Someone to Love (7 page)

“I will. I plan to.” At least I did. I
totally had my sights on Tri Delta until my housing options
dwindled down to survival mode. “I’ll have to wait until rush.”

“Rush, smush.” She fans her fingers in the
air. “I’ll make a few calls. Russell Hall is for losers. I’ll have
you home with family in less than a week.” She punctuates it with a
slap to her thigh. “Presents!” She jumps up and claps her way
around the room, slipping now again to annunciate the fact she’s
dipped into the brandy-laced eggnog or broke into the special
brownies a wee bit early, both perhaps.

Pen leans in. “Someone hit the rum balls a
little too hard.” His breath rakes over me, putrid and illegal.
“Speaking of hard.” He glances down at the rather nonexistent bulge
in his khakis. “Dude, you are fucking
hot
tonight.”

I straighten and shoot a look across the room
to Cruise. Andrew sits on a chair next to him, talking about
purchasing gold bars and moving to the Caymans. I hope to God he
plans on taking Pen with him.

Cruise steals a glance my way, and our eyes
lock. My stomach melts as he secures his gaze over mine.

“Okay!” Jackie gives an impromptu tap-dance
that ups the discomfort in the room several notches. For her sake,
I hope Santa leaves an industrial-sized bottle of Ritalin in her
stocking or at least a trial pack of Xanax. “I usually don’t do
gifts before dinner, but since we’re all here…” She fans the room
with her wine glass and a trail of merlot splatters over the floor.
“What the hell, right?” She breaks out into a cackle while mopping
up the errant vino with the bottom of her skirt.

“Cruisy.” She tosses a small bag at him that
looks rather plain compared to the glitzy-packaged boxes adorning
the potbellied tree.

Cruise dips in and pulls out a brown leather
wallet. He cracks it opens and plucks out a bill.

“Ten.” He flashes a smile and is quick to
thank Jackie and his father for his early inheritance. I get the
feeling, if Aunt Jackie gets her way, Cruise might be staring at
the sum total of his payout.

“We really weren’t expecting you.” Jackie
places us all in that awkward situation where she makes Cruise feel
like an unwanted guest. “Pen, why don’t you see what Santa
brought?”

Pennington unwraps a rather ornate box
embossed with silver snowmen. I’m kind of hoping Santa decided to
be honest and deliver Pen what he most likely asked for, a roach
clip. Instead, he pulls out a large leather bag with a strap and…
is that a purse?

“You could put all your stuff in there.” Aunt
Jackie is quick to defend her androgynous purchase. “You know, your
wallet, your phone… your shit. It holds a ton.”

God, Pen is so wasted he might actually take
his mother’s advice and defecate in the butter-soft pouch. And I’m
pretty sure “it holds a ton” is code for “gram.” It’s going to
house his stash. Basically it’s a stashelle.

“Thanks Mom.” He rises and gives her a quick
kiss on the cheek.

I guess “Cruisy” got off easy with a rather
masculine-looking billfold and some spending cash at the ready.

Jackie lands a bright pink box on my lap with
a fuzzy green bow. It’s so pretty and festive I sort of want to
save it for the tree Cruise and I put up today and place it beneath
it.

“Let’s go!” She claps up a storm prompting me
to wrestle with foil that refuses to tear. Jackie is more than
anxious to show off her ode to Christmas commerce. I wrangle the
box open only to reveal a duplicate of the purse Pennington just
unwrapped.

“I…love it.” Truthfully, I find it odd. Maybe
Jackie was simply being frugal and this was a buy-one-get-one offer
she couldn’t pass up.

“Couple gifts, so soon?” Cruise glides into a
half-smile. He looks sexy as hell seated over there all by his
lonesome, and suddenly, I want to head straight back to our
soon-to-be love shack and round out the bases in record time.

“You can never start too soon.” Jackie ticks
the air with her finger. “Time to break some bread.” She motions
for the lot of us to follow her.

Cruise waits for me and slings an arm low
around my waist.

