The Firework Exploded Read online

  His hand drops from my cheek when I don’t immediately say anything and I lean forward, pressing both of my hands to either side of his face.

  “We are such idiots,” I whisper. “Here I’ve been thinking this entire time that you’re going to call off the wedding because it’s all my family’s fault that you even need that prescription in the first place. My family is killing you, and you shouldn’t want to marry into this crazy mess. So yes, I went a little insane and thought that if I did whatever I could to keep you calm and keep your blood pressure down, it would fix everything. I didn’t even care about the problem with your penis.”

  He raises one eyebrow at me and I roll my eyes.

  “Okay, fine. I cared about it a little, but only because of what you already made clear. I was worried maybe you didn’t want me anymore, and then I found the pills and realized what the whole problem was and as much as it’s sucked not to have our usual amazing sex, it wasn’t what scared me the most. I don’t care about not having amazing sex, and I don’t care about not having kids. Not if I don’t have you.”

  Sam groans, wrapping his arms around my waist and tugging me against him. I push up on my knees and climb onto his lap, straddling his thighs.

  “I love you so much, Noel. But there’s one last thing you’ve been freaking out about for nothing,” he tells me, tightening his hold around me until our chests are pressed together. “My high blood pressure? I’ve had it since high school. I’ve also had a prescription since then.”

  My head jerks back and I stare at him in shock.

  “What? But, the bottle had a date on it of December 26th. Right when we started dating. Right when you met my bat-shit crazy family.”

  He laughs softly and shakes his head at me. “Babe, that was just the date my doctor gave me a new prescription. He wanted to try out something different and see if it gave me better results. I went back to him last week and pretty much started flipping tables, telling him about the sex problem and how if he didn’t fix it, I would have your dad come down there and cut off his dick.”

  I sigh in irritation, pressing my forehead against his.

  “We really are complete idiots.”

  Sam bends his head down and kisses me softly, pulling back to kiss both of my cheeks and tip of my nose.

  “The good news is, that means we’re completely made for each other,” he tells me. “From now on, we just need to promise to be honest with each other about any medical conditions so there isn’t a breakdown in communication and we turn into one of those stories in a romance novel.”

  “Well, the way we met and fell in love is already sort of like a Lifetime movie, so I’m pretty sure we’re doomed,” I laugh.

  “Yeah, but at least it’s not a cheesy Lifetime movie. There’s too many drag queens, killer zombie cats, and fathers who threaten you with dairy products for it to be cheesy.”

  “Oh, and I should probably tell you that I have a very serious medical condition. One where I have trouble peeing standing up until someone turns on the water faucet,” I tell him seriously.

  “Don’t worry, next time you pee standing up, I’ll be there to turn on the faucet and make sure it doesn’t get too weird,” he promises.

  “We should totally put that in our vows.”

  As we laugh and lean toward each other for another kiss, the front door opens and slams shut and we pause with our mouths an inch apart.

  “SCHEEEEEEEEVA! I LOVE YOU! I COME BARING BUTTER!”

  Sam and I turn our heads toward the living room doorway when the house is filled with the sound of footsteps pounding down the stairs. We watch Scheva go racing past the living room and hear a thump and the crash of a picture frame falling to the floor when she most likely catapulted herself into Alex’s arms.

  “Oh, my God! You brought me butter. You really love me, don’t you?!” Scheva shouts.

  “I brought you a whole shit ton of butter, baby. I got Parkay, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Land-O-Lakes, Imperial, and Country Crock,” Alex tells her.

  Sam and I look at each other and wince in disgust as we listen to the two idiots making up on the other side of the wall.

  “Say it again, slowly,” Scheva whispers loudly.

  “Country Crrrrrrroccccccckkkkk,” Alex says in a deep, drawn out voice.

  “WHAT IN THE DEVIL IS GOING ON DOWN HERE?”

  Sam and I quickly scramble away from each other when my father’s voice booms from the bottom of the steps. He looks at me in fear and I look down at myself, realizing I’m still only wearing my bra and underwear, having removed my wedding dress an hour ago and being too drunk at the time to care where I put my clothes. My father’s footsteps thump down the hall in our direction and I quickly grab Sam’s hips and turn him around, hiding myself behind his body.

