Troubles and Treats (Chocolate Lovers #3)

by Tara Sivec

  “Yes. Yes I am. I am not going to just let that thing terrorize our family. I am going to bed armed and ready to protect the people I love at all costs. You didn’t see the evil in that thing’s face when I realized I’d thrown it out into the snow and quickly opened the door back up to get her. She flew Jenny! She rose up out of the snow and fucking FLEW at me! There was death in her eyes. She was covered in snow and foaming at the mouth. I’m pretty sure her eyes turned red too,” Drew mutters.

  I can’t even think of a reply to the insanity coming out of his mouth right now. As soon as I roll over and decide to just ignore him, he pops up in bed with a gasp.

  “Did you hear that?” he whispers so softly I barely hear him.

  “Hear what?” I ask.

  “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Listen,” he scolds.

  I sigh in irritation and listen for whatever it was Drew thinks he's heard. I open my mouth to tell him to grow up, and I hear it. I crane my neck and try to figure out what the hell it is. It almost sounds like a garbled female voice. Like maybe we left the TV on downstairs or something.

  The sound gets louder, like it’s coming closer. It’s definitely a female voice and she’s talking like one of those Valerie girls. “Like, you know! Like, oh my God! Like, totally awesome!”

  “Oh my God, is this like a Ghosts of Christmas Past thing? Is this us if we were born in the eighties? But, would that be Christmas Past or Christmas Back to the Future? I don’t want to see my back to the future! I’m not ready!” Drew cries softly.

  I elbow him in the ribs and shush him.

  What the hell is out in our hallway?

  We wait in anticipation on the bed, and now I’m a little glad Drew decided to bring a bat to bed with him. I don’t think a bat will work on a ghost, but at least Drew didn’t lie when he said he would do anything to protect us.

  All of a sudden, right in our doorway we see two red, glowing eyes. Drew and I have completely opposite reactions to the creepy glowing eyes staring us down. As soon as I put two and six together, the girly voices and red eyes, I immediately know what it is.

  Drew, on the other hand, does the exact opposite of what he had just vowed a few minutes ago.

  “OH HOLY MOTHER FUCKING TAINT BUCKET! IT’S MISS LIPPY! SHE WANTS MORE BLOOD!” Drew screams as he throws the bat to the ground, jumps up to his feet on the bed, and scrambles across it, stepping on my legs in his hurry to run away. Before I can even sit up in bed, he’s already made it across the room and locked himself in the bathroom.

  “Gee whizzer, Drew! So nice of you to do whatever you can to protect us!” I shout to him in the bathroom as I get up out of bed and stomp out into the hallway to pick up Veronica’s Furby toy. She always forgets to shut the thing off when she’s done with it, and every once in a while it will just get a mind of its own and wander through the house.

  “Jenny! STAY STRONG, BABY!” Drew yells from behind the bathroom door.

  I shake my head and decide not to tell him that I found out what was in the doorway, and it wasn’t a ghost or a killer cat. I think a night sleeping on the cold bathroom floor is good punishment for turning this house into a zoo.

  Rollo repositions himself in the bed until he’s curled up in the curve of my legs and Miss Lippy, who had been in bed right next to Drew during most of his freak out, and he hadn’t even realized it, slinks down next to Rollo and lies down, her chin resting on Rollo’s back.

  I fall asleep to the sounds of Drew mumbling through the bathroom door about kittens having killer fangs.

  Chapter 6 – Liquid Courage

  “Should we call the guys and see how they’re doing?” I ask Claire.

  “That is the third time you’ve asked that question in thirty minutes,” Liz complains. “If you don’t shut up and enjoy the peace and quiet, I’m going to punch you in the neck.”

  Drew, Carter, and Jim are all at our house with the seven kids, and we’re at Liz and Jim’s house. I can’t help it if I’m nervous. It’s the first time they’ve all been alone with the kids without us there to stop the screaming and the crying. We’re the only ones who can calm the men down when they see how much poop comes out of that many kids at one time.

