Bang: Challenge Accepted

by M. Dauphin H. Q. Frost

  "Hey! How's life treating ya!? I miss your fucking ass!"

  "Fine. Great, really! Pregnancy this time around is fantastic when compared to the hell I went through with Able."

  "That's because you found your prince charming, ya bitch." I laugh when she does. God, these conversations are too few and far between.

  "So what're you out doing tonight? You sound super thrilled…." she trails off and I laugh.

  "Ya know, just keeping to my plan. Fishing for dick. And lots of it."

  She busts out laughing and I grin. It's the damn truth.

  "Oh God, Jenny. You're still up to that?" she whines but I hear a smile in her voice.

  "I don't back down to a challenge, woman. You know this." The words are out before I realize what I'm saying and to who.

  "You know he wouldn't like to see you taking it to this extreme." She goes somber.

  Ryley is the only person that knows why I live how I do. She's also way too close to that situation to joke about with her. Some things never stop hurting.

  "So whatcha need? I got a hot piece of ass waiting on me inside," I say trying to lighten the mood.

  "Oh! Liam just surprised me with a trip before the baby's born!"

  "That's fantastic! Lucky bitch!" I love that she's so happy with him, even if I hate his guts for ruining her life for so many years.

  "I know, right! We leave in two weeks," she says then pauses.

  "Who's watching Able?"

  "Oh, um…. Well, you know we don't have much help up here, unless Liam's secretary can take him."

  "Oh my GOD, Ryley, are you asking me to come up there to watch my child?!" I've missed him so much!

  "Jenny, he's not your child!" She laughs. I miss hearing that every day. I miss my best friend, my practical sister. Sure I have my actual sister, but Ryley's more family than that bitch any day. My sister from another mister.

  "I know, I know. BUT, I helped raise him so I get to claim something," I whine.

  "Sure. Aunt. You'll always be Aunt Jenny."

  "Fine, mother." I roll my eyes and smile. "Sooooo… do you want me to watch him?"

  "Would you be able to get up here by then? With your job and all?"

  "Shit yes, woman. I own the damn practice, I can do what I want… within reason." I'm not entirely sure of this, but it's happening. No questions asked.

  "Ok… great! Oh my gosh, Jenny! It's been too long!" She squeals and I squeal and we both squeal and I probably look so dumb right now. I clear my throat and try to wipe the smile off my face. Just then I hear Liam in the background.

  "Tell Bang if she's watching our son she'll have to put off tour de Bang and won't be able to come up here and fuck every dick she can."

  I exaggeratedly gasp and say, "I would never! But when little boys play all day and they fall sleep, the big boys come out for the real games." I grin waiting for Ryley to lecture me.

  "Jenny," she sighs.

  "I'm totally kidding and you know it. So, I need details!" I say trying to contain my excitement.

  "I'll email them to you." I can hear the smile in her voice.

  Three months is a long time to go without seeing my best friend.

  Hanging up with Ryley, my brain switches back into tigress mode and I remember my meal waiting at the table inside. Fuck yes, Stone. You will be mine.

  "Sorry about that" I say making sure to stand a little closer to him when I make my way back to the table. He does smell good. That's always a plus.

  "Stone here was just tellin' us all about his newest gig," the one with a man bun speaks up.

  Why do man buns freak me out so much? Like, I seriously can't stop staring at it. He's talking to me and all I can do is stare at his bun thing that's bobbing around.

  "….so from now on we're gonna call him Doc. Pretty cool, huh?" His eyebrows are raised and the bald one's shaking his head.

  Doc, huh? This night just got a whole lot hotter.

  "Well," I purr moving closer to him. "Doc." I tap his chin with my finger before slowly leaning in to whisper, "I've got a speculum and forceps at home, and this patient wants to get naughty." My hand slowly snakes down and rubs the growing bulge in his pants bringing out a moan from deep inside. This is when I see if he's worth my time or not and I grab my purse, give a wink to my girl friends, then stride to the door.

  When I glance behind me, his buddies are looking at me like I'm insane, but the lust in Stone's eyes as he approaches me says anything but.

