“You can never start too soon.” Jackie ticks the air with her finger. “Time to break some bread.” She motions for the lot of us to follow her.
Cruise waits for me and slings an arm low around my waist.
“You didn’t tell me this was your family,” I whisper. And after witnessing the fragile state of their sanity I can see why the aforementioned bit of biology was omitted.
“You didn’t ask.” His dimples depress. “And they’re sort of not.”
“I thought you said your last name was Elton?”
“It is, per my mother’s brilliant discretion. I think she made a good move. Don’t you?”
Aunt Jackie slips back in the room and spies Cruise’s strategic limb placement.
She narrows her beady little eyes over me and clears her throat. “Your future husband awaits.” It comes out cold, steely.
I wink over at Cruise. “I believe he does.”
Dinner at the Alexander estate is an asylum-worthy event. First off, a dining room painted a caustic shade of red and filled with bulky black furniture looks nothing short of satanic. Whoever thought pairing gargoyles in the four corners of the ceiling with angry-looking walls was a good idea might have been a little more than batshit. I’m betting the loon in charge of this sanitarium is my very own faux Aunt Jackie.
“Please tell your mother she’s welcome anytime.” Andrew, the saner and slightly more promiscuous of the two parental units, gives an assertive nod. “There’s always a room waiting for her at our home.”
Aunt Jackie clears her throat and cuts him with a death stare, like maybe there’s no room at the exorbitantly large inn after all. Something tells me if Mom were to visit, she’d be lucky to find a manger with her name on it.
“Cruise, who’s the latest squeeze?” She changes the subject on a dime and reverts our attention to Cruise’s most recent penile endeavors.
“Just running through the rolodex.” He leans his elbows on the table and gives a sly glance in my direction. “Currently on J.”
J is for Jordan. I give a private smile.
“You oughta get yourself deloused every now and again.” Jackie dispenses her medicinal counsel without propagation. “Crabs aren’t just for cookin’, you know.” She passes the sentiment through her teeth like a ventriloquist. “And watch out for that killer clap that’s going around,” she whispers. “I hear they’ve got a mutated strain that can make your balls fall off in the middle of the night. I got this spray upstairs in the bathroom—”
“And on that note…” Andrew rattles a little golden bell before Jackie has a chance to espouse the finer points of household disinfectants and their myriad of curative properties.
An entire army of scantily clad girls, march into the room at the flick of his wrist in what appear to be provocative French maid costumes. They break out in an odd variation of pornographic dinner theater that brings a whole new meaning to Ho, Ho, Ho. Who knew a burlesque show was in the works this evening?
Two of the younger girls openly drool over Cruise, and one slightly less-informed girl with her hair in a never-ending braid flirts with Penn by way of inserting her blossoming cleavage into his face every chance she gets. Lovely.
Once the wine has a chance to flow freely from our gilded goblets that, swear-to-God look as though they’ve been swiped straight from the Vatican, Jackie springs to her feet with a toast.
“To love!” She christens the room with her enthusiastic boom to the fickle emotion. “May we all find that special someone. And, dear God, I hope it’s soon because I’ve got some lions that need to be girded.” She titters into her more than slightly misguided analogy.
Odd toast, but since she herself is toasted, I’m willing to overlook the verbal foray into adultery.
Cruise lifts his chalice in my direction. “To finding someone to love.”
God—what I wouldn’t do for that to be him.
In a perfect world, he wouldn’t be a player, and I wouldn’t pretend to be a hussy-in-training—because I sort of just want Cruise.
I blink into my admission.
In a perfect world we’d both believe in love and fall into that beautiful pool of warm water together, headfirst.
“To finding someone to love,” I say without losing his gaze. “At least for one night,” I whisper just to play it safe.
Too bad one night couldn’t turn into forever.
Cruise
The next morning, the sky breaks through just enough to add a blue luster to the blanket of snow that fell overnight. I wake up early right along with Santa and the elves to try and gut the heater to figure out what the hell is wrong with it. But mostly, it’s to ransack the house for possible gifts for Kenny. It’s been a good long while since I’ve been moved to gift someone with something other than my body. I’d give her the expensive-as-hell perfume I bought Molly, but I had Mom wrap it and put it under the tree at the house. Molly most likely ripped into it anyway.