Loose Lips Sink Ships

by Katrina LaCroix

  Chapter 9

  But the next day came and went, and so did the next. Not only was Avery not getting any, she wasn’t even seeing Carter because he had basketball practice and a report due. It wasn’t until the weekend that she was able to secure some time with him, but even that proved much more troublesome than she’d imagined.

  True to his word, Carter insisted they go out on a date. Instead of a romantic candlelight dinner or a dark spot in the back of a movie theater where they could fool around, he told her they were going to the local miniature golf course, Hole in One. Even that wouldn’t be so bad, because Avery was an expert miniature golfer, but Carter decided to make it a double date. When they pulled up in Carter’s silver Porche, his buddy Paul and, by no accident whatsoever, Kendra were waiting for them.

  Hoping to avoid being stuck with Paul, who Avery considered a doofus, and some skank she didn’t even know, Avery had thrown Kendra’s name into the ring, and she was eternally grateful. Kendra didn’t even like Paul, whose pasty skin looked like it should be spread on a bagel, but she was dying to make herself famous on his popular website for whorish behavior.

  “You have no idea what I can do with this,” Kendra smirked, massaging her putter. Paul’s eyes widened like he was about to pass gas.

  “You’re holding it from the bottom!” he gasped, his lips smacking as he chewed gum.

  The cashier took their money and handed over a little scorecard and pencil. Beside him was a full barrel of golf balls of every color imaginable.

  “What color balls do you want?” the cashier asked, running his hand over them.

  “Blue!” Carter answered.

  “Don’t you have enough of those?” Avery jabbed, crossing her arms. “I’ll take black.” Kendra took pink and Paul took green. They were about to leave the cashier’s gazebo and walk around to the start of the course when the attendant called them back.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we ask that you not chew gum on the course,” he said to Paul, who immediately became incensed.

  “What? That’s ridiculous! I can chew gum if I want. It’s not against the law!”

  “It’s against the rules,” the cashier insisted. “People spit it out and it gets in the greens or they stick it against the walls of the cave or the side of the pirate ship. It’s clearly prohibited on this sign.”

  He was right. There was a sign right beside them that said no gum was allowed on the course. Another sign beside it demanded that golfers not swing their clubs higher than their knees. All of this seemed to irritate Paul, whose flushed skin became pinker than Kendra’s ball.

  “This is unbelievable! So as long as there’s a sign here I can’t do it? And what kind of an idiot needs to be told not to swing above the knees? It’s absurd! Where the sign that’s telling me to aim for the hole? Or to keep breathing?”

  Paul’s ranting put him out of breath, and Carter put his hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, it’s ok. Just take it easy. It won’t be the end of the world if you get rid of it.”

  Still fuming, Paul took the gum out of his mouth and dropped it on the grass.

  “Excuse me,” the cashier called again, this time pointing to another nearby sign that said all waste should be disposed of in garbage receptacles. Paul clenched his fists and groaned as he picked up the discarded gum and threw it in the garbage can.

  “It’s ok,” Kendra calmed him. “I have much better things you can put in your mouth.”

  “Unless there’s a sign against it,” Paul grumbled.

  Finally making it to the practice green, they dropped their balls and started shooting at random for the various holes. Only Avery abstained from practicing, knowing it was better not to intimidate them before she had to. Sinking a practice put, Carter pumped his fist and flashed a bright smile.

  “I’m gonna win today for sure! I’ve got a good feeling about it, like I’m already in the zone. Just watch and learn,” he bragged, making Avery roll her eyes.

  “Why would you say that? I’ve beaten you by fifteen strokes before. You know you can’t win!”

  “Not today, baby. You’re in for the pounding of a lifetime!”

  “I wish I was,” she sighed.

  It didn’t take long for Avery to prove she was right. At the very first hole, Carter did manage to put his ball only a few inches away, but Avery ricocheted hers off the sea monster, knocked away his ball, and got a hole in one. As a glum expression took to Carter’s face, lights came on and the sea monster waved its mechanical arms.

  “How did you do that?” Kendra gasped.

  “I’m a professional,” she smirked.

  Paul lined up his put, carefully calculating the gradient of the slope.

  “I used to be a professional too, but I had to quit because I kept getting rug burn on my knees,” Kendra said, making Paul snort and wildly overshoot his put. The ball rolled into a ditch, and it took him three more strokes to finish the hole. After Kendra went and they finally prepared to leave, they became aware of a disgruntled group of snotty looking twelve-year-old boys behind them.

