Chapter 5

Once again, the weather had been idyllic all day long, so the group collectively decided to camp out on the lakeshore. Things got off to a rocky start right from the get-go, when Bert showed up at the beach still carrying his rifle, as he’d spent the afternoon hunting squirrels again.

Nobody else wanted it around, especially if they were all going to get as wasted as they had been last night. Adding a loaded gun to that kind of anarchy seemed like crossing the line from stupid to downright insane. Karen demanded that Bert get rid of the gun and Marcy echoed her sentiments. Even Jeff, who normally had his bro’s back, seemed noticeably uncomfortable that the gun had been brought.

But Bert stubbornly refused to carry the gun all the way back to the cabin. He condescendingly assured the girls that he’d put the safety on and that it was completely harmless. It soon became obvious that Bert was never going to cooperate, so the others reluctantly let the subject go.

The mood gradually lightened and the frivolity began. The boys made an early start on one of the beer cases that Bert and Jeff had driven off to buy that morning, while the girls waded out to enjoy the refreshingly cool water. The boys eventually joined them and together they played another game of water dodgeball, which seemed to put everybody in good spirits.

Marcy noticed early on that Paul seemed unusually sullen and reserved. No doubt he was still in pain over Karen. She wasn’t surprised. The blowjob she’d given him might’ve been a nice little treat, but when you’ve carried a torch for someone for as long as he’d been doting on Karen, the wounds don’t mend by just randomly screwing some other woman.

Coming back here to the place where his world fell apart and virtually re-enacting the events leading up that moment must’ve been tearing the poor guy up inside.

But she knew that nothing good would come of the others perceiving him as a sourpuss. Being stuck in his own head wasn’t doing him any favors, either. So, she took it upon herself to reach out to him and gently encourage him to join in with the group, at times when he looked like he needed a little extra nudge. She called him out to the lake when it looked like he might just linger on the beach and during the ball game, she tossed the ball in his vicinity often and playfully taunted him to try to nail her when he came by it at other times.

The key was finesse. She didn’t want to upset him even further by making him feel pushed around; she just wanted to give him the gentle morale boost it seemed like he needed.

The other reason she employed such subtlety was so that nobody would notice the special attention she was paying to Paul. She didn’t want to give away that she knew about his pain; that he had shared that secret with her alone. Had they just “talked” about Karen in the woods that morning, Marcy probably wouldn’t have been so cautious. But the fact that their heart-to-heart chat had spiraled into something much less innocent made her reluctant to be caught showing Paul some special sympathy.

Near as she could tell, her efforts were appreciated. On the rare occasions when it seemed no one was watching, Paul would respond to her little encouragements with a weak, covert smile, which Marcy took as a silent “thank you.”

Marcy hadn’t felt like cooking that night, so when the sky started to darken and the group got hungry, Karen tried her hand at some homemade pizza. She left it in the fire too long and the crust got burnt. The rest of it, while well cooked, was nothing special. But at least it was edible.

The heavy drinking got underway much earlier this evening than it had the night before. At least, it did for Jeff and Bert. Marcy was drinking freely, but not as if she was in a race to get shitfaced. Karen, she noticed, seemed to be curbing her intake a bit, probably trying to avoid the mistake she made last night. Paul, meanwhile seemed to be nursing the same beer all night long.

Once again, a little alcohol in Bert’s system made him a bit too friendly for comfort. Initially, his ostensibly innocent gestures were directed at Karen. No doubt he figured that she was his best shot of getting laid again. It was a bittersweet development for Marcy. On one hand, she was grateful that Bert’s sleazy paws weren’t chasing after her again tonight. But on the other, the attention clearly bothered Karen and infuriated Paul. Marcy could see this evening ending in tears if Bert wouldn’t take the hint.

Unfortunately, the more he drank, the more ‘sociable’ he became. Karen began to use the others as human shields whenever Bert started getting friendly with her. Marcy filled this role more often than not. Considering the circumstances, Marcy didn’t mind doing Karen a solid, though she didn’t relish being so close to Bert, especially while wearing nothing but a bikini.

After yet more drinks, Bert’s fixation on Karen waivered and he began acting chummy with whichever of the two lovely ladies were nearest at the time. Marcy began to receive some inappropriate contact on her shoulder, waist, knee or thigh almost as often as Karen. However, by this point Marcy had consumed 3 or so beers herself and was too buzzed to be seriously annoyed by it. Bert was little more to her than a pesky fly buzzing around that she simply had to periodically brush off.