  Oh this one's gonna be fun.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HULK THINKS IT'S TIME TO SMASH

  JACK

  "Mom, will you hand me the salt, please?" I smile at my mom across the table and as I watch her smile slowly turn to an evil smirk I realize what I did.

  "Jack." The sweetness in her tone is fake. Kind of like a nice pair of tits that you want to motorboat, and when you do it's like motor-boating two boulders; you think what comes next is gonna be great, then bam! Like smacking into a rock. "You're twenty-eight. Mom and mommy are things children say." Her smile is polite again and she really doesn't mean to be so… so…. I'm going to use the word unrealistic, but it's just how she was raised. "Mother is fine." With an affirming nod she hands over the salt.

  It took two minutes too long for me to get the salt for these fake eggs.

  "Sorry, mother." I smile at her and my sister's foot kicks my ankle.

  We told each other we'd start putting mom in her place, but the woman is so set in her ways, she's not going to budge on what she's believed in her whole life. My grandma was the same way.

  "It's okay. You're never too old to learn."

  With a tight smile I nod.

  "Grandma, I'm not hungry," my niece whines.

  "Jos!" My sister's exaggerated gasp gives away what's about to come next so I drop my head closing my eyes. "She is grandmother. NOT grandma."

  I chance a peek at my mom and she's glaring at Joanna but all the while maintaining her natural beauty.

  "Joanna, Joslyn's a child." Her cold glare softens as she looks at Jos. "Go ahead, sweetheart. Grandma will meet you in the sunroom for tea."

  "Juice," Jos corrects when she hops out of her chair.

  "Grandma will have tea, you can have sugar free juice."

  Jos didn't stick around to get the logistics of my mother's point and I don't blame her. Mom and Joanna start arguing in women voices. You know what I mean? They're not getting loud and their trying to soften each blow with a surgery tone. It makes listening to an argument feel like an otherworld experience because their voices start to blend as they talk over each other and they start to sound like machines. Shit, I'm exhausted.

  "Dad, you hear from Cain and Werner?"

  My dad looks up from his paper like he forgot I was even here. I'm sure he's used to my mother and Joanna going back and forth like this and he blocks it out.

  "I did. Tuesday." He shakes his paper out as he lifts it again.

  "Tuesday!" The unladylike squawk that just came from my mother makes me snap my head to look at her.

  How'd she even catch what he said? She was switched to autopilot while arguing with Joanna but just like that, her bat hearing and mother multi-tasking abilities kick in.

  "Tuesday is my surgery, Jackson!" she snaps at my dad and this is a sign she's pissed. No more 'I'm angry but going to make it sweet', she's straight up pissed.

  "It's Botox, Renee," dad says dully.

  "It's a surgical procedure I would like you there for." The frozen tundra in her eyes is about to shoot icicle daggers straight through dad.

  I hear Joanna's entertained snicker but mom's too pissed to hear anything but the freight train revving in her head that she wants to run over my dad.

  "You want a chauffeur," he grumbles and my head jerks back to mother, but just like that, she's calming down and she's so robotic it's almost in stages.

  The rage, also known as 'attack level Severe', I saw has already been knocked down to 'level Elevated' and it's very s
lowly dropping to 'Guarded'.

  "I will make sure Freud can drive you."

  "Thank you." My mom wipes her mouth and stands, collecting plates from the table… like my full plate I wasn't done with.

  "Go help your mother," dad says to Joanna with no room for argument. After Joanna leaves the room with the rest of the dishes from the table, dad looks at me again. "Your mother will show up Tuesday. You know she has to be a part of everything. So maybe just warn Liam, and perhaps he can remove the rings from his face while also sporting a long sleeved shirt?"

  Fuck. Very rarely will I use that word outside of sex, but right now, his request is big fat 'fuck' worthy.

  Liam is my best friend, a hard worker, great guy, smartest guy I know, but Liam also has found his true happiness and refuses to let other people dictate who he will be. It's only two hours he'll have to pretend to be someone else, but how do you tell the guy you respect more than most people that he has to act like something he's not because my mother isn't as open minded?

