Once Upon A Half-Time: A Secret Baby Romance (34 page)

What the hell did I do wrong? I’d
never
had this much trouble getting a girl into bed.

And I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble if it wasn’t for her.

Son of a bitch. I resisted the urge to kick the chair. The musicians stood.

I faced them, trying to grin through the embarrassment of getting rejected in the middle of a waltz.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You got this gig if one of you can explain to me what the fuck I did wrong.”

“
Y
ou slept with the
stripper
?”

I stared in horror at my sister. Lindsey overturned her margarita goblet and slurped the last few droplets of the frozen concoction. Pretty sure it was just pink-tinted tequila at this point, and she had reached her limit about three drinks ago.

I tangled my hands in my hair. “But I only left you alone for
ten
minutes?”

Lindsey couldn’t speak without slurring, but she could still chastise me with a wagging finger.

“I didn’t sleep with him
now
. I wouldn’t fuck that curvy cock again! I gots my new man! Getting
married
!”

The bachelorette party whooped in excitement as Lindsey danced, stumbled, and nearly clocked herself off the bar in an attempt to showcase the ring for the fourteenth time that night.

I wasn’t as amused as the other girls—or drunk, obviously. They hollered at the stripper clad in a particularly shiny g-string and bow tie. Lindsey shouted the loudest.

“Curvy cock! Curvy cock!” My sister swiped for the stripper’s red sequined thong. “That boy don’t know if he’s going or coming, but Imma tell you…he’ll get there
quick
.”

Oh god. The stripper stopped dancing to cover his package.

Only Lindsey had the ability to revert a sexy man with a greased six-pack back to the studious kid I recognized as her class’s salutatorian.

“Christopher Curvy Cock! Slap his ass, Mandy! Make that dingle dangle!”

I was in no condition to dangle anyone. Lindsey ordered another drink. The bartender mercifully watered it down.

“Maybe you ought to stay quiet and let the nice man dance?” I smiled at the stripper as he protected the elastic on his g-string from the bridesmaids’ wandering hands.

“I haven’t seen that slanted shlong since prom.” Lindsey giggled to herself. “I got on my knees, and that love stick bent into a boomerang! It looped into his belly button!”

As far as I remembered, Lindsey went to prom with
Bryce
. It was the third drunken revelation I vowed to forget after tonight. I hid my face as the stripper greeted Lindsey with an awkward smile and asked her to use his stage name—
Firechild
.

Lindsey refused. “That cock still bent? Let’s see! I wanna see!”

Fortunately, the bar hosting us didn’t permit complete nudity.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop my sister.

The music cranked louder, compliments of the bridal party. Drowning in her tenth margarita, Lindsey sloshed to her feet. She gave Christopher a lecherous grin before pitching the glass across the bar and awkwardly leaping at the professional erotic dancer.

I reached for her and missed. Lindsey dove headfirst into his tushy and…

He shouted. The girls cheered.

Christopher whirled around and covered his behind. “She
bit
me!”

God, I hoped strippers could earn worker’s comp. Was my sister up-to-date on her vaccinations? This wasn’t happening.

He stood, shocked, as Lindsey fumbled at his waist. She gripped his thong and tugged, ripping the material off. She fisted it over her head with a triumphant roar.

The stripper was, in fact, distinctly…
curved
. Awkwardly so. I tilted my head.

How did he even get it to—

“There it is!” Lindsey celebrated her victory by wearing the thong instead of her tiara and nearly puking on the bar. “I found that wavy wang!”

I peeled fifty bucks from my wallet and shoved it in the stripper’s hand.

“I’m so sorry about my sister. Please know that this bridal party respects penises of all shapes, sizes, colors, and religious expressions.”

He shook his head. I was so relieved he didn’t also wiggle below. “I—”

“Save yourself,” I said. “Run.”

He didn’t bother to grab his clothes. Christopher bolted bare-assed out of the party. The bridesmaids snapped pictures they were sure to regret later.

“Aw! Where’d that
shlock go
?” Lindsey slammed her drink on the bar. It spilled. “Lighten up, Mandy! Maybe you need a little dick in you,
sloosen
you up!”

That was the
last
thing I needed. “Maybe we ought to get a little coffee in you?”

“You’re not even drinking!”

“I’m driving us tonight, remember?”