  “Can you hurry the heck up? This isn’t supposed to take all day!” complained a stringy brown-haired boy in glasses.

  The group ignored him and went to the second hole. Avery decided to keep score, or else she’d be even more bored. Carter took a shot, but his ball bounced off the leg of a tiny elephant stampeding in front of the hole. It rolled about halfway back, and he needed two more shots to make it in. Avery scored another hole in one.

  “Don’t get too comfortable. I’m still in it,” Carter insisted.

  “Seriously, what’s your secret?” Kendra begged after needing a whopping five shots.

  “Miniature golf is all about mental stability,” Avery explained. “Once you are so secure that nothing can get to you, you can envision the ball rolling into the hole just the way you want it to. It’s just when other things creep into your mind that problems start to happen.”

  “I see,” Paul said, dropping his ball far beyond the starting area to take his first shot.

  “No, no, you can’t do that,” Avery corrected him. “You need to start back by the wooden boards.”

  “Are you sure?” Paul questioned, preparing to putt. “I don’t see any sign saying that.”

  His putt proved a good one, and the ball sunk right in the hole. He jumped in the air to celebrate and high-fived with Carter. Steaming, Avery scratched the number one in his box on the scorecard.

  “Come on!” the boys behind them moaned.

  “Shut up and wait your turn!” she snapped at them, her patience wearing thin. It took Kendra six shots to make it through the hole after she repeatedly missed it from about a foot away.

  The next hole brought them into a gloomy looking cave. Ghosts hung from the ceilings and little gold chunks covered in gum spotted the walls. A miner repeatedly jerked his pickaxe into the hole to temporarily block it. Except for the miner’s obstruction, it was a pretty straight shot. Carter lined up, timed it, and managed a hole in one.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, baby! Oww!” he chirped, swiveling his hips in a ridiculous dance. Avery waved her hand to get him out of the way. It was hard for her to concentrate when Paul and Kendra were giggling behind her. She had to check to make sure it wasn’t because her thong was showing. Exuding grumpiness, Avery made her putt, the ball rolled to the hole, and it hit the pickaxe and bounced back.

  “I guess she’s not invincible after all,” Kendra chuckled, getting a cold stare. She knocked in her second putt and wrote the number two in her box, ashamed. Paul dropped his green ball onto the beginning of the course and proceeded to push it with the club all the way into the hole.

  “What are you doing? You can’t do that!” Avery yelled.

  “I just did though, so it looks like I could,” he shrugged.

  “What’s the point of even playing if you’re just going to disregard all the rules?” she cackled.

  “That’s a good question. Too bad
there isn’t a sign around to tell me.”

  Just then, the boys behind them ducked into the cave and things got even worse.

  “Hey, you look kind of familiar,” one of them snickered.

  “No, I don’t. Just leave us alone!” Avery demanded.

  “Yeah, do you have a sister?” the boy asked, forcing a cold shiver down Avery’s spine. “You look a lot like Whorie Lori, except she’s got bigger boobs.”

  Avery concluded there were only two options now, ignore the boy or kill him with her putter. Though it made her head feel like it would explode, she took the high road and followed the rest of her group out of the cave only because she doubted Paul would cover for her in the trial. Kendra didn’t even bother to putt.

  “So if I don’t play a hole and I get zero, that’s even better than a hole in one, right?” Kendra reasoned, making Avery cringe. She couldn’t believe they were only on the fifth hole. This nightmare seemed to be dragging on forever.

  Following a small walkway, they came to the pirate ship, lurched against a hill beside a blue-green man-made pond. Cheesy pirate chants blared from a speaker, which split Avery’s head open. It had no effect on Carter, however, and he easily two-putted his way through the sharp dogleg right.

  Taking her turn, Avery twitched so much she could barely hold the club. Her putt was way too hard, bouncing off the wall beyond the hole and stopping back near the turn. The second putt was long but reasonable, except that she missed it by a foot. Staring down at the ball, just twelve inches from the hole, she felt herself coming unglued. The noise, the boys, her unfulfilled desires, all of it came crashing down on her. Her swing sent the ball rolling to the hole and veering just to the left.