“You didn’t tell me this was your family,” I
whisper. And after witnessing the fragile state of their sanity I
can see why the aforementioned bit of biology was omitted.

“You didn’t ask.” His dimples depress. “And
they’re sort of not.”

“I thought you said your last name was
Elton?”

“It is, per my mother’s brilliant discretion.
I think she made a good move. Don’t you?”

Aunt Jackie slips back in the room and spies
Cruise’s strategic limb placement.

She narrows her beady little eyes over me and
clears her throat. “Your future husband awaits.” It comes out cold,
steely.

I wink over at Cruise. “I believe he
does.”

Dinner at the Alexander estate is an
asylum-worthy event. First off, a dining room painted a caustic
shade of red and filled with bulky black furniture looks nothing
short of satanic. Whoever thought pairing gargoyles in the four
corners of the ceiling with angry-looking walls was a good idea
might have been a little more than batshit. I’m betting the loon in
charge of this sanitarium is my very own faux Aunt Jackie.

“Please tell your mother she’s welcome
anytime.” Andrew, the saner and slightly more promiscuous of the
two parental units, gives an assertive nod. “There’s always a room
waiting for her at our home.”

Aunt Jackie clears her throat and cuts him
with a death stare, like maybe there’s no room at the exorbitantly
large inn after all. Something tells me if Mom were to visit, she’d
be lucky to find a manger with her name on it.

“Cruise, who’s the latest squeeze?” She
changes the subject on a dime and reverts our attention to Cruise’s
most recent penile endeavors.

“Just running through the rolodex.” He leans
his elbows on the table and gives a sly glance in my direction.
“Currently on J.”

J is for Jordan. I give a private smile.

“You oughta get yourself deloused every now
and again.” Jackie dispenses her medicinal counsel without
propagation. “Crabs aren’t just for cookin’, you know.” She passes
the sentiment through her teeth like a ventriloquist. “And watch
out for that killer clap that’s going around,” she whispers. “I
hear they’ve got a mutated strain that can make your balls fall off
in the middle of the night. I got this spray upstairs in the
bathroom—”

“And on that note…” Andrew rattles a little
golden bell before Jackie has a chance to espouse the finer points
of household disinfectants and their myriad of curative
properties.

An entire army of scantily clad girls, march
into the room at the flick of his wrist in what appear to be
provocative French maid costumes. They break out in an odd
variation of pornographic dinner theater that brings a whole new
meaning to
Ho, Ho, Ho
. Who knew a burlesque show was in the
works this evening?

Two of the younger girls openly drool over
Cruise, and one slightly less-informed girl with her hair in a
never-ending braid flirts with Penn by way of inserting her
blossoming cleavage into his face every chance she gets.
Lovely.

Once the wine has a chance to flow freely
from our gilded goblets that, swear-to-God look as though they’ve
been swiped straight from the Vatican, Jackie springs to her feet
with a toast.

“To love!” She christens the room with her
enthusiastic boom to the fickle emotion. “May we all find that
special someone. And, dear God, I hope it’s soon because I’ve got
some
lions
that need to be girded.” She titters into her
more than slightly misguided analogy.

Odd toast, but since she herself is toasted,
I’m willing to overlook the verbal foray into adultery.

Cruise lifts his chalice in my direction. “To
finding someone to love.”

God—what I wouldn’t do for that to be
him.

In a perfect world, he wouldn’t be a player,
and I wouldn’t pretend to be a hussy-in-training—because I sort of
just want Cruise.

I blink into my admission.

In a perfect world we’d both believe in love
and fall into that beautiful pool of warm water together,
headfirst.

“To finding someone to love,” I say without
losing his gaze. “At least for one night,” I whisper just to play
it safe.

Too bad one night couldn’t turn into
forever.

Cruise

The next morning, the sky breaks through just
enough to add a blue luster to the blanket of snow that fell
overnight. I wake up early right along with Santa and the elves to
try and gut the heater to figure out what the hell is wrong with
it. But mostly, it’s to ransack the house for possible gifts for
Kenny. It’s been a good long while since I’ve been moved to gift
someone with something other than my body. I’d give her the
expensive-as-hell perfume I bought Molly, but I had Mom wrap it and
put it under the tree at the house. Molly most likely ripped into
it anyway.

