An Aces Christmas Read online

  “Oh, come on,” Charlie complained, pushing me off the edge of the sidewalk. “Why you have to ruin my daydream like that?”

  I laughed, stepping back on the curb. “I just like penises,” I said cheerfully, throwing up my hands. “Through no fault of my own.”

  “You don’t like penises,” Charlie said with a snort. “You enjoy the idea of penis, but you’ve never had an actual experience with one.”

  “I have, too!”

  “Fumbling in the dark over a pair of jeans on the back of a bus doesn’t count,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Why are we even friends?” I asked jokingly. “And why do I tell you anything?”

  “Because I get you,” she said, sliding her arm around my waist.

  Grumbling, I threw my arm over her shoulder so we could synchronize our steps. Charlie was the tougher of the two of us, the cynic and the first one to speak up if she saw something she didn’t agree with, which was kind of funny since she was so much smaller than me. Where Charlie was a tiny bundle of athletic energy and efficient movement, I was tall-ish and curvy and I’d rather laze around watching movies or reading a book. She didn’t let anything bother her and every little slight hurt my feelings. Somehow, though, we fit.

  “If we’re doing this thing,” Charlie said, giving me a squeeze, “then I have some demands.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “First, you don’t complain about the dress I wear.”

  “No deal,” I replied instantly.

  “Fine, you have veto power but that’s it. If it looks okay but it’s not your style, I still get to wear it.”

  “Deal.”

  “Second,” she said, drawing the word out, “I’m not going to a salon to get my hair done.”

  “Why don’t we just ask the oldies?” I asked. “You can have your mom and I’ll take Rose.”

  “Acceptable,” she mumbled. “As long as my mom doesn’t give me shit. If she does, I’m out.”

  “Okay.”

  “And lastly—”

  “Is lastly a word?”

  “You tell me, bookworm,” she replied dryly. “Lastly, since prom’s on Saturday, you have to promise that Friday night, we watch Carrie. With popcorn and candy and the whole thing.”

  “That’s morbid,” I said with a laugh. “Deal.”

  “Oh, and we’re going riding on Sunday,” she said quickly. “If I’m getting all fancy on Saturday, I wanna get dirty on Sunday.”

  “Fine with me,” I said. Instantly, I started rounding up my gear in my head. I was pretty sure that most of it was in an old green duffel in the garage, but I wasn’t sure. I had a tendency of leaving my shit everywhere and then I ended up scrambling to find it when I needed it. “Are my goggles still at your house?”

  “Yep,” Charlie replied knowingly. “So are your socks.”

  “Perfect.” Reaching up to push my sweaty hair back from my face, I growled. “I hate walking home.”

  “Stop complaining,” she said, letting go of me and bumping me with her hip. “We’re almost there.”

  “Should we invite Reb to watch movies with us on Friday? She’s going to be bummed that we’re all going to prom without her.”

  “Definitely,” Charlie said with a nod. Then she shrugged. “You know she’d hate it. Too loud.”

  “Too many people.”

  “Too many moving people,” Charlie agreed.

  My cousin Rebel was our age, but she had Down syndrome and went to a different school than we did. And while we usually brought her with us whenever we were doing something fun, Charlie was right. She’d definitely hate the prom. Loud noises really bothered her, and she hated crowds unless she knew everyone.

  We were at the end of my block when a truck pulled up beside us and startled the shit out of me.

  “Hey, little girl. Want some candy?” a familiar voice called out, instantly calming my racing heart.

  “What the hell?” I called out, spinning to look. Draco and Curtis, Charlie’s nephews, were the male counterparts to the Charlie-Kara-Rebel trio. “You just made me pee my pants, and where the hell were you when we needed a ride after school?”

  “Charlie said you guys wanted to walk,” Draco replied, hanging out the passenger window.

  “Demon,” I hissed at Charlie, making her chuckle.

  She shrugged. “I told you I wanted the exercise.”

