Page 15 of Fan Favorite

“Do you remember when we first met?” Edie screamed her lines from The Fellowship of the Ring . Charlie waved his hands, motioning for her to keep it down. The candle flickered. “Sorry!” Edie whispered. Then, breathily, “Do you remember when we first met?”

“I thought I had wandered into a dream,” Charlie recited.

“Long years have passed. You did not have the cares you carry now. Do you remember what I told you?”

“You said you’d bind yourself to me, forsaking the immortal life of your people.”

“And to that I hold. I would rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”

At this declaration, a blush covered Charlie’s entire body. He dug into his cape and produced a small box. Edie smiled shyly, and Charlie thought she looked very beautiful in her elfin braids.

“You have my heart forever, Edie Pepper,” he declared. “I love you.”

“I love you!” she shouted. “Forever!”

They exchanged shell promise rings with tribal patterns that they’d picked out at the shop on Central Street that sold incense and statues of dragons.

It was time to kiss her, so with his hands clutched firmly in his lap, Charlie leaned forward with his mouth open a little too wide, so that when it finally met hers, it awkwardly engulfed her lips.

He was so nervous—he couldn’t help it—he started to laugh, and then she started to laugh, and it made him feel better.

This was Edie Pepper; he’d known her practically his entire life.

He kissed her again, better this time.

“I brought the instructions,” she whispered, picking up a dog-eared Cosmopolitan magazine. She began to read aloud. “‘Outercourse is a sexy way to be intimate with your man without the risk of going all the way.’”

“Safety first!” he said, jutting a finger into the air. Holy shit, he was embarrassing. He bit the inside of his cheek.

“‘First pinch, twist, lick, and blow on the nipple.’”

Edie hesitated before opening her elfin robe.

At the sight of her breasts, Charlie felt the wind knock out of him.

They were perfect. Perfectly big and round with pink nipples like pencil erasers.

He was thrilled to finally see them. Sure, he’d seen naked women before on the internet, but something about porn always left him feeling creepy, like he was doing something that wasn’t entirely okay.

Once he’d walked into his dad’s home office—he was just going to print a paper for school—and when he’d woken the computer up, on-screen had been a naked woman on all fours, with a man behind her, pulling her head back by her ponytail to reveal some sort of gag in her mouth.

Charlie had immediately gotten uncomfortably hard and returned to his room to masturbate, but after he came, he kept picturing the girl’s face and felt guilty, because she had looked wild-eyed, and something inside of him had known this was some fringe version of sex that had little to do with intimacy.

But the sexual impulses he felt, like, all the time, were so extreme he sometimes felt he had no control over them at all.

Since he’d kissed Edie for the first time nine months ago on the band bus, they’d made out a lot in his basement.

She’d rubbed his dick until he came in his pants, and he’d rubbed her through her jeans in a way that she seemed to like, until finally they’d graduated to his hand up her shirt, squeezing her boobs under her bra, and then rolling around on top of one another and mashing their crotches together through their clothes until he, again, came in his pants.

But she seemed to enjoy it, too, though he was much too shy to ask her directly.

She would breathe heavily in his ear as he chafed his dick against his jeans until she’d whimper, “Oh, Charlie,” and he’d go a little faster until she wrapped her legs around him, holding on tight, until suddenly she would moan and relax against the couch with her eyes closed and a small smile across her face.

Then he would know it was over and to kiss her softly all around her face.

“Are you okay?” Edie whispered now. He nodded, so she returned to the magazine. “‘Turn him on with your breasts. Cover them in lube and ask him to put his penis between them. Push them together to massage his shaft.’”

“You can do that?” he asked, breathless.

It was unbelievably awkward as they maneuvered into a workable titty-fucking position.

The candle was kicked over, and the flame went out as hot wax spilled onto the carpet.

When he finally straddled her, his knees resting on her elfin robes, her arms had been pinned to the floor, so she took the cape off entirely.

He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to take his shirt and vest and cape off, but since he’d always been a T-shirt-on-at-the-pool kind of guy, he left them on.

He squirted a pump of Lubriderm between her breasts and began to massage it all over her chest with his eyes bulging out of his head and his dick practically exploding out of his pants.

Finally, he unbuttoned his jeans.

