“I don’t—” I shook my head to clear it. “How badly?”
The look she shot me this time would have melted the skin off the bones of a weaker man. Newsflash, I wasn’t a weak man, so all it did was bounce off me. It did help me figure out where her head was at, and I was thinking I really needed to call Tabby.
“If I could see how badly or exactly where it is on my primrose, I’d hop online and pick out an appropriate piece of jewelry to put in it, wouldn’t I?”
How the hell did this just keep getting even more random?
“I’m not exactly sure. I’ve never met anyone who pierced themselves with wood from a fence while they were trying to escape a chicken called Bob Ross.”
“A rabid chicken called Bob Ross,” she corrected me, gritting the words out. “And he totally doesn’t deserve the name.”
I couldn’t say I disagreed, given that it was still making angry noises.
Standing back up, I took some of her weight again and tried to figure out how to get out of this with a modicum of sanity still.
And then the decision was taken out of my hands altogether, because Bob Ross did something on the opposite side that caused her to scream and jerk forward.
One second I was holding onto Evie, and the next, she was making agonized noises through her teeth and was balanced with both hands on the ground, her shins now where her crotch had been. That was all fair and well, but it meant that I had her ass in my face. Like, right in my face.
Hoping I was making the right decision for her, I quickly moved to pick her up, keeping my arms around her waist.
“Are you okay?”
She’d just opened her mouth when another voice asked, “What’s going on?”
I glanced back over the fence to see Cody standing there and holding the chicken in question, who looked like he was a puppy soaking up the lovins.
“Don’t let him see me like this. He doesn’t need to see me dying,” Evie whispered, her hand fisting in the back of my t-shirt.
“Your mom had an accident, bud. I’m just going to call my da—” I stopped and made a quick change of plans. “I’m going to call Rose Evans to come and take a look. Could you do me a favor and lock up Bob Ross so he doesn’t get out, please?”
Hearing the name of the feathered assassin, Evie’s eyes widened, and then slowly, her head turned to look at where Cody was watching us.
When she saw what the chicken was doing, she hissed, “Oh, you little beeping clucking beeper.”
Looking from his mom down at the creature she was swearing at, it all clicked into place. “He attacked you again, didn’t he?”
“You could say that,” she growled. “The store ran out of the food he likes, so I got what they had.” She pointed a finger at Bob Ross.
“Which, FYI, excuse the ever-loving clucking beep out of me for not wanting you to starve, you— you— dirty dooder head.”
“You tell him, girl. He’ll be shaking in his feathers,” I whispered loud enough for Cody to hear and grinned when I saw his shoulders start shaking.
“I know what you’re really saying, Mom. Just say the f-word and shit like normal people do.”
Her gasp this time was horrified. “Cody, don’t you dare. What happened the last time you cussed?”
His eyes lifted to the sky as he thought about it. “Well, you didn’t hear me the last time I did it—” he started, then looked horrified by what he’d admitted. “I mean—”
“If I hadn’t just been spit roasted, I’d wash your mouth out, young man.”
I swear, my cheeks started burning. “Uh, Evie, I don’t think you want to use those words to describe your situation.”
Looking curiously up at me, she asked, “Why not? That’s what happened.”
Leaning in closer to her and this time whispering so that the almost-teenager couldn’t hear us, I explained what it meant.
“Spit roasting’s when a man’s at the front and another’s at the back of the man or woman taking their…” I cleared my throat and looked down at my crotch, hoping she’d understand.
She didn’t.
“Taking their what? And if someone’s standing in between people, that’s not a bad thing. That means I get spit roasted at the store almost every day. Am I meant to scream, ‘Stop spit roasting me,’ because of it?”
Why hadn’t I just stayed quiet?
A sent a sympathetic look to her son when he groaned. If he knew what it meant at eleven, how didn’t she know?
Leaning so that my mouth was next to her ear, I whispered, “Evie, picture a woman naked and in the doggy style position. Now add in a man fucking her from behind and another one in front of her with his—”