I pause in the middle of my decorating to look over my shoulder at Alex.
“You pierced the stripper’s nipples? What is wrong with you?”
“I panicked! Bev told me to stop by and pick up some leftovers on my lunch break, and she was just sitting in the living room when I got here. We started talking and one thing led to another and BAM! Her tits were out and she was asking me to pierce them,” Alex tells me in a rush. “Dude, it was so weird. The whole time I had those puppies in my hands, all I could think about were Scheva’s tits and how much better they look. When you’re holding a pair of fake knockers in your hand, thinking about a pair of better, real knockers, you know you’re in love.”
I hear a gasp from behind me and turn to see Scheva standing in the hallway with her hand over her mouth.
“Shit,” Alex curses. “So, you heard that, huh?”
Scheva nods and drops her hand from her mouth, walking slowly underneath my hanging streamers and right up to Alex.
“I almost killed a stripper for you, jackass,” she tells him softly.
“Yeah? Well, I had a chance to bang a stripper and didn’t even want to because of you, crazy woman,” he replies.
What in the hell is happening right now?
“Look, I’m not really the white-picket-fence, happily-ever-after, pop-out-a-hundred-kids kind of woman, but I think I’d be okay only sleeping with you for the foreseeable future,” Scheva informs him.
“Sounds legit,” Alex shrugs casually. “I might be into the whole nonsense of keeping my dick in my pants whenever I’m not in your presence, for like, forever. I guess.”
“So, we’re doing this shit, then?” Scheva asks.
“We’re doing this shit.” Alex agrees, hauling her into his arms and sticking his tongue halfway down her throat.
They continue making out and mauling each other right behind me, forcing me to shove them out of the way a few times to finish with the decorating. I don’t understand how in the hell this happened. My best friend and Noel’s best friend managed to fall in love in a week, when they both hate everything to do with love, and I can’t even get the woman I’m madly in love with alone for five minutes.
“Let the love fest begin! Cupid is here to make all of your Valentine wishes come true!”
The last bit of crepe paper falls from my hands when Aunt Bobbie walks in the room with a very young, good-looking guy on her arm.
“What in Habanero Cheddar are you wearing? Is that an adult diaper?” Bev asks her, setting a vase of red roses in the middle of the table and placing her hands on her hips.
I look Aunt Bobbie up and down from the huge, white fluffy wings strapped to her back, to the red, sparkly bra, giant-sized diaper, and six-inch red stilettos. She’s foregone one of her usual outrageous wigs and has chosen to go natural, her shiny bald head reflecting the light from the chandelier in the middle of the room.
“Stop staring, Sam. I know you think I’m hot, but it’s inappropriate to lust after me when the love of my life is right here,” Aunt Bobbie informs me, pulling a toy bow and arrow out from behind her back and shooting a dart right at my face.
I’m still too much in shock to move out of the way and the suction cup end smacks right into my forehead.
“Direct hit!” Aunt Bobbie announces, tilting her head to the side so her boy-toy can give her a peck on the cheek. “Everyone, this is Tristan. Tristan, this is everyone. Well, almost everyone.”
Bev comes around the table and leans in to Aunt Bobbie’s side, whispering loudly in her ear, “Tristan, as in Tinder Tristan?”
Aunt Bobbie nods, running her fingers through Tinder Tristan’s short, blond hair.
“The one and the same. After he got the Poetry Penis-Pulling under control, we got to talking and realized we have a lot in common. And now we’re in love!”
Wonderful. Even cross-dressing Aunt Bobbie can find love with the Tinder lawn-whacker. My life is officially over.
“Christ, Bobbie, we have three toilets in this house. You don’t need to shit in a diaper,” Reggie complains, scrunching up his face in disgust as he shoulders his way into the room and sits down at the head of the table. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”
“We’re just waiting for Nicholas, Casey, and the baby to get here and for Noel to finish getting ready. Alex and Scheva, will you two please stop sucking face in my dining room?” Bev sighs.
