either. We’re skipping one and two percent and going right for the good stuff before both of his heads explode or he starts humping your kitchen floor.”

  Like a half-dead fish on the beach, I flop over onto my back with my arms spread out to my sides before the coolness of the floor starts to feel too good on my dick. I stare up at Reggie as he glares down at me.

  “I did not have sexual relations with the kitchen tile,” I whisper in a low, mumbling voice, having no control over the words coming out of my mouth at this point.

  Before he can pull his foot back and slam it into my face, the sound of the front door opening and the chatter of female voices can be heard from down the hall.

  “REGINALD HOLIDAY, WHERE ARE YOU?!” Bev shouts from the foyer.

  Reggie’s eyes widen in fear and he quickly bends down toward me, sticking his finger in my face.

  “If you get your ass up off my floor, distract Bev and never, ever speak of what happened in this kitchen again, I won’t kill you,” he tells me in a low voice.

  “WHY IS MY HYDRANGEA BUSH ON FIRE?!” Bev shouts again, her footsteps pounding against the floor as she makes her way down the hall toward us. “I SWEAR TO ALL THAT IS HOLY, IF YOU WERE LIGHTING OFF FIREWORKS EARLY, I WILL TAKE THE GARDEN HOSE TO THE STASH YOU HID INSIDE THE BARN!”

  Bev gave Reggie a limit of twenty fireworks when he went with one of his buddies from the VFW to the firework store in Pennsylvania yesterday. Against my better judgment and the fact that being in the military means I should probably not have anything to do with any kind of illegal activity, even if it is just the transport of a few fireworks over state lines, I stopped by last night when I got a text from Reggie to come over and help him with something. At this point, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make the guy like me and stop threatening me, even if it mean
t helping his friend back the U-haul they rented up to the barn after Bev went to sleep, and assist them in unloading seventy boxes filled with explosives and hiding them in there.

  Realizing he just spared my life when he could have easily grabbed a kitchen knife and cut off my dick after what Alex just told him, I scramble up off the floor to do what needs to be done. I give Reggie a salute as he nods in silent agreement, races around me and toward the kitchen door, grabbing Nicholas’s arm and yanking him with him as he goes.

  “Set fire to my eyes as soon as we get out back, Dad. Please, God, LIGHT MY EYES ON FIRE!” Nicholas shouts as Reggie pulls him outside and the door slams shut behind them.

  I glare at a laughing Alex and stick my finger in his face just like Reggie did to me.

  “If you say one word to Noel about what happened here today, I’ll tell Scheva how much you liked it when Aunt Bobbie put that red dress on you and that you’re currently wearing a pair of Scheva’s underwear,” I threaten him.

  “That red dress looked stunning on me! And I can’t help it that her underwear is all silky and smooth and feels good on my balls,” he whines as I walk past him to head off Bev and the rest of the women.

  With a deep breath, I round the corner of the kitchen and try my hardest not to get another hard-on when I see Noel, standing at the end of the hallway in a really short pair of jean cut-offs and a tight blue tank top with the word “America” written across her tits. If my dick gets hard again right now, there’s no way I’ll be able to stop it from taking over and wreaking havoc in the hallway, but God dammit, do I love America right now.

  Maybe I can convince her that having sex one day early won’t harm anyone. If anything, we’d be doing everyone attending the wedding tomorrow a favor. My dick is so backed up that when I come, it’s going to explode out of me faster than one of Reggie’s fireworks, ruining more than just Bev’s hydrangea bush.

  Chapter 14

  Fat Ralph

  Noel

  Turning off the hose and tossing it to the ground, Aunt Bobbie and I stare at my mother’s wilted, half-burnt hydrangea bush on the side of the house that we managed to spray down with water before it lit the house on fire.

  When we pulled into the driveway from lunch, we saw something smoking on the side of the house, but never expected the damn thing would go up in flames so quickly. While my mother tore through the house yelling for my father, Aunt Bobbie and I went back outside to check on it, and thank God we did. The siding had started to melt and bubble by the time we unwound the garden hose and dragged it over to the bush.

  “YOU KILLED MY FAVORITE SHRUB!” my mother screeches from the middle of the backyard, her hands on her hips while she stares my father down.

  “I WAS AIMING FOR TURD FERGUSON! IT’S NOT MY FAULT HE WAS STANDING BY THE DAMN BUSH AND MOVED OUT OF THE WAY!” my father fires back.

  As if just speaking the cat’s name conjures him up out of nowhere, Turd Ferguson darts out from behind the shrub I just finished spraying, sopping wet and hissing as he drags his body across the yard.

  “Was he under there the whole time? How in the hell isn’t he fried to a crisp?” I mutter to Aunt Bobbie as we silently watch the cat amble toward the ruckus in the middle of the yard.

  “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN AIMING AT ANYTHING! NO FIREWORKS BEFORE THE FOURTH!” my mother shouts.

  “YOU HAD ONE JOB TO DO, SAM! YOU WERE TOO BUSY HUMPING THE LINOLEUM AND NOW WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS!” my father yells, pointing his finger at Sam who stands guiltily behind my mother with Alex and Nicholas, everyone oblivious to the hissing, spitting, growling cat heading in their direction.

  “Sam was humping the kitchen floor? What the hell did we miss while we were at lunch?” Aunt Bobbie whispers from behind me.