  “Unbelievable!” she yelped, ready to snap her club in half. She didn’t even want to watch what Paul and Kendra would do, and she didn’t want to stick around for those boys to catch up again. Exiting down the pirate ship’s plank, she walked with Carter to the next hole, one of a few that curved along the edge of the pond’s rocky shore.

  “If anything else happens, I’m going to drown myself in the pool,” she moaned, and he carefully set his fingers on her opposite shoulder. Their hips didn’t even bump.

  “Nothing else is going to happen,” he comforted her, “except maybe getting beaten by your boyfriend.”

  Depressed, she noticed Paul had descended to join them, then they all turned back to the ship when they heard Kendra’s call.

  “Have you ever seen pirate booty like this?” she hollered, her ass sticking out of one of the cannon holes. Paul laughed and used his phone to take a picture. It was a tight squeeze, and Avery wondered if they were going to have to prod her from the outside to get her back through. But she popped back out and trotted down the plank while the boys behind them played the hole.

  The next two holes mercifully passed without incident. They’d followed the sloping walkways down until they were at the very last hole beside the pond, which was only a few boulders away from the water. Avery prepared to putt when the laughter of the boys in the group behind them haunted her.

  “Can you shut up for one minute?” she howled, but her plea only brought the lead troublemaker closer. He set his putter against one of the boulders like a cane and leaned against it.

  “Do you want to know what your sister said she’d do to me if I gave her my math homework?” he chuckled. Avery went red-faced, so embarrassed he was saying these things about her sister in front of her friends.

  “I’m telling you,” Carter piped up. “Don’t say another word to us, or else.”

  His threat failed to impress the boy, who wore a glib smirk.

  “Or else what? You’re going to take my underwear off and teach my ass a lesson?”

  “Don’t count on it, kid,” Avery said under her breath while Carter stormed forward.

  “This is your last warning!” he said, the kid backing away onto the rocks. He put his hands up, his eyes growing wide, but still the boy refused to quit.

  “I haven’t been this close to a pussy since I was born,” he sniped.

  Carter hung his head, laughing, only to take his putter in both hands and cross-check the boy in the chest. He didn’t hit him hard, just hard enough to make him stumble back against the rocks. He yelped and squealed as one foot dropped into the water, then the next, and he finally tipped over backward into the blue-green pond. Golfers from all over the course turned to laugh at him.

  It was only then that Avery noticed Paul facing the pond just a few feet away. Bending his knees a little, he released a thin yellow stream into the water. As happy as she was to see that kid get dunked, Paul brought all of her anger right back to her.

  “Paul, you can’t pee in the pool! This is a miniature golf course, not the YMCA!”

  “What? There’s no sign,” he snapped, looking back over his shoulder.

  Fuming, Avery was about to go off, but then she saw Carter walking toward him. A gentle push sent Paul straight into the water, where he splashed and kicked spastically.

  “You pushed me into a pool of my own piss?” he screeched as he came to the surface, his pasty white skin covered in icky goo.

  This was why Avery loved Carter. Seeing Paul and the horrible little boy wallowing in slimy filth brought a bright smile to her face.

  “If I jump into the piss pool with you, will that get me onto your website?” Kendra asked, point blank.

  “It can’t hurt,” Paul admitted. Setting down her phone, Kendra got a running start, leapt against one of the boulders, and sailed into the water just a short ways away from him.

  “Eww!” she howled when she made it to the surface, though she had put a smile on Paul’s face. Moments later they were calling out to Avery and Carter. “Come on in! You know you want to.”

  Avery had her hand around Carter’s waist.

  “If I wanted to be dunked in piss, I’d start hanging out with R. Kelly,” Carter said.

  “Not only are we not getting in, we’re not playing anymore. See you guys later!” Avery waved as she guided Carter toward the exit. They passed by the remaining holes, quickly dropped off their equipment, and settled into Carter’s Porche.

  “So what are we going to do now?”

  Watching Carter take a stand like that for her was probably the biggest turn on of her life. She was ready to jump on him right there, but his arm was high on the steering wheel as though he were blocking her.

  “Let’s go to your house,” she insisted, making no bones about it. There’d be nothing to stop her from having her way with him there.

  “My house?” Carter gasped, as though she’d said something scandalous. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine, just go. The Honey Wagon is parked there, so we’ve got to go back anyway. Might as well hang out for a bit, right?”

  Carter gulped, a petrified look in his eyes. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, tugging at his crotch. Slowly, he turned the key and started the car.

  “Ok…we’ll go to my house.”