The Curvy Sister (A BBW Erotic Romance) (9 page)

Jason ruffed his hair
aggressively and hunched forward into the phone. Tension rippled across his
shoulders.

“It’s really not your
business where I’m at. Deal with it until I get there.”

Jason hung up on the caller,
probably Jonathan, and for a moment I thought he might throw his phone across
the room, but instead he let out the tension and allowed his phone to fall into
the sheets beside him.

“Is there anything I can do?”
I asked quietly, not that I had any idea what that might be. He didn’t answer
right away and he didn’t turn around. I waited, kneeling behind him, wanting to
touch him but not knowing if I should.

Finally he sighed, slapped
his hands on his knees, and stood. When he turned I saw all of him, beautiful
and so strong. Too strong for the distress I saw in his eyes or the worry that
furrowed his brow.

“I have to go. Again. I’m
sorry.”

“If there’s anything I can
do…”

He took me up suddenly in his
arms and buried his face in my hair. His whole body felt tense, reaching
towards me even as he pulled me into him. He knelt on the bed with one knee and
inhaled deeply at my throat.

“Wait up for me.”

The hollow space in my chest
throbbed painfully beneath his husky voice. “
Yes
,” I promised. “Of
course.”

I reached to touch his face,
but he pulled away before I could. I sat back on my heels, mute and dumb as I
watched him collect his clothes and shove all his emotion deep down so that no
one outside my bedroom could see them.

“Apparently my Uncle Tommy
showed up and offered to buy the farm from my grandpa.” Jason shook his head as
he laced up his boots. “Offered far below its worth. Garton didn’t just refuse,
he pulled a shotgun on him. Then my uncle threatened to have him committed. You
can about imagine how well that went.”

I groaned. I could imagine
Garton, the full six and a half feet of him, swinging the shotgun around like a
crazy, cartoon hermit. It had something to do with the land or the water, but
these Midwest men had fire in their veins, unlike the rest of us mortals. They
lived forever, quiet and self-determined, until threatened and then hell hadn’t
the carnage of a Nebraska man protecting his own.

“He’s lucky Garton threatened
first.”

“Jonathan hounds grandpa for
the farm every day, but we all know Jonathan has no head for it. Uncle Tommy’s
trying to rob him blind and not even being all that sneaky about it. Honestly,
I don’t blame him for wanting to disown us all.”

Jason stood up, shoved his
wallet into his back pocket and returned to the bedside to stand in front of
me.

“And you?” I asked. “What do
you want for him?”

“Retirement. I think he
should sell the farm, not necessarily to family, and move into town with mom.
She’s offered to turn the second floor into an apartment. He’d have access to
his friends and his family and he could let someone else take care of the land
who has a vested interest in it.”

“But?”

Jason frowned. “Right now I’m
the only one he’s willing to talk to because I haven’t made any demands of him.
If I tell him what I think he should do, he’ll believe he has no one on his
side. I have to let him make the choice for himself.”

“Maybe you should tell him
exactly that,” I said carefully, well aware of how precarious this moment was.
It was definitely more than sex. “Sometimes…sometimes making decisions about
your life means listening to the people who are most important to you. The
people who will spend their lives along side yours. He respects you, Jason.
He’ll listen. You said it yourself, he’s not a child. He knows he can’t keep up
how he used to, but no one is giving him an option he thinks he can live with.
Maybe that should be you.”

 “You don’t know my
grandfather very well.” He hesitated like he was going to bend down and kiss
me, but instead he ran a hand through his hair and headed for the door. “I’ll
think about it.”

10

____________

Shabby chic. That became the
wedding watchword. In a lapse of good judgment, and also because Jason was
kissing his way up my leg from my toes, I’d have done anything to get my mother
off the phone when she called to ask if she could host the wedding salon at my
house. I hung up the phone and let it fall from my fingers to the floor without
a clue as to what a wedding salon even was and it wasn’t until Jason and I’d
gotten out of bed hours later than I even realized I’d agreed to host one.

