When I'm Alone with You (Little Lies Spring Break Outtake) Read online

  A LITTLE LIES SPRING BREAK BONUS SCENE

  H. HUNTING

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  What to Read Next

  Other Titles By Helena Hunting

  Connect With H. Hunting

  About The Author H. Hunting

  Copyright © 2022 Helena Hunting

  All rights reserved

  Published by Helena Hunting

  Cover Design by Helena Hunting

  Editing by Christa Desir

  Proofing by Amanda Rash of Draft House Editorial Services

  Spring Break is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are all products of the author’s twisted imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  WHEN I’M ALONE WITH YOU

  The kids of Pucked convene in Pearl Lake for Spring Break. Awkward parent conversations are inevitable, shenanigans abound, and TMI situations make for an embarrassingly memorable night. Especially when Kodiak tries to steal a few minutes alone with Lavender before the “real” fun begins.

  *Previously published as RINGING IN THE NEW YEAR in The Year of Love Anthology. This is a LITTLE LIES bonus short story.

  1

  BANANA BANGER

  Lavender

  When I was eight years old, I walked in on my older brothers Maverick and Robbie dressing up a bunch of bananas in costumes. They were laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their cheeks. At one point, the two of them fell into a heap on the floor, gasping for air. Maverick actually peed himself. At the time, it really didn’t make a lot of sense. I had no clue where they found the costumes, or why they were playing dress up with them. Or why they wouldn’t let me play dress up too.

  Fast forward to today, and I’m once again staring at a bunch of bananas dressed in a variety of costumes. There’s quite an array of superhero bananas, as well as some festive ones meant for various holidays. They’re arranged on the dining room table in suggestive positions.

  Our parents are having a dinner party for my Aunt’s birthday and they’re making a big deal out of it. Half the time my parents friends end up staying the night, which means we can do our own thing in one of the empty houses. Tonight that house happens to my boyfriend’s.

  I survey the scene; one superhero is giving it to another superhero from behind. A snowman is getting a blowy from Cupid, and two bunnies are engaged in a sixty-niner.

  For a moment—a very, very brief one—I contemplate how hilarious it would be to put these to use with my boyfriend. Except I’m aware that they’ve already dressed up more than bananas, so my giggle quickly becomes a suppressed gag.

  That particular fact I didn’t learn until long after I found my brothers in tears on Robbie’s bedroom floor.

  For a lot of years, I was blissfully unaware of what the costumes were meant for, other than bananas. When I was a teenager, Maverick explained that our mom dresses up our dad’s business in them. Now, I can’t unknow that piece of information.

  I also can’t believe that my mom hasn’t found better hiding spots for these.

  “Maverick!” I call out.

  Robbie is currently in the middle of nowhere, living in a tent with his girlfriend, working on his PhD in pot, so I know he had nothing to do with this, not this time. We FaceTimed with him earlier this week. He was higher than Snoop Dogg in the 90s, but also ridiculously happy.

  It isn’t Maverick who appears in the dining room doorway. It’s my twin, River. “He took off about an hour ago. What’d he do now?”

  “Where’d he go? Did he go to Kodiak’s without us?” I motion to the dressed up, sexualized bananas.

  “Oh shit.” River covers his mouth and snorts a laugh. “I think Mav went back to school.”

  “We still have three days left of spring break. Why would he go back now?” All our friends are here, and Mav rarely misses an opportunity to party. Although he has been a lot more studious this semester.

  River lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “He gave some bullshit excuse about leaving a textbook in Chicago for one of his classes and needing it for an assignment.”

  “Wow. That’s . . .”

  “Unbelievable?” River supplies.

  “Totally. He basically waits until the eleventh hour on everything that isn’t hockey-related.”

  “Yeah. I know.” River nods and pulls out his phone, snapping photos of the porno-banana gangbang.

  “What do you think he’s really doing?”

  “That’s a good question. Usually I have the market on morose and emo cornered, but he’s stepped into that role over the break like it’s his damn job.” River rubs his chin. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, so he has some sparse, patchy growth going on.

  “Right? He’s been super moody. Like PMS-style cranky,” I agree.

  “Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been laid in a week?” River speculates.

  “It’s possible. He typically has a new girl lined up as soon as he dumps the old one, but come to think of it, I haven’t seen him with anyone since that girl at the beginning of the year.” I muse.

  “I think her name was Carly?” River offers, his brow furrowing. “There has to have been someone else after that. Multiple someones, even.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen him with anyone since then, but for sure there had to be someone over Christmas break. He was even moodier then.” I’m generally pleasant with Maverick’s flavor of the month, which is easy since I typically only ever ran into one of them on their way to his bedroom. But I’ve never bother getting to know Maverick’s “girlfriends” since were never around long.

  River frowns. “He was, wasn’t he?”

  “Now I want to know what the hell is going on with our brother. Do you think he has an actual girlfriend?”