The evening rolled on. The rock kept playing. The beers kept coming.

Marcy’s awareness of what everyone else was doing began to falter and she began to feel like dancing.

By the time the last orange trace of daylight had faded from the sky, both Jeff and Bert were about as drunk as a person can get without constantly falling on their ass. It had taken them much longer to get this wasted the previous night.

Not long afterward, a conversation they were having brewed into a tense argument that quickly caught the attention of everyone else.

“ ... Dude, I don’t care. I don’t fucking care what your fucking reasons are for thinking it; there is no fucking way that you’re a better shot than me,” Bert blustered.

“Oh really?” Jeff laughed sarcastically, “Five days of hunting and you’ve hit exactly “zero” squirrels. Yeah, that’s a real hard record to top!”

“Dude, one: those fuckers are faster than they look, and two: I have bagged like, four; no, five of them!” Bert retorted, counting the points off with his fingers while still maintaining his grasp on his beer bottle.

“Bull-shit!” Jeff replied, unable to keep a straight face. “Where the fuck are they, then?”

“What? You think I’m gonna bring ‘em back with me? Like I’m fucking Granny Cartwright bringing home roadkill for dinner?” Bert countered.

“What the fuck...” Jeff muttered in confusion. “Granny Cartwright? Do you mean Granny Clampett? Jesus, you moron, you’re getting the fucking Beverly Hillbillies mixed up with Bonanza!” he corrected Bert with a gleeful grin.

“Don’t change the subject, man,” Bert told him, unimpressed. “The fact is, I could outshoot you any day of the week!”

“Oh God!” Karen groaned as she sensed what was going to happen next.

“No way,” Jeff argued.

“Well c’mon! Let’s settle this right now!” Bert challenged him.

“Fine,” Jeff agreed.

“We’ll line up five beer bottles on that log over there,” Bert suggested, pointing to a pale piece of driftwood half buried in the sand, “Five shots each. Whoever hits the most bottles wins.”

“Let’s do it,” said Jeff.

“Oh shit,” Marcy chuckled with a disparaging roll of her eyes. In terms of sobriety, she was in an odd zone where she still knew that a couple of drunken idiots playing with a gun was a stupid idea, yet wasn’t really intimidated by the danger.

“Okay, go get some bottles,” Bert told Jeff as he staggered over to collect his rifle.

“Oh no! Fuck this!” Karen declared in horrified indignation. “I’m not staying anywhere near this place if you drunk assholes are gonna start shooting off that gun!” she told them, as she stormed briskly back into the woods.

“Karen! It’s totally fine. We’re just gonna shoot some bottles, that’s all. You got nothing to worry about, I promise,” Bert tried to assuage her, to no avail. “Karen? C’mon don’t be such a pussy! KAREN?” his voice grew louder and louder the further she marched from the campfire. Karen didn’t so much as hesitate in her hasty retreat, much less respond to him. “Eh, fuck her,” Bert dismissively shrugged.

He carried the rifle over to Jeff, then helped him set their targets up. It was difficult because the log was round and uneven, and their extreme intoxication certainly didn’t make the task any easier. When they finally managed to get all five bottles to stay upright, they withdrew several yards towards the campfire.

“Are you guys seriously going to do this?” Marcy asked in exasperation.

“Well your fucking boyfriend doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, so yeah, I think we have to do this,” came Bert’s brusque answer. Marcy silently shook her head.

“Dude, I just fucking said that I could shoot as good as you. It’s not my fault if you can’t deal with it,” Jeff justified himself.

“Okay. You think you’re so good, how ‘bout we make it interesting?” Bert proposed.

“What? You mean like a bet?” Jeff asked.

“Yeah, man,” Bert confirmed.

“Okay, cool!” Jeff agreed. “So, what do you wanna bet? Like, a hundred bucks?”

“What? Get out of here, man! You gotta back yourself up with more than just a C,” Bert balked.

“Well, okay. What about two hundred? Four ... no, five hundred?” Jeff ran off thoughtlessly.

“Fuck, man,” Bert muttered in displeasure.

“A thousand?” Jeff offered.

“You know ... fuck off with your money, man. I don’t need your charity. C’mon make a real bet!” Bert told him in a moody manner.

