Authors Note: This is going to be a three-part story. Honestly, I have no idea when Chapters 2 and 3 will be published. Ideally, it will be near Thanksgiving and Christmas respectively, but I can't guarantee that. Enjoy.
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It was Halloween and the local bar that my friends hung out at was packed. I had managed to sneak in because the doorman was a friend of mine from school. Nice guy, dumb as a bag of rocks, the starting middle linebacker on our team and I had helped him with algebra during our freshman year, so this was his way of helping me out. Every now and then he let me in the door. Tonight, I thought was going to regret it. As it turns out, I didn't.
I looked across the bar at one of the hottest chicks in the place, complete with painted whiskers, a cute little black nose and kitty cat ears perched atop her brown hair. She also had the greenest eyes I had ever seen. The only problem was I had seen them before and they belonged to my Aunt Kari. That wasn't so much a problem, the problem was that I was looking across a bar at my aunt. I was only twenty and she damn well knew it.
I did the best I could under the circumstances, I grabbed my beer and headed back to my booth. If I was going to be humiliated, I might as well make it epic. Besides, I was two hundred miles away from home! What the fuck was my aunt doing here? Here of all places? I slid into the booth and looked across at my friends "Uh guys. I've got a problem..."
Before I go any further, let me explain something.
My Aunt Kari is only five years older than I am. She was the youngest child of my grandparents and my mom is the oldest. They are seventeen years apart in age so Kari and I grew up more like a brother and sister than aunt and nephew. (I'm no expert, but I don't think Kari was "planned" if you catch the meaning.) It was kind of funny in Kari's teenaged years because my mom would get on to her about something and Kari would say "Yes mom."
When Kari was about seventeen or so she let lose with an F bomb over a dropped pass during the Cowboys game at grandma's house and mom started in on her. Kari responded with "Sorry mom." and mom shot back with "Young lady I am NOT your MOTHER!" Kari smiled and then sniped back "Yeah? Well you're damn sure old enough to be!" The three or so seconds of awkward silence was followed by a screeching banshee running through the house chasing my laughing aunt.
It didn't help that my dad and I were both bent over laughing so hard that tears were running down our cheeks. I learned a valuable lesson that day, never, under any circumstances, make fun of a woman's age. Dad and I ate take out for two straight weeks.
So now you kind of understand what I am dealing with here, my aunt is my aunt but she isn't...anyway back to the present.
"Uh guys. I've got a problem..."
"Sup?"
"I'm kind of busted." I said nodding toward the bar.
Then I looked up to see Kari heading our way and my reaction was one of absolute awe. She was wearing five inch stilettos and a little black dress that showed every bit of her 5'9" frame to perfection. This wasn't my aunt, this was a fucking goddess walking toward our booth. The guys just sat there, slack jawed.
I remember thinking "Damn, the only thing more perfect than her boobs are her legs." and then thinking "Damn dude! That's your aunt for fuck sake."
"Derrick Davidson don't you dare walk away from me again! You owe me an explanation!"
I put my beer down and stood up.
"Sorry?" I offered meekly.
"Sorry's sweet ass! You told me you were going to call me last week and I don't like being lied to!"
Which was technically true because she had left me a voicemail asking me to call her and I returned the call but we started playing voicemail tag and I just stopped playing.
"I lost your number? Earthquake? Flood? Tornado?" I said smiling.
"Bullshit, you've had my number since last year." Which again was technically true, she had changed her number last year after she broke up with her boyfriend because the creep kept drunk dialing her at two in the morning.
"But, just in case..." She reached into her purse, pulled out a pen, grabbed my hand and wrote her name and number on my palm. "There, now you have no excuse."
"You know there are several ways to get in touch with someone..." I offered.
"And you didn't use any of them so what was I supposed to think?" she countered.
Then it hit me. Kari wasn't pissed, she was playing with the guys I had gone out with. That little tease!
She looked at my buddies and asked, "If I called anyone of you would you have ignored me the way Derrick did?" She was met with three shaking heads and a chorus of "Hell no!" from my trusted associates.
"Thanks assholes." I muttered.
"Any time Dude." my roommate Jared piped up. "Any damn time!"
Kari's self-righteous smirk caused all of us to laugh. She pointed at Jared and said "I like him! Seriously Derrick, give me a call tomorrow, or better yet with your track record, I'll call you. But Honey this is the last time I will chase after you, I don't care how nice we play together. Got it?"
"Got it." I replied.
