Cupid Has a Heart-On (The Holidays #2) (13 page)

She nods, lifting up on her toes to give me a kiss before quickly turning and yanking the towel from my body and taking it with her into the bedroom.

“That right there just earned you a spanking, young lady!” I shout, sticking my arm under the cold spray of the shower to turn off the water before following behind her as she laughs.

There’s a hard knock at the door, followed by Reggie’s angry voice.

“There better not be any hanky-panky going on under my roof! I’ll strap my belt around your balls and suffocate them! Believe me, no matter what my wife says, it does NOT enhance anything and hurts like the dickens!”

Spank Me Here!

Noel

“O
kay, ladies! You’re
going to just grab the pole like
this
, take a running leap, wrapping your leg around the base of the pole, and swing your body around it gracefully!” Pinky instructs, doing just that until she’s spinning around the stripper pole like…well, a stripper.

Scheva and I share a look that says, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” and leave my mother and Aunt Bobbie to practice swinging not-so-gracefully around the traveling stripper poles Pinky attached from floor-to-ceiling in my parent’s living room. It’s a complete disaster of flailing arms, falling bodies, and the two of them running into each other every time they try to swing themselves around the poles, along with the song
Pour Some Sugar on Me
blasting through the portable speakers Pinky hooked up to her phone. Scheva bends down to grab her water bottle and my eyes zoom in on the ass of her yoga pants, which now has a red, lacy slip of underwear peeking out of the top.

Being the asshole that I am, I grab onto the lace and yank it up to see words printed right underneath the lace.

“Does your ass say, ‘
Spank Me Here!’
on it? What the fuck are you wearing?!” I laugh as she swats my hand away and turns around.

“They were a gift. Don’t judge me.”

“Holy shit. You’re wearing Valentine’s Day underwear. Say it isn’t so,” I giggle.

“Alex gave me an early present. He was so cute and shy when he handed them to me, what was I supposed to do?” she asks with an embarrassed shrug.

“Please tell me he didn’t also give you a cute little heart-shaped box of candy chocolates. Wait, no. Tell me he did so I can keep laughing at you!”

Scheva smacks my arm and we both jump when my mother screams, turning to see her rubbing the top of her head after smacking it into the pole.

“Try again, Mrs. Holiday! This time, lean
away
from the pole when you swing!” Pinky cheers her on, helping her up from the floor.

I turn back to face Scheva, crossing my arms and tapping my foot on the floor, waiting for her to get back to the important subject at hand.

She huffs in irritation and glares at me. “Fine! So maybe I don’t hate Valentine’s Day as much as I thought I did. They were individually wrapped Godiva chocolates, Noel! Who can say no to those things?”

Wrapping my arm around her shoulder, I hug her to me. “Awwww, my little girl is all grown up. It’s so cute.”

She shrugs my arm off and pushes away from me, stalking over to the couch to sit down.

“I like Alex, okay? Shoot me. Maybe he’s a little bit of a slut, but shit, so am I. The guy fucks like a dream and got all sweet and nervous when he gave me presents. I couldn’t exactly laugh in his face,” she explains. “Well, I could have, but that would just be mean. Change of subject. What did Sam say when you told him you’ve been acting like a nut job because you want him to propose again before you move in with him?”

I look away from her to stare intently at my mother holding onto the stripper pole and shaking her ass, making some weird duck-face and trying to look hot.

“I think she’s getting the hang of it,” I muse.

“Your mother is only getting the hang of looking like someone having a stroke in the middle of an awkward pole dance and everyone feels too bad for her to make it stop,” Scheva says in annoyance when my mother tries to swing her legs up above her body and grab onto the pole with her ankles.

Which results in her kicking Aunt Bobbie in the chin and Pinky needing to step in between them before they start beating the shit out of each other.

“I can’t believe you haven’t talked to him yet! You two are the most fucked-up couple I’ve ever seen in my life,” Scheva huffs with a roll of her eyes.