  “Oh, great. Put me out in front, right in the open where he can easily slaughter my dick!” Sam complains worriedly under his breath.

  My dad appears in the doorway with my mom right behind him. They both look back and forth between me huddled behind Sam half naked, and Scheva and Alex by the front door doing God only knows what with butter.

  Dad reaches toward the wall in the hallway and flips on the lights above him and the main one for the living room, connected to the ceiling fan.

  Everyone in the house is suddenly spotlighted in bright florescent lightening. Suddenly, me being in my underwear with Sam in the living room, and Alex and Scheva licking butter off of each other by the front door stops being the main focus of everyone but my father.

  “Bev, get me my favorite butcher knife from the kitchen. I’ve got some dicks to chop off,” my father growls, putting his hands on his hips and puffing out his chest.

  Unfortunately, by doing this, none of us can take him seriously and it only makes it that much harder to avoid looking. No matter how much we want to look away, it’s pretty much impossible. There’s nowhere for our eyes to go but down.

  “Damn, Reggie. That’s pretty impressive. I think that deserves a fist-bump!” Alex announces.

  We watch as Alex appears in the doorway with his arm out, holding his fist out to my father. His fist currently covered in a thick layer of butter.

  “What in tarnation are you talking about, dip stick?” my father asks him in annoyance.

  Alex just laughs, but the longer my father glares at him, the faster his laughter dies and he quickly moves back until he’s behind the wall and out of our line of vision.

  “Uh, Reggie, I think you have a little…I mean, I think there’s something…you might want to take care of…that,” Sam stutters, pointing awkwardly at my dad’s crotch.

  At the huge tent poking out of his crotch behind his baggy, off-white boxers that he’s paired nicely with a set of black, shin-high dress socks.

  My mother moves around my father and looks down to where Sam is pointing.

  “Oh, that? Yeah, don’t worry about that. He’s had that thing since he drank his coffee this morning. I’m sure it will go away eventually,” she tells us with a smile.

  Moving into the living room to stand in front of us, she hides the side of her mouth with her hand and whispers loudly, “I think I might have crushed up a bit too many Viagra in his coffee this morning.”

  I completely forget I’m not wearing any clothes and step out from behind Sam, forcing my eyes up to the ceiling before the corneas burn and I’m blinded for life.

  “You’ve had that thing for ten hours? Sweet Jesus, man,” Sam mutters.

  “A horse is a horse, of course of course, unless his name is Mister Ed!” Scheva sings from the front door.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, enough with the horse,” my dad mutters.

  “By the looks of it, I think Mister Ed might be getting cancelled tonight,” my mother says, giving Sam and I a wink. “Don’t worry, Noel, if your father still has this erection problem at the wedding, we can just use it as a coat rack!”

  Giving both of us a kiss on the cheek, she walks back into the hallway an
d grabs Reggie’s arm, tugging him toward the stairs.

  “Wait, I still have dicks to cut off! Our daughter’s milk was left out on the counter to spoil and now we’ll never be able to eat butter again!” my dad complains as my mother continues pulling him down the hall and up the stairs.

  “Stop talking, Reginald, or I won’t help you with the problem going on in your pants. I’ve still got a couple of movies left I didn’t give Sam and Noel. How about we watch the one with the lesbians and the fists? You always liked that one.”

  My mother’s voice fades as my parents disappear upstairs. Sam and I slowly turn to face each other, both of us holding our hands over our mouths to stop us from puking.

  “You sure you don’t want to take back that whole thing about how my family didn’t cause your high blood pressure?” I ask in a muffled voice, my hand still firmly against my mouth.

  Sam nods quickly, slowly dropping his hand and taking a couple of deep breaths before he speaks.

  “One thing we forgot to talk about, what’s the deal with the whole Mister Ed thing? You guys must have really liked that show or something,” he states.

  “DON’T LET MISTER ED NEAR THE BUTTER!” Scheva shouts from the hallway. “THE BUTTER IS FOR ME AND ALEX AND MISTER ED CAN’T USE IT FOR HIS ERECTILE DISFUNCTION!”

