Every year since I was a kid, my Mom packed me two weeks worth of clean underwear and sent me down south to spend the summer with my cousin, Neil McCallahan. He lived in a bright yellow trailer elevated by four cinder blocks, with a trashbag stretched taut behind a broken window and a chipped bird bath on the front lawn. My own place back in the city was ten stories up, crawling with roaches, and leaky when it rained.
It was hard to say which I hated more.
Neil had a brain like a paddle ball bat but an ass shaped like two inflated balloons. He thought he was smart, but he was really just good at storing information and wore glasses to cover up the fact that he had eyelashes like a Maybelline commercial. Whenever he talked it was always yesterday's dinner - the same leftovers from the same subjects regurgitated across six different days.
"Matt," Neil called nervously from behind a tree trunk. "I can't do this."
Case in point. He'd been insisting we were going to get caught ever since earlier today, when we shook on the terms of our bet. I leaned back in the collapsible lawn chair and stretched my feet out in the grass to finish off a beer. Once the can was empty I crushed it between my hands and tried to peg him with it. When he didn't emerge from behind his hiding spot I stood up with a sigh.
"Don't be such a little bitch," I complained.
I shrugged off the camo jacket and tossed my hat on top, priming the oversized plastic gun in my arms. The lube I stole from the pharmacy sloshed in the tank when I took aim at my target: a pathetic loser in a girl's one piece bathing suit. He had the strawberry blond hair of a cabbage patch kid and a slight enough build that he could pass, if not for the way his cock and balls bulged behind the spandex.
"Wow," I gaped. "You stupid motherfucker. You're really wearing it."
We were cousins, sure, but not by blood. That's probably why Neil couldn't take a ten pound chihuahua on a good day and I was built like a brick house. His pits were smooth even though I already had hair coming in on my upper lip and side burns like a grizzly bear. I gave a couple of well intentioned squirts at his crotch while he tried to cover himself.
"Cut it out," he cried, gaze trained on the ground. "You told me to wear it, so I wore it."
I ran a hand through the my dark brown hair - buzzed short, but overgrown - and took a step into his personal space. He stiffened when I leaned in close, one hand gripping the back of his neck. The gun was the only boundary between us, hanging from a strap over my shoulder. I pulled a smaller one from the waistband of my swim trunks and aimed it at his chest.
"Don't!" Neil urged, wringing out his hands.
"Or what?" He didn't speak, or even blink. "This is the Super Soaker 50," I reminded him. "That means it shoots up to fifty feet."
Neil jumped, like my tone was so serious he forgot the weapon was just a toy. We were nearly the same height, but he had about as much presence as a bowl of oatmeal. Our foreheads collided when I surged forward, pinning him with a tight grip in his hair.
"Shut the fuck up and open your mouth."
The smell of bug spray burned my nose when I pushed my tongue past his lips. Once I got him to stop resisting, he softened, jaw slack as I scrubbed my tongue over his and across the roof of his mouth. His whole body jolted, hips trembling and unsteady. My hands roamed across the material hugging his chest before sliding under it to terrorize his nipples.
"Please," he said, struggling to withhold a whimper. "Someone might see."
