Anger Bang

Thea was in Pepto Bismol pink hell and seriously rethinking her life choices.

She was drowning in lace, had flounces up to her literal neck, and was white-knuckling some kind of parasol thing that looked straight out of a 1980s high school prom hellscape.

“Don’t forget your hat,” her mom called out.

Thea closed her eyes and muffled her groan as much as she could. Of course, there was also a hat. It was big and round with layers of pink organza and was wide enough to cover both shoulders in shade.

This was when she should run—Dr. Kowecki would agree that flight was a legit response to all of this, right? But changing old habits was easier in theory back in Harbor City than it was when she was face to face with her mom. Yeah, the real reason why they said you couldn’t go back home again was because you automatically turned back into your preteen self around your family. And twelve-year-old Thea had been all about controlling the chaos by going along to get along.

Come to think about it, thirty-one-year-old Thea was, too.

Fine. She really wasn’t fine.

Still, did she yell about how ridiculous all of this was? Did she lift up her hoop skirt and make a run for it? Did she go ice maiden so her mom would reconsider that maybe all of this was a bit much?

No.

No.

Aaaaaaand no.

Instead, she turned around and headed back to the ultra-glam wedding party RV where she took the hat without rolling her eyes because that’s who she was in this family, the go-along-to-get-along introverted nerd sister. “Thanks, Mom.”

Bridesmaid dresses were often atrocious, this was an accepted part of being in a wedding, but Thea’s sister had taken the cliché and blown it up to Argentinosaurus sized. God knew the dress felt like it weighed the same two hundred thousand pounds as the one hundred and thirty-foot long sauropod. Of course, the Argentine lizard was in southwest Argentina and Thea was in Colter’s Hell, Wyoming.

As she marched toward the mouth of the Stinkingwater River Canyon, she couldn’t mistake the hint of rotten eggs hanging in the air from the hot spring’s natural sulfurous hot water vents. This was what happened when reality show producers had several million dollars riding on the cable TV celebrity wedding of the year and needed to dial up the drama by making everyone there miserable to make bank on their investment.

“Thea, honey,” her mom said as she came to stand beside her. “I know this is a bit much. But your sister, well, your sister is gonna do things her way, and you’re just so good about going with the flow and just making things work.”

Yeah, making it work for other people.

“Jackie just has her heart set on making this the perfect eighties-themed destination wedding like the TV people wanted, and I promised to do whatever I could to support her.” Her mom let out a blissful sigh and pressed her hand to her heart. “She is the star, after all.”

Two air kisses later followed by a motherly tsk-tsk as she looked at the way the bridesmaid’s dress just hung off her no-ass, no-boobs, no-ultra-desirable-curves-in-the-right-places frame, her mom walked back to the RV. Thea knew what her mom was thinking. If Thea worked out more. If she’d been more outgoing. If she’d go see that plastic surgeon everyone used to refresh and enhance. If she’d only do those things, then she wouldn’t be working in a museum with a bunch of dusty old bones but could instead be among the sparkling stars like her sister.

She knew that’s what her mom was thinking because she’d told her directly to her face more than enough times that Thea had it memorized.

It was the story of Thea’s life.

Jackie as the former child star of two kid channel TV shows was the gravitational vortex for their family since their mom uprooted them and moved to Hollywood after deciding her kids were going to be famous. Through pure determination and some questionable deals, Mom had made it happen with Jackie.

Introverted, sarcastic, dinosaur-obsessed kids like Thea didn’t do so well in showbiz. So Thea had opted for college, graduate school, and a degree in paleontology, as well as an ugly divorce from a tenured geology professor. All while Jackie had moved on to being a twenty-eight-year-old playing a high school senior on the CW and getting married to her former costar in what maybe, possibly, could be a publicity stunt gone horribly wrong.