Alex and Scheva finally unfuse their mouths and move to the table to take their seats while the front door opens and shuts and Nick calls out a greeting to everyone as he walks into the room with Holly fast asleep in the baby seat carrier he has slung over his arm.
“If anyone brings up household cleaners that can poison a baby, sharp objects that can poke a baby’s eye out, or anything about puppies dying when my wife gets in this room, I will punch all of you in the face,” Nick warns, setting the carrier into an empty chair at the opposite end of the table from Reggie. “Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day!”
When no one speaks, he rolls his eyes at us. “Today marks Holly’s six-week birthday. Do you know what that means? That means I can finally have sex with my wife tonight. If any of you assholes make her cry and ruin my life, I will shove my foot up your ass.”
As I take my seat next to Alex while removing the damn arrow from my forehead, I hear a pair of heels clicking on the stairs and down the hall. I turn around just as Noel and Casey meet in the doorway, share a hug, and move into the room. My palms immediately start to sweat and I have to swallow a few times before I choke. Wearing a tight, red strapless dress that barely covers her ass, her long, red hair piled up on top of her head in a messy updo thingy, and red glittery stilettos, I am struck speechless. She’s so fucking hot and beautiful that it makes me even more nervous about what I’m going to do tonight. Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe she’ll laugh at me, or hell, turn me down, but I’m going back to my original plan (with a little tweaking), and I am going to ask this woman one last time. Scratch that, I’m going to get down on my hands and knees and fucking beg this woman.
“Stop staring,” Noel says to everyone in the room who went as quiet as I did as soon as she walked in. “So I borrowed a dress and some shoes from Pinky. Don’t judge me.”
“A stripper with a heart of gold…” Alex smiles. “So it’s NOT a myth.”
Scheva glares at him and he quickly kisses her cheek. “I’m in love with your real knockers, not stripper knockers. Don’t hit me.”
Noel’s eyes finally meet mine and when I smile at her, she looks away quickly and my heart drops all the way down into my toes.
Shit, shit, shit!
She keeps her head down and her eyes averted from mine as she quickly walks the rest of the way into the room and sits down next to me, scooting her chair forward and shoving her hands under the table in her lap.
“Okay, everyone is here so I’ll just start bringing the food in, and we can begin our Valentine’s Day celebration!” Bev announces.
I jump to my feet, shoving my chair out with the back of my knees as I go.
Fuck it. I’m going in. If she doesn’t love me anymore, so be it.
Reaching into the pocket of my jeans, I grab the small black box and pull it out, waiting for Noel to look up from her lap.
“Oh, shit.”
“This is NOT good.”
Alex and Nicholas both mutter under their breaths at the same time, but I ignore them and clear my throat.
I open my mouth to get Noel to finally look up at me and see what I’m holding in my hand, when all of a sudden, something smacks into my arm and the ring box goes flying across the room. I whirl around to see a guilty-looking Alex staring up at me from his seat.
Scowling at him, I move to go pick up the box and see Alex get up from his seat and move with me.
“I’m doing this for your own good!” he whisper-shouts, before we both scramble away from the table at the same time, diving toward the wall where the box hit and fell to the floor.
We hit the ground with a loud thud, both of us Army-crawling rapidly the next couple of feet, reaching out for the box at the same time.
“Get the fuck off me!” I growl when one of Alex’s legs wrap around my torso and his arm smacks down around my shoulders.
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” Bev yells from behind us.
“Nothing to see here! Sam just dropped his fork!” Alex grunts in between the repeated slamming of my elbow into his ribs.
“Do NOT give her that box!” Alex hisses in my ear as I squirm and buck my body, trying to get him off of me while still reaching out for the ring box. “I’m saving your life and the life of your balls, man!”
“DON’T MAKE ME GET THE HOSE!” Reggie scolds from the end of the table.
“This makes me want to recite some poetry,” Tinder Tristan sighs happily.
“Oh honey, Bev might frown on you fertilizing the roses on her good tablecloth,” Aunt Bobbie tells him softly.