  “What if one of them gets hurt?”

  Claire rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t worry. Gavin knows how to call 9-1-1 if the idiots we married hurt themselves.

  “I’m talking about the kids. What if one of them gets hurt?”

  “I know you’re talking about one of the kids. I’m trying to make you lighten up. So lighten the fuck up!”

  Claire and Liz have started project “Fake it Till You Make it” with me. They are on a mission to restore mine and Drew’s sex life. I still don’t understand this whole “faking it” thing. I’ve never faked anything with Drew. They had decided I need to watch the holy grail of faking it movies so we’re spending the afternoon watching When Harry Met Sally.

  “I’m still confused by the fact that you have never, ever faked it with Drew. How is that possible?” Liz asks as she puts the DVD in and hits play.

  “Drew is a very giving lover. He always makes sure I come first. And if I don’t, he brings out one of my toys. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always his tongue.”

  “Okay, stop. You’re going to make me puke,” Liz complains.

  “Well, it’s true. He’s ambidextrous so his tongue can be used both ways.”

  “Oh my God, stop the insanity!” Liz complains.

  “So what do you do if you’re just too tired to have sex but he’s bugging you for it?” Claire asks.

  “Um, I tell him I’m too tired for sex and roll over and go to sleep.”

  Both women stare at me.

  “What? What’s wrong with that? It’s the truth. I’m not going to lie to him.”

  “In this case, you definitely should lie to him. He probably thinks you don’t want him anymore,” Claire says.

  In all honesty, part of me doesn’t really mind if Drew thinks just for a minute that I don’t want him. It serves him right for what he did six weeks after Billy was born.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!”

  I had bolted up in bed at the sound of Drew screaming in his sleep next to me. He sat straight up in bed as well, shivering and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I had asked him with a yawn and checking the clock. Billy would probably be up in another hour for a feeding unless Drew just woke him up with his scream.

  “I had a really bad dream. Oh my God it was awful. It had fangs and it was trying to eat me, and I tried to scream but it bit off my tongue! Oh, the horror!” Drew wailed.

  “Where you dreaming about Miss Lippy again?” I ask him, lying back down in bed and pulling the covers up over my shoulder.

  He looked down at me nervously and started biting his nails.

  “I don’t know. I forget. Let’s have sex.”

  Drew immediately dropped his head to the pillow, wrapped his arm around my body, and pulled me against him.

  He started kissing my neck, and I swore I could hear him say, “You can do this. Just don’t think about the fangs.”

  “Drew, I don’t know. It might still be too soon,” I told him.

  I knew it wasn't too soon. It had been exactly six weeks to the day since Billy was born. This was the day we could start having sex again. While Drew was busy kissing his way down to my breasts, I looked over his shoulder at the alarm clock on his side of the bed.

  If I fell asleep right now, I’d still get about fifty minutes of sleep before Billy woke up.

  “I promise I’ll be quick,” Drew said around kisses as he slipped my tank top down, exposing one breast and starting to kiss and suck all around the full mound.

  “Be careful, I might leak,” I warned him.

  Since I was breast feeding, my boobs tended to leak at inappropriate times. Now would be a really inappropriate time.

  Drew immediately stopped, his mouth hovering over my nipple.

  “This is a huge dile
mma for me. I know I should back away since it’s like, our kid’s food, but the pervert in me wants to go grab a bag of cookies and do this thing,” he admitted.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I told him, clutching onto his hair and pulling his head back up to mine.

  “Are you really going to let me stick my penis in you? Don’t tease me right now. My heart can’t take it,” Drew said.

  “Yes, go ahead. But seriously, make it quick. Billy will be up soon.”

  Drew pushed himself off of me quickly and shoved his boxers down to his knees, lying back down between my legs before I even blink.

  “I’ll be quick, I promise. Time me,” Drew said as he pushes my underwear down my hips and to my knees. I wiggled my legs to get them the rest of the way down, kicking them off of my ankle when they reached that far.