Even now, minutes before the wedding festivities were set to begin with a to-be-filmed dress fitting, the head producer was in the RV Thea had just left, poking at every one of Jackie’s insecurities while simultaneously priming her woe-is-me-why-doesn’t-everyone-adore-the-bride sense of entitlement. Thea had tried to get her to stop, but Jackie had shot her a rich-bitch villain-of-the-week glare. Then she’d followed up with a lecture about how Thea didn’t understand how things worked in Hollywood and that she just needed to mind her own business.

Standing outside in the hellfire and brimstone stench of the Stinkingwater River was better than having to hear more of that, so Thea had left. Sure, it was a record-setting ninety-three degrees and the parasol-hat combo did next to nothing against the powerful rays of Wyoming in August sun, but she’d followed her therapist’s advice and had chosen flight!

Of course, now sweat was starting to trickle down the back of her neck and the idea of just keeping her mouth shut and doing what she was told in the air conditioning was sounding like a much better plan of action. She’d made the short walk back to the RV before realizing what she was doing. Old habits really were a bitch to break.

She was hesitating outside of the RV when a large, man-shaped shadow fell over her. Startled, she did a little jump turn thing while letting out a high-pitched squeak.

What she saw didn’t make her panicked pulse slow down, though. It sped up. No man should look that good in a tan tux with a powder blue ruffled tuxedo shirt.

He was tall enough that she had to take a step back to get a look at his face, but it was worth it. He had tropical paradise blue eyes, a square jaw covered in salt-and-pepper scruff that managed to look accidental and deliberate at the same time, and a nose with a bump that told tales about it being broken at least once but probably more. It was enough to make her breath catch. Then one side of his mouth went up in a crooked smile and her matching pink panties embroidered with Always The Bridesmaid—thank you, Jackie—went up in flames.

“If you don’t laugh at what I’m wearing, I’ll share my flask.” He unscrewed the top and held it out. “You look like you need it.”

“It’s that obvious?” she asked as she accepted the offering, a sizzle of awareness zinging up her arm when their fingers brushed.

He chuckled, a deep rumbly sound. “Only to anyone with eyes.”

Bracing for whatever was about to burn all the way down her throat to her empty belly, she took a swig from the flask. Lemon. Lime. Bubbles. The shock of soda when she’d been expecting whiskey or gin or even straight-up lighter fluid sent the liquid down the wrong pipe as she spluttered and gasped for air.

“That,” she said, using the back of her finger to dab at her watery eyes, “was not what I expected.”

He gave her an intense look, as if he needed to check for himself that she was okay, then gave her a lazy smile. “The best things in life rarely are.”

“Sorta like this wedding?” The words—which were the very opposite of reality considering the air around them reeked of rotten eggs—tumbled out of her.

“This,” he said, leaning over and lowering his voice, “is exactly the nightmare I expected.”

Eyes wide with shock at someone actually saying it out loud, she stared up at him and a laugh—her real one that was loud, nasally, and gave off more than a little hint of woodpecker—burst out. “It is.”

She slapped her hand over her mouth and stifled the last of her chuckles while they shared a knowing glance.

“With the exception of getting to meet you, of course,” he said, watching her as she started to take another drink from his flask. “You have to be the one person in the world who could make that outfit look good.”

Feeling shock at his words and the shiver of anticipation they sent up her spine, she did a shit job of using her depth perception and bonked the lip of the flask against her teeth.

Wow.

Watch out for Thea Pope, world. She’s setting a land-dork flirting failure record and putting her dentist’s kids through college at this rate.

“You’re kidding, right?” He had to be.

He shook his head and winked at her. “Not in the least.”

Was he flirting with her? No. People didn’t do that. They flirted with Jackie. They ignored her, which was more than fine by her. Dinosaur bones she got. People? They left her at a total loss.

When she didn’t say anything because she was too busy gaping at him with her jaw on the dusty ground—yes, she was well aware of how terminally lame she was—he continued.

In her head, she said thank you with an air of confidence and mystery before flirting right back. In real life, she made some kind of gurgling, grunting sound and took another drink from the flask—at least this time she didn’t make a total idiot of herself by forgetting how to swallow or breaking a tooth.