Alex continues to squeeze the life out of me as I growl and curse and try to reach for the fucking box. I give him one last, hard elbow to the ribs and he shouts in pain, loosening his grip on my shoulders just enough for me to smack my hand down on the box and pull it back and under my chest.
“That’s right, mother fucker!” I cheer, shoving him the rest of the way off me. “I win and you lose, and I’M THE MOTHER-FUCKING WINNER!”
The room has suddenly gone silent and I roll over onto my back, panting and wheezing with the ring box clutched to my chest.
Noel is staring down at me with wide eyes and I give her a crooked smile.
“R.I.P., Sam’s balls,” Alex mutters, pushing himself up from the floor. “I’m sorry for what’s about to happen to you.”
I ignore him, getting my own ass up from the ground to stand in front of Noel.
“Noel, can you give me your hand, please?” I ask softly.
A look of panic takes over her face and her cheeks redden, both of her arms flying behind her back.
“Hands? What hands? Did I hear the oven timer? I think dinner’s ready!” she speaks rapidly, looking over her shoulder at her mother.
Well, this is going exactly how I DIDN’T plan. Alex is right. My balls are ruined.
Chapter 15
Key Party
Noel
“Hands? What hands? Did I hear the oven timer? I think dinner’s ready!”
I talk as quickly as I can and look back over my shoulder at my mother, who is too busy staring at Sam to pay attention to my rapid eye movement and head jerking in the direction of the kitchen.
So much for wearing stripper clothes to distract Sam from the fact that I lost his mother’s ring. Scheva assured me he’d take one look at my tits practically falling out of this tiny red dress and he’d never notice.
“Noel, please give me your hand,” Sam repeats, now standing in front of me instead of rolling around on the floor fighting with Alex.
I have no idea what the hell that was about and I refuse to ask. I thought I saw them scrambling for a ring box when I got a few seconds to look between their flailing and punching bodies and that just made me sweat and my hands shake. What if he plans on asking for the ring back? Maybe he got tired of me giving him the brush-off this last week until I could find the ring and he realized I’m not worth all this trouble.
Shit, shit, shit!
Squeezing my arms tighter around the back of my body, I look anywhere but at Sam, my eyes suddenly zeroing in on the young guy sitting next to Aunt Bobbie whose hair she’s currently running her fingers through.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Tinder Tristan!” he says with a smile. “Don’t worry, I’m skipping the poetry tonight.”
Aunt Bobbie kisses his cheek, and I finally turn my head to face Sam. Sort of. I close my eyes and pretend like I’m in a galaxy far, far away. One that does not have a crazy train leaving every thirty seconds and one where I never lost the ring the love of my life gave me from his dearly departed mother.
I feel Sam wrap his hand around my left arm and start to tug it away from my body.
“Seriously, just give me your hand for a second,” he says in a low voice, still trying to pull my arm out from behind me.
“Oh, shit. We should all probably run right about now,” Nicholas says from his seat at the table.
“See? Now I don’t look so crazy, do I?” Alex replies to him.
“Will you two shut the fuck up?!” Sam growls. “Noel, please open your eyes.”
As slowly as I can, figuring I should probably get this over with since Valentine’s Day is pretty much ruined at this point, I lift one eyelid and see Sam holding exactly what I thought. A ring box.
An empty ring box because he wants the damn ring back!
With a sigh, I loosen my arm and let him pull it out from behind my back, taking a page out of Sam’s book and looking up at the ceiling instead of him so I don’t have to see the disappointment on his face when he notices my empty ring finger.
His hand slides down my arm and he squeezes my left hand. I hear the shuffling of his feet and something snap open and my heart skips a beat.
“I’m so sorry, Sam. I don’t know what happened and I’m sorry, and I know none of that means anything because I lost-”
“What the fuck? It’s not a key? I wrestled you like an alligator and you didn’t even have that dumb key in there?” Alex cuts me off with a complaint.
