The Bunny Is Coming (The Holidays #4) Page 2

  “Yummy, yummy, in your tummy!” Bev praises the pig as he gobbles up every piece she hands him.

  “Um, Bev. Are you feeding Bacon leftover pork chops?” I ask tentatively, my eyes flying to Noel’s face, watching it turn an alarming shade of green as she stares at what her mother is doing.

  “Look at his little piggy tail wagging! He loves pork chops, don’t you, my little honey bunch?” Bev asks, giving the pig a kiss on top of its head when he inhales the last piece.

  He puts his two front feet on the table, pushing himself up with his little snout sniffing and searching for more when she sets the empty container down on the table in front of him.

  “This is so wrong on so many levels,” I mumble, quickly moving to Noel’s side and pulling her away from the cannibal pig before she pukes on its head.

  “Bev, I never thought I’d say this, but get the damn Bacon off the table. Bacon is never allowed at the table, ever again,” Reggie informs her. “But good call on the pork chops. That is going to be one tasty Bacon on Sunday.”

  With a groan, Noel takes off like a shot out of the room, racing down the hall until I hear the guest bathroom door slam shut, followed by very loud heaving and retching.

  Chapter 3

  Plastic Wrap in Your Anus

  Noel

  “You’re bulimic, aren’t you? It’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t judge you.”

  I come to an abrupt stop walking out of Scheva and Alex’s bathroom to find her leaning against the wall in the hallway.

  “I’m not bulimic,” I reassure her, breathing through my nose to try and stop the nausea from taking over again.

  After the chaos at my parent’s house the other night, we never got around to stuffing all of the Easter eggs for the church egg hunt this weekend. Mostly because my dad kept chasing Bacon around the house with a knife and my mom spent the evening chasing him with a wooden spoon. Since my mom is completely insane around the holidays, and is up to her armpits in melted, pastel-colored chocolate, Scheva, Aunt Bobbie and I decided to take the egg stuffing off her hands so she could continue making hundreds of chocolate Easter bunnies, chocolate eggs, and my favorite—Easter Nests. Little piles of white chocolate-covered Rice Krispies, dyed pastel green, left to dry in clusters with three jelly beans in the center to look like eggs.

  “Oh, thank God. Because I totally would have judged you. Puking is disgusting. All that bile and half-chewed food coming back up your throat and flying past your lips…”

  Scheva trails off with a full-body shiver, and I clamp my hand over my mouth and attempt to swallow down exactly what she just described.

  I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. As soon as the three of us sat down in the middle of the living room floor surrounded by thousands of plastic eggs and piles of bagged candy, I dry-heaved when I opened the first bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. The most amazing piece of candy deliciousness there is, and one of my favorite parts of the holiday season, now destroyed. Just thinking about those things right now makes my stomach churn.

  “You’re probably pregnant!” Aunt Bobbie announces, coming around the corner, vodka sloshing out of her martini glass and all over her hand.

  She licks the spilled booze off of her hand as the three of us laugh hysterically at her announcement.

  Then, I start doing something I hate with the fire of a thousand suns—math.

  Two plus two is four, carry the seven, multiply by the square root of JESUS MOTHER FUCKING FUCKS!

  “Could you imagine Noel and Sam being parents? Holy shit that was hilarious, Bobbie!” Scheva continues to laugh while my mouth drops open and I stare at the wall across from me, still trying to do math in my head and coming up with nothing but FUCK THIS SHIT.

  “Remember when they babysat Holly right before last Christmas and burned the house down?” Aunt Bobbie laughs, the loud slurp she takes of her drink shaking me out of my stupor.

  “We did not burn the house down! There was a small electrical fire when Sam decided Nicholas and Casey didn’t have enough lights on their tree and added a few more strands,” I explain.

  My brother and his wife got all bent out of shape when they left us alone with my niece, Holly, and they haven’t let us babysit or be in a room alone with her since then. Jesus. You start one small fire and everyone thinks you’re a monster. I blame my father for that disaster. His insanity about holiday decorations rubbed off on my husband. Sam took one look at Nicholas and Casey’s tree and declared it unfit for Christmas. It’s not our fault they have shitty electrical wiring in their house. The good news is, I got Holly out of the house and avoided smoke inhalation, while Sam put out the fire with an extinguisher.