Instead, she just took the drink and then stood there about as useful as the itty-bitty arms on a T-Rex while the man looked at her with an amused grin. Wow. Her minor in communications with an emphasis on public speaking (in case she ever got to present at academic conferences) was really coming in handy.

Yep. It was just her, the hot guy who carried a flask full of Sprite, the sulfur stench of the fumaroles and hot springs dotting the landscape, and the silence of a shy paleontologist who couldn’t string two words together.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Just when the moment was on the verge of morphing from awkward to downright pitiful, the RV door flew open, slamming against the outside of the RV with a metallic thump. Jackie stood in the doorway, her hands on her Disney-princess-levels-of-poof wedding dress.

“You are not supposed to be here,” she said, looking directly at the guy. “It’s bad luck. Plus, you were supposed to shave off that stupid scruff before filming started.”

Unlike nearly everyone else who’d ever been told to do something by Jackie, though, he didn’t cower or immediately agree. Instead, he threw back his head and laughed. Loudly. Right into the cloudless blue sky. Then, without a single word, he turned and started walking toward the groom’s RV.

Mouth agape, Thea held out his flask. “You forgot this.”

He looked back over his shoulder and gave her a slow smile and wink. “Keep it.”

Oh my.

Her panties were barely even a memory at this point.

Jackie swiped the flask from Thea and downed a long drink. “Oh my God,” she spluttered after the first swallow, “it’s Sprite. Who keeps soda in a flask? Oh. My. God. He’s such a weirdo. Come on, it’s time!”

The dress fitting.

Yeah.

That’s what Thea was here for, not meeting a hot guy way out of her league who looked like a sexy badass even in a dorky early eighties tux and drank straight Sprite in a hip flask.

Someone in production was deep in their eighties nostalgia and Thea didn’t think it was possible to be more sick of a decade she hadn’t even been alive for.

Fine, her mood was sour after spending the entirety of the bridesmaid dress fitting being told that chicken cutlets and butt pads were available to help fill out her dress in all of the right spots—instead of the wrong spot of her belly that just wasn’t so concave it looked like she’d removed an internal organ or three.

Where were her round belly, no boobs or butt having kindred? Her kingdom for her apple-shaped sisters with solid, muscular legs!

Wow. All of that Mt. Dew she’d guzzled after tossing the hoop skirt across the room when she’d finally gotten to change out of the bridesmaid dress must have just kicked in. Her fellow scientists may have proven that there was no such thing as a sugar rush, but she sure felt like she was dancing on the thin string of an adrenaline-spiked high wire. It was like her whole body was telling her it was go time.

Except she wasn’t a go-time kinda woman. She was a melt-into-the-background-and-avoid-the-cameras-at-all-costs kind of woman. Too bad she stuck out like a sore thumb in her flowery cotton skirt and white tank top with her hair pulled back into a simple ponytail at what she’d thought was a relaxed meet-and-greet type of first night in Wyoming get together.

Yeah. Not even close.

Somehow she’d missed the memo that the entire week leading up to the wedding was eighties cosplay with each evening being a party like it was 1982 event. The resort’s barn had been decorated like the original Footloose prom for the reception and everyone was in their Madonna, Springsteen, or Prince and the Revolution best. Seriously, how did the others manage to get their hair that high? One of the bridesmaids had bangs that stood half a foot straight up from her forehead.

Thankfully, the producer, a perpetually stressed-out-looking woman named Justine Cummings, was ignoring Thea’s obvious misstep for bigger game—Jackie who’d gone AWOL.

Sorta.

As far as the rest of TV crew was concerned the bride had absconded. In reality, though, Jackie was hiding behind a humongous bronze statue of mountain man John Colter after he’d left the Lewis and Clark expedition. The artist had created a haggard, snarly, fuck-you-and-your-horse statue so Colter looked exactly like someone who’d have a hell named after him.

