by Shey Stahl
“Why?”
“Because we’re in a foreign country.”
“Hawaii’s not foreign,” Jameson noted, like he knew what he was talking about. This coming from the guy who thought Rio was next to China. “It’s part of the United States.”
“Why are we doing a family reunion here anyway?” Casten flopped down in the chair next to me. “None of us are from here.”
“Rosa might be.” I gave a nod to her on the stage trying to hula dance. She couldn’t. Not even the slightest. She looked like a cat trying to walk with shoes on.
“What are we waiting for? I thought we came here to eat?” Casten asked just before downing his third beer of the night. Apparently, his raisins weren’t enough earlier and he was starving.
“The pig. They’re digging it up.” Axel gave a nod to where they were in fact digging a pig from the ground.
Savannah, who was on Axel’s lap, threw her head back in a screaming fit and nailed Axel right in the jaw. He immediately handed her off to Lily, his face red with anger. That was like the fourth time she’d done that tonight. Poor Savannah could never get it together at the dinner table, or any other time. She was by far the crankiest kid I’d ever seen. Nothing made her happy unless it was Jonah making silly faces at her. Word to the wise, never let her and Hudson play together.
“This is a fucking joke. I’m starving.” Casten growled and then looked at Willie who was using a razor blade to cut a hole in a coconut. Or trying to. “Where did you get a razor blade?”
“From my sock.” He shrugged placing the razor blade back in his sock. “Security is a fucking joke at this place.”
“Why would you even need a razor blade?”
“It is the amazon.”
Casten sighed. “No, it’s not. It’s fucking Hawaii.”
“Oh, right. Well still, what if a pig chases me?”
I pointed to the pig roasting in front of us. “Yeah, cause he looks terrifying.”
Willie turned to me. “I’m not eating that.”
Once the food arrived, everyone seemed to calm down a bit and unfortunately, drank as much as they ate, including Jameson and me. I don’t know what my deal was but the drinks were delicious and I had no self-control.
Then the fire dancing started. Their first mistake was allowing Jameson, who was shitfaced, to dance with fire.
“What’s your name?” the girl wearing a grass skirt and a coconut bikini asked, her long black hair draped casually over her perfect olive skin. She was fucking beautiful. If I were ever going to consider a threesome, it would be with Kelly, the Hawaiian fire-dancing beauty.
I was also sure it crossed Jameson’s drunk mind when he leaned into her and said, “Whatever you want it to be.”
I could count the number of times I had seen my husband drunk enough that he flirted with other women. Certainly confident enough not to worry, I found it entirely too entertaining and burst out giggling at the table.
“I haven’t seen Jameson this drunk in a long time.” Emma snorted and grabbed Hudson—Rager and Arie’s youngest—before he waddled up to the fire. He was fascinated with anything that had flames. Believe me, he had the makings of a pyro.
“It’s awesome!” Tommy shouted, whooping and hollering beside us.
“Don’t give him fire!” I yelled, practically standing on the table.
They didn’t listen to me, and Jameson ultimately caught poor Kelly’s skirt on fire. And fuck me if she wasn’t hotter naked.
“I’d do her,” Hayden whispered, looking at me in disbelief, her eyes wide. “Fuck, how is her skin that perfect?”
My concern grew when Jameson nearly dumped his alcoholic drink on her to put the fire out. At least he was trying to help, but still, not the brightest move. “I think it’s something in the air here. They all have pretty skin.”
Emma frowned and reached for her drink. “Jameson looks ridiculous up there. It’s like Grandpa Ken dancing next to Hawaiian Barbie.”
Emma was just jealous because she wanted to dance on stage.
It was about twenty minutes after my husband caught the girl on fire, and she had since changed, when a boy, just as beautiful as her, approached me to dance.
“Ah, well that’s sweet of you, Island Boy, but I’m a grandma now. I can’t be dancing with boys in high school.”
I wasn’t sure he understood what that meant. Actually, I was positive he didn’t because the next thing I knew, Island Boy was teaching me how to hula dance.
