“Show me how good you can suck,” he instructed me. My lips clamped down around his fingers and I took them all the way to the back of my throat. “That’s fucking right, so perfect, O.”
Before I could blink he had me off his lap and on my stomach, my hips lifted, and my entire ass on full display. He tugged at the G-string and snapped it against my pussy. “Oh my god,” I whined.
“That piece of scrap isn’t hiding anything from me. You should see how juicy this cunt looks.” He spread me open and hummed. “Can I have a taste, too?”
If he didn’t, I was going to lose my mind. We were both too far gone to rationalize anything. So when the room started to fill with a sheen of thin black smoke, and a simmering sound became more violent in the kitchen, it didn’t distract us in the slightest.
A second later, with Frankie’s mouth inches from that happy place between my legs, the fire alarm started shrieking above us.
“What the fuck?” He jumped up off the floor holding his ears.
“The cookies!” My eyes rounded. “Frankie, the fucking cookies are burning!”
We sprung up in a whirl of half-naked limbs. I hobbled across the living room and into the kitchen, pulling my shorts back up my legs just as Frankie swung open the oven door, waving a towel at it. A barrage of smoke came first, followed shortly by a dozen hockey pucks as he reached in and snatched the burning tray from its fiery confines, ditching it all in the sink and pulling the faucet.
“Fuck!” He winced, sucking his burnt fingers into his mouth.
I climbed the barstool and stood inches away from the ceiling, fanning another towel at the screeching fire alarm as Frankie dashed around flinging all the windows open.
By the time the noise stopped, we were surrounded by an oily fog and the mood of minutes prior was as burnt as the fucking snickerdoodles. Frankie’s zipper still hung wide open on his shorts as he stood across from me with a crease in his brow and his hands on his hips.
Our entire relationship thus far had been a series of unbelievable events: the plane, the club, the beach, these fucking cookies. Maybe it was the universe trying to ward us off one another, but instead of heeding that advice, I just started to laugh.
A maniacal, uninhibited, holding-my-gut laugh.
“Is something funny about this, Ophelia?” Frankie attempted not to smirk. “You almost burned my house down.”
I laughed harder, tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
“You keep this up, you won’t make it back to Colorado in one piece.” He finally chuckled and kicked the dish towel at his feet across the floor. “Who was in charge of the timer?”
“Natalia has it on her phone,” I said. “Where did they go?”
We made our way down the hallway toward the bedrooms where the hum of music seeped through the walls.
“I don’t hear a summoning.” Frankie shrugged.
I glanced at him hesitantly. “Maybe they fell asleep.”
“Playing throwback jams?”
“It’s like…nineties ASMR.”
Frankie rolled his eyes. “Come on, the cookies are already burnt anyway. We don’t need them.”
A pesky intrusive thought hammered me in the head. “What if they’re dead?” I asked. “What if they’re dead and we’re standing out here making jokes about them?”
“Ophelia, that’s fucking insane.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. He was much more rational and I needed someone to talk me down off the anxiety ledge. “There’s no way.”
We didn’t make it three steps in the direction of the living room before Frankie groaned and turned back around, mumbling under his breath. His fists connected with the bedroom door. “Cap, you good?”
After a few seconds without an answer, I joined him in knocking. “Nat! The cookies burned!”
The longer we stood there waiting for a reply the greater the pit of despair opened in my stomach. My worried expression must have gotten to Frankie because a second later he announced his entering and shouldered his way through the door.
Our collective jaws dropped like the fucking ball on New Year’s Eve.
Across the room Natalia’s phone buzzed incessantly in her tangled shorts on the floor, completely drowned out by the sound of music playing from a speaker on the dresser. All the lights were dimmed, save for some red and green mood setters that illuminated the walls behind the bed. Mateo’s impressive desktop setup was on and streaming, tiny icons hopping up and down where a video window was open. At the foot of the king-sized mattress sat a tripod with a giant circular light pointed down at the bed.
It was what was happening on the bed that left Frankie and I speechless.
“Oh, shit.” Mateo looked up and caught us standing in the door, shocked we’d actually pushed our way inside.
Nat was on all fours in front of him, that skin tight Mrs. Claus corset unbuttoned and her fishnet stockings ripped open as she offered her ass to her boyfriend who was dressed as the fat man himself. Red jacket, red pants, a fluffy white beard fastened around his head with elastic.
“What the fuck are you doing, Mateo?” Frankie spoke first. His voice roused Nat, who until that moment was none the wiser, still performing for the jumping icons on the computer screen. “Jesus.” He smacked his palm over his eyes and turned back toward the open door.
She screamed, flinging her body off the bed and shielding herself. “Phee! Oh my god!”
“Fuck, guys.” Mateo hurriedly tucked himself into his pants, clambering over to the camera to end whatever sexy live stream they were hosting.
A wave of shock washed over me, and when I thought it would subside, I took another look around the room and got hit with it again. “Lady Marmalade” unironically sifted through the speaker in otherwise silence like a sick joke.
“It’s not exactly what it looks like!” Nat crooned.
I couldn’t have cared less if my best friend was having sex on camera. I just needed more than thirty seconds of adjustment. We almost lit the house on fire and then I watched Natalia’s boyfriend mount her like a reindeer for an audience. Another one of those what-the-fuck waves crashed into me again.
“Nobody’s judging,” Frankie assured her, pointing to his roommate. “But, why the fuck are you dressed like that?”
“It’s an act.” Mateo ran his fingers through his fake white beard. “Mrs. Claus and Old Saint Dick.”
17
Nothing was too scandalous to say at brunch. I’d sat through many PTA meetings over bagels and coffee and listened to parents show their true colors over school district politics.
You’d be shocked to hear the kind of gossip that gets spewed when someone’s kid isn’t getting first class attention in a classroom of thirty to one. Which PE teacher is sleeping with the new divorcee, whose English teacher is writing naughty romance novels on the side. I’ll be the first to agree that we’re not paid nearly enough money to deal with parents. The kids are fucking cake in comparison.
So—brunch was good for open conversation, first and foremost. A few bellinis, some eggs benedict, avocado toast on house-made everything bagels. And Natalia and I playing a game of who can keep their mouth the fullest the longest to put off the inevitable discussion about the events of the night before.