Part 14 - Beware of This One
"Hey Butthole Surfer." For a second I thought Mom, Aunt Allison, or Miss Soder had been posting things.
Then I remembered that the Butthole Surfers were a one hit wonder band, I already knew who it was, smiled and instinctively shot back, "Hey Cheap Trick."
"I'm totally sure you've used that one before."
"Oh that was a band?" Smiling bigger as my sister smiled at me, coming over to give me a hug.
"Uch, you're all sweaty." She only said after we were parting.
"Yeah, sorry, just got back from a jog."
"I can see and smell that Stinkin Park."
"You could have said Nickelback, that's pretty much a synonym for stinky."
"I like that band!" She shot back.
"Oh yeah? Wow." Shaking my head, eyes telling the tale of how much she'd dropped in my book for like the band. Coming out of it to give her shoulder a little poke, "But the real missed opportunity is Hoobastank. I mean... HoobaSTANK."
It was our game, I don't know how it started but at some point we just started calling each other band names. Most times we tried to make it an insult or relevant to the situation. Sometimes a band name had stuck for a day or a week. One time on vacation when she got stung several times she was UB40 for the entire trip. Another time after I dumped a girl she hated I was Best Coast for like a month, which was her favorite band at the time, so a double compliment.
"Martin." After parting from my sister, I saw and went to her husband who was standing there only as Martin could, like he was somehow intruding on...
everything
and was about to excuse himself and go. So as to not be a bother to anybody. I did the handshake hug, which put him at ease. "How's Happsburg going?"
"Great. Great! I added a water tower, well a new water tower." He pulled out his phone to show me pictures.
He was a model train nerd. I didn't judge him as hard as his wife did and maybe 99% of the world. Not that she teased him or said much, but she made her feelings on it clear by her expressions anytime the subject came up. I would never do it myself but I could kind of understand Martin. It was his grandfather's set that had gotten him started, my sister, him, and the kids now lived in his grandfather's house. A huge old farmhouse on a big plot of land that Elaine couldn't complain about the train set taking up a portion of the basement. Plus Martin had a sharp eye and bought and sold enough of the stuff that the hobby pretty much paid for itself. I was always impressed by how great the stuff looked, he painted and placed and photographed them with enough detail that if I didn't know it was fake I wouldn't have guessed. Especially the angles he took the pictures at. The people figures, of course, always looked fake no matter how good he was but the buildings, trees, and rest were amazing.
"What?" Yanking the phone from him to get a better view, he'd painted and weathered the water tower so that it looked just like the one in their town. Minus the name change to HAPPSBURG in all capital letters. "Holy sh..." I held my curse back, "That looks exactly like it! If you got a better angle I would have thought it was just pictures of the thing." The reason for me to suddenly remember to hold back my curse making me look around. "Where are the kids?"
"Dad's." Elaine whispered, checking out in the other room for mom, who would start bad mouthing dad if somebody brought up the subject.
"Whoa," I let out, Elaine rolled her eyes at my shock.
"Better to get it out of the way now, he'll drop them off tomorrow before dinner. Plus, you know what that means." Motioning to her wine glass. "Momma can drink tonight!"
"Momma has already been drinking if she missed Hoobastank." Martin smiling at my teasing of his wife but trying not to be seen doing it.
"Yeah, yeah whatever Stinkin Park."
I flipped her off, all in fun, pulling my shirt off as I started towards the bathroom. My phone went off, it was Rickee answering my message from earlier. Her, Gwen, and Soap had been at some all day debriefing about the "Explosion" over at the corporate regional headquarters in Willow Rapids. But she was free now if I wanted to meet up. I messaged her that more of my family had shown up and I couldn't get away now. She apologized a ton, sent me a couple of cute pictures of her looking sorry, ones that just so happened to show off an ungodly amount of cleavage.
I wasn't going to take a return pic, right there in the open but the thought of sending one made me aware of my surroundings. My eyes flicking to my brother-in-law and sister. He was watching some documentary on TV, she was staring at me. Or... Not at me but at my body, if she had been looking at me she would have seen I was looking at her. Elaine sipped, stared, sighed, shook her head and stared some more.