“Are you sure they’re not heading this way?” Jackie asked, her voice barely louder than the Flock of Seagulls’ song “I Ran (So Far Away)” blasting out of the speakers surrounding the dance floor.

Thea scanned the crowd, her gaze stopping on the flask-carrying mystery man. He was in a black T-shirt with a Humbolt Motorcycle logo on it and jeans that were worn but definitely not acid washed (thank you, Baby Jesus). At least she wasn’t the only one who missed the eighties cosplay memo.

“Hello, earth to Thea,” Jackie said, her tone taking on the Valley Girl sound that was totally eighties. “Can I do this or not?”

“Yeah, you’re good,” she said without bothering to peel her attention away from Mr. Cool Drink of Sprite.

“Thank fuck,” Jackie muttered before taking a shot.

It wasn’t that the alcohol wasn’t flowing at the fake prom, but her sister was taking shots of tequila when a vodka company had sponsored the wedding. Justine had threatened everyone with a painful death via being drowned in the Stinkingwater River if they even accidentally got any non-branded alcohol on camera during the livestreams.

What kind of alcohol Jackie was tossing back was the last thing occupying Thea’s mind, though. She couldn’t look away from her mystery guy over by the bar, still drinking from his flask, and she must have made a sound—please God, not a moan—because Jackie peeked around the statue.

“Who are you even looking at?” her sister asked.

Thea squeezed her eyes shut. Fuckity, fuck, fuck. Why did she have to be such an open book?

“The guy from this afternoon,” she said before she could think of something other than the truth.

Improv had never been her thing.

“Ugh. Dex’s brother Kade is the worst.” Jackie poured a third shot. “I do not understand why he picked him to be his best man.”

So that’s who he was. She’d heard bits and pieces about him during the fitting this afternoon. According to Jackie and her pair of fellow actress bridesmaids, Kade was boring, always reading, hot but not hot enough to get away with being that annoying, and—worst of all—not involved in the showbiz industry at all.

“It makes complete sense that he’s the best man. They are brothers,” Thea said, her breath catching when he turned and caught her staring.

Heat beat her cheeks as she jerked not just her attention to the floor littered with glittering confetti and neon green and hot pink tissue paper flowers that had fallen from the hastily put-up decorations.

“Well, he’s still an asshole with an asshole name,” Jackie said, her words slurring together just the slightest bit. “I mean his name is Kade St. James. What the hell kind of dumb name is that?”

“He didn’t name himself.” God knew she wouldn’t have picked Thea, which conjured up a whole mysterious and tough image that did not conform to the reality of her boring, thick dark bangs, thicker glasses, and waaaaay thicker thighs.

“Well, going by the silver hair starting to sprout in his beard, he’s had plenty of time to change it. Thank God Dex has barely spoken to him since I told him yesterday how rude Kade was to me all the time. I mean, he actually complained about a beautiful destination wedding. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience in rural Wyoming here. I was all like, it’s just part of the process, buddy. Stop being selfish and deal with it.”

“And he didn’t take that well?” What a shocker.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Jackie said, totally missing the sarcasm in Thea’s tone. “He rolled his eyes at me. Can you believe it? So. Rude. I told Dex, but he said it was too late to swap Kade out for one of his cuter and younger and nicer friends who it wouldn’t be such a total embarrassment for me if my bridesmaid banged. Why they are even checking him out, I have no idea. I mean, he’s just the worst. Plus, now I’m stuck with him in all of my pictures.”

“Won’t he be a part of your life forever now that you’re married?” Thea turned and faced her sister, accepting the small mirror Jackie shoved into her hands to hold up for her sister before she reapplied her lipstick. “I mean he and Dex are brothers.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean he had to be the best man.” Her sister smacked her lips together, added a second coat of red, and then winked at her reflection. “I mean, look at us. You’re not my maid of honor, and you’re my only sister. I wouldn’t even have had you in the bridal party at all, but the producers insisted.”