You know what, I was way better than anyone else at it too. Maybe because I was drunk and my own dancing ability seemed superb to me, or it was that I was just that drunk that I didn’t care.
Either way, it was a blast. And I had no idea how it happened—goes back to being drunk—but I ended up showing Island Boy the funbags before the night was out.
It was then my drunk husband had something to say. “What the fuck, Sway?” He growled, grabbing me by the arm and covering my chest with his shirt.
“Whatever. You were dancing with the Hawaiian beauty over there. How come I can’t?”
He looked offended, his mouth opening and shutting a few times before he said, “She sure as hell didn’t see my dick, now, did she?”
“Well, I didn’t show island boy my crankcase. I showed him the funbags.” I motioned around me, drink still in hand and splashed poor island boy in the face with it. “I just wanted to see if they compared to the girls around here.”
“They look better to me,” Island Boy popped off with, his dark hair swept from his beautiful face as my drink dripped from his perfectly chiseled jaw. He looked like a tan Greek god statue.
Jameson shoved him back away, and into Tommy who squealed like the pig they buried and ate, because we hit his sensitive skin. “No one asked you.”
“She asked me.” Get this, Island Boy stood up to Rowdy Riley.
I was very interested to see where it would go when Jameson stared at the kid with a look I hadn’t seen in a while. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“I said… she wanted me to see them,” Island Boy smarted off, focusing again on Jameson.
“There will be no version of this where you’re gonna walk away, so stay out of it.” Jameson stepped closer, his movement both guarded and a warning. He was one, drunk, and two, Island Boy could be some kind of UFC fighter or something. He never knew.
A familiar standoff, one I’d seen many times, began between Jameson and Island Boy. One where I knew Rowdy Riley might make a return any minute.
Jameson’s eyes swept over his, gauging a reaction he knew he’d have. “Why don’t you go back to showing these other woman a good time and leave mine alone?”
Island Boy looked at his buddies gathering around, all of them showing amusement. “I think you’re—”
Jameson smiled a cold, bitter smile, letting out a venomous, cynical laugh. “You really think I give a goddamn what you think?” he asked, his jaw tightened. I put my hand on his shoulder, surprised how quickly his temper was getting out of control.
“No, I don’t think you care. All you tourists are the same. Come here lookin’ for a good time and when you get it, you’re good, right? What about her? She’s just lookin’ for a good time too and she’s a little drunk. Who fuckin’ cares, man. Relax. You were dancing with my wife and I didn’t say anything.”
Jameson said nothing. Absolutely nothing.
See, I knew Island Boy and Hawaiian Barbie were married.
Damn, think about how beautiful their kids would be. Like little chocolate kisses of sweetness. While I daydreamed about their pretty babies, Jameson finally loosened up a bit when Hawaiian Barbie came over. “What’s going on over here?”
“Your boy’s looking at my wife’s tits,” Jameson told her before anyone else could speak. It was just like him to get the first and last word in.
She laughed, her arm around Jameson. “Oh relax.” She then put her arm around her husband. “Eamon’s harmless.” She extended her arm t
o me, which I took and dropped Jameson’s shirt. So she met me and the enhanced funbags all at once. “I’m Kahlua. But almost everyone calls me Kelly.”
“I love Kahlua in my coffee,” Casten said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder, before he noticed I wasn’t wearing a shirt any longer but only covering myself with Jameson’s shirt. Naturally my son didn’t look but discretely removed his arm and became best friends with Eamon.
Thankfully they all walked away, and Jameson made me put my shirt back on. “I can’t believe you showed him your tits. Stop doing that.”
I blew off his harshness and kissed his sunburnt cheeks. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“Can we go fuck now? I’m tired of this Luau shit.”
Raising an eyebrow, I walked with him onto the beach, hand in hand. “Is that because Kahlua back there got your engine temp up?”
“She may have put a little heat in the engine, sure…” I loved how relaxed he was, his eyes drooping shut slowly, “but I prefer to get racey with someone who knows how to lay on the loud pedal.”
