STORY 5

I looked at my phone, knowing what I would see: a text message from my best friend, Nia. She was currently living her best life in a bar that had whipped up some green beer for the holiday. The text included a selfie of her getting her nipple sucked by a guy who wasn’t her husband. Her husband, Jim, stood next to her, cheering on the other fellow.

It was just after midnight on March 18th, so technically, it wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day anymore, but the party wouldn’t stop until the bar shut down.

I sighed. “Well, it looks like Nia’s having fun.”

“That’s nice,” said Oscar, my husband, lying in bed next to me.

“I remember having fun,” I said.

“You could’ve gone,” Oscar said. “I’m sure Nia would love to have you

there to witness her shenanigans.”

I rolled my eyes. He knew why I didn’t go out and party with Nia like I

had every other St. Patrick’s Day for the last few years. We were beyond broke, and buying copious amounts of green beer just wasn’t in the cards.

“I’m not gonna bum drinks from my friends,” I said.

“Look, if they’re really your friends, they wouldn’t mind spotting you a few bucks here and there.”

“You’re right,” I said. “They wouldn’t. But I don’t want them to know how bad things are with us.”

He rolled over, turning away from me, and said, “Shouldn’t be partying too much anyway. It’s a Wednesday night, for God’s sake.”

“What’s that matter?” I asked. “Not like you have to work tomorrow. Or any day, for that matter.”

“Is that another crack at me being unemployed?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I lied, “but since you brought it up: did you find any good leads today?”

“No,” he said. It was the same answer he gave whenever I asked the question.

“Did you try that new jobs website I sent you the link to?” I asked. “It’s supposed to be better than Indeed.”

“Not yet,” he said. “But you know what I did see today?” “What’s that?” I asked.

“A rainbow. On St. Patrick’s Day!”

“So?” I asked.

“So I should’ve followed it to the end,” he said. “You know, to get the pot of gold. Then you’d get off my back about finding a job.”

I shouldn’t have indulged him. He was being ridiculous, I know that, but part of me couldn’t help wondering if he was trying to make me feel a little better by joking about the holiday. So I played along.

“Well, it wouldn’t have been that easy,” I said.

“No?”

“No. Leprechauns don’t give you their pot of gold just because you find the end of the rainbow.”

“Really? Then how do you get it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ve heard they’re constantly running from one end of the rainbow to the other with the gold, so it’s never in one place for very long.”

“How’s anyone supposed to get the pot of gold then?” he asked.

He seemed to be taking this way more seriously than he should.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you could offer them something for it.

Something they might want.”

“And what would that be?”

“How should I know?” I asked.

He laughed. “You seem to be the leprechaun expert all of a sudden. I bet I know what would work.” “What’s that?”

“Pussy.”

I rolled my eyes. Somehow he thought the answer to everything was pussy. I had to admit it was, in fact, the answer to a lot of things, so he might have had a point.

“I guess you’d have been out of luck then,” I said. “Probably a good thing you didn’t waste your time trying to find the end of the rainbow.”

“Ah, but if I’d had you with me,” he said, letting his thought trail off.

I playfully smacked his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’d whore me out for gold.”

“Only for a lot of gold,” he said. “I mean, it’d depend on exactly how big a pot we’re talking.”

“So this isn’t like the time you dared me to suck Maddox’s cock for five dollars?”

“It was twenty,” he corrected me, “and that was just a joke.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “You wouldn’t stop asking me if I was sorry I didn’t do it as you fucked me that night. I think you wanted me to do it for real.”

“For real?” he said. “Nah. Fantasy and reality are two different things.”

“You’re the one talking about looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow,” I pointed out.

“It’s all bullshit,” he said, suddenly sounding very serious. “There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and working yourself to death for pennies is every bit as dumb.”

This again. Oscar was somehow offended that he might have to work for a living like almost everyone else on the planet. I didn’t exactly love my job as a waitress, but it paid the bills. Barely. Not for the first time, I wondered how much of Oscar’s apathy I could put up with before I finally had to put my foot down and make him get another job.

But I had other concerns at the moment. The talk about whoring me out for a pot of gold and sucking off his friend for twenty dollars got me revved up. I felt my pussy lips tingling as they swelled, moistened by my juices. Damn the lazy bastard, but Oscar knew what to say to get me off.

And yeah, seeing my best friend’s nipple in the mouth of someone who wasn’t her husband hadn’t hurt, either.

I tapped Oscar on the shoulder, intending on inviting him to help me out with the quite pleasant problem I now had in my underwear, but he was snoring. Fantasizing about sharing me with his friends used to get him going, too, but maybe those days were over.

I sighed and opened my nightstand drawer. I took out my trusty vibrator and set it on high. I was hoping the noise would wake up Oscar so he might join me. It didn’t, and neither did my cries when I came both times.

They weren’t the worst orgasms I’d ever had, but they sure weren’t the best, either.

St. Patrick’s Day used to be one of my favorite holidays: fun with friends, an excuse to get a little wilder than usual, celebrating my heritage that I really only thought about on this day. And, yes, I’m aware that much about the holiday was American bastardization and had nothing to do with Ireland. But I loved all of it, just the same.

Maybe those days were over, too.

I put the vibrator away. I went to the bathroom to clean myself up and put on a pair of dry panties. I turned off the light and thought about green beer and Nia’s husband watching another guy make out with his wife as I drifted off to sleep.