  “Doubtful. He’s been low key since October. I can’t see him getting involved with anyone this close to the end of the school year and a deal with Nashville dangling like a carrot. But I guess anything is possible.”

  “He’s definitely been acting weird.” And now I really want to get to the bottom of it. But not badly enough that I’d drive to campus to see what he’s up to. “Maybe Kodiak knows.”

  “I don’t know that he would tell Kody.”

  “They’re best friends, why wouldn’t he tell him?”

  “Because you’re Kody’s girlfriend, and girlfriend status trumps best friend status. If Mav tells Kody, and you ask him, Kody will most definitely tell you.”

  “Not if Maverick told him not to say anything to me. Kodiak’s a pretty loyal guy.”

  “Yeah, but if you ask him after sex, when his guard is down and his brain is functioning at about twenty-five percent capacity, there’s a good chance he’ll accidentally tell you. And then he’ll feel like a bag of guilty assholes. Mav knows this, so I don’t think he’s said anything to Kody, but feel free to prove me wrong and ask anyway.”

  I scowl at my twin. “I don’t want to make Kodiak feel like a bag of guilty assholes.”

  He shrugs. “He always feels guilty; it’s not like it’s new for him.”

  I elbow him in the ribs. “I don’t want to make his guilt worse.”

  “Why, because you’ll feel guilty for making him feel guilty?”

  “N
o. Well, yeah, but when he feels guilty, he gets clingy.” And needy. Sometimes the needy is fine. Most of the time, actually. But occasionally he gets a little obsessed with making me feel good. There have been a couple of times that he’s been so fixated on giving me guilt-inspired orgasms that he’s licked my clit raw. Once it was a result of a run-in with Bethany, who was my roommate when I tried to live in the dorms for all of thirty-six hours. She was also a stick chaser and tried to hook up with my boyfriend before he became my boyfriend.

  During our short, unpleasant exchange in the campus bar’s bathroom, she told me that she and all her friends had masturbated in front of my boyfriend. It wasn’t true. I know because I asked Kodiak point-blank and told him that I wasn’t going to be mad either way, I just needed to know so I could deal with it and we could move on.

  Kodiak can’t lie to me. Which probably sucks for him, because it means if I want to ruin a surprise, I can. So I don’t abuse the fact that I’m his personal truth serum.

  While his knee bounced a million miles a minute and his mouth was so dry that he had to drink two liters of water, he explained what had really happened. On the first day of classes—after he dropped me off at my place, we’d argued, and I’d stormed off, flipping the bird over my shoulder—he’d gone home to stew in some self-loathing for being an asshole to me.

  Bethany had come up to his room and tried to get with him, right after she’d been fooling around with Quinn, one of Kodiak’s roommates. Kodiak had told her he didn’t have condoms, which was a lie. Kodiak always has three boxes on hand. He considers us to be running low when we open the second-to-last box, and immediately goes online after we have sex and orders more. He has a condom subscription on Amazon because he gets a better deal that way.

  Anyway, she pulled out some condoms, and he lost his cool and told her he wasn’t going to have sex with her, especially since she’d just been hooking up with his roommate. She’d heard the rumors (which, based on our sex life, definitely hold a grain of truth) and offered to give him a free show. He said no thanks. She told everyone otherwise.

  Has he been given free shows prior to Bethany? I have no doubt in my mind that he probably has. I’d even go so far as to say there’s a chance that one of her friends has given him a masturbation demonstration prior to me moving to Chicago.

  Kodiak is twenty-one years old, in college and an elite athlete. He might have been in love with me his entire life, but that doesn’t mean he’s been a monk. And while a small part of me would like to tit-punch every single girl who’s ever seen his dick or experienced his amazing oral skills, I’ve benefited directly from his previous practice. Do I want a list of the girls he’s hooked up with before me? No. But I’m not an idiot. I know I’m not his first. Just like he’s not mine (and he hates that fact). But I’m sure as hell planning to be his last and only for the rest of my life and his.

  Anyway, after he told me the truth about Bethany, he fell into a guilt spiral. Mostly because he’d spent the first two months of the semester trying to make me hate him out of fear that he’d ruin me if we ever ended up dating. And the whole Bethany ordeal was directly related to that. He felt like he needed to find a way to earn my forgiveness. By giving me orgasms. Hence the raw clit situation.

  River snorts, pulling me out of my mental musings and my trip down Raw Clit Memory Lane. “Kody is always clingy.”

  I give him the stink eye. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, River.”

  “Josiah’s not clingy.”

  “No. He’s not. But you sure are.”

  River’s usual furrowed brow furrows even more. His forehead looks like a barren farmer’s field getting ready for seed with how many lines there are. He’s probably going to need Botox by the time he’s twenty-five. “I am not.”

  “You text him when we’re in the house and you haven’t seen him for five minutes.”

  “I haven’t texted him once during this conversation.”

