Marital Bitch (Men with Badges) - By Jc Emery Page 0,22
of these cars, most actually. Reality is sinking in as I recognize my coworker, Thomas's, car. It was one thing for Facebook to know, and one thing for the neighborhood to know, but now my boss’ son knows. Crap.
We pass up Brad’s house and drive four houses down to Darla and James’s where we pull into their garage and climb out of the Cheese-mobile. Darla and James walk directly out of the garage and into the street. The rest of us follow. I do my best to postpone this royal embarrassment, but they aren’t having any of it.
“You gonna walk or do I have to carry you?” Brad asks. I pout, not liking either option. He lets out an exaggerated sigh and says, “Alright then, have it your way.” I back away from him, but it’s no use.
“I’ll walk, I’ll walk!” I shout nervously, but he isn’t having it. Before I know it, he has me over his shoulder and is smacking my butt. A few cars drive by slowly and I hear whistles from inside the cars. I turn my head around and recognize some of Brad’s buddies from down at the station. I give them a small wave and try to smile.
“You don’t look very happily married, Mrs. Patrick,” Darla quips. Brad laughs, shaking me in the process and smacks me in the butt again—this time hard. I yelp and start hitting him in the back. I really want to hit him in the butt. Not to check for firmness or anything, honest. It’s just… what’s fair is fair, right? I reach as far down as I can and I get another idea. I can’t quite reach his butt, but I can reach his boxer briefs. Without another thought, I yank them up as high as I can, laughing wildly. Darla’s eyes go wide and Brad freezes immediately. The whole group stops and Brad curses a string of profanities as he drops me to my feet, causing them to sting.
“You want to play?” Brad unabashedly reaches into his pants and removes his boxer briefs from his ass. “Okay,” he leans in and kisses my cheek, “let’s play, pretty girl.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
(Colleen)
Around here, family is the most important thing.
WE WALK THROUGH Brad’s front door and we’re immediately assaulted with loud cheers and hoots and hollers. I’m grabbed first by my mother, then Emily, then Grammy. Grammy smacks my arm and scolds me for not telling her about our secret love affair… apparently we’ve been holding out on her. I just apologize, I’m not about to argue. My dad pulls me into a tight embrace and then lectures me for not getting to walk me down the aisle. My dad rarely expresses feelings of sorrow, and he never makes us feel bad for leaving him out of something, so I know walking me down the aisle was a big deal to him. I feel instantly awful despite the fact that this isn’t a real marriage. To my father, it is.
Brad’s sisters get a hold of me and they each have their own opinion on my marriage. Like their brother, the Patrick girls are never short on an opinion—especially when it comes to me and Brad. Charlotte, his older sister, puts her hand on my stomach and she nods her head and says that I’m definitely pregnant. Yeah, my vagina just found that insulting since it hasn’t seen any action from a man in over a year. I swat her hand away. Brad’s younger sisters, twins, Mary and Margaret, gush over us all finally being family. I tell them that we’ve always been family and they take this as though I mean to say that I think their brother and I were fated for one another. It’s more like he’s a fungus that won’t go away.
Slowly but surely, I make my way through my mother’s sisters and her brother, and then my father’s cousins. Crap. They really went all out for this. I can’t believe my Great Uncle Earl is here. I haven’t seen him since my first communion, and that was over twenty years ago. Grammy keeps shooting Great Uncle Earl dirty looks. They haven’t gotten along since they were kids and if you even try to make sense of it all either one of them will say is “potatoes.” We’re Irish; the source of most great conflicts seems to be over potatoes in one form or another.
An hour after our arrival, I finally spot the old Ball & Chain across