Joke

by Mia Malone

  “Wow! Look,” the woman said and held her phone out. “You’ve gone viral.”

  His gut froze immediately, and he pulled the phone out of her hand. Mac leaned in, and they watched the screen in silence.

  The woman had posted a fucking video of him and Sissy singing Dive.

  She’d made the post public.

  And it had been viewed more than a million times.

  “Take it down,” he growled.

  “What?” the young man said. “No. It’ll be great publ –”

  Joke had a hand around the young man’s throat immediately, pulling him up and closer.

  “Take it down. Now.”

  “Joke,” Mac said quietly. “I’ve changed it. It’s hidden. We’ll delete it later. He might not see it.”

  Joke let go of the man in a way that made him stumble several steps backward.

  “What?” the woman gasped and tried unsuccessfully to grab the phone Mac was fiddling with. “We thought you’d be pleased. Over a million people have watched the two of you singing. It’s been shared all over the country.”

  Joke heard a soft gasp behind the bar and reached out immediately to take Sissy’s hand.

  “We’ll keep you safe, baby. Swear to God. He’ll have to walk through me to get to you.”

  “Joke,” she whispered. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “You’re not leaving,” he growled. “I’ll have Raz with the girls the second they step off that plane. We’ll tell the whole fucking town to be on the lookout. Swear to God you’re safe, Sissy.”

  “We didn’t…” The woman sounded like she was close to tears. “We thought you’d be happy. Everyone wants to –”

  “No,” Joke barked and let go of Sissy’s hand. “You posted a video of us without asking, and not every-fucking-body wants to be famous. And for some people, this kind of famous is fucking dangerous.”

  He ended his sentence on a roar, and the woman stepped back, but he followed her. He heard both Mac and Sissy move, but he didn’t care. The stupid woman needed to understand that it wasn’t okay to just post anything on fucking Facebook.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t care,” he barked.

  “We didn’t mention your names,” the man said. “We didn’t check in here. Those who watch it won’t know where it is.”

  “I have really tight privacy settings,” the woman sobbed. “I only made that video public because my friends wanted to share it.”

  “Fuck,” Mac grunted, and Joke turned.

  “What?”

  “You changed your cover image,” he said to the woman. “That’s public… and you changed it to a picture of Wilhelmine Main Street.”

  Joke closed his eyes and started planning.

  “Right,” he said. “Mac; delete everything you find that might tip him off. Sissy,” he murmured gently and watched her pale face. “Call Gibson and Day, and get them down here. Tug; Get hold of Paddy, tell him what happened and share that he should call Roddy. I’ll call Raz.”

  Then he turned back toward Sissy who was tapping the screen on her phone with shaking fingers.

  “We’ll keep you safe,” he murmured and slid a hand over her shoulder. “Promise.”

  “Okay,” she said shakily and walked off with her phone pressed to her ear.

  “We’re sorry. We didn’t know. Is there anything we can do?” the man asked.

  “Leave,” Joke said. “I’m not happy, so you need to leave.”

  “Nu-huh,” Mac protested. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “We’ll stay,” the woman agreed immediately. “We’ll help any way we can.”

  Mac looked away as he spoke into his phone, “Yeah, Cal, get to Oak right fucking now. We’re in a shitstorm, and you need to take a couple down to the station.” Then he put the phone away and turned to the woman. “We don’t need your kind of help. You’re staying because I’m throwing the book at you. Invasion of privacy. Intentional infliction of emotional distress. Appropriation. Whatever I can come up with that might stick.”

  She gasped and started sobbing, but Mac’s face was hard as granite.

  “You should have thought things through before you decided who got to watch my friends sing in their own fucking place,” he said in a voice that was cold as ice.

  ***

  Sissy

  The days after that stupid, stupid couple posted a video of me and Joke on goddamned Facebook were crazy, but in a strange way, the frenzy calmed me down. It had never been like that before.

