Chapter 12 Over-Grown Monkey Butt

Three weeks ago...

Nico

Today was Becca's birthday, so our family and friends were gathered at my house for a poolside cook-out. My sister wasn't a huge fan of birthdays - her own at any rate - and had asked for something simple. I'd planned to have it catered, but Mom and Nonna had a holy fit over that idea. So, my father and Tony had declared themselves the grill masters for the day. Mom and Nonna had prepared numerous side dishes, and Allie had brought desserts.

She had made Becca's favorite carrot cake, along with mini cheesecakes topped with fruit, Turtle brownies, and her famous chocolate chip cookies. I fucking drooled when I walked up behind her as she was setting it all out on the long table. Not gonna lie, it was a toss-up as to which I wanted to take a bit out of - the desserts, or Allie's ass in those shorts. Sweet Jesus, the woman was trying to kill me. Then she turned around, and the sight of her fitted V-neck shirt stretched across her gorgeous tits made my knees weak. Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun, which made me want to nibble my way up the side of her neck to her cute little earlobes. Of course, nibbling my way down her neck to her luscious tits sounded like an even fucking better idea.

OK, I needed a distraction before I pitched a full tent in the board shorts I was wearing. I looked around my backyard, and my gaze landed on my Nonna, who was wearing a T-shirt with an old lady sunbathing in a thong, the phrase "Sun's out, buns out" emblazoned across the bottom of the picture. Oh hell no. Yep, just the thing I needed to wilt my willie.

Gracie came running over then, with a little boy fast on her heels. "Uncle Nico!" she screeched. Sometime over the past few months, I'd gone from Unka to Uncle. It was a reminder that my little princess was growing up. She launched herself me and half-hid behind my legs. "Micah's trying to give me his cooties."

I recognized the boy as the son of Becca's best friend, Min Zhang. Min had been divorced for a couple of years, and her ex-husband had moved across the country as soon as the divorce was final. Now, at five years-old, Micah hadn't seen his dad since. I knew Min and Micah were better off without the rat-bastard, but it still had to be hard on them. Min was a lawyer, so at least the asshole ex hadn't been able to weasel out of paying his financial support.

Micah stopped trying to chase Gracie and stared up at me shyly. "Hey bud," I said with a grin. "What are you two doing?"

"We're playing tag, but Grace won't let me catch her," he complained. Then he peered around me to look at Gracie. "And boys don't have cooties, girls do!"

"Nuh-uh," said Gracie. Not much of a compelling argument there, Gracie-girl, I thought to myself. We needed to work on her debating skills.

I laughed and reached down to swing Grace up into my arms. She let out a high-pitched squeal and I put her down with a wince, hoping the hearing would return to my left ear soon. Micah stood there giggling, so I grabbed him and tossed him over my shoulder, pretending to run off with him. He laughed harder, and Min called out "If he throws up down your back, don't say I didn't warn you!"

That made me think twice, so I carefully set him back on his feet and sent the two kids off to play on the swing set I'd had installed for Gracie last summer. When I looked over at them a few minutes later, they had managed to rope Josh into pushing them both on the swings, and Min was walking over to join them.

As I watched, Josh seemed to get distracted by Min's approach and forgot to watch out for the swinging kids. Micah almost knocked into him, and Josh stumbled back barely missing a flying swing to his crotch. I snickered as Josh windmilled his arms in an attempt to keep from falling on his ass. Min rushed to help him, as he righted himself and tried to look suave. They spoke for a couple of minutes, and Min laughed and blushed at something he'd said. I'd seen Josh in lady-killer mode before, and if I wasn't mistaken, he had just flipped that switch on.

Allie walked up and murmured quietly, "Well, that looks interesting. I wondered how long it would take him. Poor guy just about swallowed his tongue when Min walked out here earlier."

Min was a pretty woman. Petite, with dark hair falling straight to the middle of her back, deep brown eyes, and a warm smile. Sharp as a fucking tack in the courtroom, too, from what Becca had told me. I wasn't surprised that she had caught Josh's eye.

"Min's a pretty serious woman, and Josh is a fucking goofball. Should we take bets on how long it takes her to wise up?" I asked.

Allie tsked and smacked me across the stomach with the back of her hand. "Oh, be nice. Josh is a good guy with a lot to offer. They may seem to be a little mismatched, but opposites do sometimes attract, you know."

"The meat is ready," Dad hollered, saving me from a response to that statement.

We all dutifully followed Mom's instructions as we moved around the tables filling our plates. Allie helped Gracie with hers, and I filled one for Allie as I got my food. We made our way to one of the smaller tables set up around the pool, with Gracie sitting between Allie and me. Nonna joined us and we all started to eat.

