By evening, Lily was decked out more practical as she got ready to compete in the barrel racing competition in chaps, dusty brown boots, brown Stetson with a turquoise silver band (Could have bought another small car with that little item.) and a deep turquoise western shirt. Hot Pants performed to perfection with the guidance of her mom, dad, and brother, Jonathan who whistled and shouted words of encouragement in the background along with her Uncle and his wife, Jen. She won hands down with a trophy to prove it. She sent an email picture to Quinn. It made him smile as did all the pictures she sent. Unbeknown to her, he had thumb tacked each one to the wall in his room as he waited for that eighteenth birthday when he would make her his.
When Lily turned seventeen, Quinn began emailing that summer. That was a glorious summer of blooming love – one that she held near and dear to her heart. She, in her youthful enthusiasm, mailed him on a regular basis. He on the other hand, not so much. With half the United States between them, it was a lot easier for Quinn to put on the brakes. Not only did he need to keep some space between them while he waited for her to grow up, but she needed the transition from childhood to womanhood with all the memories that most everyone has – going to prom with a friend of course, going to parties with chaperons of course, learning to drive, going to slumber parties, going to movies without parents, learning to drink beer just a little, swimming lazily in the pool, going to graduation parties and all the fun memories that everyone should get a chance to make and take with them from their high school days. He had no intention of robbing Lily of that.
Lily did get to do all those high school things. She even found another passion – singing. She was in several musicals in high school. She was fortunate to sing the National Anthem at the Royals. She won trophies for barrel racing. She was crowned rodeo queen more than once. She partied with friends, but never dated seriously, partly because she had known all the boys since kindergarten and partly because none of them measured up to Quinn. Besides, she was much too busy competing in local, regional, and national rodeos making memories and enjoying life as a teenager.
Lily graduated from high school in May. She had just had her eighteenth birthday and was planning on going to college in the fall. Her mom and dad were hoping that she would choose to go back east to an Ivy League school, but were happy when she chose to go to a school nearby in Manhattan, Kansas where she was offered a scholarship. She had thought about it for two years ever since she had gotten Hot Pants. She wanted to be a veterinarian and K-State was a top choice with its new scientific animal laboratory. Besides, she could bring Hot Pants with her to college. He would be boarded nearby.
Lily pledged a sorority and lived at 1819 Todd Road with some of her best friends from high school. She studied hard and made a life without Quinn as he had intended. During that time the twins and Lily saw each other once or twice a year. She visited the Stanford Campus and they the K-State campus. Brother and friend both gathered information from the twins as they inadvertently shared what they knew to each, unwittingly letting each know that neither had found a significant other – a relief to both of them.
CHAPTER 8
The twins had been in college for three years and would soon be turning twenty-one. They were planning their own coming out party as young adults. They had been thinking about an extravaganza of a birthday party since they had turned eighteen. It would be lavish and flowing with champagne in abundance. They promised to have small weddings with only intimate friends and family for their last hooray and send-off as brides if only Dad would let them have this party for their twenty-first. Besides, one birthday party was cheaper than two, they pleaded their case, as they’d always had two birthday parties on the same day with two separate cakes helping them preserve and separate their own identities. Fortunately, their lovable Daddy had always enjoyed indulging them and loved making his adored girls happy. Fortunately, as well, they had a mom that kept them grounded.
The theme of the birthday extravaganza was going to be L.A.Confidential taken from a Hollywood movie made a few years ago and set in the forties. Since their birthdays were after Christmas and before New Year’s Eve, they decided that it was going to be a celebration into the New Year as well. Everyone was to come dressed as their favorite movie star of the forties era. If they didn’t, they didn’t get into the party.
The birthday bash took place in a beach hotel ballroom with elegant chandeliers and high ceilings. It looked out over the Pacific. It had the perfect atmosphere for the party with all the ambiance of a Hollywood set.
