Page 4 of Return By Fire

Kara’s voice deepens. “Oh, I really do.” She reverts back to herself to ask, “Dean? What’s sploshing?”

“Getting a blowjob with a grapefruit wrapped around the base of a cock.”

“Have you had that done?” she wonders.

Pulling my mother’s mien back on, I declare haughtily, “I would never share such debauchery with such an impressionable mind.”

Kara cracks up. Then she resumes her role. “But, darling, what if I got you a ruby to match the ruby grapefruit I wish you to use?”

I can barely keep a straight face. “You expect me to lower myself to roll the fruit on the counter to juice it up?”

“But, my sweet, you’re going to be doing so much more with it,” Kara whines in the grating way our father does. “How does one carat per suck sound?”

Returning to myself, I mutter, “Like Father would—for the first time—be getting a bargain. Christ, maybe even with the Ice Queen it wouldn’t take much. But with a man who knows what the fuck he’s doing with his mouth normally...”

Kara falls back, screeching. “You mean...”

“Oh, yeah. God, Kara. The feeling is insane.” Confident we’re alone in our alcove and the Queen of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell isn’t lurking about, I confide all the salient details of what a grapefruit blowjob feels like from the moment my current play friend, Shad, lays his lips against the head of my dick. “Picture an enormous cock ring, Kara.”

“Okay. I got that.”

“Now, picture it lubricating everything as it’s sliding up.” With a devilish smile, I confide, “And the heat of a mouth following something cold like that? Massive turn-on.”

Instead of repulsed, my sister’s face becomes contemplative. “So, do you think it’s more intense because—”

That’s when hell freezes over when our interlude is interrupted by our mother’s icy, “Kara Beatrice Malone. Do not dare finish that sentence. Go inside.”

She hesitates.

My mother loses her Borg-like cool and her voice whips out a “Now!” that may possibly be heard over the band.

My sister faces me tearfully, but I squeeze her tighter despite the lash of fury emanating from our mother. Just for her, I murmur, “It’s all right, Kara. I’ll be fine.”

Kara scurries to her feet. Carefully, I place her textbook in her hands. Standing, I lean over and press my lips to her chalky cheek. “Good luck tomorrow, sister.”

When I straighten, it’s to find my mother’s malevolent eyes narrowed on me in disgust. I nudge Kara toward the veranda doors before facing her. Before I can say a word, she hisses, “Not now, Dean. Not tonight. Tomorrow, you will present yourself in your father’s study. One o’clock.”

She storms away.

Just as she reaches the far end of the porch, I call out, “I’m working tomorrow. I can’t make it.”

She whips her head around. The force of her disgust reaches me from several hundred feet away. “Then don’t. But don’t expect to be welcome in this home again ever.”

With that, she sails back into her birthday extravaganza as if she didn’t just threaten her children.

* * *

Three days later, after I finish my shift at the fire department, I pull up to my parents to find all the belongings they deigned appropriate for me to retain packed in boxes. I loaded them in one by one under the watchful eye of the guard who protected my parent’s property as if they were a member of the Secret Service and I was trying to break into the White House.

Amid all the photos, I found paperwork from their lawyer severing my rights to any Malone money, including my grandfather’s trust, due to “abominable behavior, disgusting morality, and being a potentially negative influence on relatives.”

“Well, fuck it all—the money and them.” After a good half bottle of whiskey cooled my initial anger, the first thing I did was text Kara, who free from finals, flew into a rant. It took hours to convince her to stay to earn her degrees. “In my opinion, they owe you—us—that much.”

“I don’t want to be here, Dean,” she protested.

“Don’t be. Live at school. Go away. Explore the world.”

Agreeing, Kara and I made plans with foolish hope nothing would change for her.

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