  And really, everyone knows nieces and nephews are practice kids you can mess up all you want in preparation for having your own children. You’re supposed to feed them high fructose corn syrup, teach them how to swear, allow them to watch scary movies right before bed, and on rare occasions, let them witness their house almost burning to the ground.

  “Fine, Holly is still alive and well, but let’s not forget about Gunther,” Scheva adds.

  “Rest in peace, Gunther, you were a fine, fine goldfish for the thirteen hours you managed to survive in Sam and Noel’s care,” Aunt Bobbie states, holding her glass up to the heavens in a silent toast.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Sam and I had been talking about getting a pet, and for Valentine’s Day this year he surprised me by installing a beautiful ten-gallon fish tank in the living room. He put Gunther, swimming in his bag of water, inside a big, heart-shaped box. He wrote the cutest little note inside of a card that said I swam into his heart, just like Gunther will. It was so sweet that obviously I couldn’t keep my hands off of him. It turns out, leaving a goldfish in an airtight bag overnight while you’re busy screwing your husband isn’t really good for their health.

  “I think I’m pregnant,” I blurt out, before I lose my nerve and these two idiots continue coming up with even more bullshit about how Sam and I would suck as parents.

  Aunt Bobbie starts choking on her martini, and Scheva starts laughing even harder. I quickly move over to Aunt Bobbie, smacking her on the back as I watch Scheva continue to laugh, until she realizes I’m not laughing with her and my face clearly says “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”.

  Her laughter dies in her throat, and the smile falls from her face.

  “Wait, you’re not kidding?”

  I shake my head, moving away from Aunt Bobbie and crossing my arms in front of me when she finally gets her choking under control.

  “She has to be kidding. They’ve only had sex once in seventeen days,” Aunt Bobbie states.

  I glare at her and she shrugs.

  “You guys are really loud! What do you expect me to do, just not listen? It’s like porn, without a picture. I can just close my eyes and imagine my own scenario. Very exhilarating,” she says with a nod.

  “How in the hell did this happen?” Scheva asks, throwing her hands up in the air.

  “Well, when a man and a woman love each other—”

  “Shut the hell up, I know how it happens,” she shrieks. “What I mean is, how in the hell did it happen to YOU? Aren’t you the woman who made a guy wear two condoms at once?”

  I scoff, rolling my eyes at her.

  “That was one time, and it was when I lost my virginity in high school and I was nervous about getting pregnant. Is nothing sacred with you?” I complain.

  “I once had a guy wrap his dick in plastic wrap because I was out of condoms,” Aunt Bobbie muses. “Word of advice—never, ever get plastic wrap stuck in your anus. It is NOT a walk in the park getting that stuff back out, let me tell you.”

  I open my mouth to quickly get back to the subject at hand, because I am not touching that story with a ten-foot pole, but Scheva quickly clamps her hand over my mouth and looks at Aunt Bobbie.

  “I’m gonna need you to elaborate on that story,” Scheva tells her, pressing her hand harder to my face when I frantica
lly shake it back and forth.

  It’s like she wants me to throw up again.

  “Oh, you know how it is,” Aunt Bobbie sighs. “You’re getting all hot and heavy with a guy you met on Tinder, you realize you’re out of condoms and you make do with what you have. And when you use vegetable oil as lube along with the plastic wrap? Forget about it. That shit turned into this gelatinous goo, the likes of which I’ve never seen come out of my ass, or anyone’s ass for that matter, and I’ve watched A LOT of weird porn on Tumblr.”

  Scheva immediately drops her hand from my mouth when I gag. It takes me a few minutes of breathing through my nose before I can get that image out of my brain and speak without vomit pooling in my mouth.

  “Anyway, back to Scheva’s original question, I don’t know how the hell it happened. I’m on birth control, and I take those things religiously,” I inform Scheva.

