Tell Me It's Real (48 page)

“Maybe I should spank
you
!” I told him quite loudly. And, of course, that was right when Charlie signaled to the DJ to cut the music, and so everyone in the bar below heard me telling my boyfriend kinky things.

“Are ponies allowed to give spankings?” I heard my grandmother almost shout in the dark above the laughter.

“I’m sure if he stays in scene, it’ll be okay, as long as he’s rearing up to kick his hind legs,” Mom said even louder.

“I don’t want to talk about my son rearing anything,” Dad said. “Especially Vince.”

“Mom?” Vince asked. “Dad? Nana? Why are you guys down there in the dark?”

The lights came on then, and the pictures that would be taken later would show Vince’s wide, happy grin as people shouted, “Surprise!” up at him. And, of course, me, standing next to him, my red face buried in my hands, looking like I was about to die or something. Which, to be fair, I really wanted to do right then.

Helena led the crowd below in a stirring, dirty rendition of “Happy Birthday,” which explicitly described the blowing of a gigantic cock. The fact that my parents and grandmother were singing right along with everyone else was enough to make me wish there were no such things as birthdays, and that it was possible for me to reach inside my own head to scrub my brain of the image. They all finished with a flourish and everyone cheered, and Vince turned to me. “You did this, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “Everyone helped.”

“Paul did it!” everyone shouted.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.

“Kiss! Kiss him!” Nana screamed. “Kiss his face off!”

Everyone else picked it up and started chanting for him to kiss my face off. It was a little weird. I felt like a goat was about to be sacrificed to a pagan god. I grinned at him as I backed away a few feet.

Vince stalked toward me. “I’m going to kiss the fuck out of you,” he said as he reached for me, the crowd roaring up at us.

“Lucky me,” I managed to say before I had a mouthful of Vince.

Lucky me.

W
E
MANAGED
to escape later on, me having only taken a couple of shots so that I’d be okay to drive toward the end of the night. Vince was a little bit tipsy, but he didn’t like to get full-on drunk, so I didn’t have to worry about him passing out on me.

Besides, I was already worried out of my fucking mind about giving him his present.

So I stole him later, slipping quietly out the back, his hand in mine as we headed for the car. “Where we going?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

And the night was perfect, warm and clear, even though it was October. We didn’t talk much as I drove, him content to hold my hand, me content to be freaking the fuck out. I told myself I was being stupid, that I didn’t have to be nervous, but it didn’t do a damn thing to help. I’d gotten better about myself over the past six months, thanks to Vince, but since he didn’t know a thing about this, it just made me all the more nervous.

He finally figured out where we were going and grinned over at me when we pulled into the parking lot of the park where he’d taken me after our first date. On the lookout for homicidal hobos with hook hands, we walked through the dark to what I thought of as our little patch of grass. He didn’t even need any coaxing and assumed his position on the ground, his stomach becoming a pillow for my head, making our T shape that we did so well. His hand immediately went into my hair and started rubbing my scalp. The stars were so bright, and for just a moment, everything was as it should be.

“Perfect end for tonight,” he sighed, echoing my thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So….”

“So what?”

I almost didn’t say it, but I pushed through. “So, I got you a present. You know, for your birthday.”

“Yeah? Is it awesome?”

“Uh. Pretty sure. I think so. I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe.”

“Covering all your bases?”

I blushed. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything.”

I snorted. “Bullshit. You would have given me so much crap had I not gotten you a present. Even
if
I’d thrown you a supersecret birthday party with all your friends and family, you’d have still bitched and moaned.”

“Yeah, I would have made your life a living hell until you bought me something,” he agreed. “But you haven’t given me a bad present yet. Well, except for that neck massager you bought that I thought was supposed to be anal beads. I don’t think I’ll get that look on your face out of my mind as long as I live.”

“You had it up your ass!”

“It vibrated,” he said smugly. “Where else was something like that supposed to go? Besides, you didn’t seem to mind when I pressed it against your balls.”

“You know there’s a homicidal hobo with hook hands jerking it to our conversation over there in the bushes.”

“I don’t think I’d touch my junk if I had hook hands,” he said.

“How would you jerk off if you only had hook hands?” I wondered aloud.