  “But your hand has been tucked into your pocket fifty percent of the time.” I don’t think this is true, but I am 100 percent right about River and his clinginess with Josiah. “And you incessantly check your phone whenever he leaves for class, and you make him text you to let you know that he made it there safely.”

  “I do not do that.” His gaze shifts away.

  “Uh, yeah, you totally do. And I would know, because I have class with him, remember?”

  “Fuck.” River runs his hand through his hair. “Do you think I need to tone it down? I just worry, you know?”

  “He thinks it’s cute for now. I’ll let you know if there’s something for you to actually worry about.”

  Our dad comes sauntering into the dining room, his eyes trained on the cell phone in his hand. He’s wearing a smirk. I bet a million banana costumes he and my mom are sexting.

  I have accidentally been on the receiving end of one of my mother’s inappropriate messages to my dad. There were references to beavers eating wood. Thankfully I stopped her before she could add anything else that I couldn’t unread.

  His gaze lifts, first to me and River standing on the other side of the room, both of us wishing we could sink into the floor and disappear, before he turns to see. . .

  “Oh fuck. What the hell?” His arms flail like an octopus on some kind of drug-induced trip.

  “Maverick was sleuthing, and he was apparently successful.” I totally throw my brother under the bus.

  “How the fuck does he always find them?” my dad mutters. “I’m going to pin him down and shave his head.”

  “He’s gone back to school,” I tell him.

  “What?” My dad frowns. He looks like an angry Superman with some gray hairs.

  “Mav’s gone back to school. Said he forgot a textbook or something.”

  Dad rubs his chin. “That sounds like a giant load of bull.”

  River and I both shrug. At the same time.

  “Maybe he realized he actually needs to put some effort in?”

  “In his last semester? Nashville already has eyes on him. Why would he start putting in effort in the eleventh hour?”

  “Maybe he’s got a hot tutor?” River offers.

  Our dad looks like he wants to argue for a second, then nods a couple of times. “I wish that boy would get a girlfriend and settle down.” His gaze darts to River. “Or a boyfriend. Or a nonbinary friend. Whoever is going to calm him down and help him reach his potential.”

  “Mav is straight,” River announces.

  “Okay.” Dad nods a few more times. “How do you know?”

  River shrugs. “I just do. Same way you know if someone is attracted to you, I guess? You can sense it. I’m sure that’s how it must have been for you and Mom?” He forms it like a question. We all know that our dad pursued our mom, and that their relationship started as a one-night stand, not because they told us specifically, but because their relationship was all over the hockey websites. Including some very graphic pictures of them trying to sword fight with their tongues. It’s pretty gross, and yet another thing I can’t unsee.

  “I knew your mom was my end game the moment I saw her reading Fielding in the front row at center ice.” Dad grins and gets a faraway look in his eyes, like he’s remembering that moment in real time.

  “Anyway, as far as Maverick is concerned, he looks at dudes like bros, not like a potential date. I look at my friends like bros, but when I met Josiah, I didn’t want to toss a football around with him for any other reason than I wanted to tackle him.”

  “That’s . . . informative. I’m glad you found someone you wanted to . . . tackle. Where is Josiah, anyway?” Dad asks and takes a step toward the table, gaze on the dressed-up nanners. Clearly he’s trying to be all casual as he learns how to be a dad in the age of gender equity and fluidity, while also trying to get rid of the evidence of their weird-ass sex life in the form of a porno-banana gangbang on the dining room table.

  “He’s getting ready.”

  Josiah i
s big on being put together. It’s his thing. Just like River’s is being angry at the world. Although a lot less so since he and Josiah started dating.

  “I think you and I should probably have a talk since you’re all staying at the Bowmans’ tonight, without adult supervision.” Dad rocks back on his heels and runs his hand through his hair.

  “I’ve been living away from home for almost two years, without adult supervision,” River points out.

  “I realize that, son, but this relationship with Josiah is pretty new, and there are a few things we need to discuss.”

  I don’t know whether to feel sorry for River or gleeful that I’m going to witness my dad try to give him a safe sex talk.

  River holds up his hand. “I already know where you’re going with this, and you can stop now.”

  “But I—”

  “I’m on the receiving end, Dad.”

  Dad opens and closes his mouth three times before he nods. “Right. That’s good. Probably safer that way. For Josiah.” He pokes at his cheek with his tongue. “I’m just going to grab those and put them away before guests arrive.” He scoops up the festively dressed bananas and hustles out.

  River and I look at each other.

  “I can’t believe I got to witness that. It was like a train wreck.”

  “I find sports analogies are the easiest way to explain things to dad. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t had this discussion before. When I was fifteen, he sat me down and talked about the importance of foreplay and gave me a bottle of lube and four boxes of giant condoms.”

  “Wow.”

  “Where do you think Mav’s stocking of lube came from over the holidays?”

  “Right. I thought that was from mom, though.”

  “I think Dad keeps getting it from his old endorsements, which is why mom is using them as stocking stuffers. Doesn’t Mom have safe sex conversations with you?”