Nonna pointed to her T-shirt. "This shirt you got me is a hit, Allie. Matt thinks he and the boys should pose with me for a picture, and you can post it on that Insta-thingy."

I turned to Allie and raised a brow. "So, you got her that shirt? I should have known."

"Yes, I did. I knew she'd love it." Allie smiled and winked at me.

Oh, fuck me, I'd do anything for Allie when she smiled at me like that, even eat my lunch while trying to avoid looking at saggy old-lady buns in a thong.

After lunch, we cleared away the food, except the desserts, and Mom brought out the candles. We sang a rousing rendition of the Happy Birthday song, and Becca blew out the candles.

Nonna piped up and said, "You know, for having a bunch of professional musicians in this group, that song sounded like shit."

Matt laughed and said, "There's always a critic!" Nonna snorted and flipped him the bird.

Once the dessert table had been pretty well demolished, I collapsed on a lounger next to the one Allie and Gracie were sitting on. Allie was braiding Grace's hair and putting more sunscreen on her.

"Oh damn, Sunshine, I'm going to have to double my work-outs this week. I am seriously addicted to your baking." I said, rubbing a hand across my stomach. I was seriously addicted to Allie period, but I didn't think I should mention that at the moment.

Allie smiled at me and said "I'm glad you enjoyed them. I'm also glad I kept some of the brownies and cookies in a container in the kitchen. I didn't get any of the ones out here. I think your dad and Tony ate them all."

"Yeah, I thought I was going to have to arm-wrestle my dad for the last cookie on that tray."

Allie got a soft sad smile on her face then. "Alex always loved those cookies. I remember I made a batch to take into the studio for you guys once and didn't leave any at home for him. He pouted for days, until I made a batch that he could have all for himself." She chuckled then.

"Oh, I remember. Trust me, we heard all about it the next time he saw us," I laughed, remembering how he carried on about how the cookies she'd made for him were superior to the batch she'd brought in to us "He tried to convince us that you had messed up the first batch you made, and that's why you gave them to us."

"Are you talkin' about my Daddy?" Gracie asked curiously. Allie smiled and nodded.

"We sure are, princess," I replied. "He looooved your Mommy's chocolate chip cookies. He was like the Cookie Monster!" I grabbed her arm and pretended to gobble it up, making her and Allie laugh.

"Ok, sweet pea, let's get your floaties on and you can get in the pool," Allie said.

I stood up and held out my hand. "Come on, princess, we'll grab your floaties and I'll get in with you while Mommy changes into her swimsuit."

Once Grace and I were in the pool, we joined Josh in the shallow end, where he was trying to teach Micah to swim. Min was standing close by, and I wasn't sure who she was watching more closely, her son, or the tattooed rocker with him. Matt and Becca were at the other end of the pool, playing some kind of water dodge ball with an inflatable beach ball. Becca spiked the ball at Matt, laughing when it bounced off his head. He lunged for her with a shout and dragged her under the water before she could get away. They both resurfaced a moment later, Matt laughing like a fucking loon, and Becca sputtering water and trying to smack him. I could remember them both doing the very same thing in the pool at our parents' house growing up. The three of us practically lived in that pool during our high school years, with pool parties just about every weekend, until Matt's and my senior year, when we formed our first band.

Tony yelled "Cannonball" and jumped into the pool ass-first, splashing everyone in the resulting tidal wave. Nonna, sitting at a table with my parents, yelled at him that he needed to improve his technique, and told him that the judges only scored him a 2.5 for that piss-poor effort.

Allie came out of the pool house carrying a stack of towels at that moment, and I'm pretty fucking sure I forgot how to breathe. Oh, fuuucck me! Her dark green one-piece wasn't daring by LA standards, but good God, the way her curves filled out that scrap of fabric was probably illegal in some states. When Gracie regained my attention by splashing the water in front of me with the palm of her hand, I glanced down at her, fighting the urge to blush over the dirty thoughts I was having about her mother. I was going straight to hell, no doubt about it.

As Allie walked toward the lounge chair, I watched her ass like it was my fucking job. She slipped off her sandals and set the towels down on the table next to her. I tried to roll my tongue back up into my mouth when she turned back around toward the pool, and I got a full, unobstructed view of her from the front. I had a sudden urge to pull that swimsuit down and fuck her tits until I came all over them. Yep, straight to hell.

She stopped at the edge of the steps leading into the pool, and gave me a nervous, self-conscious smile as she caught my stare. I guided Gracie over that direction, thanking the patron saint of horny men for the protection the pool water provided my lower half. "I think your mommy should join us, don't you, princess?"

Gracie clapped and bobbed up and down in the water as Allie carefully made her way down the steps and into the pool. She stopped in front of me in the waist-deep water, as Gracie dog-paddled around us in a circle. Between the two years of swim lessons she'd had, plus the floaties she was wearing, she was safe in the water as long as there were adults nearby.

