Seriously Messed Up: A Laugh Out Loud Romantic Comedy

by Luke Young

  “Jillian, how are you?”

  She smiled. “I’m, uh, fine. How’s everything with you?”

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  “Hey, tell Mary it was a pleasure getting to know her at Brian’s party.”

  “I will, and we all got to know Brian incredibly well that night.” He made a face, and they shared a laugh. “Oh speaking of… Victoria said she was going to tell you the good news.”

  She looked at him a little confused until he added, “The pregnancy…”

  After widening her eyes, she smiled. “Oh, yeah sure. I, uh…”

  “Mary and I couldn’t be happier. I can’t wait to hear the pitter patter of little paws running around.”

  “Paws? That’s so cute.” Her smile faded as she gave him a serious look. “And Mary’s okay with all this?”

  “She’s overjoyed. She’s always wanted another one. Mary just hopes we don’t end up with some all-black ones. No one wants to adopt those.”

  She looked at him aghast, a little offended, hoping that she just didn’t hear him correctly.

  She shook her head in confusion. “Wait, so now she’s not keeping it?”

  “We’ll probably keep just one.”

  “She’s having twins?”

  “At least!” He scoffed.

  After trying to shake the cobwebs from her mind, she steadied herself against the cart.

  He reached his hand out in support. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m, uh… so… I just can’t picture Victoria taking care of twins. I offered to babysit, but wow, I’m not sure I can handle that. Mary’s a strong woman. If my husband came home and told me, he was having another baby—especially with a woman as attractive as Victoria… I’d kill ‘em. Not to mention it’s twi—”

  She shut the fuck up as soon as she saw his expression.

  He placed his head in his hands and asked, “Victoria’s pregnant?”

  She looked away, horrified. “What’s that?”

  After glancing around the aisle to be sure they were alone, he whispered, “She’s pregnant with my baby!”

  “I’m sorry.” She tried to repair the damage with a casual smile. “Um, what were you talking about?”

  “Our Golden Retriever’s having puppies. Victoria said she’d ask you two if you wanted one.”

  “Oh, we’d love one or two even. When, will, uh…”

  He looked away sadly, mumbling to himself, “I can’t believe she wasn’t going to tell me.”

  Abandoning his cart, he turned and walked away in a daze. She stood there dumbfounded, watching him go. When he turned the corner, she pulled out her cellphone and dialed Victoria’s number. It went directly to voice mail.

  Five minutes later, John was knocking gently on Victoria’s door while hiding a bouquet of flowers behind his back. He glanced behind him to be sure that none of the neighbors were watching. After a few seconds, he knocked again. Victoria opened the door sleepily and looked at him with apparent surprise.

  “May I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  He rushed into the living room, plopped down on the sofa and fidgeted nervously in his seat. Sitting down next to him, she curled up on the sofa, still drowsy eyed. He handed her the flowers.

  “These are for you.”

  “Thanks.” Her eyes went from the flowers to his face while she wore a look of confusion.

  He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I’m not sure what to say.”

  “John, why are you here? Is everything okay with Mary?”

  “Yeah. I just want to tell you that I’ll be there for you with whatever you need. I’ll be as involved as you want me to be.”

  With realization washing over her face, she sat up straighter.

  He opened his palms to her and gave her a genuine smile. “I can help out financially. Just let me know what you want from me. Anything…”

  Looking at him, flabbergasted, she asked, “Have you spoken with Jillian?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. I could tell she didn’t mean to tell me. It just slipped out.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I’m serious. I’ll find a way to break it to Mary, but I really think—”

  “John…John.”

  He looked as if he were in a trance.

  She widened her eyes. “John?”

  Still nothing from him. She lightly slapped him across his face, finally bringing him back to earth. “John, are you with me?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, meeting her gaze.

  “It’s not your baby.”

  “What?” He shook his head, mystified.

  She repeated slowly. “It’s not your baby.”

  “Then why’d she—”

  “I told Jillian it was yours.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to tell her the truth.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That it’s either her fiancé‘s brother, Jim or her son, Rob.”

  His eyes widened and jaw dropped open. “You slept with Rob?”

  A second later, Jillian burst through the door. Victoria and John stared at her in shocked silence.

  Victoria covered John’s mouth with her hand as she waited for Jillian to say something.

  Jillian finally said, “I’m so sorry. I, uh…”

  Standing up, Victoria grasped John’s shirt with one hand and coaxed him to his feet with her other hand while still covering his mouth. Jillian looked at them, obviously confused. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”

  Victoria pointed at her. “You sit right there and don’t move. Don’t say anything—don’t speak. You can breathe but nothing else.”

  Rushing to the sofa, Jillian sat down, grimacing as Victoria dragged John out the front door. Jillian decided not to breathe since she wasn’t exactly sure if Victoria said, don’t even breathe or that she could only breathe. As she pondered that question, Victoria slammed the door.

  Removing her hand from his mouth, Victoria led him halfway down the driveway.

