Hilariously Ever After

by Penny Reid

  “When you said we were getting lingerie, I was thinking something more like Victoria’s Secret,” Marc said under his breath.

  “Victoria’s Secret is, sadly, not in our budget.” I picked up a shopping basket. “Well. If we’re doing this…”

  Marc took the basket from my hand and returned it to the stack. He grabbed a cart instead and rolled up beside me. “I think this situation calls for a bigger boat.”

  According to the signs hanging from the ceiling, lingerie was in the back of the store. Of course. Meaning that no matter what way we took to get there, we’d have to walk past a lot of crazy shit. Crazy, intriguing, terrifying shit. I couldn’t wait.

  “This way,” Marc said, turning down the DVD aisle. Clearly, he was overwhelmed. “This section seems manageable.”

  Every kind of porn imaginable was featured—straight, gay, stepbrother, BDSM, gang bangs, transgender, role play, celebrity, fake celebrity, My Little Pony (not even kidding—it was next to the cat costume porn), vintage, parody, and so much more. Types of porn I’d never heard of before (balloon porn?). Types of porn I never wanted to hear about again (breast milk porn—I’d never be able to watch Lizzie nurse again. On the other hand, I also knew she was always short on money—I made a note to gently suggest a new side business.

  There was a whole section for Kim Kardashian as well as one for Donald Trump, though that one had seemingly been mixed with the clown porn.

  “Does anyone have normal sex anymore?” Marc remarked as we made our way slowly down the aisle.

  “I think that’s supposed to be this area.” I nodded at the shelves to the side of us.

  A position on one of the covers caught my eye—the woman was in a handstand while the guy banged her from behind.

  Could we…?

  No. We couldn’t. I knew myself too well. The last time I’d done a handstand I’d been seven and I was pretty sure that even then, I’d failed miserably and then collapsed onto my head.

  I walked on past. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Marc eyeballing the same video.

  I glared in his direction. “You tripped trying to take off your pants, big guy. Stop dreaming.” Then, before he could come up with some retort that would undoubtedly point a finger back in my direction, I took the cart from him and announced that I’d be in the back.

  To get to the bras and undies, however, I had to pass the toy section.

  It was true that, historically, I hadn’t always climaxed from intercourse alone—thank you female packaging—so perhaps I did need an egg-shaped vibrator to help me along. And what was this? A vibrating cock ring? Well, more good vibes for everybody then.

  Then there was this feather tickler thingamajig…

  Marc wandered over his arms full with—wait for it—books.

  “More books? You have got to be shitting me.”

  “What? I found some literature that could help.”

  “No. Just no.” I reached for them, pausing when our fingers touched.

  “Why not? You said we could do some reading—”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Fifty Shades of Gray.” I inched my hand up the stack, but his fingers were still touching my wrist. I wondered if he could feel my fluttering pulse.

  “That’s fiction. We need non-fiction. Like The Kama Sutra—” he nodded to the book on the top of his pile. “Look at it. There are all these suggestions for—”

  “Do you remember what I told you about experience being the best teacher?”

  “I’m not sure that you’re an authority on teaching practices. Let’s remember which of us has actual teaching experience.”

  “Experience. See? You didn’t learn that from a textbook, did you now?”

  “We started from a textbook. That’s what these are—textbooks for sex.”

  No. No, no, no. The unsexy was setting in again. “No, Marc. Put the books away.”

  “I will not.”

  If he wasn’t going to put them back, I would. I grabbed onto the books and attempted to pull them from his arms. Somehow I’d forgotten that Marc was strong. Not that I’d had a lot of experience with his strength, but those arms—I should have known I couldn’t take him.

  Didn’t mean I didn’t try.

  I pulled this way; he pulled that way. I pulled again, grunting as I put more force into it. He pulled back, also with more force, but sans grunt. The awkward tug-of war continued until we were interrupted by someone clearing their throat.

