I let out a squeak in surprise because I basically forgot they were standing there or that anything else in the world existed. I quickly wrap my arms around my chest, just in case my nipples are poking through my shirt.
“Yee-haw!” Susan yells from the door. “That was a heck of a kiss! Now come out here and play our penis game. I demand it, and I’m the bride, and being the bride, what I want trumps Mom trying to stuff you both full of baked goods and iced tea.”
“Okay.” I turn frantically to the side to hide my scarlet cheeks. “We’re coming.” I brush past Gabriel, who looks as flustered as I probably do.
Was that boner for real? Did he spring one because of some physical malfunction in the groinal junction, or is he actually bisexual? I didn’t really ask. In fact, Dean just assumed he was gay if I remember correctly. When he walked up, he said that because Gabriel was gay, our plan would be perfect. Gabriel never corrected us, but would a complete stranger just be comfortable saying he was bisexual? Also, we had just bombarded him with all our levels of craziness. So no, he probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable.
“Okay, have fun! I have pie for you all when you get in!” Mom calls from behind us as Gabriel follows me out of the patio door. He shuts it carefully behind him and sends me a quick, apologetic look before he smiles at my sister and her group of friends.
I know all of five of them because all but one grew up in Sisston. Emily, Paula, Stephanie, and Lisa all went to school with Susan, while Amy is Chase’s sister, so Susan’s future sister-in-law.
Amy, who is blonde and blue-eyed like her brother, rushes over and hands me a purple penis. “This one is for you, and we have this one,” she produces a massive green, wrinkly, and bent paper laminated penis for Gabriel, “for you.”
Gabriel inspects it. “It might just be me, but this weenus doesn’t look overly healthy.”
“It looks healthy enough to me,” Paula says loudly, and the rest of them titter behind their hands.
Paula always did like retro stuff, and she’s currently sporting a set of huge glasses that look like they’re from the eighties, and she’s also wearing a bright floral dress that likely belonged to the same decade. She’s tall and has a killer body, but it’s her great sense of style, immaculate dark hair, and flawless makeup that really help her pull off the look.
Gabriel grins back at her, and when Paula blushes before she spins away to pick up an equally large, not so wrinkly, but bright orange paper phallus, I feel jealous.
Yes. For a split second, that green-eyed beast hits me hard, and it’s like getting a ginormous dart plunged straight into the middle of me out of the blue.
I shake it off when I find my sister staring at me with both brows raised. I just hold up my “weenus” as Gabriel called it. I like it. Weenus. It’s actually quite funny. I’ll have to remember that one. As if I could forget anything about this.
The thought is sobering, so I turn around to face the target at the other end of the back yard. My parents have a really nice area. It’s fenced off, and since we have a corner lot, it’s pretty big. Mom, as usual, has gone wild with the flowers, both in her gardens lining the fence on all three sides, and in the pots. At the far end, there’s a life-size cardboard cut-out of Chase wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt.
“Are you sure Chase doesn’t mind being the target of this game? I feel like his cardboard doppelganger might take offense to being objectified like this.”
Susan giggles. “Oh, he knows all about it, and he thinks it’s hilarious. He’s having his stag tomorrow night with his friends, and I’m sure they’ll do way worse than pin a bunch of pee-pees on a cardboard image.”
“He’s not having it here?”
“No. In Seattle.”
“The night before the wedding?” I gasp. “You let him get away with that?”
Susan looks around nervously. When she grasps her hands and twists her fingers together, I can tell that no, she doesn’t like the idea. Not because she thinks Chase will do anything. He won’t. Chase is an amazing guy, and my sister is very, very lucky. It’s just that his friends might give him so much booze that he’ll have a hangover from ultra-hell and look like a wreck at the wedding if he manages to make it there at all.
“Bobby promised to look out for him. I trust them all not to give him too much booze, hopefully. Chase would never do that to me. Look like death for the wedding, I mean.”