  “Actually, you don’t. You have fifteen pills left for this month and you should only have fourteen, so you missed one somewhere,” Aunt Bobbie says, taking a sip of her drink.

  When Scheva and I stare at her without speaking, she sighs.

  “It’s like you two have never met me. Stop looking at me with those judgy eyes. I was looking through Sam and Noel’s medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and I thought she was hiding some Xanax from me until I realized what they were. You’re lucky I didn’t accidentally take one of those things. Do you have any idea what a birth control pill would do to me?” she questions. “Actually, now that I think about it, since you don’t need them anymore, can I have them? I could always use an estrogen boost.”

  Slumping back against the wall, I put my head in my hands and try not to cry. Sam and I have never talked about having kids. I mean, he’s really good with Holly, and he’s never said he doesn’t want kids, but he’s also never come right out and said he does. We haven’t even been married an entire year yet. And we’ve only been together for sixteen months. It’s too soon, and he’s going to freak out.

  “Alright, before you completely lose your shit, you need to take a test. You might not even be pregnant, and you’re getting upset over nothing,” Scheva tells me, resting her hand on my shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

  She moves away from me and into the bathroom, bending down and pulling a plastic bag out from under the sink. Aunt Bobbie and I move into the doorway as she tips the bag over and somewhere around twenty pregnancy tests come tumbling out to litter the counter.

  “Why in the hell do you have so many pregnancy tests under your bathroom sink?” I ask, picking one up and flipping it over to look at the directions on the back.

  “Alex and I were out to dinner one night, and he thought it would be fun to buy a ton of those marijuana test kits from the dollar store, get high, and pee on them to see if they really work,” Scheva explains, crumpling up the empty bag and tossing it into the garbage can.

  “Still not understanding why you have twenty pregnancy tests,” I remind her.

  “Oh, yeah, I was already REALLY high when we he came up with that idea. Since we got an Uber to dinner, we smoked in the parking lot of the dollar store, and I accidentally bought pregnancy tests instead of drug tests. Alex was so mad they kept coming up negative he just kept smoking more weed and getting higher and trying again, until he eventually passed out face down on the kitchen table in a bowl of Frosted Flakes.”

  With a sad shake of my head, I shove Scheva and Aunt Bobbie out of the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind me. With shaking hands, I open up the box and read through the instructions one last time before I pee on the stick.

  Five minutes later, I open up the door to the bathroom with tears streaming down my cheeks, holding the stick in my hand.

  “So, who wants to help me come up with an idea to break the news to Sam?”

  Chapter 4

  Killer Bunnies

  Sam

  “Where are you?”

  Holding my cell phone between my chin and my shoulder, I bend down and look under the kitchen table.

  “I’m at Reggie and Bev’s house watching Bacon,” I tell Alex, standing back up when I don’t find the damn pig.

  “What?” he replies through the line.

  “Not what, who. And I told you, I’m at Reggie and Bev’s house watching Bacon.”

  “What?” he asks again.

  “WHO!” I shout with a roll of my eyes.

  “I feel like we’re in the middle of a really weird Abbott and Costello act. Is bacon on first and eggs on second?” Alex laughs.

  “Bacon is the name of the damn pig Reggie bought to eat for Easter dinner on Sunday, and Bev had to run to the store. She didn’t trust Reggie to be alone with the pig, so I got stuck pig-sitting,” I complain, making my way through the house, looking under furniture and in closet doors.

  “Jesus, your in-laws are weird,” Alex informs me.

  “Tell me about it. And I lost the damn pig. He was here a second ago and now he’s gone.”

  Alex laughs again.

  “Thank God you and Noel don’t have kids. Could you imagine that disaster? You’d be losing that thing every ten seconds.”

  I chuckle right along with him, even though laughing about something like that doesn’t feel funny at all. I never thought I wanted kids. My childhood wasn’t all that great, and it’s not like I’d ever spent a lot of time around kids as an adult to even know what to do with them. Well, aside from Noel’s niece, Holly, but we’ve been banned from coming within a hundred feet of her without another adult present. At least until the statute of limitations that her brother and sister-in-law set runs out. Which, by my calculations, should be right around the time Holly leaves for college.