  “Next time,” I said, spinning back to the boys, “assume I do not want to walk.”

  “We can drive you the rest of the way,” Curtis called, leaning around his twin to grin at me.

  “I can see my house,” I replied flatly, making him laugh.

  It was impossible to ignore the way my stomach flip-flopped when he did that. The guys were identical, and you’d think that Draco’s laugh would illicit the same response, but it didn’t. It had always been Curt that made me blush and stammer and act like a complete idiot no matter how I tried to hide it. It was probably because Draco chased anything female and Curtis, well, he’d always held his cards close to the chest. I knew he dated—if you wanted to call it that—but I never actually saw him do it. There was something mysterious about him, which was pretty impressive since I’d hung out with him nearly every day for years.

  “Just meet us at the house,” Charlie said as she started walking again.

  “Wait!” I yelled. I jogged over to the truck as Draco laughed and opened the door to let me in. “Just take my bag,” I said, dropping it onto his lap.

  Draco let out a startled oomph. “Jesus, what do you have in here?”

  “Books,” I said happily as I jogged toward Charlie at least twenty pounds lighter. “Thank you!”

  “You’re so lazy,” Charlie said, laughing as she shook her head.

  Five minutes later, the four of us were stomping into my house like a herd of elephants.

  “I’m home,” I called, walking through the living room to check the kitchen.

  “Where’s Rose?” Charlie asked, dropping her stuff inside the front door.

  “No idea,” I muttered with a shrug. “But she’s not here. If Brody was napping, there would’ve been a sock on the door.”

  “She puts a sock on the door?” Draco asked with a laugh.

  “That’s the signal to be quiet,” I said dryly. “She said she’s preparing me for college.”

  “Bet your dad loved that,” Curt said, setting my backpack down gently on the couch.

  “He laughed,” I replied. “Then he said if he ever finds a sock on my dorm room door, I better be ready for a bloodbath.”

  “Sounds about right,” Curt agreed with a grimace.

  We all dropped onto various seats in the living room and got comfortable.

  “Hey, we’re watching Carrie the night before prom,” Charlie announced. “And then Sunday we’re riding.”

  “Are those the terms for her to agree to going?” Draco asked me.

  “Some of them,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

  “Sounds good to me,” Curt said, stretching his arms above his head.

  I deliberately kept my eyes on his face instead of the sliver of skin I knew would be showing at his waist.

  “You wanna use the track or go out in the woods?” Curt asked Charlie.

  “Probably the track, don’t you think?” she asked, kicking off her shoes and stretching out on the couch so that her feet rested in my lap. “It’ll probably rain next week, so we won’t be eating fistfuls of dust.”

  “Plus, if Kara gets hurt, we’ll be closer to the hospital,” Draco joked.

  He laughed as I threw a throw pillow at his head. “It isn’t always me that gets hurt.”

  “Yes, it is,” three of my best friends replied in unison.

  “And Reb can come to the track,” Curtis said easily.

  “If she even wants to,” I replied. “I swear, she worries more than my parents when we’re riding. I have no idea why she likes to watch us.”

  “Because she likes riding with me a
nd Curt,” Draco said, grinning.

  “I thought she was going to shit herself last time,” Charlie replied. “Don’t go so fast.”

  “She loved it!”

  “She told you she loved it,” Charlie said, shaking her head. “You didn’t see her face. She was fucking terrified.”

  “Oh, shit,” Draco mumbled. “Whoops.”

  “Maybe Will can bring her bike out so she can ride,” Curtis said.

  It was a good idea. Reb loved to ride and she loved to watch us ride—but her parents, my uncle Will and Aunt Molly, didn’t allow her to ride on her own when they weren’t there. I understood it—it got pretty sketchy sometimes and honestly, I didn’t want to be responsible for making sure she didn’t get hurt.

  “Let’s ride for a couple hours before they get there,” Charlie said, her eyes closed. “That way, Will isn’t up our asses the whole time.”