The twins decided to transform themselves into Jean Harlow and Betty Gable complete with the sexy dresses, glamorous hairdos, and silk stockings. Lily with her dark red hair went as Rita Hayworth. They were all three perfect imitations of the forties sex bombshells with their well-proportioned figures and beautiful youthful faces. The girls changed their natural blond and red hairdos into up sweeps and partially down fluffs. They painted their nails and toes a bright red to match their red lipstick. All three wore long slinky gowns called slip dresses – the rage of the era and worn often in present day – sexy then and sexy now.
Confetti rained as the band blasted swing music with the Hi De Ho man, Cab Calloway imitator, dressed in white tux complete with white tails, vest, shirt, tie, and shoes bringing down the house with Hidy Hidy Ho followed by Minnie the Moocher. Colored tinsel dripped from the chandeliers. Everyone danced and jived as the champagne flowed. The party continued way past midnight and well into the morning. Two floors of hotel rooms were reserved – one for the guys and one for the girls not that anyone could tell which was which, with the purpose that those who imbibed excessively would not be driving home and end up in the ocean.
Dad Troy dressed as a bouncer in a night club, but he fooled no one as they all knew he was really the Chaperon Dad who was there mainly to make sure they didn’t destroy the place. The twins were counting on Mom to make sure Dad didn’t do anything to embarrass them. He did pretty well considering. The only comment he made drily and with no humor when everyone was gone was, “I’m planning the next one.”
Quinn knew Lily was coming to the twin’s birthday bash as she was staying at their home and had been there for a week helping plan the festivities as their other sister. He had his own room with a balcony at the hotel away from the other rowdy guests. He was in the process of putting on a white dashing dinner jacket over his wide shoulders bulging with muscle and black tuxedo silk pants over his well-defined thighs. He had just finished slicking down his coal black hair with the look of the forties, making him look a lot like Tyrone Powers, a movie star of that era. His shirt was a pleated tux shirt with a wing tip collar that he was threading with the last touches of a black silk bow tie. It was complete with French cuffs and onyx cufflinks. When he was finished, he looked like he could step onto a movie set as all the females swooned the moment they saw him. He dressed early so that he could help his dad chaperon if necessary.
All the twin’s high school friends knew the minute Quinn walked in the door, what his purpose was for the evening. By this time, they also knew he was a Navy Seal. He might only be popular among the girlfriends of the twins, but the men certainly respected and admired him.
Quinn had gotten a short holiday furlough for this special weekend only because he was going to be near San Diego. He was on standby and knew that he could be called in for action at any time, in which case, he was to report immediately to the base on Coronado. However, tonight, he planned to celebrate not just the twins twenty-first birthday, but it was finally his and Lily’s time to come full circle. The twins weren’t the only ones making a plan for the past three years.
It had been almost three years since Lily and Quinn had seen each other. They seldom exchanged emails anymore as Lily had gotten tired of not getting many responses back from Quinn. He missed her correspondence, but he knew it was for the best, which is why he tried not to encourage. Now, she was nineteen and all grownup in his opinion. He was twenty-five and more than
anxious to see her and claim what he had long ago denied himself when he decided that she was to be his forever.
Quinn looked up at the ceiling in the ballroom, balloons were in several nets and ready to rain on the room below at midnight. Horns and confetti were on every table. Movie stars of the forties era such as Clark Gable, Ester Williams, Gary Cooper, Jean Harlow, Vivian Leigh, Susan Hayworth, Tyrone Powers, Ingrid Bergman, and the list went on and on, had their images flashing on large screens around the room.
Waiters were scurrying about putting out silver platters of food from pate’, jumbo shrimp, salmon, caviar, sushi, variety of canapés, cocktail buns of prime rib, cashew encrusted Tilapia, cream puffs, melon, fruit and berries in stemmed glasses. Champagne glasses in abundance adorned every table. It was the waiter’s job to make sure every item was replenished all night long. It was a task that they completed with great flourish showing that they were up to the task.