Lindsey tried to blow a raspberry at me. She forgot to swallow the margarita first. The drink went everywhere, and I stopped her before she licked it off the bar.

I had drunk-sat my sister before, but she’d never gotten this bad. Lindsey giggled, whined, and nearly wet herself like a toddler.

Well, hell, if this was what having a baby was like, I could handle it. Especially since babies usually didn’t run up ridiculous bar tabs.

“You’re. No. Fun.” Lindsey pointed at me. “That’s what you are. No fun. No funny funny fanny.” She waved me close. “Know what’s fun?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Fucking a curved cock.” She laughed a little too loud. “Don’t tell Bryce!”

“Oh, believe me.” I ordered another ginger ale. “
No one
is going to know what happened tonight.”

I certainly wasn’t telling a soul about the nightmare that was Lindsey’s
first
of three bachelorette parties.

No one would know how Lindsey insulted all of Taiwan during our mani/pedis.

Nor would I tell the story of the limo’s broken window and combustible two liter bottle of soda.

And I hoped I could get the video off YouTube of Lindsey performing karaoke on the restaurant’s hibachi. It was a good Beyoncé impression until they turned on the grill.

My sister never handled alcohol well. She took criticism of her drinking habits worse. My newest mission was forcing her to drink water before her head exploded, and we weren’t even in phase two of the bachelorette party.

Because Lindsey’s party wasn’t just one night.

Oh
no
.

This was only the
beginning.

“If we want to get to the cabin, we should head out now.” I guided the bottle of water to her lips. She cheered, splashed, and spilled on me. At least she was excited about the weekend excursion to Bryce’s family’s lake house. “It’s a long trip—”

“God, Mandy. Can’t you just
relax
for once?” Lindsey belched, and that did nothing for the nausea swirling in my stomach. “You’re all…go here, go there, eat your noodles, go to the cabin, don’t steal the traffic cone, stop groping the policeman—”

“It’s
your
schedule,” I said. “You said to stick to the itinerary, no matter how many bars we crawled.”

“But I wanna
dance
!”

Lindsey attempted to take off her bra before removing her shirt. The shoulder strap snapped off, and she collapsed in a fit of giggles. She headed for her panties instead.

Of course, in classic Lindsey style, those were lost somewhere between the mani/pedis and dinner.

Lindsey whipped half of her bra out of her sleeve and over her head. The other half tangled around the piercings she still had to hide from Mom.

“Someone start the music!” She howled.

The music was already blaring. I covered my eyes as my sister lifted her skirt and flashed the bar.

Oh sweet Mary and Joseph—

Now was
not
the time of the month for her to be expressing herself!

The tampon string was just the fuse that would blow this party from drunken fun to jail time.

I grabbed Lindsey and dove over her skirt before the world saw everything she was giving away for the wedding.

“Okay, we’re leaving for the cabin
now
. We need our rest, right?” I shook Lindsey to gain her attention. She toppled onto the bar. “The cabin’s gonna be just as fun. We’ll get to work on the wedding dances.”

“
Dances
!” Lindsey slouched a bit. “Can’t wait to
nae nae
.”

I could. Oh, Lord, what I wouldn’t do to avoid the rest of the weekend. But we only had six weeks until the wedding, and Lindsey’s choreographed dance routines didn’t learn themselves.

The only thing that horrified me more than an unplanned pregnancy was shimmying onto the dance floor with my fellow bridesmaids just to reveal that I was the only black woman in the tristate area with no rhythm. At least it was only my closest friends and the entirety of my family that would witness this disaster.

And
Nate
.

Of course Nate would see me awkward, jerky, and combusting in shame. Then again…it wouldn’t be much different from when I usually spoke to him, except this time I was expected to shake my booty.

I couldn’t even hand jive, and Lindsey sure as hell expected more than the twist. I was boned.

“Time to go!” I helped Lindsey to her feet. “Know what’s better than dancing?
Sobriety
!”

“And curvy cocks.”

“Of course.” I handed Lindsey to the other bridesmaids, and they helped me out the door. “I’m sure genital deformities are just as fun as getting a big cup of coffee and sitting quietly!”

Our limo returned the party to Mom’s house, but I’d borrowed Dad’s SUV to haul all seven of us to the Washington’s cabin for Lindsey’s bridal-dance boot-camp. Not that I didn’t trust a limo to off-road it along the cabin’s dirt path, but I wasn’t getting stranded without four wheel drive anywhere Lindsey couldn’t access Pinterest.