“We are NOT fucked-up! We’ve just been really busy, and then there was the issue with me going to an interview stoned today and shower sex sounded like a much better idea at the time than talking,” I tell her lamely.

“Eeeew, shower sex sucks. There’s always someone who doesn’t get any water and freezes their ass off, and then the other person is too busy trying to keep from drowning under the spray to enjoy it,” she complains. “Call him. Right now and tell him what the fuck is going on in your head.”

She grabs my phone from the side table and holds it out to me.

“I can’t call him and tell him something like that, are you crazy?!”

Scheva thrusts the phone out harder and gives me the evil eye. “Call him right the fuck now or I will! You can’t keep going on like this without telling him how you feel. What if he starts asking you to move in again? Are you just going to keep brushing him off for all of eternity because he’s a guy and has no idea that you don’t think his first proposal was a real one?”

She has a point. I mean, how is Sam supposed to know I want him to propose again unless I tell him? But that just brings me right back to my original point – that is not romantic at all! Is it so wrong for me to want him to
know
what I want and do it without me having to tell him?

Reaching for my phone just to shut her up, my eyes glance over my hand and I let out a blood-curdling scream.

“Jesus, no need for theatrics. If you don’t want to call him, don’t call him,” Scheva complains when I finally stop screaming.

Pulling my hand up in front of my face, I twist and turn it before frantically dropping to my knees and crawling around on the floor. I look under the side table, I look under the area rug by the doorway, and I even crawl between my mother and Aunt Bobbie, both attempting to climb up their respective poles and slowly slide back down them. Aunt Bobbie doesn’t hold on tight enough and comes flying down the pole, landing on her ass right next to me with a painful shout.

“Noel, what the hell are you looking for?” Scheva asks, getting up from the couch to follow behind me while I continue searching and try not cry.

“My ring. My ring is gone!” I shout, looking down at my left hand again, hoping by some miracle it magically appeared back on my ring finger.

“Well, there you go. Problem solved. Just tell Sam you lost the ring and he’ll have to buy you a new one, automatically forcing him to propose again since a new ring demands a new proposal,” Scheva announces with a smile.

“IT WAS HIS MOTHER’S RING!” I scream hysterically, my eyes clouding with tears. “It’s the only thing he has left of her and he gave it to me. AND I LOST IT!”

My mother and Aunt Bobbie quickly shake off their injuries and help me move around the room, looking under furniture, lifting up seat cushions, and shaking out blankets.

“Maybe you swallowed it when we first started the lesson,” Pinky suggests, squatting down next to me to pat me on the back.

“How in the fuck would I swallow a ring that was on my finger?!” I shout, immediately feeling bad that I’m yelling at the poor, dumb stripper who is only trying to help.

“You’d be surprised how many things I’ve accidentally swallowed over the years in my line of work,” she admits with a smile, not even phased by my outburst.

“REGGIE! GRAB YOUR METAL DETECTOR AND GET IN HERE!” my mother shouts out into the hallway.

Ten seconds later, my father comes running into the room with wide, excited eyes, holding his metal detector above his head like a warrior going into battle. There are few things in life that excite my father, and one of them is scanning anything and everything he can with that stupid device, in the hopes that he’ll eventually find a buried treasure and become a millionaire.

“Where do you need me? I just put new batteries in this baby, so she’s ready to go,” he informs us, flipping the switch to turn it on.

“Noel lost her ring from Sam,” my mother explains.

“Oh, is that all? It will turn up eventually,” he says with a shrug, moving his hand to turn the machine off.

“DAD!” I complain, pushing up from my knees and putting my hands on my hips.

“She might have lost it when we started our pole dancing lesson and I was helping her loosen up,” Pink suggests. “Maybe try over here by me.”

My father quickly waltzes across the room and runs the base of the detector slowly up Pinky’s body, starting at her feet.