I reached out to swipe a smear of sunscreen off of the side of Allie's neck. I held up my finger, showing her the white cream on the tip of it. "You missed a spot," I said huskily, before rubbing my fingertip back along the curve of her neck.

Allie flushed and shivered, from my touch or the coolness of the pool water, I wasn't sure. She muttered her thanks, before looking around the pool. She smiled at Matt and Becca's antics with the beach ball, and then looked back at me. I figured I should earn some kind of a goddamned award for my efforts to keep from staring at the creamy tits that I'd been fantasizing about just moments before. She seemed uncomfortable, and I didn't want to make it worse by staring.

"You look gorgeous today, Sunshine. I don't think I've told you that yet," I said with a smile. I noticed that her gaze was flitting all around me, her eyes briefly resting on my mouth, my shoulders, and my chest, lingering for a moment on my Storm Front tattoo before darting back up to my face. Her face was make-up free, with a few little freckles across the bridge of her nose, her beautiful green eyes sparkling up at me.

She fucking owned me, and it killed me that she had no idea how incredible she was. She saw the starlets and supermodels that seemed to line the streets here in Los Angeles, but what she didn't realize was that their beauty was manufactured. It was completely contrived, with professional beauty treatments, cosmetic surgery, and make-up tricks that rivaled the special effects used in movies. Strip that away, and those women were still attractive of course, but they weren't extraordinary.

The bigger problem was that most of them - at least the ones I had encountered - were so convinced that the outer package meant everything that they didn't let their inner selves shine. They censored everything they said and did, to make sure it projected the "right image". The majority of them were nothing more than a vapid, narcissistic, soul-sucking void, wrapped in sinew and blemish-free skin.

I much preferred Allie, no matter how she was dressed. Cocktail dress on with hair and make-up just right, barely dressed in a bathing suit that made me want to fuck her in my pool, or just waking up, with her tousled hair, sleepy eyes and fresh face, luscious curves hidden under a baggie sleep shirt that said "I'm great in bed...I can sleep for hours".

That particular shirt has inspired a few fantasies, too. It hits mid-way down her thick thighs, and she doesn't realize that when she reaches up to get one of her mugs out of the cabinet, it rides up just enough to flash a hint of her panties, and for me to see the lower curve of her ass cheeks. She has a single freckle on the left one. I have dreams about that freckle. I preferred Allie, who was smart and funny, wickedly savage when she was pissed off, compassionate, loving, and stronger than she realized. I preferred Allie, who found reasons to smile all the time, and lit up my world whenever the reason for her smile was me.

I was brought back to reality when I heard my sister shriek, "Aaaaah!" Allie and I whipped our heads toward Becca and Matt. He had apparently gone underwater and came up between her legs, so that she was being lifted out of the water on his shoulders as he rose to his feet. She was holding on to his left ear, with her right hand plastered across his forehead in a desperate attempt to stay upright. Matt was laughing hard as her legs flailed, knocking them both off balance. Becca fell off sideways as Matt was pushed under, and they both came up to the surface sputtering and laughing.

Dad hollered "Now, children, no rough-housing in the pool."

Matt bumped his shoulder against a grinning Becca. "Yeah, child, no rough-housing in the pool"

"You're calling me a child, you over-grown monkey butt?"

"Monkey butt?" he hooted. "That's really adult of you."

"Oh, bite me, Matty," Becca sniped with a roll of her eyes.

He waggled his brows at her, leaned close to her and said, "Gladly, baby girl, as long as I get to pick the spot to bite."

She flushed and started to pull herself up at the side of the pool. Matt followed her, with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. He helped boost her up, with his hand way too close to her ass for my peace of mind, then hopped out of the pool himself. I watched my little sister walk over to pick up a towel, as Matt - my oldest friend in the goddamned world - followed behind her with his eyes glued to her ass.

What the fuck??? I whipped my head around to look at Allie, wondering if she saw that shit too. Judging by the smirk on her face and the side-eye she was shooting my way, she apparently did. "Tell me I did not just see Matt eye-fucking my little sister?" I hissed.

Allie chuckled and said, "I'm not saying a word." She lifted her hand to her mouth, and mimed zipping her lips.

"But...but they've known each other since we were kids," I sputtered. "She's like a sister to him!"

"Oh, calm your tits, Nico. First of all, she's your sister, not his. Secondly, you don't know if anything is actually going on, and if it is, quite frankly it's not your business. They are both adults, and it's not like they don't know each other well. I don't think they would risk their friendship like that, but if they do, it's their business."

Well, shit. That last comment was...a little too close for comfort. I'm so fucking confused.