Despite their bluster, they were good friends. But the contrast between Jeff’s reasonably wealthy background and Bert’s poorer, blue-collar background had always been a sore point that occasionally caused friction.

“Oh. Okay. So ... what, then?” Jeff asked.

“Dunno, man,” Bert shrugged.

“How ‘bout: loser has to get a tattoo that says, ‘I suck!’ On his forehead!” Jeff suggested with a broad, self-satisfied grin.

“‘I suck’? What are you? Eight?” Bert refused.

“Well okay, how ‘bout: loser has to ... loser ... No, wait. Winner has to ... ah, shit! Loser ... uh...” Jeff babbled, trying to compose a new wager on the fly.

He didn’t notice his girlfriend rolling her eyes at his stupidity.

“Winner gets to drive the loser to the hospital,” Paul muttered bitterly under his breath. He’d only been speaking to himself, but Marcy overheard the remark and instantly broke into a hysterical giggle.

“Shut up, Marcy,” Jeff offhandedly chided her as he tried to concentrate on his problem.

The moment he said her name, Bert had an epiphany.

“Well, how ‘bout this, man: Winner gets to fuck Marcy?” Bert suggested.

Marcy’s trailing laughter was swiftly severed. For a moment the campsite descended into a deathly silence where even the fire didn’t seem to crackle. Her blood ran stone cold and her body froze in place, her trembling eyes shooting a gaze of raw fury at the shirtless drunken imbecile who just spoke. Surely, surely, she must’ve misheard. Surely, even he couldn’t have spoken an idea as disgusting as that out loud.

“What? Fuck off, man! We’re not doing that!” Jeff rebuffed, without so much as a hint of indignation. He reacted as if the idea was merely silly, not grossly offensive.

“Yeah, ‘cause you know you can’t hit shit!” Bert mocked him.

“Okay, fine!” Jeff agreed as a kneejerk defense to his wounded pride. “Winner...”

“EX-CUSE ME?“ Marcy roared in outrage.

“Relax, babe, I got this,” Jeff blithely assured her after downing a mouthful of beer.

“So yeah...” Jeff resumed his conversation with Bert, having already forgotten Marcy’s outburst, “Winner, i.e. me, gets to fuck Marcy and you can go fuck yourself.” A second later, he doubled over in hysterical laughter upon realizing the droll turn of phrase he’d made quite by accident.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bert brushed him off, unamused, as he concentrated on loading the rifle. “Just make sure you don’t get your hand caught in the bolt. I got a feeling you’re gonna be needing it tonight.”

“Uh, hell-o! Newsflash! I am not gonna fuck one of you guys just ‘cause you shoot down a bunch of fucking bottles!” Marcy venomously asserted.

“Hey c’mon, babe, be cool!” Jeff urged, as if the disgusting act he’d volunteered her for was nothing more than a simple errand.

“Yeah, Marcy,” Bert agreed, “look on the bright side. You might find out what it’s like to be with a real man for a change.”

Marcy’s jaw hung agape in utter disbelief. She looked on as Jeff and Bert debated the minor bylaws of their little contest, utterly oblivious to how mortified she was by the way they were treating her; utterly oblivious to the fact that, regardless of their own private agreement, neither of them had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting laid tonight. Not by her, anyway.

“Un-fucking-believable...” she quietly seethed, as she turned to walk away.

Only then did she notice Paul, reluctantly watching the unfolding catastrophe with a scowl of disgust.

Out of all the people present, he alone seemed to appreciate how obscene Bert and Jeff’s treatment of her was. Naturally, he wasn’t half as infuriated as she was; after all, he wasn’t the one being raffled off like a ham at a school fair. But at least he was sensitive enough to empathize with her sense of degradation. At least he was human enough to know that what Bert and Jeff were doing wasn’t okay. Paul had more decency in his little toe than those other two assholes combined had in their whole bodies.

It was cold comfort to know that she had a friend of sorts at a time like this, but it was a comfort nonetheless.

At that moment, she was a woman torn. On one hand, she just wanted to storm off into the night and get as far away from those two drunken pricks as she could. But at the same time, that didn’t feel like it was anywhere near enough. She wanted to kick their asses; wanted to hurt them as much as they’d hurt her. But even half-drunk, Marcy was no thug.

It seemed like her wounded pride would go unavenged and she was about to just walk away when watching Paul gave her an idea.