  I’d like to say I’m too worried about the cat heading in Sam’s direction to pay any attention to her or wonder about the humping comment, but I’m too busy staring in a daze at my fiancé. He’s wearing my favorite pair of tan-colored cargo shorts that make his ass look fantastic, and the tight red t-shirt he has on hugs his muscled arms and tapered waist so perfectly that I think I feel a little bit of drool sliding down my chin.

  Suddenly, deciding we shouldn’t have sex until tomorrow night seems like the dumbest idea in the world. I felt a little guilty sending Sam all of those pictures of me in new lingerie, but they didn’t seem to affect him in the slightest. He didn’t even text back any words, just thumbs-up emoji’s after each one I sent him. I mean, seriously? A thumbs-up emoji? I couldn’t even get a heart or a smiley face with its tongue sticking out? I was so irritated after I sent the sixth photo, that I stood in front of the mirror naked and sent him that photo to try and get a rise out of him. My frustration grew when he didn’t respond, not even with another stupid thumbs up, that I curled up in my old bed and I was determined to masturbate just to stick it to him. I mean, it’s not like I’d tell him I masturbated since we agreed not to do anything like that and save the good stuff for our wedding night, but just the knowledge that I did it and I could look at him with a satisfied, smug smile on my face would be enough. And maybe even give him a REAL thumb’s up just to make myself feel better.

  Sadly, trying to masturbate in my parents’ home is just as exciting as trying to have sex in it was when Sam and I first started dating and I lived there. Right when I got a good fantasy going in my head, my father burst into my room, staring in a daze at nothing. He has a bad habit of sleep-walking, and seeing him standing in my doorway in a pair of baggy boxer shorts, no shirt, black dress socks and one of my mother’s pink, frilly robes draped over his shoulders, immediately killed any desire I had to diddle myself and secretly lord it over Sam.

  Sam, who looks so damn good in those shorts and that tight t-shirt, that I want to rip them off his body and climb him like a mountain, thumbs up emoji be damned. He can take that thumb and stick it up my—

  “HOLY SHIT, GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME!”

  Sam’s shout from the middle of the yard pulls me out of my day dream. I blink a few times to clear my head and I see him jumping around in circles, kicking his leg out to try and remove Turd Ferguson, who has once again latched his claws and teeth to Sam’s thigh. I quickly bend down and grab the hose, running across the yard until I’m jerked to a stop a few feet from him when the hose runs out of length. Pulling it up in front of me, I press the button on the nozzle as Aunt Bobbie comes racing up behind me, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “NOOOOOOOO, DON’T SPRAY HIM! HASN’T HE BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH?”

  The water erupts from the nozzle, drenching Sam and the zombie cat. The cat immediately unlatches himself from Sam’s leg, flopping to the grass in a puddle of wet fur and pissed-off yowling, scurrying away to the opposite side of the yard where he disappears around the corner of the house.

  “I’ve never seen a pussy that wet before,” Alex laughs. “Good thing you chased it away with the hose or Sam might have started humping it.”

  I’m oblivious to the punch Sam gives to Alex’s arm or the retching and dry-heaving my brother is doing next to both of them, as I slowly lower my arms and the hose slips out of my hands. I’ve become obsessed with the way the water drips down Sam’s body and how his t-shirt clings to his abs and I’m wondering why I’ve never entered him in a wet t-shirt contest before. I start squirming while I stand here staring at him, rubbing my thighs together to stop the ache between my legs, not even caring that I’m currently in the middle of having a real-life wet dream in front of my family.

  “I recognize that glazed look in Noel’s eyes. Quick, someone say something not hot before she catches what Sam has and starts mounting inanimate objects!” Alex suddenly shouts.

  “You stay away from my fireworks, Sam! I don’t care if they have a phallic shape, there will be no humping of the explosives!” my father pipes up, his voice quickly dousing the flames growing in my vagina and snapping me back to attention.

  My father and Sam start shouting back and forth,
my mother and Aunt Bobbie argue about which one of them will go after Turd Ferguson and remove him from the property before tomorrow and he starts attacking random guests, Alex points and laughs at a still dry-heaving Nicholas, and I suddenly take a minute to look around the yard.

  After letting go of the wedding planning and trusting my family to take care of everything, it’s been a struggle not to ask a thousand questions whenever they’d start whispering or leave the room to take a phone call. Looking around the yard and what they’ve done, restores my faith in them, even if they’re all currently acting like idiots and the neighbors have started to come outside to see what all the commotion is about.

  I silently turn in a circle to take everything in, trying not to cry as I do so. My mother has somehow managed to remove almost every bit of Fourth of July decorations from the yard, or at least all the ones with the color blue in them, leaving nothing behind but red and white twinkling lights and red and white lighted stars hanging from all the trees.

  We chose red and white as our wedding colors, mostly because having our wedding on the Fourth of July meant it would be easy to find things in those colors this time of year. In reality, Sam said the only decision he really cared about was picking the colors, because he wanted the color red for Ohio State, our favorite college football team.

  After our whirlwind Christmas romance and the craziness of Valentine’s Day when I worried the proposal he gave me at Christmas wasn’t real, thinking I lost the family heirloom ring he gave me somewhere inside a stripper, and that we didn’t know each other well enough to be engaged, we spent the week following Valentine’s Day really getting to know each other. We asked every question known to man, and when I asked who his favorite college football team is and we both shouted “Ohio State Buckeyes” at the same time, it solidified the fact that we were meant to be together. That fact was proven even further when I moved in with him and the two of us had so many Ohio State t-shirts and sweatshirts, that we made the spare bedroom a Buckeye room. We painted the walls scarlet and grey and the closet held nothing but our OSU gear.