I burst out laughing while he tripped in the sand and sat down, chuckling to himself at his ability to turn anything into car jargon.
Leave it to the girl in me to ask, “Did she really turn you on? You never talk about that kind of thing with me.” I’m married and understood just because a man had a ring on his finger, it didn’t make him blind to the opposite sex. Jameson and I just didn’t talk about that kind of thing.
He did that thing where he blinked, maybe deciding if he should tell me the truth or not. “What?”
“Never mind.” Despite me trying not to, my cheeks heated. He knew what that meant.
He groaned. “Come on, don’t be like that. Was she hot? Yeah. Did I want to fuck her? No. I want you.” I still wasn’t buying it so he pulled me on his lap to straddle him. “Do you remember that night in Charlotte?”
“How could I forget that?”
He drew back, his eyes searching mine. “Well, my point is it had been like a year since I had sex.”
“So….”
“I wasn’t having sex because I wanted my best friend.” He raised his hips so I could feel his erection through his shorts. I shivered despite the warm humid air, goose bumps moving over my skin. His lips brushed against my neck once again. “And I still want her, always.”
Okay, he had a way of making things better.
“I bet you I can make you remember why you chose me, too.”
He ground his hips into mine as his lips pressed to my bare shoulder and then he kissed me slowly leaving wet kisses over my skin until his lips found my neck. “I bet you could.”
“It’s been a while since I did any micro polishing.” My finger traced the line of his ready camshaft through his shorts.
His hands moved to behind his head as he lay back in the sand. “Let’s see what you got. Don’t get any sand on me though.”
Lowering myself down his body, his eyes lit up when I had his shorts undone. They rolled back when I went to work, and squeezed tight. His legs stiffened, and he squirmed a little when he met his rev limit.
When I finished, I was a tad breathless and crawling up him. “Did you forget all about Kelly?”
Jameson chuckled, slightly breathless as well. I felt pretty good about my efforts and wanted to remind Hawaiian Barbie I could get the job done in record time.
“Do you believe me now?” His arms reached out to pull me close to him, holding me tightly against his chest. He was quiet for a while before he whispered into my hair, “You will always be what I need.”
“WHERE WERE YOU last night?” I asked my son who looked like Mardi Gras took a shit on him.
Casten groaned sitting down at the bar outside where Hayden and I were making Bloody Mary’s. “What a mess. I said I’d go out with them for a drink. Next thing I know I’m half naked, the bar is chanting my name, and I’m dancing on tables with that Kelly chick from the luau and her husband. I can’t do anything in moderation.”
“You married Tommy? Do you even love him?” Arie asked as she and Rosa stepped outside to the bar. Almost everyone else was still sleeping, including Tommy who was facedown on the pool deck drooling.
Casten and I whipped our heads around to stare at them as they sat at the bar too.
“Well,” Rosa contemplated for a minute and then took a slow drink of her Bloody Mary I handed her. “I think about him when I masturbate so I guess that’s love, right?”
“No, not really,” Casten told her setting Gray down beside me and then taking a seat next to Rosa at the bar. “I used to masturbate to pictures of Megan Fox, and I never loved her.”
Gray stared at Casten, blinking slowly. “What’s masturbating?”
Casten looked at me and then Hayden, who punched his ear. “Really, dude?”
He ignored her and looked over his shoulder at Tommy, now awake, groaning about his sunburn. “Maybe that’s why he got married. The sunburn went to his head.”
“So why did you marry him?” Hayden wanted to know. Hell, we all wanted to know.
Rosa shrugged, staring at her candy pop ring. “Let’s face it, at the end of the day, he’s the face I want to sit on.”
Leaning into my shoulder, Hayden whispered in my ear, “Twenty bucks says they get it annulled when we get home.”
“I don’t know.” I took the empty cups from the bar and washed them out. “I think they might actually work. I mean, they’ve been together for a long time.”
“Yeah, but when has Tommy been faithful to her? Him and his orange hair get more ass than a toilet seat sometimes.”