“
Road trip
!” Lindsey’s excitement was short-lived. She tripped trying to hop into the SUV, and her butt sprawled onto the gravel.

Her howl woke the neighborhood. Worse, it woke
Mom
.

“
Oh no
! My hand!” Lindsey shrieked. “I hurt my
hand!
”

The bridesmaids tumbled out of the SUV, spilling onto the driveway in a pile of tiaras, feather boas, and vodka. I raced to my sister, avoiding a slap as she thrust her hands towards me.

I groaned. She had a
little
scrape over her fingers. It rubbed raw where the engagement ring rested, but Lindsey screamed like she amputated it with a bayonet on a World War I battlefield.

Mom’s front door opened.

This wasn’t going to be good.

Our larger-than-life mother raced outside in a robe and nothing else. I loved my mom for taking pride in the natural endowment the Lord saw fit to give her, but those ta-tas thundered every which way but symmetrically as she raced to Lindsey.

“Oh Jesus have mercy. Look at your hands!” Mom tied her robe closed, but not everything tucked inside.

My sister and I stared in shared horror at our mother’s heaving bosom.

When and
why
did she get a tattoo of a snake wearing a helmet?

And why was it curled so obscenely around Mom’s nipple?

Lindsey yelped first. Oh god. The tattoo wasn’t a
snake
.

It wasn’t a snake at all…

“Mandy, how could you?” Mom snapped at me.

I couldn’t look away from the slithery penis tattoo curled to engulf what was once a chocolate chip before two babies flattened it into a pancake.

“What did I do?” I covered my eyes.

“Why didn’t you help your sister into the car?”

“Because she’s twenty-eight years old?”

“You have a responsibility to her! She’s tipsy!”

She wasn’t tipsy, she was one shot away from black-out. I knew better than to correct Mom. The last thing she needed to hear was stories about her daughter, a Vice officer, and a very crude rendition of
Let It Go
in reference to her bladder.

“Mom, what about my
pictures
?” Lindsey hiccupped. “I’m supposed to take pictures with my ring on Monday!”

It was one in the morning, and the baby drained every last bit of energy from me. I was sick, hungry, tired, and my head hurt. God forbid we saved two hundred dollars by not commissioning pictures specifically for her engagement ring.

“Now you don’t have to shove your hand in strangers’ faces.” I grabbed a bottle of water from the hatch and poured it over my sister’s hands. She was barely scratched and would live…unless a weekend with her finally broke me. I herded the drunken bridesmaids into the SUV. “Get in the car, Linds. We have an hour and a half trip.”

“How
dare
you?” Lindsey appealed to Mom. “Did you hear her?”

“Mandy, show some
compassion
,” Mom scolded. “And after Lindsey stood up for you this week!”

I shouldn’t have asked. “Now what did I do?”

“You
cut
your hair without asking Lindsey!”

“Without…” I tugged on my shorter locks. Here I thought I’d look cute, something to take my mind off of the wedding, Nate, and the baby. Instead I caused some sort of inter-family drama for a twenty dollar cut. “Why would I ask
Lindsey
?”

Lindsey stomped a foot. “For the wedding, freakface!”

Too much. “Get in the car.”

“You didn’t even
ask
if you could cut off what…seven inches of hair?”

“
Four
. It’s no big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal!” Lindsey sniffled. “You have no respect for me, for this wedding, for the beauty we’re trying to create. You are the
worst
sister. Just once I want you to think of
me
first!”

Right. Because keeping the secret of my lifetime to spare the family any drama during the wedding wasn’t enough. If she only knew how much I needed
her
, how I wished my big sister would tell me everything was okay and that we’d get through it.

But I didn’t fight her. We had two days planned at the cabin, and the bridesmaids couldn’t remember why they were drinking. I had to drive, and I had to get us there in one piece.

“I’m sorry, Lindsey.”

“That’s all I wanted!” My sister wrapped me in a tight hug. “You do
care
about me.”

“Of course I do.”

“And you know how much I love you!”

Oh man.

I
knew
I was wrong to doubt her. Stress and the spotlight just went to her head.

“I love you too, Linds.”

“And this will work out for the best.” She brushed away tears. “With your new haircut, I’ll definitely be the prettiest at the altar.”

Son of a
—