She sauntered over to his side and whispered in his ear, “How many have you had?”

“Hmm?” Paul reacted, surprised by her presence. He saw her looking at the bottle in his hand and he understood. “Oh. Two ... not counting this.” The bottle in his hand was open, but otherwise seemed practically untouched. “Why?”

“Could you do me a favor?” Marcy pleaded, still whispering.

“Sure,” Paul blindly agreed. He took his cue from her and lowered his volume to match hers.

“Take a shot at those bottles,” she told him.

“What?” Paul responded in confusion.

“You’re practically sober. You can totally out-shoot those assholes,” she assured him.

“But ... why?” he asked.

“I want these guys to get some humble pie, y’know? Get their asses kicked and realize what a couple of losers they are,” she explained.

They were so wrapped up in their little macho contest right now, outshooting them both would be about the biggest blow someone could do to their egos. It would pale in comparison to being treated like a cheap sex trophy, but for Marcy, getting the last laugh would still feel mighty good.

“But...” Paul uttered, as he wrapped his head around the surprising request. “I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

“Those guys can barely stand up! You’ve got the advantage,” Marcy pointed out. “Just give it your best shot. If you’re 0 for 5, well ... whatever.”

He looked into her pained eyes and saw how badly she needed this minor victory right now. He gave her a silent nod, then stood up and approached the two rambling drunkards.

“Well, hey, what about me?” he chimed in, silencing both of them.

“What? You want a shot, too?” Jeff asked.

“Sure. You guys get to show how good you are, why can’t I?” Paul argued. Bert and Jeff looked at each other.

“Bring it,” Bert stoically agreed.

“Okay. Wow,” Jeff said, suddenly seeming a bit disoriented by the surprise addition. “So, three players ... Winner fucks Marcy; second place ... shit!”

“Winner fucks Marcy; other two losers don’t get shit, man!” Bert declared. His arrogant manner betrayed just how certain he was that he already had first place in the bag. It made both Paul and Marcy’s blood boil. Marcy couldn’t wait to see Paul beat him.

“How ... How ‘bout, first and second place each get a turn with Marcy, and the loser just gets nothing?” Jeff bargained. It seemed that with the addition of a third player, Jeff suddenly wasn’t so confident about his odds of getting to sleep with his own girlfriend tonight. “You cool with that, babe?” he asked Marcy, as if okaying such a disgusting arrangement with her was some kind of courtesy.

Marcy simply sneered at him. As unbelievable as it was, it seemed Jeff would not stop digging the massive hole he was in until he popped out in China.

“How ‘bout: Winner fucks Marcy; second place gets to watch; loser gets squat,” Bert proposed. Jeff found the idea agreeable.

“Babe?” he checked with Marcy.

She replied only with cold silence and a sour gaze at first, but she soon relented. “Ugh! Fine...” she sighed with a roll of her eyes, purely for the sake of moving things along. Of course, she had no intention of sleeping with either of those clowns. If, by some chance, either of them did claim victory, she would simply refuse to go ahead with the deal. To hell with ‘good sportsmanship!’

But with a little luck, it wouldn’t come to that. Paul would come out on top, she’d be off the hook and Bert and Jeff would feel almost as pathetic as they actually were.

After some tediously protracted discussion about what would happen in the event of a tie, a line was drawn in the sand, and Jeff took position to begin his round. Bert and Paul stood well back and watched keenly. Bert was still sipping from his beer.

BANG!

BANG! He wasn’t hitting anything.

BANG! Not even close!

BANG! Oooh! The fourth bottle actually toppled! The breeze of the bullet must’ve blown it over.

“Ha ha! Got it!” He cheered.

“Fuck off, man! You got to “hit” the bottle! If it isn’t broken, it doesn’t count,” Bert told him.

“Ah, fuck!” Jeff complained, before bracing for his last shot. “How many do I have left?” he asked.

“One,” Bert and Paul said in unison.

“One,” Jeff muttered to himself as he concentrated. The end of the barrel was wobbling all over the place.

BANG! Swing and a miss.

“Shit,” Jeff quietly grumbled as he lowered the rifle and stepped back from the line. Bert handed Paul his beer without a word, then took the rifle off Jeff’s hands. He went up to the ‘target range’ to reset the fallen bottle, then returned to the line.