  With each of us still gripping the books between us, we turned in the direction of the sound. It was the heavily tattooed girl at the counter. She said nothing, but the look she gave us distinctly said, “No fighting or making porn in the store”.

  Probably because the sign she was pointing at next to her literally said, “No fighting or making porn in the store.” It was so hard to have fun these days.

  I let go of the books immediately. Marc took the opportunity to throw them in the cart. As we continued our slow, gawking stroll towards the lingerie, I had to wonder what had prompted the sign in the first place. Clearly at some point in the store’s history, someone had been so overcome with lust by the sight of so much pornography that they had been moved to create their own addition to the genre.

  What a life.

  Finally, we made it. Our cart may have been filled with textbooks and discreet marital aids, but we were still going to accomplish the original goal. I browsed the racks, carefully selecting a full coverage pushup bra in my size, and was busily trying to discover if the boyshorts were hiding behind the thongs when Marc bounced—literally bounced—up with a full armload of items for me.

  “Hey there, Tigger,” I said, looking warily at his selections. Compared to those, the bra I’d picked out looked downright matronly. But also, really comfortable. I mean, if I was going to shell out my limited and hard-earned money on new bras, I did want to be able to wear them to work. But then I looked up at him, and he looked so excited and pleased with himself that I melted a little.

  I mean. Who wouldn’t have, when confronted by those big, soft puppy-dog eyes?

  So that’s how I managed to find myself in a dressing room at a store called Get It On, trying on g-strings over my normal underwear. Like all sexy ladies must do, apparently.

  “Can I see? Are you going to come out?” Marc asked eagerly from behind the velvet curtain that served as the changing room door. I looked in the mirror. He could see the top bit only.

  As carefully as I could, I wound just my upper body out, while draping the curtain around my waist, and stood at an awkward angle just in the doorway.

  Marc gaped at me.

  “Well, fine,” I said, completely offended. “I know I’m not an autumn, and this rust-colored lace isn’t necessarily right for me, but I thought it was still kind of…”

  “Fuckhot,” Marc breathed. And that’s when I realized the gaping was the good kind. And that he couldn’t take his eyes off of my boobs. And that at long last, I finally had the power over him I’d been secretly longing for. It felt pretty amazing. So I dropped the curtain.

  Well, you could practically have heard screeching tires, the sexed-up look left his face so fast.

  “Are you wearing a thong on top of the boyshorts? I thought I told you I’m not interested in having sex with Superman!” God knows I am, though.

  “Oh for the love of kryptonite, Marc. You can’t try undies on your bare parts. Not anywhere, but especially in a store like this!” I realized, too late, that the chick from the desk had moved back to supervise the dressing rooms. “No offense,” I muttered. She glared back.

  I pulled the curtain shut again, as Marc craned trying to watch my chest again. It bolstered me enough to decide to get cheeky and try on a few of the other outfits he’d chosen. After all, just because these things weren’t totally my style wasn’t the point. The point was that they were clearly exciting to my screwmate, and he was the one I was seducing. So.

  First up was a short satin nightie.
I all but flung the curtain back once that one was on. I got two thumbs up. Next was a French maid costume. Wait, what? I popped my head back out.

  “I thought we didn’t do dress-up?” I asked.

  “Don’t judge me,” Marc said. So apparently his libido is stirred by only a certain variety of Halloween costume. Duly noted. I put the little butt-exposing dress on and silently thanked Lizzie for teaching all us girls about the virtues of doing squats regularly back in ninth grade. When I nervously opened the velvet and presented myself to Marc, I still wasn’t totally convinced he was being serious.

  Then I saw the serious way his pants tightened. Holy of holies. He really did have an impressive dick. I couldn’t wait to touch it again, without my chin, without a tricky condom. Maybe with my mouth. Would he respond to that, to me sucking him, the way he was responding to my legs in this? I grabbed the feather tickler from the cart and held it like a duster, gently running it over his chest and moving slowly downwards. He moaned, his voice deep.