“Easy. I’d get a plain bagel, cover it with lube, then fuck it. I’d latch it into my hook hands and just go to fucking town on it.”

“We’re breaking up,” I told him quite seriously. “Then you can go fuck all the bagels you want, you weirdo. Keep your grossness away from me.”

He laughed. “Nah. You’re stuck with me, pretty much for forever.”

This caught me a little in the chest. “It’s real?”

He sat up, cradling my head in his lap. He bent over (for he was indeed as bendy as he had once claimed so very long ago) and kissed me deeply. “It’s real,” he mumbled against my lips. “Now give me my present.”

I sighed and reached into the pocket of my light coat and pulled out an envelope. I almost tore it to shreds right then, but he’d already snapped it out of my hands like a greedy little child, and I tried to hide my face against his stomach. I heard him rip open the envelope and pull out the paper inside and start to read.

I knew the moment he got it once his breathing almost stopped completely. “Paul,” he croaked out.

“Yeah?”

“Is this what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?”

“An itinerary for three weeks in Asia next spring.”

“Then you’d be thinking right.”

He started sputtering. “I don’t… how did you… fucking sexy motherfucker… I will
totally
bone you… what is….”

“Wow,” I said. “That
is
kind of hot being on the other side of that.”

“Paul!”

“What!”

“How the fuck can you afford this? We work the same job!”

I shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ve been saving.” For a long time, though I didn’t know for what. Then he came along, and I figured out what it was for. He wanted it, and I’d given it to him. I’d give him everything if I could.

He dropped the paper to the ground and knocked me off his lap before he crawled on top of me, covering me with his body. It happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to make a noise, much less to fight back. Our noses touched as he searched my eyes. “You did that for me?”

He was too close to be able to look away. I thought about closing my eyes, but he’d just make me open them again. “Yeah.”

“We’re going to Asia?”

“Parts of it, but yeah. You and me. Three whole weeks.”

“Do you think we could go see the fortune-cookie factories?”

“Sure,” I said, even if I didn’t know if those were real things in Asia. If they weren’t, I’d hunt around until I found one just so he could see it. Who cared if his dreams were weird? They were starting to become mine too.

His eyes were bright. “You’re pretty much the greatest thing in the world, you know that right?” Then he smiled at me, dimples and all.

And with that, I knew all my stupid little fears had been for nothing. Every single one of them, because to Vince, none of that mattered. He was happy just the way we were, and there wasn’t one more thing I could have asked for. “So you like it?”

“Paul… are you sure?”

I rolled my eyes. “I should hope so. Everything’s pretty much bought and paid for already.” I said this as if I hadn’t been freaking out about it all for the past couple of months since I’d decided to do this. I played cool, but I knew he saw right through me. It didn’t matter, though.

He smothered me in a way dirty kiss that I thought would end with me nutting in my jeans like I was sixteen years old if he kept it up, not that I minded in the slightest. I figured the homicidal hobos with hook hands didn’t have any bagels to fuck, so we might as well give them a show. I couldn’t even really breathe under the assault from his tongue, but breathing was overrated.

“We need to go home now,” he panted, breaking the kiss, moving off me and pulling me to my feet. He pushed us quickly toward the car, his hands already down the back of my jeans, trying to get at my ass. “I’m going to Freddie Prinze Junior you so hard when we get there,” he growled in my ear.

“I don’t think you get the concept yet,” I said breathlessly, squirming under his touch.

“I don’t care,” he said, a wicked curve to his mouth. “I’m going to do it anyway.”

And you know what?

He did just that.

When
TJ K
LUNE
was eight, he picked up a pen and paper and began to write his first story (which turned out to be his own sweeping epic version of the video game Super Metroid—he didn’t think the game ended very well and wanted to offer his own take on it. He never heard back from the video game company, much to his chagrin). Now, two decades later, the cast of characters in his head have only gotten louder, wondering why he has to go to work as a claims examiner for an insurance company during the day when he could just stay home and write.

He lives with a neurotic cat in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. It’s hot there, but he doesn’t mind. He dreams about one day standing at Stonehenge, just so he can say he did.

TJ can be found on Facebook under TJ Klune.

His blog is tjklunebooks.blogspot.com.

You can e-mail him at [email protected].

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

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TJ K
LUNE

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Also from
TJ K
LUNE

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com