  Something about the holidays always makes me think differently, though, especially now that I have Noel in my life.

  Pausing in the middle of the living room, I take a second to look around at all the Easter decorations. Sure, it looks like the Easter aisle of Target threw up in here, but it’s kind of nice. I never had this growing up as a kid. It’s festive and it’s fun, even though there are at least two hundred ceramic bunnies of all shapes and sizes on every available surface. I even like the white Christmas tree Bev put in the front living room window with multicolored pastel lights and different colored plastic Easter eggs hanging from the branches. Thinking about how amazing it would be to have a son or a daughter and getting to experience all of these things with them makes me smile.

  Then I remember that Noel has banned any and all decorations from our home the last few holidays because, according to her, we are completely fucked around the holidays. She thinks if we ignore them as best we can nothing bad will happen to us. I have to say, I kind of agree with her. Our life is crazy enough without adding a child to the mix.

  “CODE RED! CODE RED!” Reggie screams, racing into the house and zooming past me down the hall.

  “Alex, I gotta go. Reggie’s freaking out about something,” I tell him, disconnecting the call before he has a chance to respond.

  Sliding my phone into my back pocket, I head down the hall and find Reggie in the kitchen opening and slamming closed every drawer and cupboard in the room.

  “Make yourself useful and find me some duct tape,” Reggie says when he hears me walk into the room.

  “Why, exactly, is finding duct tape cause for a code red? Also, I may or may not have lost Bacon,” I tell him, going right to the junk drawer in the corner of the room and pulling out the roll of tape.

  “We’re under attack, Sam. It’s time for you to put that military training to good use. And Bacon is in the oven, where he should be.”

  My eyes widen in shock, and I quickly scramble across the kitchen, flinging the oven door open and breathing out a sigh of relief when Bacon looks up at me from his spot on the middle oven grate, where he was curled up taking a nap.

  Scooping Bacon out of the oven and into my arms, I shoot Reggie a glare.

  “Don’t look at me like that. He’s gotta get used to being in there so
oner or later. I figure if he likes it enough, we won’t even have to force him in there on Sunday. He’ll just jump right in on his own. And why the hell are you still standing there, WE ARE UNDER A STATE OF EMERGENCY!” Reggie screams at me.

  “Do I even want to ask what the hell you’re talking about?” I sigh, leaning back against the counter, hugging Bacon closer to my chest when Reggie pauses his tirade to look down at the pig and lick his lips. “Reggie, eyes up here!”

  He shakes his head and blinks a few times, looking away from Bacon and back up at my face.

  “SOMEONE STOLE MY BUNNIES!” Reggie screams, snatching the duct tape out of my hand, yanking off a long piece and tearing it off with his teeth. “Poor Matilda was stabbed in the process and she’s losing air fast. We need to hurry!”

  “Matilda?” I question, following behind him while tucking Bacon under one arm as Reggie heads outside through the side door in the kitchen.

  “Cheese and rice, Sam, do you pay attention to anything? Matilda is the pink bunny with the red reverse bob haircut, smoky blue eyeshadow and dramatic cat eye with black liner,” Reggie huffs as he hurries through the yard.

  Shaking my head, I follow along behind him until we get to the front of the house and, sure enough, at least ten of the blow-up bunnies are missing from the yard with nothing but empty stakes left behind.

  Reggie races to the blow-up that is quickly losing air and listing to the side, dropping down on his knees in front of it.

  “Don’t you die on me, Matilda, do you hear me?! You hold on and keep fighting. Dammit, DON’T YOU DARE DIE ON ME!” Reggie screams, quickly slapping the length of duct tape over the bunny’s stomach and untying her from the stake.

  As my father-in-law performs CPR on the damn bunny, blowing air into the plug at its neck and then resting his ear against its stomach to make sure its holding, I quickly scan the neighborhood to make sure no one is watching this shitshow happening in broad daylight.

  Yep, definitely don’t need to be having thoughts about kids right now. We won’t know until Holly is at least five whether or not crazy runs in the family, and I don’t want to take any chances.