My head whips down and I stare wide-eyed into the ring box Sam is holding out to me, while down on one knee and still squeezing my left hand.
“Your mother’s ring!” I shout, finishing my previous sentence, but with a lot more relief than before.
“Jesus, man. Give us a little warning next time. I legit thought the key was still in there. Sorry about riding you like a bull,” Alex apologizes.
“What is all this key talk about?” Tinder Tristan asks quietly. “Is this a key party? Are we switching partners tonight? If so, I think I’d like to try the old guy down at the end.”
“Keep your dick in your pants. I am strictly exit only,” my father warns.
Sam sighs, pushing the ring box up a little higher.
“I swiped it off of your finger that night in the shower,” he tells me with a grin.
“What? How?” I ask in shock, staring wide-eyed at the ring nestled in the white satin.
“Well, you were a little preoccupied and the water helped keep it loose on your finger. Then, it was just a matter of hiding it under my tongue until we got out and I could stick it in my pants pocket when you left the bathroom.”
Aunt Bobbie whistles under her breath.
“I get him if this turns out to be a key party. I’d like a stab at that mouth and tongue. Pun intended,” she tells the room.
“Your idiot brother and my idiot best friend thought I was going to get down on my knee and give you a ring box with a key to my house in it, that’s why we had a little scuffle when Alex saw me pull the box out of my pocket,” Sam explains.
I laugh and shake my head at him. “I would have totally kicked you in the balls if you did that!”
Alex and Nicholas reach across the table to give each other high-fives.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that might happen. After I got my head out of my ass, I got to thinking and I realized you never really got a proper proposal,” he tells me.
“Bullshit! My idea!” Scheva suddenly says in between a few loud coughs.
“Okay, fine. I had a little help with this idea.”
I shoot a little glare in Scheva’s direction, knowing damn well she must have told Sam my crazy thoughts about how maybe our previous engagement wasn’t quite so real.
She grabs her wine glass and tilts it in my direction. “Cheers, bitch! And, you’re welcome.”
Scheva downs the entire glass, smacking it back onto the table as I focus back to Sam.
“Don’t be mad at her, I may have called her in a panic, thinking you wanted to break up with me. There was a lot of
cursing and yelling. She had no choice,” Sam informs me.
“And I’ve forgiven you for the twat comment. Now, please proceed so I can get more wine,” Scheva says.
Sam takes a deep breath and lifts the ring box closer to me. “Take the ring out.”
With a shaky hand, I gently pull it out of the box and I notice something new about it now that I’m holding it that it I didn’t see when I was so busy freaking out.
“I had the jeweler solder a band to it to make it a little wider. Look inside the ring.”
The simple, gold band with a one-carat, princess-cut diamond in the center, now has a beautiful diamond-studded, gold band attached to it. Turning it in my fingers, I look inside the ring and the tears immediately start to fall when I see what’s been engraved inside.
“My heart started beating at an airport…” I read aloud.
“You know I meant everything I said to you when I got down on one knee Christmas Eve and first gave you that ring, but I realize now that I should have done it again. For real. When neither of us are pretending and when we’re both on the same page,” Sam says, tossing the ring box to the side and holding my left hand in both of his.
I can’t stop the tears from falling as Sam repeats all of the same words he said to me on Christmas Eve.
“I wanted to wait until the perfect moment to do this, because you are perfect. But I realized it doesn’t matter where or when I do this, just that I do it.”
He leans forward and kisses the top of my hand as he continues, my heart melting inside my chest.
“I think I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, and every moment I’ve spent with you since then has just gotten better and better. I love your smile, I love your laugh, and I love the way you love your family, so unconditionally that you would do anything for them. Marry me, Noel Holiday. Marry me and never leave. Love me forever, and I will do everything I can to keep that smile on your face and the laughter in your voice.”
Just like the first time he said these words, my mother’s sniffles and soft sobbing is audible from the other side of the table as Sam gets up from his knees and stands in front of me, resting his hands on my hips.