  Raz was apparently all over the place. The whole town had been informed about what was going on via the dependable communication channel called local gossip, so everyone was keeping their eyes open. For reasons unknown to me, Joke and I had received boxes of cookies and containers of food that probably would last us until November, which was sweet and I spent a lot of time thanking everyone, wondering silently why they thought we wouldn’t be perfectly able to nuke a pizza or whatever if we got hungry.

  Paddy had called every club he could think of, and my father had called everyone else, which meant that bearded men in vests probably roamed the countryside looking for an excuse to shoot someone.

  Then I called Dante who predictably lost his mind. What I hadn’t predicted was his order for me to hand the phone over to Joke, which I did without a word because I’d never heard him speak in that voice before. They discussed what to do, and agreed that Dante would talk to someone in Raz’ company about protection for the girls.

  “Yeah,” I heard Joke say calmly. “Thanks, man, but we’ll handle Wilhelmine. Roddy and his band of crazies are on it too.” There was a brief pause, and then Joke snorted something, and muttered, “Not gonna shoot the old goat.” Pause, and a chuckle. “Not them either. Yeah. Later.”

  Then he closed the call, and I realized that my ex and my current had bonded over my issues in a way that made Dante someone Joke casually referred to as “man.” Saying goodbye could now apparently also be eschewed in favor of, “Later.”

  “Did you just call my father an old goat?” I asked.

  Gibson who had been in the process of making us coffee froze and turned toward Joke. He tried to hide that he was laughing, and so did I. It had freaked me out when I heard about the video, but I‘d calmed down almost immediately and seeing the look on Joke’s face made laughter bubble up my throat.

  “Might accidentally have done something like it, yeah,” Joke muttered.

  “What did Dante call my brothers?” I asked.

  “Not saying,” Joke said. “What about some fucking coffee?” he snapped at Gibson.

  “You got a new best friend?” Gib said and turned back toward the coffee maker. Under his breath and with his eyes aimed at me, he murmured, “Joke will look good in a golf-shirt, don’t you think?”

  I started laughing, and since I didn’t want to share the joke, I was slapping Jokes hands away when Mac walked in.

  “Good to see you laugh, Siss,” he murmured. “They’ve left.”

  I had talked Mac down from almost everything he’d wanted to do to the couple who had started the whole debacle. The way I saw it, they were guilty of stupidity and naïveté, but neither were crimes, and they had been so remorseful. It had taken some serious sweet-talking on my part because Joke had sided with Mac, but in the end, both men had agreed to ease off on the couple.

  Joke looked like he’d say something foul, but his phone buzzed and he disappeared with it pressed to his ear to come back half a cup of coffee later with a much calmer look on his face.

  “Raz tracked him down, he’s in Ohio.”

  “Ohio?” I echoed. “What in God’s name is he doing in Ohio?”

  “Visiting one of his acquaintances from prison. Drinking. Smoking pot. Fucking very, very ugly Ohio-women.”

  I tried to say something, but only a hoarse sound made its way up my throat.

  “Raz’ words,” Joke said calmly.

  “Stupid bastard,” Gib muttered.

&
nbsp; “Fuck, yeah,” Day said from the door. “I’ve met plenty of women from Ohio, and they were gorgeous.”

  “What?” I wheezed out.

  “Just sayin’,” he said with a grin. “Why pick –”

  “That is gross, Day,” Jenny snapped from the door. “I know how you guys talk and when you’re in your man-huddles you can shoot whatever shit you deem necessary. I don’t want to hear it in Lee’s house.”

  Gibson raised his brows and a hand.

  “It’s actually my house.”

  Jenny turned slowly, and I had to press a hand over my mouth to stop laughter from slipping out. The look in her eyes could have exterminated a small flock of birds in seconds, and Gibson was a tough guy, but he knew what he had in front of him, so he backed down.

  “Whatever,” he said and turned away, muttering, “Man-huddles my ass.”

  “Does this mean we can go camping?” I asked Joke.