Apparently, a wedding salon was
a fancy term for sitting in the same room with twenty gossiping women, a pound
of glue sticks, a flour sack of glitter, and enough mimosa mix to drop an
elephant. It meant I let every Blue, every King, and every bridesmaid into my
home to build romance from tulle, candles, and pennant banners. The same people
now prepping for Bailey’s wedding had also been a part of prepping for my
wedding. There was a lot more alcohol in the house this time around.

I self-exiled to the front
porch swing after everyone had arrived with a craft project under one arm and a
mimosa in the other. The orange juice, admittedly, was mostly for color. 

The warm sun struck my bare
toes while in my lap I wrapped blush pink ribbon around white envelopes. The
envelopes were to be hung from the rafters of the barn where guests could hide
a hand written love letter from a secret admirer or a kind note to brighten
someone’s day. Later, when the slow dances began, guests would be invited to
pluck them down. Love letters from strangers. It would have been a very sweet,
romantic idea if it didn’t make me gag a little. Each letter I tied off felt
like a needle through my heart.

I blamed Jason for
discovering that kissing and sucking on my toes made me go momentarily blind
and delirious for putting me in this situation.

“You’re a brave girl,”
Jonathan’s aunt Judith said to me later when she needed a smoke break. Aunt
Judith gazed across the fields towards the King farmhouse and plucked absently
at a thread that I suspected would soon unravel her knit shawl if she kept it
up.

“Or stupid. I may be that
instead.” I shrugged into my lap. “I considered smothering them in their sleep,
but Sheriff Gibbs is already mad at me.”

Aunt Judith snorted on her
cigarette and blew the smoke out through her pursed grin. “The best retaliation
would be to get yourself a new man and absolutely smother yourself in him.
Hell, get two or three. Nothing will make you feel more like a woman than
having three voracious lovers.”

I grinned. “You know this
from personal experience?”

“Oh sweetheart, the stories I
could tell would curl your toes.” Aunt Judith stubbed out her cigarette and
touched my ankle. I could feel her wrinkles against my skin. Her over abundant
smile turned serious. “We were all sorry to hear. I want you to know. You’re a
good girl and we’d have been proud to have you in our family.”

I kept my head down until she
went inside so that she wouldn’t see the wetness on my lashes. That was one
thing I regretted about losing Jonathan. The King women were some of the
neatest people I’d ever met.

I also wondered bitterly how
long it would take for the wrong people to stop apologizing.

Lost in my own thoughts, I
didn’t hear the broken back door squeak open. I looked up when Bailey cleared
her throat politely.

Our eyes met and my first
instinct was to vault over the back of the porch swing and make a run for it.
But since she stood stock stiff next to me, her fingers intertwined in front of
her, looking poised and very pink without a single knife or flame thrower in sight,
I held my ground.

She cleared her throat again,
a tiny bird noise. Even though we both had blue eyes and blonde hair, there was
nothing similar in shade, shape, or presence. I wondered if maybe one of us had
been found in a basket on the side of the road when we were babies. Probably
me.

“I wanted to say,” she began
quietly, “thank you for hosting today. The snacks you made were very good and
you’ve been perfectly nice all afternoon.”

Surprise held my tongue. One
thing we’d never done all this time was talk, mostly because there seemed to be
nothing either of us could say to make the situation better. In fact, in all
likelihood, talking would lead to bloodshed.

But this didn’t feel like a
preamble to homicidal rage. There was tension there, like fishing wire tied
between us, strung out so tight it was stretching. But the tension felt less
immediate. For the first time when I looked at her and inhaled the scent of her
lotion, like fat pink babies and linen sheets, instead of thinking about her
and Jonathan naked in the barn, I thought about Jason. In this complicated
moment, the memory of his touch this morning brought peace. He’d stopped by
before going to pick up his brother and the best man and after I let him in we
didn’t even make it out of the living room before he had me bent over the arm
of the couch.