  “Good call,” Draco agreed.

  “So, when are you guys buying the tickets for prom?” I asked after it had been quiet for a minute. “Do you want to go halves, or—”

  “I’m not paying for half!” Charlie griped, poking me in the stomach with her toes. “Why would you even offer, you lunatic? We’re doing them a damn favor.”

  “I’m impressed you made it this long without bringing up the dance,” Curtis said at the same time. He was grinning.

  “We’ll buy the tickets,” Draco said, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “What? It’s not like it’s a date!”

  “We’re still paying,” he replied firmly.

  “Fine,” I huffed.

  “And we’re paying for dinner, too,” Curt said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Charlie groaned, but I lit up. “We’re going to dinner?” I asked, trying and failing to seem nonchalant about the whole thing.

  “Of course we’re going to dinner,” Draco said dubiously. “It’s prom.”

  “We’re going to dinner,” I said to Charlie, squeezing her feet in my hands.

  “Yippee,” she said unenthusiastically.

  “Stop it,” I ordered, pulling hard on one of her toes until she yelped and yanked her feet from my lap.

  “Fine, it’ll be fun,” she said in exasperation as she sat up. “But we do need to figure out one important detail.”

  “What’s that?” Draco asked in amusement.

  Charlie’s lips twitched. “Which one of you is taking your aunt to prom, and which one of you is taking the stacked underclassman with hair down to her waist?”

  My eyes bulged out of my head when both boys yelled, “Dibs!”

  As the three of them laughed, I stared at them.

  “Wait, dibs for who?” I said in confusion, making them laugh even harder. “Dibs for who? Me or Charlie?”

  Chapter 3

  Farrah

  Present

  “You know, I try not to overstep,” I said as I poured chocolate pudding into a pie tin.

  “Uh, huh,” my best friend Callie muttered mockingly across the kitchen.

  “But I really wish I’d gone with them today,” I finished, ignoring her.

  “You did the right thing staying home,” she told me, pulling a pie out of the industrial oven and putting a different one in. “They need some space.”

  “If I wasn’t going over to Cam’s tonight, I probably would have gone.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” she said, rubbing my back lightly as she moved around me. “You might be a huge pain in the neck, but you know when to take a step back.”

  I nodded.

  “I mean, your radar is a little off, so you don’t always take a step back when other people would—”

  “Shut it,” I shot back, making her chuckle.

  “How’s Charlie doing? She excited?” Callie asked, a little out of breath as she kneaded dough on the island beside me.

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh. Honestly, it was kind of hard to read my youngest daughter. She was a mix of me and her dad and both of her sisters put together. She was wild like Cecilia and tenderhearted like Lily—even if she refused to show it, like me—and she was street smart, just like her dad. A mix of contradictions, that one.

  “I can’t believe it’s been almost four years,” Callie said. “It feels like just yesterday.”

  “And also a hundred years ago,” I replied quietly. “It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that three of them kept growing and learning and changing, and one just—I don’t know—was frozen in time or something.”

  “You know he’s been growing and changing, too,” Callie reminded me.

  “His entire life was just put on pause,” I snapped.

  “Hey,” Callie said, her head jerking back in surprise. “I know that. What, do you think it’s easy for any of us?”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, shaking my head. “Guess I’m on edge.”

  “With good reason,” she replied, forgiving me easily like always. “I remember when Asa got out.”

  “Me, too,” I said with a scoff. “Loser.”

  “Now that was a hundred years ago,” she joked. “Think you could let it go yet? I forgave him a long ass time ago.”

  “That’s because you’re nicer than me,” I said stubbornly. “He stayed up here and partied while you waited for him at the old apartment like a lovesick puppy.”

  “Jesus, you’re on a roll today,” she complained.

  I laughed. “Sorry, that didn’t come out quite how I intended.”

  “Sure, it didn’t.”

  “I just mean, I remember how excited you were and what an ass he was.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” she said with a soft smile. “Hey, you wanna hear some news that you can’t tell anyone?”