Your imagination! I tried to tell myself but... But the rest of the potion was hidden in the locked trunk of my car. Still... Elaine was staring at me like she had taken a big gulp of it. Martin cleared his throat, but just a normal one not because he'd spotted what his wife was doing. She jumped, seemed about ready to babble an excuse when she saw her husband staring at the TV still, oblivious. Turning all red she did finally check me, my eyes. One of my eyebrows was up, she blushed deeper, then quickly finished her drink.
"Stop wandering around here half naked." She growled on the way to the kitchen, giving me a shove that just so happened to start at (and squeeze) my pec, then rapidly go down to my abs. All of which were standing out all the more, like I'd done months of exercise instead of hours, it wasn't vastly different but there was certainly more definition. "And take a shower Stinkin Park."
I was happy to hurry away, both of us looking at each other, then away quickly as we saw the other looking. My dick was half hard in my jogging shorts, the only reason she hadn't seen it was because my back was turned. No! I internally chided. Chided my dick and myself. Not her too! I had had a blip of a thought as we hugged, about how she was basically a twenty-three year old version of mom. Slender, with small breasts, no sign of the kids that were years in the past, and with almost the same hair color. And... And just really quick, I thought about the two of them making out naked and looking like one was a time traveling version of the other.
No. No! I repeated as I showered. She doesn't want it! But even if she did, aren't things complicated enough?
"You saved four people?" My sister asked me the second I got out of the bathroom.
"Huh?" Aware of what she was talking about but shocked she was asking it like this, angry.
"Your... girlfriend is here."
"I'm not really his girlfriend. We're just friends, we went to high school together and ran into each other at the coffee shop." Samara said, stepping out from the main room to give me a wave, a bashful smile, and a shrug.
"Just bumped into each other," Mom grumbled, really did look like a time traveling version of Elaine.
"Yeah right." Aunt Allison finished, arms crossed and standing right beside her sister (wife) with the same expression. God damn! All three of them! Like some multiverse had spit out different versions of the same woman and they were all pissed at me.
Samara shrunk under it. I didn't blame her.
"There was an explosion? And you saved her? And three of the workers too?" That was the story that they'd told, I couldn't go against it, plus for sure Soap and I had saved Samara, she had been in a really bad place all alone under that negative onslaught. "You bastard! I hate you!"
"What?" I asked, feeling like we were kids again she stomped her foot and then stomped off to her room.
Elaine realized that was where Aunt Allison was staying (They probably would have given it to Elaine and the kids but it would have been more dangerous for her to sneak up from the basement to cuddle with mom and me at night, which neither of them had relented on.) came right back out of there in more of a huff. Into my room, which was my room again after her short possession of it. Coming out this time she was pissed at being embarrassed, charging right at me. Slapping her hands against my bare chest.
"Why do you have to be so damned hard to live up to? Huh? You got better grades than me! You were always more popular!" The grades part was true, but I was a nerd which seemed to directly contradict the second part. I started to shake my head but then because I wasn't! I hadn't been. By the end of high school I wasn't popular but for the most part I was ignored rather than mocked. That was nice but not
popularity
in any way. "You went to University AND graduated! You're the only kid mom and dad can brag about. Only good thing I did was give them grandkids and neither of them wanted to be grandparents that early."
"Elaine!" Mom and I said at the same time, hers was chastising and mine was comforting.
"You go off to University and you... You get BETTER looking. You have an apartment with two awesome gay guys, you live in the city, I live in a smaller town than Defluer! You went to University, graduated and got this amazing job lined up. I'm a stay at home mom! Nobody is proud of that. Both my kids go to school, you know what I do when they're gone? NOTHING! Takes me half an hour to clean the house, then I just lay around until the kids get home. He thinks I'm all run ragged because by the time he gets home I'm cooking dinner and helping the kids with homework. Only they don't need my help, they got his brains. They got brains like YOU and him. And he offers to bring dinner home and I let him and... You're having sex with busty Latina women, and who knows who else, she wants it so bad she came over here to see you under the disguise of giving you some thank you tamales."
"Tamales?" I mean! Tamales! There were some great places to eat in Willow Rapids but the few with tamales had tasted like shit in comparison to the ones that Samara would occasionally sneak to me, knowing I liked them so much.