  “What was your dream about,” I asked him as he wraps his hand around his erection and guides it toward me, running the tip through me and placing it at my opening.

  “It was awful. Your vagina turned into a monster and it looked just like it did when you were having Billy, except it had teeth and red, glowing eyes, and it wanted to bite off my face, and it was so saggy and floppy and had all this extra skin hanging around. It was so fucking scary,” he explained as he pushes just the tip of his penis inside of me and groans.

  I put my hand on his shoulders and pushed him up and away from me a little.

  “Are you kidding right now or are you serious?”

  He paused and a look of pain washed over his face when he realized I’m stopping him from pushing in any further.

  Drew had never been able to lie to me, even about little things. I knew that right then he was wondering if he should really tell me the truth.

  “Um, yes?”

  I pushed on his shoulders as hard as I could.

  “Are you serious with this right now? You’re having nightmares about my VAGINA?” I yelled at him as he scrambled to get up on his knees, his penis sticking straight out, pointing right at me.

  “I’m sorry! I have no control over my dreams. It’s not my fault!” he argued.

  “It is if you’re thinking about my vagina being floppy and saggy!” I yelled back, digging under the sheet for my underwear and sliding them back on.

  “No! Please! I need that!” Drew whined as I roll angrily away from him after I pulled my underwear all the way up.

  I felt the bed shift and the heat of his stomach against my back. He rested his chin on my shoulder, and I was hoping he was coming up with a really good apology for this crap.

  “Can I just stick the tip back in?” he whispered against my ear. “If your vagina is still sore, we could just do anal. That would be awesome, right?”

  I had shoved my elbow back and into his stomach as hard as I could. While he was moaning and whimpering like a baby next to me in bed, our REAL baby had started crying over the monitor.

  That episode was six weeks ago and Drew hasn’t even attempted to try and have sex with me since then. Well, aside from the sex swing I guess. I’ve forgiven him for his stupidity because, well, he’s a guy and guys are stupid. But I’m still not really in the mood for sex, which brings us back to the lesson Liz and Claire are trying to teach me.

  “You don’t want Drew to think you don’t want him. Hence the phrase, ‘fake it till you make it.’ If you start off faking that you want it, eventually you’ll get back into the flow of things and really start to want it.”

  Does Drew really think I don’t want him anymore? I don’t want him to think that.

  “Drew is never going to buy it. He’s going to know right away if I fake an orgasm.”

  Claire and Liz burst out laughing.

  “You’re kidding right? There is no possible way he would ever know,” Liz informs me.

  “Oh believe me, Drew would know. He says he can feel it when I come. He says my vagina squeezes him if he’s inside me, and it tastes different if he’s going down on me,” I tell them.

  “What the fuck are you ingesting before you have sex that he can taste it, straight gasoline?” Liz asks.

  “Why would Drew lie to me about something like that?”

  “Why wouldn’t Drew lie to you about something like that? Every woman has asked her guy if he can tell when she’s coming. We don’t ask because we want to know if he can feel just how amazing it is and thereby boost his ego because he can get you off. We ask just to make sure he can’t tell so when we fake it, he won’t be the wiser. Even though we all have the same working body parts, every guy’s answer is usually different. Proving that they have no idea, aside from the sounds we make,” Liz explains.

  “Carter told me he can tell when I’m coming because I start breathing faster. I’m usually breathing faster because I’m tired as shit and out of shape and I think my heart is going to give out,” Claire says.

  “Jim told me he knows because I always smack his ass right before I come. I do that so he’ll hurry the fuck up because I want to go to sleep or because Top Chef is coming on,” Liz adds.

  I stare at both women in shock and cannot believe this has been happening all these years, and I've known nothing about it. I had never known women faked orgasms with their husbands. It makes no sense to me. Why would you marry someone if they couldn’t give you an orgasm? Liz and Claire’s marriages are solid as a rock though, so they must be on to something.

  “Fine, get to the faking part so I can see what this is all about.”

  “It will be my fake pleasure,” Liz says with a smile as she fast forwards the movie.