  First time my mother met Liam she called him the janitor and told him the hallway could use a sweeping. Liam just smirked at me, nodded at her, then left the room and before I could defend him, which I won't lie to you, I was scared, but my dad had already changed the subject.

  The second time my mother came across Liam, he opened the car door for her and she tipped him five dollars. Again, Liam just looked at me with a smirk, more like he felt sorry for me, and he let it go, wandering away. When I told mom he wasn't valet she almost had a heart attack for donating to, and these are her words, 'rock and roll, punk trash that think riding a plank with wheels in circles is considered a job, compared to a respectable man that does hard work'.

  So, this is only my guess, but a plank with wheels is a skateboard. Joanna had bought Jos a skateboard a day prior and my mom had a fit; she was definitely harboring some harsh feelings towards athletes.

  Her little rant confused me so much that I just dropped it, especially because she went off about Liam's substance abuse issue. Mind you, my mother didn't know him and assumed he was panhandling, but she was confident he was an alcoholic and she had just given him five dollars to get drunk.

  Finally, the third time she met Liam, we were in the middle of a job site, both of us filling in for a few of the missing guys that had the flu. Dead middle of winter, we had snow gear on and Liam was starting to get sick so he took out his nose and lip ring because he didn't want snot icicles. She loved him and gloated about his hard work and dedication and told me for about a week I was lucky to go into business with such a respectable, hardworking man.

  I think you see my point.

  Big ole FUCK.

  ***

  "Ey, Liam." I nod him over.

  "You ever fix your water heater? I'll come over and give you a hand."

  "Nah, it's still kickin'. I'll do it soon. Ey, so my dad's coming in tomorrow."

  "Cain and Werner bullshit?"

  "Yeah. Finally. But my mom will be stopping in after her Botox."

  He grins and slightly shakes his head.

  "Yeah, right?" I rub my forehead. "Anyway, you know how she…." I stare at him for at least a minute because I don't know what to say. "Your piercings, man," I huff.

  His hand touches his lip in confusion. "What?"

  "Can you take them out? Just for when she's here?"

  His eyebrows shoot up. In the seven years I've known Liam, we've never had to discuss something like this. He knows my mother's more old fashioned and painfully proper, but he doesn't know the half of it. My dad doesn't care. He likes Liam and thinks if a man wants to put holes and ink on his body, it's his own business, just as long as he respects himself and others.

  "Seriously?" Liam chuckles and it's that laugh he does when he's holding back anger.

  "I'm tired of her thinking you're a delinquent because you have piercings and tattoos."

  "And that's my fault she thinks that?" His arms tightly fold across his chest and I can see he's getting tense.

  "No!" I boast. "No, but it's not hers either. It's just the way she was raised."

  When he drops his arms he looks at me with raised brows again then slowly shakes his head exhaling.

  "Because I respect you and your family, I will, Jack." He shakes his head as he starts to walk away from my desk. "Instead of enabling her outdated beliefs, you could help her understand everyone's different," he calls out.

  "Wear long sleeves too!" I call back and quickly add, "Thanks, Liam!"

  "Suck it, Reed!" he yells back and I hear his office door harshly shut.

  ***

  Liam enters the conference room in brown corduroys and a gray sweater. It's seventy outside. But I get his point. It's a 'screw you' to me for asking what I did of him. The tattoos on his neck are disguised by a button up he has on under this sweater and he's sporting a yellow tie tucked into it. He looks like a yuppie and I want to laugh. But his tattoos are hidden and his piercings are out. He's playing the part I asked him to.

  I wonder who dressed him. I don't think Liam could even put this stuffy outfit together if he tried. Ryley had to have helped him with this.

  "Liam Porter reporting for work, sir," he says in a nasally tone.

  "Cool it, asshole," I grumble while I plop into my seat and hope this meeting with our lawyer goes fast.

  "Cool what?" He whips out a pair of glasses and pushes them onto his face. Liam doesn't wear glasses.

  "Seriously?" I huff. He's going to make this whole meeting difficult.

  "Jackson, please." He dramatically puts his hand up while placing a briefcase on the table that I didn't notice him walk in with.