  We’d planned to go, but with all that had happened, we hadn’t talked more about it. If Raz were following that man we would be okay, wouldn’t we?

  “Do you want to?” he asked back.

  “Yeah,” I said immediately. “You guys are new to this, but I’m not. This is my life. It has been my life for a very long time, and as long as Raz stays on top of where he is then I won’t let him destroy a ding-darned camping trip with my friends.”

  “Ding-darned?” Gibson muttered, lips twitching even as he was trying to still glare sourly at Jenny.

  “Jenny is scary,” I said with a wink at her. “Weren’t sure what words I could use.”

  “In this company; any apparently,” she snorted. “And, yeah. Let’s thumb our noses at that fucker and go camping.”

  ***

  Joke and I arrived at the campground already before lunch because neither of us would work that day. The others would come when they could get off. Gibson and Lee would be there early too, as soon as Lee had finished decorating a bunch of anniversary cupcakes. I wouldn’t have thought anyone ordered cupcakes for a wedding anniversary, but Lee told me that it was in no way uncommon when the happy couple had passed what she called, “their prime,” which meant they were both above ninety years of age and needed something that was both easy to serve and chew.

  Jenny would get out of the diner early, but she’d wait until Paddy got back from an inspection he had to attend. Mac had murmured something about not making it which had gotten him calm stares from four sets of eyes, and he’d said he’d come, but later. Day had immediately informed him that this was fucking fantastic because then he could get a ride.

  “What’s going on with Mac?” I asked when we’d unloaded our things and sat on the edge of a small dock, dipping our feet in the water.

  “You noticed?” Joke said. “Don’t know. Don’t think he’s gotten laid in months.”

  “Is everything about sex with you guys?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He was so full of shit. I’d seen the look on Gibson’s face when he made Joke calm down after his father had been an ass yet again. How Paddy was constantly checking the group out, making sure everyone was… Okay? Happy? I didn’t know exactly what, but it reminded me of how my dad looked at the men in the club. Protective.

  “So Day claiming the need for a ride when he has three cars in his barn was… about sex?”

  Joke chuckled.

  “No,” he said. “And no, everything isn’t about sex. We’ll talk to Mac.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he isn’t sad. Something is going on, but I don’t think it’s something bad.” I thought about it for a while and added, “If I were to guess, it’d be that he’s seeing someone.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know. Just a hunch.”

  “Huh.”

  “But if you girlies want to stage an intervention then by all means,” I said primly. “Go ahead.”

  I should not have said that.

  It got me thrown into the lake so quickly I was flying through the air before I realized what he was about to do. When I surfaced, he stood on the dock, laughing at me.

  “Joke, what the hell?” I squealed.

  Then I shut my mouth because he’d stopped laughing and I recognized the look on his face.

  “Zacharias,” I whispered.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  I looked toward the road.

  “Gib and Lee should be here by now.”

  “You’d better hurry then,” he said and pulled off his shirt.

  Then he dropped his cutoff jeans shorts.

  “Sissy.”

  I pulled my top over my head, and threw it up on the dock, pulled off my shorts and sent them flying the same way. Then I raised my chin and watched him.

  He still had his briefs on, and I’d keep my underwear until he –

  I squealed again when he jumped off the dock, making a bomb as if he was a ten-year-old boy.

  I was laughing when he surfaced and shook the water out of his hair which no longer was tied back. He swam toward me, and I moved further away from the dock, laughing at him and feeling both young and silly.

  He caught me easily and pulled me into his arms. We were some distance away from the dock, but the water was only up to his shoulders so I wrapped my legs around his waist. Then we kissed, and I moaned into his mouth when one of his hands moved my panties to the side and he slid a finger inside me.

  “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Hold on. Gonna fuck you, Sissy.”

  I was about to tell him that it was way more than okay with me, but he used his other hand to push his briefs down and then he slid inside. I gasped when he put his hands on my ass and started rocking his hips, pressing me to him.

