A Very Merry Superhero Wedding (Adventures of Lewis and Clarke) by Kitty Bucholtz Read Free Book Online Page A

had!
    “Tori! Get Tori!” someone called.
    “It’s the bride’s turn!”
    “Bring down the bride!”
    Tori got up and stood next to Lexie and Sam. “I don’t think I can follow that,” she said to Joe’s great-grandma. She leaned down and gave her a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek.
    “I can show you if you want,” Grandma Esther said in a voice loud enough to carry.
    Everyone laughed and Tori blushed some more. “No, thank you, I’ll manage.”
    Lexie turned her to face the room, then tied the blindfold around her eyes. “Wait, you have to give me a condom first,” she told her sister.
    “Oh no,” Lexie replied. “You need to learn to do this in the dark.”
    More laughter.
    Tori opened the condom wrapper, but when she pulled the condom out, it slipped through her fingers onto the floor. Oh boy, was this an embarrassing game. She started to bend her knees, but Lexie pulled her arm, giggling.
    “Here, just take a new one.”
    This time, Tori was careful not to drop it. She laughed as people called out directions on how to unroll it. When she finally got it to its full length, she played along with the crowd, holding it up and asking, “Is it long enough now?”
    “You’ll find out in four days!” someone called out.
    Tori felt Sam’s hand on hers, and she put a pushpin in the top of the latex. Then she felt both sisters spinning her around. When they stopped, Tori put her arm out, but Lexie must’ve been gesturing to the crowd because everyone laughed again.
    “Nope, not yet,” Sam giggled.
    Then they spun her around the other way. Tori nearly fell over, she was so dizzy. Her sisters let go of her and when she took a step forward, they took turns saying “warm” and “cold” and “warmer” until Tori could reach out and feel the poster.
    She started to push the pin in, then moved her hand to another area. Someone called out “Ice cold!” and Tori moved her hand again. More people called out advice, some of it quite risqué, until Tori finally pushed the pin into the foam core.
    By the time she was done, the room echoed with hilarity.
    Tori pulled off her blindfold. Her condom was pinned to Captain America’s shield. “Well, it’s sort of close to the right part of Iron Man,” she said with a grin.
    “Close, but not close enough,” Lexie said. “The winner of Pin the Condom on the Avengers Poster is Grandma Esther!”
    Sam pulled out a big basket wrapped in cellophane. Tori saw it was filled with scented products from Bath & Body Works. Sam handed it to Tori, and Tori walked it over to Grandma Esther.
    “Why, thank you, lovey,” said her about-to-be-great-grandma. She reached up for Tori to hug her. “Don’t worry,” she whispered in Tori’s ear, “his powers are nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be fine.”
    Tori was so glad no one else heard that. How embarrassing! His “powers”? Was that how people used to talk about sex? She pulled away before Grandma Esther gave her a lecture on the birds and the bees.
    When she walked back to her sisters, face burning, she was so relieved to find the games were over. Hayley motioned her over to the gifts table. Okay, good, that would be easier on her nerves.
    Lexie handed her presents, Hayley wrote down who they were from in a little white book, and Sam took all the ribbons, doing something with them out of Tori’s view.
    The gifts overwhelmed Tori with the generosity and creativity of the givers. There were kitchen items, including a Crock-Pot and matching cookbook, silver picture frames, baskets of soaps and bath salts and lotions, and pre-made “date night” packages with gift cards for restaurants and the local movie theater chain.
    While Lexie took a moment to figure out which gift went with a card, Tori leaned over and whispered to her mother. “This is wonderful, but it seems like too much. I’m stunned and…” She shook her head a little.
    Dixie hugged Tori’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I know you don’t like