  Chapter 12

  Cumquats and Rice Krispy Treats

  Noel

  Taking the porch steps two at a time as I run the rest of the way from my car, I throw open my parents’ front door, slamming it closed behind me. Leaning against it, I take a few minutes to calm my breathing. This running in fear from that fucking cat every time I come over here is getting old. He hasn’t shown his face to me, but every time Sam’s been here in the last couple of weeks, he’s raised holy hell, and now Sam sleeps with a small shovel under his pillow.

  I smile to myself, thinking about the last few weeks. After our long-awaited talk, Sam and I have been perfect. Better than perfect. It might have taken us a while, but we’ve finally learned it’s better to talk about things as soon as they’re bothering us, than to let them fester and come up with all sorts of wrong reasons for any problems we might be having.

  As much as we wanted to test out Sam’s confidence that going back to his old prescription would fix our sex problem, it took over a week for us to stop picturing Alex and Scheva licking butter off of each other and my mom and dad enjoying fisting porn. By that point, we only had a week to go until our wedding and we both decided to do at least one traditional thing—abstain from sex until our wedding night.

  I’m not gonna lie, it’s been tough. No matter how exhausted Sam and I are when we get home from work, and after we’ve done whatever last minute things we needed to for the wedding, we’ve made it a point to set aside at least twenty minutes to talk about anything that’s bothering us.

  While we’re lying in bed.

  Pressed up against each other.

  Only wearing our underwear.

  The struggle is real. The struggle is so real that I’m currently standing in my parents’ hallway, staring at the banister to the stairs down the hall, wondering how good it would feel to rub my vagina all over it.

  Thankfully, Aunt Bobbie comes running into the entryway from the living room before I can decide if humping my parents’ handrail is a good idea or a bad one.

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

  Before I can ask her what’s going on, she takes my hand and drags me into the living room. Scheva is sitting on the couch and lifts her hand in a wave. I start to greet her and then notice someone sitting next to her on the couch I don’t recognize.

  “Oh, this is my friend from work, Jamie,” Scheva introduces when she sees the confused look on my face. “She’s the one who hooked us up tonight.”

  “Aaaaand welcome to our problem,” Aunt Bobbie whispers in my ear.

  “Yo,” Jamie says with a nod in my direction. “You’re the one getting married, right?”

  I nod my head, still wondering what problem Aunt Bobbie is referring to.

  “I hate romance. I hate weddings. All that hearts and flowers crap is boring. Why can’t we just beat the shit out of people in the street? Or live in a futuristic society with sectors and barbed-wire fences and wars with no time for gross lovey-dovey shit?” Jamie asks, kicking her feet up on the coffee table.

  “Okay, I see the problem now,” I mutter to Aunt Bobbie under my breath, trying not to glare at the new addition to our crazy.

  She’s got a really pretty face and great hair, but she’s she keeps cracking her knuckles and it’s starting to make me a little afraid of her. I don’t know what is going on, but I’m pretty sure if I say one wrong thing, she’ll tackle me to the ground and fulfill her wish of wanting to beat the shit out of people and start a war between just her fist and my face.

  “Oh, no, that’s not the problem. The ambiguously gay, love hater on the couch only brought the goods. That over there, is the problem,” she informs me.

  I look in the direction of the big window on the side of the room where Aunt Bobbie is pointing, but I don’t see anything that would cause any kind of problem aside from the horrible curtains my mother still has from before I was born. I start to ask her to just spit it out and stop being so vague, when I hear a low moan coming from behind the curtains that hang from the rod above the window, all the way down to the floor.

  Scheva and Jamie laugh and Aunt Bobbie shoots them an annoyed look.

  “I tried to stop her, but she just wouldn’t listen. You know how your mother gets,” Aunt Bobbie tells me as I quickly move across the room.

  I squat down in front of the curtains that have now started to rustle and the moaning gets louder. Grabbing onto a corner of the fabric, I yank it aside and find my mother sitting against the wall with her legs pulled up to her chest.

  “I’M DYING! CALL AN AMBULANCE!” my mother shouts as soon as she sees me.