  “Ahem,” came the long-suffering worker again, and suddenly I understood why you needed to have a “no-porn-making” sign in the store. I quickly scurried back into the changing room to deal with my last few options.

  Slave Leia got tangled in my head for a moment. On one hand, it’s rape culture personified. On the other, Marc actually had a nerdy fantasy? I decided that my opportunity to school him on feminism could come later. Right then, it was just nice to find we were one step closer to having something in common besides an address.

  Also, several new lacy lingerie sets made it into the cart. I really hoped the things weren’t as uncomfortable as I had always assumed. Then inspiration struck.

  “Since these are your fantasies, this one’s on you,” I told him. He glanced pointedly down at the egg vibrator. I just stared back. Like he was really going to tell me that the female orgasm wasn’t as deserving of his money as the foreplay lingerie sets were? Pssht. Nope.

  “Should we go home and get busy? I have like--half an hour probably, before I have to get ready for work,” I said. I was still wet from my turn as the maid. I was all ready to do some more, um, cleaning, at home. And by cleaning, I definitely meant blowjob.

  “It is hardly a seduction when it’s a quickie,” Marc said. Ever the voice of reason. No one likes the voice of reason. Never have. “I think it should be unplanned, anyways. Remember what happened last time we planned?”

  “Ava and the condom,” I recalled. It was a fair point. However. I also didn’t want him to feel weirder about it then I was certain he already did. So I lied through my teeth. “She hasn’t said a word to me about it. I bet she never even looked down. How did it get attached to your sock, anyway?”

  “Don’t ask,” he replied grimly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 9

  Swapped shifts tonight and signed us up for a class at the Culinary Center, I texted. Texted. I texted. I had Hot Marc’s phone number, and I was texting him.

  Texting was an exciting new development in our pseudo-relationship. I fervently hoped we could graduate to sexting soon, but for now, this was exciting. I waited, staring at the phone, touching the screen every time it began to dim, until I saw the little wiggly dots that meant he was texting (or sexting?) back.

  The dots disappeared. I waited a little longer. The dots reappeared. I stared. They wiggled. I stared. They disappeared.

  Half an hour had disappeared as well. So had half my battery. I sighed, and plugged my phone in, promising myself I’d be cool. It was just that tonight was going to be my first shot at a full-on seduction, and I was certain I had all my ducks in a row. All except for the one that was him. So I needed that confirmation. Soon.

  To distract myself, I pulled out my new favorite sketchpad. The one that I’d divided up all neat into variously sized panels. The one I was drawing my sitcomic in. The Screwmates Sketchbook.

  Lest you think I was going all Chasing Amy here, the comic was still half fictional. Fanfiction of my own life, even. For example, the characters in the comic had been having torrid sex for some time now. Torrid, multiorgasmic sex. They had mastered, on the first try, the upside-down position from the sex store. Comic Madison (Maddy) was much bendier than real-life Madison.

  Lest you think I was going all pornographic here, the sex was still off-page. It was just discussed in great detail during Maddy’s weekly coffee dates with Liza, Crimson, and Eva.

  Total fiction.

  Weirdly, though, it was getting a hell of a response online. Basically every time I opened my browser to upload another page, there were a thousand new followers. Crazy. Pants.

  I hadn’t exactly told anyone about it, because I wasn’t sure it was real. Plus it just seemed like a really awkward convo to have, like “hey ladies, how’s life cause I think I might be internet famous now but I can’t find a statistic on how many likes you need to qualify”. No. I was not going to be that girl.

  The girl I was going to be was casually sketching, inking over the best lines, erasing the pencil marks, and not at all shooting mental laser beams at my phone. Finally, it dinged.

  Okay.

  Whaaaaat. I had waited the better part of an hour for that?! After all that buildup. Overpromising and under-delivering had better not be his bedroom MO, I thought to myself.

  When he finally got home, we put on some nice clothes and drove south to the Culinary Center in Overland Park, on the Kansas side of the city.

