Page 26 of Space Balls: Houston, We Have Liftoff
But she really doesn’t need to, because as comical as I imagined the whole process of doing Blow Job shots would be, the reality of watching her lips wrap around the rim of the glass as she sucks just hard enough to form a seal so she can lift the glass off the table hands-free is torture enough.
She straightens, tilting her back toward me and swallowing the whipped cream and Baileys in one go before leaning forward and dropping the glass back down.
Shrugging my hands off her hair, she turns to me. “Your turn.”
By the look on her face, I can tell she knows that the last time she said that to me, she rode me like a champion rodeo queen in her family home.
The vivid memory has my eyes locking on her lips.
She licks them. Slowly.
I want nothing more than to kiss her. And if I had brought my 4Runner out tonight, maybe I would. But with no place to take this kiss any further, I pull my gaze away and square up to my own Blow Job shot.
One, because I told her I would and I’m not going to back down. It’s like I have to prove to her, and myself, that just because I may be more years older than her than I’d originally thought, I can still hold my own.
And two, because I’m still reeling from Jackie’s reminder on why I became an astronaut. And the sacrifices I knew I’d have to make when I became one.
I was seventeen when Herrington flew up and determined not to follow in my dad’s military footsteps. I was going to be an engineer. I was going to build things, not bomb things or be bombed. I wasn’t going to leave the people I loved behind.
And then Herrington changed it all. Photographs and videos of him carrying the Chickasaw flag in zero gravity lit up the news stations. I watched him, on NASA TV, help build the spine of the International Space Station over various spacewalks. He was a builder, just like me, but he was building inspace. And that called to a part of me I must’ve inherited from my fallen in action father.
“Chicken?” Rose taunts, pulling me away from my sobering thoughts.
The crowd that gathered around a hot girl doing Blow Job shots “the right way” laughs as Rose begins to bawk, bent arms flapping.
And just like that, Rose has me smiling and living in the moment.
I bend over and suck the shot up and back, managing not to choke on the large lump of whipped cream sliding down my throat. When the shot glass pops away from my mouth, the crowd’s applause is louder than their previous heckling.
“Fucker,” Rose says with a smile. I laugh, pulling her into me for a side hug, getting a high off the energy she emanates. She’s like the sun, radiating energy on all the people in her orbit. I can’t help being drawn to her.
The blaring music changes to a slow song. Across the bar, Jules is shuffling her motorcycle boots in time with Holt’s cowboy ones, Trish’s eyes are closed as she rests her head on Ian’s chest while he rocks her to the music, and Jackie’s mouth is in constant motion. Probably applying a multi-nuanced algorithm to the two-step’s rhythmic oscillation. The thing they all have in common is the grin they’ve put on their dates’ faces. A grin I’m pretty sure is just like the one I’m sporting.
A glance in my peripheral shows Rose also looking at her friends, a frown where her smile should be.
I’m not too sure what to make of that. And I’m too caught up in Rose’s orbit to find out.
“Another round?” I ask, bringing her eyes up to mine.
Sighing but now smiling, she turns back to the bar and slaps the surface. “Line ‘em up, old man.”
Eight
Vertical Launch
Rose
Two Blow Jobshots in and I’m pandering to the newly formed crowd. The retelling of the fight during Jackie’s bachelorette party at the strip club is going over fairly well. Both men and women are hanging on my every word.
Well, the women are. The men are probably stuck on the strip club part, their minds in the gutter.
“You’re saying that girl overtherelaunched herself off a strip stage and took down a three-hundred-pound thug?” A woman points at Trish on the dance floor.
“Yep.” I nod like the proud mama I feel like when I remember Trish’s sexy airborne scissor kick takedown.
The crowd stares at my petite brunette friend two-stepping in a demure, knee-length pleated skirt, silk tank top, and black platform pumps. She looks more like a kindergarten teacher with a heel fetish than a vigilante stripper. “But don’t mention it to her. She’ll get all embarrassed, which will make her fiancé mad.” I heave a long-suffering sigh. “Things do tend to escalate when the menfolk get snippy.”
Vance chokes on a sip of beer while the women in the crowd nod knowingly.