“Right? I’ve never understood it. Maybe because he’s Tommy to us.”
“Or maybe he’s just really gifted in bed,” Rosa added, peeking over our shoulders and handing me her empty cup.
“Well, there’s that.” Hayden cringed. “But excuse me while I vomit.”
“What are they talking about?” Jameson asked, no shirt on and scratching his head. I stared, naturally, at his body as he sat down next to Hayden, who he kicked off the stool next to him so he could put his feet up.
She took her new drink I gave her and dumped it on his head.
He stared at her in complete disbelief that she would one, do that, and shock because it was cold.
“Tommy and Rosa got married,” I blurted out, hoping to distract him from killing Hayden. He had that look in his eyes.
His brow scrunched as he took a towel from the bar and wiped his face off. “Why?”
“Rosa wants to sit on his face.” Hayden smiled, trying to make Jameson uncomfortable. Ever since Jameson began playing practical jokes on Hayden, it had been her mission to get him back. Poor girl would be trying a lifetime but she was good at making him uncomfortable.
Glaring at his daughter-in-law, he stood and took two steps toward her, wrapped his arms around her and jumped in the pool with the both of them.
This was turning out to be a great vacation.
Stressed member – Term used for a method of construction, seen mainly in open wheel cars, where the engine, rather than being supported by the chassis, is part of the chassis.
“You’re such an asshole.” Hayden reached for her towel on the side of the bar.
“Whatever. You poured you’re drink on me. How’s that fair?”
“Just is.”
Gray walked by, looked at me and then back down at the screen pointing to the racing game on her iPad. “I beat your high score.”
I ripped the iPad from her hands and yanked her on my lap to sit with me on the lounge chair on the deck.
She glared when she noticed her clothes getting wet. “Gross. Is that sweat?”
“No. I’m wet. Now let’s see this game. Who says you beat me?”
“The game.”
Staring at the screen, her name blinked at me, mine under hers. “You cheated.”
She gave me an offended look over her shoulder. “Whatever. I’m good at it. Once I’m racing in the Ou
tlaws, people are gonna be like, Jameson who?”
Hayden approached us. “Don’t be corrupting my daughter.”
Gray laughed and dropped her eyes to the iPad, uninterested in anything but the game again. “Pretty sure you and Dad did that years ago.”
Being seven, Gray thought she knew everything. I blamed Hayden for it.
“You ready to go?” Aiden asked, coming outside with Spencer wearing board shorts and socks with sandals. Him and his fucking socks.
“For what?” Leaning back in the chair, Gray got up and went about her game, so I kicked up my legs like I wasn’t going anywhere when Sway handed me a drink.
Aiden rolled his eyes, like he couldn’t believe I’d forgotten what we were doing today. “Fishing.”
“I don’t want to go fishing.”
Sway threw a towel at my face. “No one asked if you wanted to go, but you are. Now get up.”
As I stood in the driveway, I came to one conclusion, besides the fact that Sway forced me to go fishing so she could go shopping without me. My family was like a three-year-old hugging a kitten. They didn’t know the difference between hugging and suffocation. And that suffocation to me was being on a boat in the middle of the ocean, fishing with them.
Rager sighed beside me when we were getting in the truck to leave. “Think they’d know if we bailed?”
My voice was dejected when I said, “Probably.”
Guess who was the fisherman taking us out into the Pacific?
Yep. Eamon from the Luau last night. He still didn’t like me and I wouldn’t have helped him if he went overboard.
“How long have you and Irish Cream been married?” Willie asked Eamon as they sat baiting hooks.
Eamon gave him this look that was something similar to, I think this dude is mentally challenged. But he answered with, “Kelly and I have been married for three years.”
Willie nodded, seeming interested. “Kids?”
“Girl.” Eamon was short with all his answers, which I found entertaining. Most people were with Willie because you just wanted him to stop talking.
Willie let out a laugh, seeming to find his own thoughts entertaining. “Did you name her Cream?” Twisting, he slapped me on the shoulder. “Get it, Kahlua and Cream?”