An ice sculpture of the Los Angeles skyline with little lights that sparkled inside, was carved in one chunk of ice, the numbers twenty-one with sparklers was carved on another, and the rest of the sculptures were of the bust many movie stars on an assortment of over fifty tables. Bubbling champagne fountains were flowing like spring water all over the room. Someone said it looked like they had more fountains than Rome. (Indulgence was the other theme of the birthday.)
A crowd of around four hundred was at the birthday party extravaganza and having a good time. For the guys, that meant getting laid, for the gals that meant having a good time. Most came from the Los Angeles area and Stanford, but some were acquaintances that the twins had picked up from all over the world. Most were young adults of twenty-one. Those that were not considered to be twenty-one, certainly did not stop them from enjoying and imbibing the booze that was in abundance at the lascivious and decadent party.
All guests that came were decked out in their rented tuxes and party dresses of the era, not wanting to take the chance of being turned away from the event of the year. It was a beautiful crowd that could have been used on the movie set in Hollywood – L.A. Confidential. The scene all around them seemed to have moved backwards in time as it imitated the past to perfection.
The gleeful and happy celebration had been going full steam for almost three solid joyful hours before Quinn finally spotted Lily in the middle of a mob. He probably hadn’t seen Lily when he was looking around previously, as he hadn’t been looking for her being constantly surrounded by a horde of panting young men whenever she moved through the crowd. It was like they all moved as one unit stuck together.
Lily wasn’t terrible tall. Even in spiky high heels, she wasn’t much more than five foot seven, just fitting under his armpit if memory served him correctly. Most of the men towered over her. As Quinn observed, they continued their annoying entourage – when she moved, they moved.
Quinn was really pissed as he watched from a distance. Suddenly, she was swung up on the grand piano by some macho college guy with a gleam in his eye as he span her waist with ease and helped her carefully settle down on the piano top. But, what irked him farther was that he had to stand there with steam coming out of the top of his head while the jerk ran his hand up Lily’s silk clad leg. He narrowed his eyes with disgust as she laughed. It only made him happy when she gave him a shove with her dainty ankle strapped foot, square in the middle of his stomach. The other swarm of guys were only too happy to take his place as they maneuvered him three rows back with the momentum. Served him right!
Lily was a stunner! No wonder her entourage followed with their tongues hanging out. She wore her auburn hair fluffed and held up on one side with an antique sparkly rhinestone comb and a little side black feather that came out the side. Her dress?? — was a slip dress of clingy white satin with a top of black lace held up by spaghetti straps that looked more like a negligee in his opinion, that plunged rather low, showing more of her cleavage than he thought she should be and that wasn’t the only distraction. As she sat down on top of the piano, she crossed her black silky legs. The split of the white satin gown gaped open to reveal a well-shaped leg that continued well beyond the knee to barely the top of one sheer black nylon held up by what looked to be a garter belt. Quinn’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. The entire male population looking would have had their eyeballs going around in circles if it had been a cartoon.
Quinn certainly didn’t think his Lily should be showing that much leg either, but before he unglued his feet from the pillar of which he was leaning, any spot near Lily no longer existed. She was surrounded by every dick in the place. That didn’t, however, stop him from immediately muscling into the dick crowd until he was near the front row. On the way, he couldn’t resist an elbow jab in the stomach of the jerk that had started this whole thing. He was reward with a grunt that gave him some satisfaction.
A few minutes later, Quinn heard Lily say in a husky voice as she leaned back on the piano lid, “Give a lady a little space, would you fellas?” The man playing the piano gave a little octave roll of the piano key cords before she began the forties song, I’ve Been Kissed Before and The Heat is On, transposing herself into the bombshell of the forties, Rita Hayworth, known by all WWI American servicemen as “The Love Goddess”. The screen behind Lily showed the picture of Rita, identical to the dress that Lily was wearing. Shit! The picture was originally supposed to be on the cover of the Life magazine if the information from history was correct, but was nixed because it was too risqué. They were right!
