She glared at both of us. “Just that I’m a sniper,” she said. “Full-on, Grade A sniper. And besides, we weren’t talking about me, remember? We’re talking about how Vince probably already knows all about the surprise birthday party that Paul worked so hard to put together, which is now probably just ruined completely and everyone will hate him and be bored and talk about for years to come how awful of a time they had.”
“You scandalous bitch!” I hissed at her. “You told him, didn’t you!”
She smirked at me. “You’ll never know.”
“I think you will,” Daddy said. “Vince isn’t the world’s greatest actor. If he knows, he’ll probably say something like, ‘Oh, gosh, now this is a surprise! I sure didn’t know this was going to happen, no, I didn’t!’”
“Better than a cheese dice,” Helena muttered, straightening her falsies.
“I was a theatrical treasure!” I shouted at her.
“That is the gayest thing I’ve ever heard you say, boy,” Daddy said. “And Vince told me about what you like to scream when you ride him reverse cowgirl.”
“He did what?” I was going to murder him after wishing him a happy birthday and telling him I loved him and giving him the present that I was way fucking nervous about.
Helena’s phone chimed and she looked down. “Dare said they’re on their way here,” she said. “They should be here in ten minutes.”
I couldn’t resist. “Since when do you have Darren’s phone number? And since when did you start calling him Dare? Is that what you say to him? ‘Oh, hey, Dare. I dare you to sit on my face and do sexy-time stuff with my butthole.’ Or, you know, whatever else you would say to him.”
“I will break you in half,” she promised me darkly. “And I didn’t say Dare. You just heard me wrong.”
“No, he didn’t,” Daddy Charlie said.
“Even if Paul couldn’t get around to it,” Helena growled at him, “I will put you in a home, Charlie.”
I reached over and wrapped my arms around the old guy. “Don’t you worry, Daddy. I’ll protect you from the big, bad queen.”
He kissed my forehead. “Thank you, boy. It’s nice to know at least someone appreciates me.”
“I’m going to tell Vince you’re kissing and cuddling with another man,” Helena said.
&n
bsp; “You do, and I’ll tell Darren about the sex dream you had about him,” I said back. “I would think he’d find it very interesting how you apparently liked it when he mounted you in the middle of a Sears electronics department while it was shown on a wall of TVs in front of you. Which, by the way, I don’t know what that says about your psyche. I mean, Sears? Really? That’s, like, one step up from Walmart. I feel sorry for you just thinking about it. It’s like your dreams are broken and are dying slow and painful deaths.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that,” she grumbled. “What else doesn’t Vince know about you that’s embarrassing so I can tell him? Does he know you really had a diary that you wrote about him in?”
“It was a journal!”
“It had Saved By The Bell stickers on it!”
“Hey,” Charlie said.
“That made it awesome.”
“That made it a diary.”
“Boys and girls,” Charlie said.
“I’ll tell Darren that you are in love with him and want to go out with him and that you borrowed my big black dildo and pretended it was him!”
“I’ll tell Vince that you really got hippo shit in your mouth that time you fell into the hippo exhibit, and you had to stay overnight in the hospital because they thought you’d get some kind of weird hippo disease in your mouth!”
“Hey!” Charlie said.
“I’ll tell Darren that you stare at the picture of him on your phone that you don’t think anyone knows that you have!”
“I’ll tell Vince what you bought him for his birthday before you give it to him, thereby ruining a magical surprise and depriving you of the look of wonder on his face!”