It was pretty cute Lucy thought she could beat me at April Fool's. She can't say she didn't know what she was getting into with me. I have four brothers and a dad who are all April Fool's fanatics, just like me, and just like me, they can come up with some pretty funny stuff. We've been pranking each other since we were kids, and this upstart, this gift from God to men's eyes and my heart, thought she could win? Nuh uh. Not today, not ever.
April Fool's already holds a pretty special meaning for us. Like I said, it's my family's favorite holiday -- well, okay, definitely not my mom's, but she tolerates it. My brother Todd throws a party every year at the end of it. It's a good time. We all bring something weird to eat, with the rule being that it has to be edible and at least tolerably tasty. Beer's allowed, but if you want to hang with the Belville boys, you have to do shots instead. We're talking Prairie Fire. We're talking Big Bangs. We're talking Cement Mixers. Every year one of us assholes is bringing something new and fun to the party. Last year it was bacon whiskey. Year before that, it was some godawful mixture called Toothpaste. You can probably guess what it tasted like.
Lucy came to the party last year, the hottest thing to walk through Todd's door since he accidentally set his wig on fire one Halloween when he was out barbequing and singing like he was Mick Jagger -- no joke, we're idiots. Fresh off both a breakup and the idiots at the news station she worked for firing her due to budget cuts, she was ready to party in a slinky pink minidress that plunged down between her breasts in a way that said, "Hey, big fella, eyes down here the rest of the night." She was dressed to fuck and I was addicted in about three seconds. Especially with her flaming red hair and lips I wanted to get medieval on and pillage until I came deep down her throat.
Look, I'm not exactly a fucking poet, all right?
She was a guest of one of my other brother's wives, and fit right in with the rest of the lunatics. There's only one rule at that party -- no one under eighteen -- so we lived it up while none of the nephews, nieces, and assorted younger hanger-ons were around. Lucy did the customary opening shots -- which was always optional, as was everything at the party -- and bellowed with us the sweet, sweet lyrics of Mmmbop, our party theme that year of choice. As was also tradition, Todd gave a speech with the other four of us flanking him. We stood up on a garden wall, and when I looked into Lucy's twinkling eyes, I had the first notion I was in deep, deep trouble with this one.
We played a variation on the chocolate game, with a bottle of tequila in the middle and boxing gloves instead of the bar of chocolate and oven mitts, and I knew I was going to fuck this woman or die trying when she rolled a six, put the gloves on, then instead of gripping the bottle with her hands, she got down on her hands and knees and used her cleavage to hold the bottle while keeping it shoved against her body with the gloves. Then she tilted back and let the neck of the bottle spill into her mouth, mad with laughter.
My sister-in-law Tayla, one of the best goddamn wingmen on the planet, introduced us shortly thereafter. Most the tequila had gone all over Lucy instead of in her mouth, leaving her dress sticking to her knuckle-biting curves. Fighting the urge to drool over her well-plastered tits was like fending off a Nazi werewolf army single-handedly with a spork, but I managed it.
I was playing bartender at the moment, mixing up jalapeno margaritas for a few of the guests, and I offered Lucy one. With a smile that spoke volumes of the dirty things this woman was capable of doing, she said, "Get me any more drunk and you could probably take me on the stairs."
"Is that a no, then?"
For an answer to that, she grabbed a bottle of vodka, spun off the cap with her thumb, took a tiny sip, and held out her hand. I didn't actually fuck her on the stairs -- we were, after all, surrounded by family -- but I did bribe the crew in the game room with the pitcher of margaritas to clear out and give us twenty minutes. I had Lucy's panties off her and stuffed into my pocket in about as long as it took for them to shut the door. We fucked hard enough to rattle the pool balls, making it sound like thunder every time I bottomed out in her soaking wet cunt.
I didn't think anything could top that day until I came up with the idea to propose to her this year.
Yeah. April Fool's has some pretty special meaning to me, then.
