The Stocking Was Hung(18)

The answer comes immediately: no.

Logan is from a very wealthy, upper class family. Their idea of Christmas is flying everyone to St. Thomas for the week to be waited on hand and foot while sunbathing on the beach, not touring a house from a Christmas movie set in the eighties or putting up with a cross-dressing uncle/aunt with wandering hands. This is why it took me an entire year to even get up the nerve to ask Logan to come home with me. I knew he would spend five minutes with my family and look at me differently. I’d no longer be the strong, independent woman who moved across the country to have a life of my own. I’d be the middle class, crazy girl with a loud, inappropriate family to match. My family embarrassed me when I was with Logan. Looking at them now with Sam’s hand in mine, joking with each other, quoting lines from the movie and just happy to be together, I’m not embarrassed to have Sam here by my side witnessing all of it. I’m happy for the first time in a long time, and something about that scares the shit out of me. How could a guy I just met make me feel this way? Cause me look at my family differently and actually appreciate them, instead of wanting to hide them away?

“Alright, Black Bart, now you get yours,” Nicholas suddenly announces, standing in the middle of the living room after we’d wound our way through the whole house, holding a BB gun up to his shoulder, aimed at Sam.

I laugh at the quote from the movie, but Sam quickly drops my hand, holding both of his palms up and out in surrender with a tiny look of fear on his face.

“Jesus, don’t shoot me! I won’t drink anymore of your sister’s eggnog, I swear!” Sam panics.

Pressing my hand against his back, I rub small, smoothing circles in the middle of it, trying not to giggle.

“Sam, it’s fine. It’s a prop from the movie, it’s not loaded,” I explain softly, the rest of my family laughing at his expense.

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” Aunt Bobbie adds.

“It’s an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two hundred shot range model air rifle!” Nicholas says excitedly, quoting the movie and hefting the gun up higher by his shoulder as he sets his sights right on Sam’s chest.

Sam sighs, dropping his hands down to his sides.

“I’ve been shot at with sniper rifles and almost got my legs blown off from a road-side IED, and I just pissed myself over a BB gun,” he laments. “This is just pathetic.”

“Don’t worry, Dr. Urinstein will fix you right up tomorrow morning,” my mother says with a smile.

Nicholas lowers the gun a tad, looking at Sam strangely, while my father sidles up next to Nicholas, shooting Sam the same questioning look.

“Uh, remember? He’s in that production of Oklahoma and he’s just running his lines,” I blurt out with an uncomfortable laugh.

“That play takes place at the turn of the century with cowboys, not snipers and road side bombs,” Aunt Bobbie informs everyone. “Believe me, I know my Broadway.”

“Yes, well, um, this is a modern day version set in Afghanistan about soldiers,” I tell them lamely. “It’s very new-age and you know…modern. All the playhouses are doing it.”

Everyone quietly looks back and forth between Sam and I, and I really wish a hole would open up in this damn house and swallow me up. I have never been good at lying and this just proves it.

“I like socks,” Sam suddenly mumbles.

“What a douche,” Nicholas laughs, his finger accidentally pressing against the trigger of the rifle while he continues to lower the BB gun.

A small pop sound fills in the room, followed quickly by the loudest scream I’ve ever heard. I turn my head in Sam’s direction just as his hands clutch his crotch and he falls to his knees.

“MOTHER FUCKER! HE SHOT MY BALLS!” Sam wails.

“EVERYONE OUT OF MY WAY! HE NEEDS MOUTH TO BALL RESUSCITATION!” Aunt Bobbie screams, shuffling quickly to Sam’s side in her four-inch stilettos.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe this thing was loaded,” Nicholas muses as he pets the gun lovingly and my mother smacks him in the arm.

“Nicholas Holiday, apologize right now for shooting that poor man in the balls,” she scolds.

Squatting down by Sam’s side, I continue rubbing his back as he clutches his junk and rocks back and forth, a sad keening sound coming out of his mouth.

“It stings…mother of God it stings,” he moans.

“You’ll shoot your balls off, you’ll shoot your balls off!” Nicholas says in a sing-song voice, altering the line in the movie to fit the situation.

I smack Aunt Bobbie’s hand away when she starts petting Sam’s head and his moaning gets louder.

“Everyone, OUT!” I yell. “We’ll meet you out by the van.”

My mom smacks Nicholas again and he gives a half-assed apology before setting the gun down against the wall behind the tree where he found it, everyone quietly shuffling out the front door.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I apologize, my hand still rubbing Sam’s back until he finally stops rocking and slowly gets up from his knees with a groan. “What can I do? What do you need?”

My brother just shot him in the balls. If he didn’t want to leave before, he sure as hell will now. He made it through a year-and-a-half tour of duty without getting shot and on his very first family outing with me, he takes one to the nuts. Nuts that I haven’t even had the pleasure of touching yet, dammit.