  “Look, I promise you, it’s not your baby. It can’t be. We used a condom every time, plus we had sex a few weeks before I even got pregnant.”

  “Oh…okay.” He took a deep breath.

  “Look, I’m not sure why I told you I had sex with Rob because—”

  “Oh, good, so you didn’t have sex with him. Mary and I found him to be a little creepy. He’s like—”

  She gave him a tired look. “I was drunk, okay? I had sex with him but only once.” She sighed. “I meant that I shouldn’t have told you because if Jillian finds out, she’s going to kill me. You cannot tell anyone.”

  “Okay, no problem. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, I just need to get back in there and pretend like I’m so mad that she told you. I’m really going to let her have it. Why the hell did she tell you? How did it even come up?”

  “I was telling her about the puppies, and I guess she must’ve thought I was talking about your pregnancy.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’d mentioned you… Hmm, now that I think about it, I guess she could’ve reasonably assumed that I was talking about you and your pregnancy.”

  Victoria broke into a chuckle. “I’m still going to give it to her. This’ll be fun. You go back to that hot wife of yours.”

  John opened his car door as he said, “We’ll be praying that it’s Jim and not…”

  Victoria glared at him. “Do not tell anyone. Not even the wife.”

  He nodded, smiled, and then whispered, “Got it. I’ll be praying.”

  “Thanks.” After shaking her head with a grin, she went to the front door, paused a moment to prepare her words, then headed inside.

  Victoria burst through the door and glared down at Jillian. She noticed her face was slightly blue as she sat there, apparently holding her breath. Victoria cringed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Jillian exhaled deeply. “I wasn’t sure if you said—”

  “Never mind. What the hell were
you thinking?”

  “I, uh, I’m so sorry. I thought—”

  “Just shut up.”

  Turning away, she bit her lip to keep from cracking up then put on an angry face as she returned her attention to Jillian. Victoria sat down across from her on the other sofa and simply shook her head.

  After about ten seconds of that, she said, “Do you know he was thinking about going home first to tell his wife that we’d slept together? Luckily, he stopped here first. She doesn’t even know that we dated. She thinks I’m some kind of physical therapist. She might’ve been okay with that, but he was also going to tell her that I was having his baby. That… she might’ve had a slight problem with.”

  “I never meant to—”

  “Why did you tell him?”

  “I thought he knew. He was asking me if you shared the good news about the pregnancy. How the heck was I supposed to know he was talking about his stupid dog?”

  “So, you think I’m a dog?”

  “What? No, I, uh…”

  “Look, you’re lucky I nipped this in the bud. You could’ve been responsible for a divorce.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Rising from the sofa, she walked over to Jillian and stood over her with folded arms. “I don’t want you to mention me or my pregnancy. In fact, don’t even mention the word baby to anyone… or puppy, for that matter. Actually, you’re not to discuss the offspring of any mammal with anyone.”

  “Okay…okay.”

  “Just to be clear, if someone tells you his fish laid like a million eggs, you don’t ask what kind of fish it is or reply in any way. Just turn and run away. Got it?”

  Jillian nodded like a frightened child. “I understand. Again, I’m so sorry.”

  “You haven’t told Brian, have you?”

  “No, I swear.”

  After studying her distraught expression, Victoria nodded. “Okay, I believe you. Now, I want you to go. I need to be alone.”

  “Sure, I’ll…” Jillian got up and rushed to the door. She looked back. “Is there anything I can do? Should I talk to John and apol—”

  Victoria’s angry glare shut her up and answered her question.

  “Right, I won’t even…”

  “Good!”

  Jillian walked out and closed the door.

  Sauntering back to bed, Victoria slipped under the covers and burst out laughing. She felt guilty, but it was the most fun she’d had in months. Okay, her life was awfully boring now—mainly because she wasn’t having any sex.

  8

  The following Monday, Victoria began her fall semester at college. She was incredibly horny, even hornier than her normal level of unparalleled neediness. Walking around on a campus full of attractive men wasn’t helping her situation at all. Luckily, her teachers and fellow students were mostly women. There were only a few, not terribly attractive guys in her classes. The workload was heavy, and she found it particularly easy to focus without a man in her life to distract her.

  Brian kept himself busy at work and spent a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect gift to give to Jillian as a wedding present. His job at the bank was thoroughly boring, and he found himself craving some form of creative outlet. When he was younger, he excelled in art. He could draw competently and had some experience with watercolors. He’d never been great at drawing people, but all of the time that he spent studying Jillian’s perfect body made him long to improve. She had truly inspired him. So he signed up for a night class at the community college, telling Jillian he was working late on the nights he had class.

  It was an intermediate class in drawing the human form, and his goal was to complete a drawing of Jillian and to give it to her on their wedding night. The class met twice a week. On the first night, the students used charcoal to draw a nude female from a large video screen of an image of a live model.