The corner of my mouth
twitched. It was hard keeping a straight face with the memory so fresh.

“You didn’t have to,” she
went on. Her eyes dropped to her toes, out of focus. She nibbled her bottom lip.
“You could have told us to go to hell and no one would have blamed you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said
carefully, like tip-toeing through a mine field. “To be fair though, mom asked
me when I was a little distracted.”

She glanced back up and
smiled. “Distractions are good.”

I felt another bright memory
of Jason’s hands tangled in my hair.

“Distractions are
very
good.”

“Ok then.”

“Ok.”

The tension slackened. She
backed up, clearly as afraid of turning her back on me as I was on her, and got
almost to the door before stopping.

“Jonathan is stopping by with
food. He’s bringing Jason and Darrel with him. Will that be…”

“It’s fine.”

She nodded. “Also, Sabrina’s
putting together a sort of bachelorette party. Just up at Black’s for some
drinks and appetizers. She didn’t know if she should invite you or not and I
said of course.”

I made a noise and raised an
eyebrow at her. “Do you think getting us liquored up in public is the best
idea?”

Bailey shrugged her tiny
shoulders and screwed the toe of her boot into the porch. She looked down and
fiddled with the hem of her shirt. “Maybe it would help.”

The smart ass in me nearly
ruined the moment, but her logic wasn’t entirely without merit. Reluctantly I
nodded. “Tell her to invite me and we’ll just…see.”

Bailey raised her eyes in
surprise, but quickly shuttered the emotion behind her usual distance and
nodded. “Ok then.”

“Ok.”

Without letting herself get
caught up again, she yanked open the broken screen door and disappeared inside.
I heard my mother call her name and my aunt call for another mimosa. I
inventoried all the sore spots in my heart and head, the sickness in my stomach
or the butterflies that had lay dying in my toes for months. Nothing stirred or
rocked or throbbed out of place. I felt a bit of liveliness in my chest but it
was not an unpleasant sensation. This salon, being invited to Bailey’s
bachelorette party, and having Jonathan in my home again should have scored me
up like a piece of butcher meat, but nothing bled. Nothing felt raw and
restless. It all felt as it should be, the guts of a plain girl with baggage.
At worst, a little tender. Stitched back up, maybe imperfectly, but holding it
all together nonetheless.

###

Jason arrived in the
afternoon with Jonathan and the best man in tow. They brought more orange juice
and hot sandwiches from Marcy’s. When he climbed the stairs our eyes met and
like magic my tension vanished.

“Ladies! Who’s hungry?”
Jonathan called as my kitchen door slammed.

Bailey squealed. I made a
face and reluctantly abandoned my exile to slip inside where the cheering King
and Blue women were crowding the men. My aunt Elisabeth kissed Jason’s cheek
and told him how handsome he’d gotten. Bailey kissed Jonathan. Jonathan’s best
friend Dan nabbed a sandwich from the middle of the mad crowd and snuck it to
me with a wink.

“Here, sweethearts, tea.”
Francine King handed off cups to the three boys. Jason took one sip, coughed,
and whispered to Jonathan, “Is this rum?”

“A lot of rum, I think.”

“Cheers!” My mother barked
and the room flooded with a rousing wave of tipsy cheers and clinking Styrofoam
cups.

It happened in slow motion. A
cup was set down on the edge of the island. A hand went into the box for a
sandwich. Someone bumped someone else. Someone swore. The cup got nudged by any
number of hands or elbows and tipped like a waterfall onto the hardwood floor
right where Jason and I had first ripped each other’s clothes off.

Everyone watched it fall. It
splashed across the wood and people ran about looking for something, anything
to clean it up with. Jason and I, however, stared together at the spot, the
memory a fresh, bright explosion throughout my body. I felt it in my knees, in
my hands, in the hollow of my chest, and, of course, like a burning heat
between my legs. Jason met my eyes and I knew he was there too, weeks ago,
sweaty and soaked on this floor.