I glance out the window at the Beamer nestled
next to my truck. Jackie made a point to gift Kenny with a car she
could borrow until she got on her feet. Typical Jackie, buying
people off with my father’s money—with the exception of me, of
course.

“Morning.” Kenny comes up unexpected and
gravels it out in my ear with a moan. She’s wearing the same
T-shirt as the night before. Her legs spear out, long and lean, as
if they were carved from butter. An image of her sitting on top of
me filters through my mind—I can see her eyes partially closed, her
neck arched with pleasure.

“Merry Christmas.” I follow her out to the
living room and hand her a bag of ornaments from Mom’s
bucket-o-holiday crap.

“Merry Christmas.” She gives a shy smile.

I watch as she lands the bulbs on the tree
and try to forget about the passing pornography that just swept
through my mind. Can’t help it though. She’s a fantasy come to
life, and she just so happens to be walking in my living room with
her hair dripping wet, her face scrubbed clean, without a stitch of
makeup and still manages to look like a supermodel.

My phone vibrates in my jeans, and I pluck it
out to find Blair’s face smirking back at me.

Shit.

I’m quick to silence it and bury it in my
pocket.

My blood runs cold from the visual. I haven’t
heard from her in so long—not that I care. I could go forever
without seeing or hearing from her ever again.

“You going to get that?” She tilts into me.
“I can leave the room if you want.”

“Nope. Not important.” Not important? There’s
a first.

“So tell me all about your family.” Her pale
eyes light up as she dips into the bin and picks up the star. “I
feel like we’re related now. Is that weird?”

“We’re definitely not related.” The last
thing I want to be is her brother. I’m gunning for something a
little more… what the hell am I gunning for? I pause to take her in
and wonder what I might be getting myself into. I haven’t had a
real feeling in months. Not quite sure how to categorize Kenny,
yet. “You and Penn though”—I give a slight nod—“that’s practically
bordering on incest.”

“Can you believe Jackie had the balls to get
us matching purses?” She gives a soft laugh, and her boobs bounce
in rhythm.

“Yup. That’s Jackie in a nutshell. The
woman’s got balls, that’s for sure.”

“So what happened? She break things up
between your mom and dad?”

“Nah, they were over before Jackie ever came
into the picture. He did say he had one great love, and he let her
get away—he said he always regretted that one. But Jackie, she’s
like crap on the bottom of your shoe. Once she shows up it’s pretty
hard to get rid of her. Pen is all right though. For the most part,
I hardly see them.”

“Was that awkward for you last night?” She
pulls her lips down and looks adorable as hell in the process.

She smells good, clean like watermelon and
cucumbers. Her lips are full and slightly glossed. They’re calling
me over to them, but I resist.

“Nope, not awkward. I had planned on stopping
by anyway. Jackie’s nice enough, so long as I stay out of their way
the rest of the year.”

“Oh.” She fondles the star in her hand and
her features dim, so I plug it in and it glows through her fingers
like magic. “Pretty.” She holds it up a moment. “Was he around for
you much? You know—was he still a good dad?”

For some reason my childhood has clouded her
mood, and I’m sorry Andrew’s crappy parenting has the power to
dampen her Christmas spirit.

“He came to a few football games when I
played. Saw him at graduation. He’s been hitting all the right
highlights. Pen’s the one that reeled him in though. He got the
tossing-the-ball-in-the-backyard version. The one who took the
family to Hawaii every year for summer vacation.” I don’t mention
the fact I could count on one hand the amount of times we’ve spent
together, or the fact “Jackie the Jack Ass” made sure to make me
feel excluded the few times I was around. “How about you? What’s
your story?” She hands me a bag of giant red bulbs. I remember
these. I used to think we were leaving fake apples for Santa and
that’s why he outright avoided us some years.