  At the second class, he sat at his station along with the twelve other students and waited. A young man in a robe entered the room, approached the chair positioned between the students, slipped the robe off and sat on the stool completely nude. He was a shower—that was the first thing Brian noticed. The three male students, including Brian, rolled their eyes as the nine female students widened theirs in anticipation. Brian reluctantly drew the man, focusing on all of the parts except his junk. Towards the end of the class, he made a halfhearted, smaller-than-scale drawing of the man’s more than generous genitals.

  On the third night of class, the same nude male model sat on the same stool. This time the video camera was on and focused directly on his penis. The large television screen displayed it in extreme close-up detail. It appeared to be about two feet long. The assignment was to draw it in exquisite detail. After rubbing his head, Brian sighed and went to work.

  When he returned home late that night, Jillian still didn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary. After having sex, he and Jillian were both in bed, naked. She’d just dozed off. As he attempted to fall asleep, he found it difficult to get the image of the giant member out of his mind. When he woke the next morning, he lifted the covers off her. Gazing underneath, he found her resting in a beautiful pose. After watching her for a few moments, an idea hit him. Running outside wearing only boxers, he rushed to the car then grabbed his drawing pad and supplies.

  Back in the bedroom, he found Jillian in the same position, lying on her side sleeping soundly with her hand resting gently under her face and her gorgeous breasts in a perfect position. After carefully sliding the covers off her a little more, he exposed the rounded curve of her hips then sat down to sketch. He worked quickly and made some progress sketching her hips, stomach and breasts. However, as soon as he started to work on her face, Jillian began to stir.

  Panicking, he quickly ran out of the room with his pad and charcoal. When he returned, he found her still sleeping soundly. It was a close call. He made his way to the bathroom to shower. After getting dressed, he sat in his car in the driveway, grimacing at his drawing. He wasn’t happy with it at all; it was a rushed, nervously prepared sketch. He definitely needed a better plan.

  Victoria attended classes that morning and took an exam. When she returned home, she worked on a paper for a few hours then proceeded to do something far more important. She searched the Internet for a plausible way to request blood samples from Rob and Jim. She located a nationwide firm that she could contact to obtain the samples for her. That was the easy part. Then she pondered her story—that was the hard part.

  First, she considered telling them that she had some new strain of chlamydia that wasn’t all that dangerous but needed to be treated. Rather than have them go to the bother of seeing a doctor, she’d send a lab tech to them to get a sample. She felt this was an option, although an embarrassing one that was sure to lead to more questions. It would be Plan B, used as a last resort.

  She briefly considered other implausible scenarios. As she scrolled through one last page from her Internet search, she spotted it—an ancestry search required a DNA sample. Sure, a cheek swab could extract the needed information, but her subjects probably wouldn’t know that. She’d tell them both that she was planning on giving the wedding couple a gift of a full ancestry search and that a blood sample from a close relative was the only way she could pull it off and keep it a surprise. Maybe it was an odd gift, but she knew she could sell this story without any undue embarrassment. She could sell anything. The company she found online produced an elaborately framed ancestry family tree that traced back the roots of individuals hundreds of years. She’d use these details only if needed.

  Quick phone calls to Rob and Jim left them both confused and a little reluctant but onboard. Victoria made all of the needed arrangements with the lab and a few days later both Rob and Jim were visited by a nurse—Jim at his dorm and Rob at his office. Victoria had to wait another few weeks to give her sample, but at least she had the potential fathers’ part out of the way.

  At Brian’s fourth class, it was female nude night; the three male stud
ents were looking forward to the refreshing sausage-free change. All Brian saw of the tall woman in the robe as she made her way toward the stool was her back. When she dropped her robe and exposed her curvy backside, he felt a sort of déjà vu vibe. As the woman turned, he immediately recognized Victoria. He wasn’t surprised at all. She spotted him instantly and rushed over for a hug as the other male students looked on jealously.

  When they pulled apart, she smiled. “Got to go. I’ll talk to you after class.”

  For some reason, he broke out in a cold sweat throughout the entire remainder of the hour-long class as he sketched her naked body in full detail. He was beginning to improve. When done, he admired his sketch proudly. Once the class ended, Victoria unabashedly walked over to him, sans robe, and stood along with him appreciating his work. As the other members of the class packed their things, they gawked at them both.

  Giving her a nervous look, he whispered, “Aren’t you going to put on your robe?”

  She scoffed. “I’ve been sitting there naked for almost an entire hour. Now I’m supposed to suddenly become shy?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  She held her chin as she studied his drawing. “It’s so good. I had no idea you were an artist.”

  Frowning a bit, she pointed to her crotch on the page. “You made my labia too big.”

  “What?” He took a closer look at the drawing.

  “My labia, it’s not right.”

  “Really?” He glanced down between her legs. She spread them apart and shifted her hips forward so he could get a better look. A student walking by nearly burst into laughter at the sight of them.

  Brian shifted his eyes from the drawing to her actual labia back and forth twice before nodding in agreement.

  “I guess you’re right. It’s the first time I’ve ever drawn that part.”

  “Wait until next class. You get to do the close-up. Then you can draw it really big and detailed. That’s my favorite class.”