  “You’re not dying, Beverly, for God’s sake,” Aunt Bobbie sighs from behind me.

  My mother leans forward and grabs onto the front of my shirt with her fists, yanking my face right up to hers until our noses are touching.

  “Tell Sam I love him and I did this for him,” she whispers, her body swaying away from me in a circular pattern until I have to grab onto her arms to hold her steady.

  “What are you talking about? What did you do for Sam? Will someone please tell me what is wrong with my mother?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at the women behind me.

  Aunt Bobbie looks away guiltily, while Scheva and Jamie have turned themselves around on the couch and are now resting their arms on the back of it, staring at my mother while continuing to snort and giggle.

  “She had a few too many Rice Krispy treats,” Jamie informs me as Scheva reaches over and starts petting her hair. “It’s fine. She’ll be good soon, no worries.”

  I take a minute to look around the room and notice a few things I missed when I first got in here. Mainly, the seven cereal boxes and five empty potato chip bags on the coffee table, three empty and tipped-over boxes of Pop Tarts on the love seat, assorted, half-eaten bags of Twizzlers, Gummy Bears and miniature Reese’s Cups on the floor, and a gallon of strawberry ice cream on the fireplace hearth, tipped on its side with four spoons sticking out of it as it melts all over the stone.

  “I’M DYING! CALL AN AMBULANCE!” my mother shouts again.

  Adding all of the food paraphernalia littering the coffee table, to the fact my mother thinks she’s dying, and my best friend grabbing onto a clump of her long blonde hair, has shoved it into her mouth and is now chewing on it, and I’ve got my answer.

  “You didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did?” I ask, looking from Scheva, to Jamie and ending with Aunt Bobbie.

  “We told her to just eat half of one, but she wouldn’t listen,” Aunt Bobbie tries to explain.

  “Nummy, nummy, nummy, Rice Krispy treats are nummy,” my mother chants.

  I turn away from
Aunt Bobbie to lower my head and try to meet my mother’s eyes as they dart all around the room.

  “Mom, how many Rice Krispy treats did you eat?” I ask, speaking to her slowly like I’m talking to a toddler.

  “I stopped counting when she got to four,” Scheva pipes up from behind me. “Four, four, four. Four is a funny word. Why is four such a funny word? My hair tastes like pizza.”

  “Ooooh, I could totally go for some pizza right now,” Jamie adds.

  I turn away from my mother again, just long enough to give both of them a dirty look.

  “I cannot believe you gave my mother pot Rice Krispy treats. Are you insane? Scheva, stop eating your hair. Aunt Bobbie, go make some coffee. How in the hell are you not stoned?” I ask her.

  “I’m not about to eat high fructose corn syrup. I have to fit into an Aunt of the Bride dress next week,” she scoffs.

  I shake my head at her and nod in the direction of the doorway. “Go. Kitchen. Coffee. NOW.”

  Aunt Bobbie hustles out of the room and my mother shouts after her.

  “BOBBIE! I’M DYING! CALL AN AMBULANCE!”

  I sigh and shake my head at her. “Pot Rice Krispy treats, really, mom?”

  With her hands still clutched onto the front of my shirt, she yanks my face back to hers.

  “I saw this show on television the other night called Weediquette,” she whispers. “It was very enlightening. Did you know weed can cure anxiety and make everything calm and pretty and nice? I thought to myself, ‘Bev, that’s exactly what Sam needs so he doesn’t have to clean Mister Ed’s stall anymore.’ I told Scheva, and she told me about her nice friend Jamie and they came over tonight with some samples. I figured I should test it out first before giving it to Sam. He already killed Turd Ferguson, I don’t want him killing Mister Ed.”

  She finishes with her rambling explanation and I don’t know whether to shake her or thank her for worrying about Sam and wanting to help him. I probably should have clued her in on the fact that it’s no longer necessary that we do everything we can to make sure he remains calm and explained to her about his blood pressure and the penis problem. I kind of thought the cat zombie apocalypse would have been pretty self-explanatory that we were wasting our time trying to keep anyone calm, but obviously not.