* * *
I never thought this day would actually come again, me proposing to someone. I was married once, a brief, dark fling when I was finishing up college. She was a couple years older, a museum guide and a librarian, and so very much an intellectual hipster it makes me grind my teeth to think of how stupid I was for falling for her.
But I did. The engagement was all of about two weeks, the marriage six months. During the ugliest fight of my life, she told me I'd never amount to much. I told her she was a pretentious dick-killer. I think that made her proud.
The "never amount to much" comment pissed me off to the very core of my soul. I was a straight-A guy in one of the best business schools that didn't require a donation from some rich family's bank account to get me in the front door. I kept fit and muscular with a low-carb diet and an absolute fuck-ton of working out and swimming. I'd landed an internship for a highly regarded money management firm. I knew where I was going, and I knew I was money in the bank. All she had to do was wait, and she couldn't.
The truth is, though, I loved her, and I loved her hard. The divorce slammed a wall into place when it came to women in order to become the investment manager I knew I could be. I graduated top of my class. I was brought into the same firm I interned with at one of their highest starting salaries they'd ever given out, and I earned every penny of it. You might have watched Wolf of Wall Street or Boiler Room and think I'm some kind of opportunistic shark, but the truth is anything but that. Do you know how I go into Las Vegas and always walk out richer than I started? Because I don't fucking gamble. My money's diversified into safe bets that'll only keep going up. I don't need to play poker because I'm going to be richer tomorrow than I am today. So will my clients.
At work, I'm ice cold. I don't jump onto trends. I'm not dropping millions into cryptocurrency. What I do is mentally jerk off to tiny fractional percentage gains. I roar like a goddamn lion when one of my software investors can afford to lease the new year's BMW.
But off hours? Away from the office? I'm out to always have fun. I'm the hungriest guy in the room. I'm the man you don't leave alone with your hot wife desperate for something other than the husbandly missionary pump and dump or your just-turned-eighteen daughter ready to have her core hollowed out by a real man for the first time in her life. Or both -- my boss's supermodel-level wife and his twenty-something daughter are freaaaks.
I'm not here to convince you I'm a nice guy. I'm not. Lucy knew that. This year, for April Fool's, she knew how to set up the perfect Rube Goldberg machine of delightful fuckery to get me to act exactly how she knew I would.
I love her batshit crazy ass.
* * *
Lucy unofficially moved into my place about five days after we met at the party last year. I say unofficially because one day she showed up with a suitcase, and we never really talked about her leaving after that. That was weird for me. My longest relationship since my divorce lasted maybe a month, and that was so far beyond the usual one-or-two-night stands that it was, until Lucy, weird unto itself. I guess I just didn't want Lucy to go, so I never talked about it. Plus, she makes amazing souffles. You don't jinx good souffles.
As a former local news anchor she was in high demand around the city, so she landed a nice six-figure PR vice presidency. We focused on our careers outside the house, but back home, our clothes were off more often than they were on. She was on the shot, and I loved nothing so much in this world as seeing her drip me out of her pussy lips onto the bed or the concrete around the pool or on the carpet or down the front of the washer. I don't think there was an inch of that house that didn't need to be steam cleaned. She gagged on my cock like she was bobbing for apples. Her ass became my second home. We were addicted to each other.
Jump forward to mid-February and enter, house right, Samantha Dunlop. Can't blame her one bit for wanting the place next door, especially with the curved arches of the rear patio leading out to her pool and backyard. We didn't actually see her for two weeks after the "For Sale" sign disappeared from the lawn, but we were friends with the realtor and she said Samantha was a knockout but didn't know what it was she actually did.
We figured that out real fast.
When Lucy and I saw an Alfa Romeo pull in and out of the house's attached garage, we -- and by we, I mean she -- bought a gift basket of wine, chocolate, cheese and crackers and headed over. I was expecting blandly attractive, like most the other thirty-to-forty-somethings down the block.