  Then a car drove up to park next to ours. Gibson and Lee had arrived.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered and felt how his hands on my behind tightened.

  “We’re far enough out. Water’s dark, they won’t see,” Joke murmured into my ear.

  I shivered but didn’t move. He started sliding out, and I whimpered, but then he slid inside again and started to slowly make love to me as our friends unloaded their car. It was naughty, but it still felt safe and as long as they didn’t –

  “Hey!” Lee shouted. “Is the water cold?”

  “Yes,” I called back to her.

  Gibson had walked out on the dock, and he was watching us. Then he pulled off his tee, and took something I suspected was his phone out of his back pocket and placed it next to my wet clothes.

  He didn’t do a bomb. He dove gracefully and started swimming toward us. Joke stopped moving but didn’t slide out.

  “You got here early,” Gibson said when he was standing next to us.

  I didn’t dare to look down to see if he could see what we were doing, but he didn’t look that way anyway. His eyes slid quickly over my bra and then to Joke.

  “Yeah,” Joke grunted.

  “Nice day for a swim,” Gibson said.

  They were looking at each other, but Joke didn’t answer, so I started moving. Joke pressed me to him which made him slide deeper inside, and I shuddered.

  “Is it cold, Sissy?” Gibson said and, oh God, his voice was a bit hoarse.

  “Stop fucking with us, Gib,” Joke said. “Get out of here.”

  Gibson grinned at him, stretched a hand out to slide his index finger over my cheek gently, and murmured, “Enjoy.”

  Then he swam back to the dock and Joke caught my mouth in a deep, hard kiss.

  “Did he –”

  “He guessed,” Joke confirmed.

  “What…” I said, not sure what I wanted to ask.

  “Depends on you,” Joke murmured. “We can follow him and get dressed. Sit on the dock, have a few drinks. Or we can continue what we’re doing.”

  Heat shot through me and I moved my hips a little with a shudder.

  “Yeah, baby,” Joke murmured. “I can keep fucking you. They won’t see much, but they will know.
”

  I turned my head to the side and watched Gibson carry a foldable chair to the dock. He was watching us, and then he slowly sat down and pulled Lee into his lap. She was in a sundress that reached her calves, but it bunched up just above her knees as she straddled him.

  Joke started moving his hips slowly again and his mouth covered mine when I gasped. Then he slid his mouth down my neck and thrust harder. His mouth was moving over my shoulder and then up to nip my ear.

  “Look at them,” he said quietly.

  They had shifted slightly and Gibson had one hand under Lee’s shirt and the other on her behind. They were kissing but then Gibson’s hand slid to her hip, and she started moving. I knew that they were doing what we were doing.

  “Sexy,” I breathed.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, but when I turned my head, he was looking at me. “And a little dirty.”

  I whimpered, and he grinned at me.

  “Like that, wild girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  He kissed me again, and kept moving lazily. I arched my back a little and then a soft sound reached us. I turned to see Lee lean forward to twist her head into her man’s neck and when she did, Gibson tilted his head back, took hold of her hips and push her down hard.

  I watched them as they came, and then I leaned back. Joke’s eyes were on the couple on the dock but he turned and grinned at me in a way that made my insides quiver.

  “Make me come too, Zacharias,” I said.

  He moved a hand between us and I felt the pad of his thumb on my clit. It circled, flicked, and when he pushed his cock deep inside, I came. The sun was in my face, my man inside me and I had an audience not seeing any of my private parts but still watching what we were doing. Enjoying what we had together. Who we were. It was so hot that I couldn’t hold a soft wail back when the orgasm rushed through me. Joke suddenly put his hands on my ass, thrust in and out a few times, planted himself deep and groaned against my neck, shaking and holding me tight to him.

  “Sissy,” he said.

  Just my name, and then his grip loosened.

  “I love you,” I whispered. “Thank you for giving this to me.”

  “Babe,” he murmured. “Love you too, and it was in no way a chore.”