Lily sang for another twenty minutes with every eyeball in the ballroom transfixed and every picker standing at attention as Lily sang sexy songs in a sexy voice while she rolled around on the piano making love to the musical phallus. When she finalized her performance, you could have heard a pin drop before she received an enthusiastic applause from all standing male guests and other parts of their anatomy, that by that time, were standing up as well.
As the performance continued, Quinn had worked himself to the front side of the audience with a scowl of disapproval. It was a good thing Lily didn’t see him as she probably would have done something really outrageous. As it was, she only had time to part her dress to bare a little more leg and a deeper lean to show a little more breast.
Lily had turned into such a sex kitten, which Quinn had to admit, he liked a lot. He just didn’t like all the other men liking “a lot” as well. For some reason it made him angry that she had learned to be such a sexy desirable woman. Wasn’t that what he had been waiting for her to become, he asked himself? Yes, but only for him, he snapped to self!
Before the clapping stopped and Lily could blink, think, or enjoy the applause, Quinn scooped up a surprised Lily off the piano lid and into his muscular arms claiming her as his. No one challenged, but it might have caused quite a ruckus with her male audience, except, it was getting close to midnight and the band immediately struck up the tune, Happy Birthday. Everyone’s attention was quickly diverted towards the stage where lights and obvious action was about to begin. Lily and Quinn barely noticed.
Two six foot birthday cakes with sparklers were suddenly wheeled out onto the raised platform that served as a makeshift stage. The “ahaas” were followed by two fabulous look-a-like platinum-haired dolls who wore long white gloves and very little else, that popped out of each cake simultaneously as the crowd sang the birthday song to the pop up twins. All the woman wished they were one of them at that moment and all the guys were too hypnotized to wish anything at all, except maybe that they wouldn’t embarrass themselves with their peckers flying at full staff.
All this happened much to the chagrin of the twins scowling father who obviously had not been told before hand what they would be wearing or doing. Little did he know that the twins had made their mom promise not to tell Dad in advance.
Jade and Jasmine had no trouble capturing the fickle male’s attention that had surrounded Lily only moments before, as the male members sang the birthday song with more gusto than they had since they were five. A
fter that, the twins added their own rendition to the birthday chorus by singing in unison to the tune of the nineteen seventies juicy fruit commercial the following:
Double your pleasure,
Double your fun;
Happy Birthday to us,
We’re twenty-one!
Then, they hugged and kissed each other in their skimpy costumes, which turned the male population on all the more. So, the minute the twins finished singing and started stepping down the first tier of cake steps with their silver high heel ankle straps, there were plenty of eager close males that were just itching to begin popping the balloons that surrounded their skimpily clad bodies. When they reached the bottom of the cake steps, all of their balloons had been popped. They now hung deflated in colorful latex around the flesh colored bikinis that they each wore, which gave them the illusion of wearing nothing at all, much to the delight of the horny men. Fashion conscious Mom Swan who was watching the festivities thought the busted balloons now looked like rainbow colored confetti tutus. Dad Troy thought they looked more like latex colored condoms – which just goes to show that perception is only in the eyes of the beholder.
The young male’s testosterone had been primed by Lily, Jade, and Jasmine. They were now ready to flow like the New Year’s Eve sparkling champagne fountains. Suddenly, they began to get a little rowdy and appeared to be right on the precipitous of getting out of control. Just as Dad Troy was considering stepping in with a gun, the situation diffused itself as the boyfriends of the twins grabbed and claimed their birthday dates for the evening, showing ownership that caused the crowd to move back and disperse. Female dates appeared at the sides of their date (or not) and swished their partners into their arms just in time for the band to begin to play Auld Lang Syne. That was followed by the clock in the middle of the ceiling that began to immediately chime midnight. As the clock chimed, it began raining colorful balloons, more confetti, and the horns blew, but most just had their tongue down their date’s throat and were oblivious to the festivities that landed on their heads and surrounded them.
Forever Lovers Page 4