Marcy smirked at Jeff’s poor performance. The only downside was that Bert could do no worse. While Jeff was far from innocent, it was Bert’s vulgar little brain that had come up with the idea of using her body as the prize for this shooting contest. He was the one she was aching to see totally humiliated.

Bert steadied himself and lined up his shot.

BANG! The sand a couple feet behind the first bottle blasted into the air as the bullet hit the beach.

“Shit!” Marcy silently cursed. “He got really close.”

BANG! The second bottle exploded in a flash of flying brown shards! One of them must’ve struck the first bottle and it toppled to the ground, as if in fearful surrender.

“Yeah-eh!” Bert cheered in triumph. Marcy softly groaned at the unwelcome result. In her head, she shouted profanity at his good luck.

BANG! Miss.

BANG! Again, the fourth bottle toppled, but it was intact.

BANG! Nothing but sand.

All his shots had gotten close to the targets, but he’d only gotten one hit. He was sneering and grumbling about his overall score as he stepped back from the line. Marcy, on the other hand bore a tentative smile. Bert’s slump in his final three shots gave her renewed hope. Paul only had to do better than ‘1’. That was doable, she felt.

Bert exchanged the rifle for the beer that Paul had been minding for him. He downed the last few ounces in a single gulp, then lumbered over to the target range to restore the two fallen bottles and replace the busted one with the one he’d just emptied. By some miracle, he managed to stand amidst all those glass shards he’d created without lancing his foot.

He left the targeting area and walked right past the ‘spectator zone’ from where Jeff and Paul had watched him take his shots, to fetch another beer from the cooler several yards away. Once Bert was clear of the targets, Paul took position behind the line. He turned to Marcy with a nervous smile and their eyes met.

“Wish me luck!”

“Good luck!” They silently said to one another at the same time.

He turned and raised the rifle. Marcy put her hands to her mouth. She could barely stand to watch.

He took a second to gauge the trial before him. He was encouraged when he realized that from this position, the bottles were only a few yards away. No doubt the distance would’ve appeared much further through the eyes of anyone who’d had half a dozen beers.

Paul had seen numerous ‘teach the rookie to shoot’ scenes in action movies throughout his life. Right now, they were all he had to go on. He quickly recognized the protrusions on top of the barrel as the ‘sights’ and aligned them as best he could with the dead center of the first bottle. He took three deep breaths, each slower than the last, then finally pulled the trigger...

BANG! Direct hit! The first bottle was vaporized!

Taking only a second to privately celebrate, Paul realigned with the next target, and did his best to suppress the adrenaline rush with some deep, calm breathing.

BANG! Two for two! He blew the neck and half the shoulder clean off! That was it! He’d beaten them!

“Eeee!” Marcy squealed in delight, bobbing on her tippy-toes.

“Fuck, man!” Bert and Jeff moaned in unison.

Marcy was ecstatic! Her white knight had won the day and delivered her sweet justice! The competition was, in effect, over. But Marcy continued to watch eagerly as Paul lined up his next shot. The more crushing his defeat of those two jerks was, the sweeter her victory would be.

BANG! Miss.

BANG! The fourth bottle toppled, yet again. It must’ve been in a bad spot.

BANG! Yes! Bottle number five was history! Paul had tripled that asshole Bert’s score!

Paul lowered the gun and turned to face the other guys with a well-earned smug smirk. Jeff shook his head in defeat while Bert silently drank his beer and gave Paul a brief, frosty glare. It made Paul hesitant to hand the loaded gun back to him, if only for a second.

Marcy concealed her beaming grin well behind the hands cupped over her mouth. That had been fun to watch, but now things were about to get real. The contest was over, and the boys would be expecting to settle up. Her pulse began to quicken as she stifled her smile and prepared herself to deal with the situation.

At the beginning of the contest, she had hoped Paul would win because it was an easy way out of that sick arrangement the other two had made. Of course, she certainly wasn’t obligated to sleep with either of them. But she had a feeling that if either of them had won, the victor would’ve hounded her to give him his “dues”, which would’ve just been another awful trial for her to endure in a night that had already dealt her too many. Paul’s victory meant neither of them could claim her as their ‘rightful’ prize and effectively let her off the hook.

But while the competition played out, her feelings on the matter changed significantly. It began as she watched Paul waiting to take his turn. Here was this sweet guy - no, this sweet friend, standing up to two drunken clowns who were, frankly, bigger and tougher than he, simply to support her.