As soon as he placed his dick between her breasts and she pushed them together to sort of bun up his hot dog, he felt like he was going to come.

Genuinely, he wanted it to be good for her, too, like the previous times they’d fumbled around with one another, so he tried to go very slowly and think about other things, like what they were even going to eat in the Alaskan woods.

Fish? It would be an uncomfortable departure from the Doritos and Bagel Bites he was used to.

He tried singing the Bagel Bites jingle in his head to distract himself.

Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at suppertime.

When pizza’s on a bagel, you can have pizza anytime!

But then he faltered and looked down at her face.

Edie was looking directly at his dick jutting toward her chin, and while her expression was somewhat agog, or possibly alarmed, just her looking at his dick for the first time was enough for him to—

“Uh, Charlie—” she said, beginning to sit up.

—shoot an astonishing amount of semen into the air, a glob of which landed directly in Edie’s right eye.

And while Charlie was collapsing in ecstasy, Edie was yelping at the fire consuming her eyeball and jerking forward, smacking him hard in the face with her skull.

Everything went black. He crashed to the floor with a thud, alarming the group of Hobbits in the basement who looked toward the ceiling for a moment before returning their gaze to Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King playing on the big-screen TV.

Blood poured from Charlie’s nose, and he moaned at the pain.

Edie struggled out from under him, clutching her eye.

“I’m blind!” she cried, stumbling around the room topless.

“Edie, shh! Are you okay?” he whisper-yelled. He couldn’t make out how bad the damage was exactly—he was still catching his breath and seeing stars and trying to angle his head so he didn’t choke on the blood that was now rushing down his throat.

“No, I’m not okay!” she whisper-yelled back. “What did you do? What did you do ? It burns!”

“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” he cried. “Hey, watch out—”

Edie tripped over a discarded Middle-earth staff and crashed head-first into the wall. She crumpled to the carpet, out cold.

The bedroom door flew open. “What the hell’s going on in here?” Charlie’s dad yelled.

“Charles! My baby!” Charlie’s mother rushed over to him as he lay on the carpet with his pants around his ankles. He quickly folded his body into the fetal position and wrapped his traveling cape around him. His mother fell to her knees and took hold of his bloodied face. “Call 911!”

“Now, just calm down, Helen—”

“I will not calm down! Charlie’s been attacked! Charlie, what happened?”

“Get out! Get out!” Charlie yelled, desperately trying to skooch away from his mother and get his withering penis back into his pants.

“Hold still, you’re getting blood all over the carpet!

” Charlie’s mom was borderline hysterical now.

She had been unusually weepy as his departure approached.

“Did you break your nose? Where’s the Kleenex?

” She yanked open his nightstand and the drawer flew out, spewing an impressive number of condoms and Pokémon cards to the floor. Helen covered her mouth in horror.

“Helen! There’s a girl passed out behind the door!

” Charlie’s dad moved to assist Edie until he realized she was missing her shirt.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, considering, until he settled on ripping items from the closet and throwing them toward her, eyes averted, until Edie lay shrouded in Charlie’s graduation gown, a Dungeons & Dragons T-shirt, and two pairs of jeans.

“You have to leave!” Charlie yelled. “Edie? Edie! Are you okay?”

A group of Hobbits appeared in the doorway and watched wide-eyed as Charlie’s mom lunged at him with a wad of Kleenex. Charlie rolled across the floor, struggling with his pants along the way.

“My staff!” Gandalf entered the fray to retrieve his walking stick.

“Helen, I really think you should take a look at this girl.”

“Bill Bennett, if you don’t call 911 right this second—”

“My precious!” Charlie’s little brother, Rick, lurched into the room on all fours and began yanking on the promise ring stuck on Charlie’s right hand.

“Rick! Knock it off! Cosplay is over, Rick!” Charlie screamed.

“What are you supposed to be?” Charlie’s dad asked a new arrival to the doorway.

“I’m a conscientious objector to Lord of the Rings due to its patriarchal and misogynistic undertones,” Lauren, dressed as Hermione Granger, said. She shrugged. “Really I’m only here to be nice.”

Charlie’s dad made a face like, I hear that.

From the carpet then, a whisper, “Charlie? Charlie? I love you…”

And then everyone turned to a fallen Edie Pepper, who had not only lost her elfin robe but also one of her elfin ears.