“Really, dad?”

He shrugs. “You want me to find the damn thing don’t you? Pinky here said it might be in her general vicinity, so I’m checking her general vicinity!”

The machine suddenly starts beeping like crazy when my father hovers the round, flat base over Pinky’s boobs.

Dad takes a confused step back and the beeping stops.

My mother, Scheva, Aunt Bobbie, and I all move closer, and Aunt Bobbie tells him to do it again. His hands are now shaking and he has to take a minute to wipe a bead of sweat from his brow, but he does as he’s told, moving the base slowly across Pinky’s ample bosom.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

The metal detector starts going crazy and we all turn and share a confused look.

“Well, she did say she’s swallowed a few things over the years in her line of work,” I tell them lamely.

“I believe she meant penises. She’s swallowed a few
penises
in her line of work,” Scheva mutters.

“Pinky, honey. Did you swallow Noel’s ring?” my mother asks her with a kind voice.

“Jesus, Beverly, if she swallowed the ring it would be in her stomach. Not in…those,” dad informs her, using his free hand to wave in the direction of her huge tits.

“If I did swallow the ring, will they have to cut me open? I can’t really afford to have a scar like that,” Pinky tells us nervously, wrapping her arms around her body. “I mean, there are some clientele who are into weird things like strippers with scars and girls who are pregnant, but they don’t tip very well.”

Scheva laughs and I smack her in the arm. Any other time, this might be a funny situation, but there is nothing funny about me losing Sam’s mother’s ring and the possibility of it being somewhere in or on Pinky.

“No one would cut you open, sweetie. We’d just make you chug a bottle of MiraLAX and let you shit it out,” Aunt Bobbie reassures her with a smile.

“That doesn’t sound very hot,” my father mumbles.

“See? Strippers aren’t always glamourous, Reggie. Next time you feel the need to look at the ceiling instead of at her boobs, you just picture her with explosive diarrhea while one of us dons a pair of rubber gloves and pokes through it for jewelry!” my mother tells him.

I take a step forward to diffuse the situation before my father starts screaming.

“I’m sure she didn’t swallow it. Maybe it just fell down her top,” I suggest, not really coming up with any other plausible reason for why the metal detector is going crazy when it’s pointed at Pinky’s tits.

“I don’t know. Do tears of shame and regret make a metal detector go off? That’s probably what her fake tits are filled with anyway,” Scheva whispers to me.

“Oh, my gosh! I’m so dumb!” Pinky suddenly announces.

“Well hello, Captain Obvious,” Scheva mutters.

Pinky ignores the comment and continues. “I can’t believe I forgot! He stopped by here on his lunch break earlier, and when he told me he could do it, I jumped all over that!”

A light bulb suddenly goes on in my head and I groan, knowing exactly what’s coming next. Too bad my reflexes don’t work as quickly as my mind and I forget to wrap my arms around Scheva to hold her back.

“Alex pierced my nipples!” Pinky announces, grabbing the hem of her teeny, tiny tank top and yanking it up to her chin, putting her fake, newly-pierced tits on full display.

“Yep, my penis is definitely confused,” Aunt Bobbie says in awe, as my mother gasps, my father collapses to the floor with a
thump,
and Scheva lets out a shrill, war cry before diving across the room and tackling the stripper to the ground.

So much for finding my ring. Now I have to break up a Goddamn chick fight and revive my father.

Lawn Whacker

Sam

“I
really don’t
like the look on your face right now. You’re either plotting something, or you’re constipated. Either option is frightening,” Alex tells me quietly as we stand in the doorway of the dining room.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Bev invited everyone over for a romantic dinner. Being around a group of crazy people isn’t really my idea of romance, but it’s not like I could turn down her invitation. Noel has been avoiding me for the last week, even hanging up on me a few times when I asked her about getting together, texting me a few minutes later that we must have a bad connection and she’d talk to me tomorrow. Which she never did.