  My eyebrows raise as he opens it.

  "Your dad's not here yet?" He looks at the watch on his wrist then pushes a button.

  "RAWR! HULK THINKS IT'S TIME TO SMASH!" the watch screams at him.

  "Me too, Hulk," Liam agrees and I'm stunned stupidly silent. "Hang on. I have to make a call." He pulls a cellphone from his briefcase. A child's toy. And begins pushing buttons making the toy sing and beep. "Hello, Panache police? Yes, this is Liam Porter checking in to see if I've pulled off the grade A douchebag Jack asked me to be?"

  "Liam—"

  "I have? Excellent. Very good day to you, sir." Pushing another button that makes the phone sing he then throws his head back and lets out an exaggerated pretentious laugh telling me exactly how much of an asshole I am. "Let me just fire up the laptop."

  "Liam—"

  "Please, Jack." His hand goes up to silence me. "This is no time to be ourselves." The laptop he's removed from his briefcase turns on.

  "Hello, Able, what would you like to play?" the robot voice asks before the sounds of children singing the alphabet fills the room.

  "Liam, Jack," my dad's voice clips as he walks through the door.

  "Mr. Reed," Liam says getting to his feet to shake my dad's hand.

  "That's an impressive setup you have there, Liam." Dad nods towards Liam's toys.

  "Thank you, sir. My son helped me out this morning," he says shoving the toys back into his briefcase before smirking at me.

  "I can see that." Dad sits and looks toward the door as three men enter.

  My eyes shoot to Liam because I know he plans on making the next two hours a hell for me.

  Luckily Liam keeps quiet, but we've been listening to this ass talk for over an hour. Things are about to conclude and I couldn't be happier that my mother didn't show up. But of course relief came too soon because just as it's time to sign eighteen pages each, she enters.

  "Hello, hello," she says barely moving her face.

  "Dear." Dad stands and kisses her cheek.

  "Mother." I stand and kiss her cheek.

  "Mrs. Reed." Liam stands, pulls her into a hug, dips her back and kisses her cheek.

  "Oh my!" she bellows and my dad gets to his feet again, but once my mother starts to laugh, he sits back down and directs his attention to the paperwork in front of him.

  "
Absolutely stunning, Mrs. Reed." Liam winks at her before pulling the chair next to him out.

  "I've always liked you, Liam." Mother stiffly giggles while sitting and touching his shoulder.

  "Jack Senior better keep an eye on you." He winks at her again and her face looks painfully stiff as she tries to smile.

  "Close eye," my dad mumbles without looking up.

  Luckily my mother silently observes as we silently fill out the rest of the paperwork.

  On the way out of the conference room my mother turns to Liam and says, "I like that tie, Liam."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Reed. I knew you would. Pleasure seeing you again."

  "Don't be a stranger. You and your wife should join us for dinner. Perhaps Thursday. As I understand it you have a son around my granddaughter's age?"

  "Able." He nods. "Today's actually my last twelve hour day before me and my wife head out for a nice relaxing vacation. But we'll come for dinner soon. Able and Jos have a blast together."

  "Vacation. That sounds nice. And yes, Joslyn is a rather rambunctious girl—"

  "She's a child, Renee," dad pipes up following the lawyers outside.

  "I know that. And Able is too. They probably have hours of fun." My mother stops to say goodbye to me and Liam and she smiles at him looking like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and that old comedian woman. Something Rivers.

  "I can attest my son is just like his dad. Hours and hours of fun." He winks at my mother before patting my shoulder and heading for his office.

  I wince and look at my mother as she looks a little confused, but I don't give her time to analyze it.

  "I'll see you at the party Saturday." I kiss her cheek then head straight for my office without seeing her out. Hopefully she'll have forgotten about that before Saturday.

  ***

  I've been standing here with my hand under the shower stream for five minutes and the water's still cold. Son of a bitch. I don't have time for this! My niece's birthday party starts in two hours and I still need a gift. That'll be a quick stop to grab some of those My Little Pony's, or a Barbie. I don't know, she likes it all! What the hell am I going to buy her! I don't have time for this!