"Good, because you owe me dinner and a movie now. My friends are waiting on me, we have a party to go to. I'll see you tomorrow."
With that she smiled, rose up just a bit on her toes, and surprising me she draped her arms over my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the lips. To say I was shocked was an understatement, then she almost, almost bit my lower lip before she broke it off, winked and turned away. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear to God she added a little swish in her hips when she walked off.
Three things happened at that moment. The first was I became a hero to my buddies and I didn't buy a beer for the rest of the night because they were plying me with questions about Kari. The second was I realized that between the beer, the little black dress and the added swish that I was wrong about the boobs and legs; my aunt's ass was perfect. The third was that between the beer, the kiss and the twinkle in her eyes as she smiled at me, I had popped a serious boner.
Well, four things...I found myself asking what the fuck had just happened, and I tried to remind myself that the woman who had done that was my aunt. Then I realized that throughout the entire exchange, I hadn't introduced Kari as my aunt and she hadn't mentioned it either.
The first day of November found me face down on my bed, hung over, hungry, bleary eyed and wanting to find the ninja that had kicked me in the head and shoot him in the face. Then at the ungodly hour of noon, my phone rang.
"This had better be important." I mumbled into my pillow and phone at the same time.
"Well good morning Stud. Did we have a late night or early morning?" I heard Kari ask.
"We had a little of both. My buddies kept buying beer to get me to loosen up and talk about the hottie that wanted to jump my bones at the bar last night."
"Really? There was a hottie that wanted to jump your bones? And I missed it? Damn!" she said laughing.
"What are you doing in town?" I asked, honestly perplexed.
"Bridal shower for Susan, you remember her don't you? You had a serious crush on her a few years ago." She responded.
True. I did. Again. I was busted.
"Seriously Kari, thank you for not embarrassing me last night, I really appreciate it." I said honestly.
"No problem Sweetie, any time. Just don't tell your mom okay?"
"Yeah, like that is going to happen. Tell you what, I won't tell her that you kissed me if you don't tell her we went out to a bar together. How's that?"
She laughed. "I didn't kiss you! It was an innocent peck on the lips."
"Okay, but that innocent peck on the lips would have sent mom into a conniption and you know it."
"Nah, she can be a tight ass at times, but she wouldn't get upset unless I grabbed your ass when I did it." She quipped.
And, the boner was back...I will say this about Kari, she is brutally honest. My dad is a corporate attorney and says exactly what he means. Kari is a Project Manager and has the same ability to let everyone know what she is thinking. My mother, Denise, is the perfect corporate wife and companion for a guy like that. She would have died of embarrassment if someone we knew had seen that kiss no matter how innocent it was. When Kari and I were growing up mom would admonish either of us for stepping one toe over a line that might not be socially unacceptable under the smallest of circumstances. That kiss would have caused her to stroke out.
"Well, let's not find out. I don't want to be eating take out the entire time I am at the cabin for Thanksgiving."
"Spoilsport!" she said, laughing again. "Listen Sweetie, that's why I needed to talk to you last week. I've been tasked, by YOUR mother, with stocking the cabin this year for Thanksgiving dinner. I was wondering if you want to help your decrepit old aunt and do the heaving lifting for me?"
The cabin belonged to my grandparents. I would like to say it is a small humble abode nestled in the Rockies, but the truth is it is a 4,000-square foot, five bedroom, six bath monster setting just outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Somehow it survived the wildfire there last year. The cabin was where we spent most of our summer vacations, half of our Thanksgivings and half of our Christmases. If we spent Thanksgiving, we skipped Christmas and vice versa. This year it was turkey in Tennessee and Christmas in Mobile. Grandpa hates it, he calls it the Mountain Top Money Pit. Grandma loves it, so, they have a cabin in the Smokies.
"Sure, and you're not all that decrepit. At least you didn't look that way in the dress you were wearing last night." I replied, with a very pleasant and nasty memory of my aunt walking away in high heels and a dress that barely covered her ass.
"Well thank you for noticing, at least somebody did. The other party was a dud, I should have stayed where I would have been appreciated. I'll be heading up there the Monday before, do you want to come up separately or do you want me to stop on the way and pick you up?" she asked.
"Stopping and picking me up would be better, that way we can take turns driving. And I can brag that the hot chick from last night is kidnapping me for a week or so in the mountains." I said laughing.
"You would tell them that wouldn't you?"
"Damn straight, oh and one last thing, writing your number on my hand may have been a bad idea." I replied.
"Why is that?"