  ~

  An hour and a half later, we’re sitting at a local hole in the wall bar a few blocks from Liz and Claire’s shop, and I’m still in shock by that movie.

  “I mean, it was so real,” I tell them in awe.

  “I know, right? You would have totally thought Billy Crystal was giving it to Meg Ryan under the table,” Liz says as she drinks the last of her beer and signals the waitress for another round.

  We decide that since we were without children or husbands we should make the most of it and get some drinks. Plus, the girls are convinced that a little liquid courage will help with the faking I plan on testing out this evening, but they have yet to order me any.

  The waitress comes to our table a few minutes later and Claire and Liz each order another beer.

  “I’ll take whatever size Liquid Courage you have on draft,” I tell her with a smile.

  “I’m sorry, what?” the waitress asks in confusion.

  “I don’t know. My friends told me to order it. Do you guys not have it? Maybe it’s new.”

  Liz leans over and covers my mouth with her hand. “Just bring her a drink with the highest proof alcohol you’ve got.”

  Claire is laughing and typing something into her cell phone.

  “What are you doing? Are you putting that on Facebook? Don’t you dare! How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a brand of beer?” I complain.

  “Actually, that isn’t a bad idea. I wonder if I could market my own beer for the shop. Liquid Courage: helping men get laid for centuries.” Claire laughs as she slips her cell phone back in her purse.

  The waitress comes back with the girls' beers and a shot glass filled with a pinkish colored liquid for me.

  “What is this?” I ask her.

  “It’s Everclear with a splash of cherry juice,” she explains before rushing off to another table.

  “Ooooh, Everclear. That sounds pretty,” I say before downing the shot.

  I immediately start coughing and choking, fanning my mouth with my hand.

  “IT BURNS! OH MY GOD IT BURNS!” I try to yell with a raspy voice that feels like it’s on fire.

  “Here, drink this,” Claire tells me as she slides her beer across the table towards me.

  I drink the entire thing in three big gulps and smack the glass back down to the table.

  “Well, I do believe that is plenty of liquid courage for the evening,” Liz says with a laugh.
r />   Chapter 7 – Fake it Till You Make it

  “Holy fucking Wheat Thins. What did you feed this kid?” Jim asks as he brings Billy over to me, holding him at arm’s length with a look of disgust on his face. “It smells like he ate a dead dog covered in vomit and yogurt and then shit it out.”

  He puts Billy in my lap and as soon as I get a whiff, I throw up in my mouth a little and have to hold my breath.

  “Jenny stopped breast feeding last week and put him on formula and cereal. Maybe that’s it.”

  Carter shakes his head. “That is not what formula and cereal smell like. That smells like ball sweat covered in Swiss cheese.”

  I place Billy on the floor at my feet and step away from him so I can take a breath.

  “Jesus, that is really bad. How is he smiling? Can’t he smell himself? If I took a dump that smelled that bad I wouldn’t be smiling,” I say.

  “Well, at least whatever that was isn’t inside of him anymore. Imagine the havoc it was wreaking on his stomach. He’s probably like, ‘Thank fucking God that shit is out of me.' Literally,” Jim says as he plugs his nose and takes a few giant steps backwards.

  All of a sudden, the sound of five little girls screaming bloody murder comes from the toy room at the back of the house, and ten-year-old Gavin comes running into the living room with a grin on his face.

  “What did you do?” Carter asks him as I dig through the diaper bag for a gas mask and latex gloves.

  “Nothing,” Gavin replies as he flops down on the couch. “Who farted? It stinks in here.”

  We all point to the baby. There is still screaming and crying coming from the toy room, but at this point we’re all more concerned with the fact that the smell coming from my son might start peeling the paint off of the walls.

  Veronica comes charging into the living room holding a headless, naked Barbie in her hand. Behind her is Carter’s six-year-old Sophia and Jim’s three daughters, Charlotte who is also six, Ava who is five, and Molly who is three. All have tear-stained cheeks and a multitude of naked, headless Barbies in their hands.