  “No,” I replied firmly. I hated keeping secrets. Inevitably, I slipped up and made some comment about it and then I spent five minutes trying to backtrack, making it worse. I knew some things that I’d take to my grave—but the small secrets? I could never keep track of who knew what and I always ended up spilling the beans.

  Callie ignored my reply and whispered, “Heather’s pregnant again.”

  “Dammit, Callie,” I said in exasperation.

  “What?” she replied innocently. “They’re going to tell everyone soon anyway. Plus, Heather’s like me—she can never hide it because she’s always throwing up.”

  “Five kids is a lot of damn kids,” I said with a laugh, meeting Callie’s eyes. “You should probably have a talk with your son about how to prevent that.”

  “I thought she was going to make Tommy get snipped the last time,” she said, laughing with me. “But he obviously avoided it somehow.”

  “If I was her, I’d make him do it before this one is even born,” I replied. “Take care of business before they get to the danger zone again.”

  Callie started humming the Kenny Loggins song and I choked. Wheezing, I tried to catch my breath as she started dancing to the beat.

  “Yeah, it’s all fun and games until you have to move into a shoe with all those grandkids,” I gasped, making her flick flour at me. “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe—”

  “Hey, I’m not an old woman!”

  “We’re both old women,” I said as I got my breathing under control. “I think my ass is starting to sag. My ass! What the hell is that about?”

  “Well, something had to sag eventually,” she said reasonably. “And you’ve got no boobs.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “Okay, that’s fair,” I conceded.

  “God, did you ever imagine we’d be the old ladies hanging out in the kitchen making pies for fifteen zillion people?” she asked with a sigh.

  “I didn’t imagine I’d live to see twenty-five,” I replied honestly. I paused. “I didn’t think I’d end up an Old Lady, either.”

  She smiled at my pun. “I felt a lot better about that distinction when I wasn’t actually an old lady,” she said, tilting her head to the side as she flattened the dough she was working o
n with a rolling pin.

  “Amen, sister,” I replied. “But hey, at least our men can still get it up.”

  “You’re talking about my brother and that’s disgusting,” she said easily.

  “You have three nieces,” I replied, just as easily. “You know me and your brother do the dirty.”

  “Oh, come on,” she muttered in disgust.

  “He takes me to Pound Town,” I said, enjoying the look on her face. I leaned closer. “Regularly.”

  “I’m going to brain you with this rolling pin, you sicko,” she said, snickering.

  I grinned and reached for another pre-made graham cracker crust. While Callie kneaded and rolled and sliced and put the pretty little edges on her pies before she baked them, I mixed up a few different flavors of pudding and filled my store bought crusts and threw them in the fridge. Sometimes, if I was feeling fancy, I even added whipped cream to the top. The two of us made a pretty good team, I thought. Plus, I was always done way before she was, and it gave me time to sit around while she worked, which I thought was hilarious.

  “I’m glad you’re my friend,” I said, grinning at her.

  “That’s good,” she replied. “It’s been over fifty years, I’d hate to think you’d been miserable all this time.”

  “Nah, you’d love that,” I argued. “That would make your day.”

  “What would make my day is if you’d finish those shitty ass pies and get out of my workspace,” she bitched, her lips twitching with amusement.

  “I’m going to put bananas in my banana cream pie this year,” I replied importantly. “So it’s going to take me even longer than usual.”

  “Of course you are,” she said in exasperation. “Where are the bananas?”

  I looked around the kitchen. “Shit, did I forget them?”

  “Probably,” she said as I strode toward the bags we’d brought with us. “Those bags are empty.”

  “They can’t be,” I said, lifting them from the floor. “Fuck.”

  “Did you leave them in the car?” she asked.

  “I thought you said you grabbed the rest of the bags,” I said, swinging the empty bags from my fingertips.

  “Maybe I missed one?”

  “So, now I have to go look for it?” I whined, stomping my foot.