  “Toto, we aren’t in Missouri anymore!” I said, in my best tremulous Judy Garland voice as we crossed the state line. He chuckled, but I could tell it was just out of politeness. My tummy was starting to feel weird. I so wanted this night to go perfectly, and that was fertile ground for my social awkwardness to start sprouting.

  I get so strange when I’m nervous. Always been that way. I had considered taking that part out of the sitcomic, but let’s face it. If both characters are perfect, there’s no story. So occasionally I even took those two for a test-drive based on what might happen.

  Today’s episode centered around the cooking class, where Maddy burned absolutely everything, and Markus found her ineptitude sexy. She burned his pants on accident, and he removed them immediately to show her just how uninjured, and yet also searingly hot, he still was.

  The double entendres were some of my finest work. I sent a small prayer of gratitude up that Marc didn’t seem to know his way around any part of the internet that didn’t belong to an academic database. There was just no universe in which I could imagine him being amused by my wild speculation about his horizontal mambo.

  My cheeks were bright red as we got out of the car, but he didn’t mention it and so neither did I. Only half-pretending to be a little unsteady in my kitten heels, I took his arm. How was it possible that every time I touched him, bright blue sparks flew around the point of contact? Every. Single. Time.

  “Welcome to Cooking For Lovers: An Evening of Aphrodisiacs!” proclaimed the sign out front, and Marc did a little double-take. Did I mention the evening was a surprise? Well, that was how seduction worked, wasn’t it? If you knew everything that was coming down the pipeline, it would be boring and unsexy. I smoothed down my dress in an attempt to both look nicer and deal with the clamminess of my hands.

  “They have wine pairings,” I told him joyfully, eager to share my excitement. “You know, if you’d prefer, you can just read the tasting notes and not actually drink.”

  “Shut up.” He was grinning, though, so.

  “Aren’t you two a handsome couple!” remarked the host as we walked in.

  “Oh, we’re not—” he started to protest, but I cut him off at the pass.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Can you even believe this is our ten year anniversary? Thank god we found a sitter, amirite? Good help these days… my mother always warned me.”

  “Oh my god, shut up. We aren’t a couple. We’re just roommates.” The panicked look on his face as he explained to the host sort of annoyed me. Which was why—
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  “Screwmates,” I hissed at the host as he yanked me past, and into the classroom kitchen.

  “Not yet!” he called over his shoulder. See, he knew he was being seduced, and handily.

  “But soon!” I yelled over him. He’d had the last word too often already.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” Marc told me.

  “Lucky for us, I took you here.” Boom. The kitchen smelled fantastic already. It may surprise no one to note that although I would have lied like a rug about it, I couldn’t actually identify a single bit of the smell. If pressed, I would have just said it smelled like a nice restaurant, mixed with a hint of Grandma’s kitchen.

  Later, when I was waxing poetic about it, Marc told me that was bread. I was smelling fresh-baked bread. I never have quite figured out how someone as observational as myself can have such a dull palate.

  “Hello, and welcome to a night of romance!” the chef proclaimed from the station at the front of the room. “Prepare to fall in love all over again… with great flavor.”

  I so wished I had used that line in my comic.

  The appetizer course was that most classic of lusty foods—the oyster. Brief moment of geographical knowledge—Kansas City Missouri only has one kind of native seafood, and that is the mutant kind that comes out of the river that no one eats and is probably dangerous to touch. There’s only a single Cajun restaurant in town. So even though I knew oysters were sophisticated and alluring—well, I had never actually had one.

  “You’ve all seen oysters before, but a lot of you probably haven’t opened one,” chef said, and I nodded pretentiously. If I pretended I was old hat at shucking oysters, then it would only make sense for Marc to acquire the skill. Then I could just sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

  Plus—there was something undeniably sexy about seeing him pry my dinner from the jaws of nature, regardless of how the actual oyster was meant to make you feel.