Thea stood there, her mouth hanging open and humiliation burning her from the inside out as she tried to process what in the fuck her sister had just told her. Her lungs were too tight. Her glasses suddenly became the wrong prescription because things had gone blurry. And no matter how much she replayed Jackie’s statement in her head, she could not get it to make sense.

Her sister, though, didn’t notice Thea’s shock. She just took her compact mirror back and dropped it into the borrowed designer clutch she was carrying.

Then the DJ started a Prince song that had part of a social media dance craze that had even made it to Thea’s dinosaur side of things and called the bride and the bridesmaids to the center of the dance floor.

The song was blaring over the speakers, but Thea stayed frozen to the spot, watching her sister and the other bridesmaids managing to all be half a beat off while doing the synchronized dance moves as the cameras caught every second of it.

She just kept hearing Jackie’s words over and over again in her head.

The producers insisted.

If there had been a chair anywhere near, Thea would have crumbled into it. Sure, she and Jackie had their issues, but they were sisters. That was a sacred bond, one that lasted through thick and thin, through good times and bad, through sickness and in health. But it wasn’t enough for Jackie to want her to be a part of one of the biggest days in her life?

Oh, that hurt. Badly. It was the kind of jagged pain that caught her off guard and hit a secret sensitive spot so vulnerable she hadn’t even known it was there.

Desperate for a way out of the reception before the shock had worn off and she did something horrible like break into tears where the cameras could spot her, Thea’s gaze landed on Kade, the man Jackie was dead set on none of her bridesmaids fucking.

And that was the very moment when a lightbulb blazed to life. Fuck flight. She was going to channel all of this embarrassment and hurt into a fight response—and she was going to fight dirty.

She was going to have sex with the one man here that her sister hated the most.

Tonight.

Probably on top of that hideous bridesmaid dress. And she’d maybe even let him spank her with that damn pink parasol—or better yet, maybe feisty Thea would spank him! It was going to be a glorious anger bang with a guy she’d never ever see again and who seemed like the kind to deliver on multiple orgasms—which she’d be able to remind her sister of for the next forever. She’d tell Jackie just how damn good that salt-and-pepper beard hand felt against the inside of her thighs. And the thing he’d do with his tongue? All of that, she’d tell her sister all of that every Thanksgiving in graphic detail as her sister passed the sausage and cornbread stuffing.

There would be details! So. Many. Details.

Remember how you said you didn’t want any of your bridesmaids to fuck Kade?

Remember how you didn’t even want me as a bridesmaid?

And yet I was and I did. Oops!

Petty?

Yes.

A win-win for her?

Fuck yes.

Okay, multiple orgasms was pushing it, but at least one good toe-curling, forget-your-own-name climax that would have her seeing T-Rexes in confetti-covered party dresses was definitely what she needed. Was that really asking too much after this wedding week hell?

Maybe, but fuck it. She was doing it anyway. Sometimes revenge came with orgasms. That was the beauty of it.

Fucking Kade St. James—Jackie’s most hated guest—was the perfect way to get back at her sister.

Crossing her fingers behind her back, she sent up a quick prayer to the patron saint of revenge orgasms and made her way over to Mr. Tall, Hot, and Completely Hated By Her Sister. She reached up—way up—and tapped on the shoulder before she could lose her nerve.

Kade turned around and smiled. The way his grin was higher on one side than the other sent a wave of desire through her warm enough that she started fanning herself with a crushed tissue flower before she realized what she was doing.

He discombobulated her. It was her only excuse for what happened next. If she would have been herself—a grown-ass woman in her early thirties, a respected paleontologist, a human who could name every one of the bones of the one-hundred-and-twenty-two-foot-long Titanosaur at the American Museum of Natural History—the question would never have tumbled out of her mouth quite like it did right as the DJ decided to take a break.

“So,” she said, her voice loud enough to be heard over the eighties synth-pop music that was no longer playing. “You want to get out of here and have a no-strings-attached, hate-the-bridezilla fuck?”

There were four whole beats of silence, and then every camera in the room that was livestreaming the party focused on Thea.

…

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