Making Amends

[6 word request: black nerd shrinks bully out clothes]

Of all the “wrongs” Tucker had listed for his sponsor, the monetary ones were the easiest to handle. In his ex-wife’s kitchen, he wrote out a check for $50,000 to pay for the car he crashed but she ripped it up, grateful to see him sober and getting his life together. To his football coach, he handed over the money for a new couch. Back in college his coach had found him wandering around downtown sauced beyond belief. Good old coach was never able to get the stain out when Tucker pissed himself that night.

“The monetary ones are easy,” his sponsor, Al, said over the phone. “The emotional damage can be some of the hardest stuff to fix.”

With 6 months of sobriety under his belt, Tucker was ready to feel the relief of releasing the nastiness from his past. He wanted to feel the freedom of patching up a major wrong. He knew he was going to have to speak to Wendell Walker soon or later. It might as well have been next on his list.

It was coincidence that both Tucker and Wendell had ended up working and living in Boston. They hadn’t spoken in ten years, not since just after college. Tucker had heard through people back home that Tucker had started some biochemical research company and was a multimillionaire. Staring at the massive building Wendell’s condo was in, Tucker knew the guy had to be making some serious money.

Tucker unfolded his written speech, read it, then refolded it and crammed it in his pocket. Then he unfolded it again. Should he read off the paper, he wondered, or try to memorize it? It was so much easier to write down his own wrongs than it was for Tucker to actually prepare to cop to them out loud.

“Remember, it’s not an apology,” Al had reminded him. “You’re not asking for forgiveness. You’re offering whatever is needed to make it right. But there was so much to make right.

In elementary school, Wendell and Tucker had been close friends, having sleepovers until fourth grade, when their redneck classmates pointed out that Wendell was the only black kid in their very rural hometown. Suddenly it wasn’t cool to be seen with Wendell, so Tucker shunned him. Through high school, Tucker maintained a friendship with Wendell in private, stealing notes and having papers written when he needed it but publicly ignoring the nerdy guy’s existence. When Wendell was caught kissing a boy he had met on the internet, the public outing made Wendell dangerous territory for a popular jock like Tucker. 

Wendell showed up at Tucker’s door once their junior year. It was raining and Wendell wasn’t wearing his glasses for once. He asked if he could come in. It was the night after a big game. Tucker was still high on beating Central 17-0, still drunk from the afterparty, and had Michelle Sanders in his room. Wendell asked if he could come in. He said he had nowhere to go. Tucker said he was sorry but no. He shut the door in Wendell’s face.

Then there was college. Tucker remembered when he ran into Wendell on campus, shocked they ended up at the same Maine university. Tucker’s girlfriend at the time had a class with Wendell. “He’s a real freak,” she said. “Says the only reason he came here is some hunk from high school. You think that’s you, babe?” Tucker had shuddered at the thought.

He shuddered now, thinking of all the times he shunned poor Wendell.

But now he was going to make it right.

“Friend from high school,” Tucker told the woman at the desk in Wendell’s building. “Very close friend from a ways back. Tucker Daniels,” Tucker repeated. The woman repeated Tucker’s name into her headset and smiled.

“It looks like Mr. Walker is free to take your visit,” she said, handing Tucker a key card. “That will let you access the elevator. Please return it on your way out.”

Tucker was stunned when the elevator door opened up directly in Wendell’s apartment. His old friend was seated on a stool at a marble bar, sipping a cocktail. He smiled and stood up--still skinny, but definitely a grown-up version of the gangly kid Tucker remembered.

“Wow. You’re still big,” Wendell said, his eyes lighting up as they traveled the dimensions of Tucker’s broad body.

“Yeah, well, all that football size hung on no matter how hard I tried to drink it off,” Tucker said, shrugging his big shoulders and adjusting his tight blue polo shirt. He was suddenly very conscious that his nipples were hard and showing. “Turns out being sober makes it way easier to train hard at the gym, too, so I’ve been making some serious gains there.”

Wendell nodded. “So I guess I won’t offer you a cocktail then?”

Tucker smiled. “No, but you go ahead,” he said. Wendell gestured to a couch near a gas fireplace.

“This place is unbelievable!” Tucker said, staring wide-eyed at the high ceiling and the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“This is my summer spot,” Wendell said. “In October I get the hell out of New England. I have a spot in Mexico that’s really nice.”

“It seems like you’re doing great,” Tucker said. “Amazing.”

“So what brings you to my place?” Wendell asked. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re stopping by to wish me a happy birthday?” He took off his glaces to polisht them on his shirt but the smile never left his face.

“Oh, gosh,” Tucker said, suddenly feeling awkward. “I didn’t know it was your birthday!”

Wendell held up his hands. “I’m just pushing your buttons. I mean, it is my birthday, but how could you have known?”

Tucker nodded. His hands went to the paper in his pocket, nearly demolished from all of the refolding, but he decided to wing it. “Look, Wendell, I’m in a twelve step program now and… One of the things I have to do to maintain my sobriety is to clean up the wreckage of my former life. And I know in college I was pretty cruel to you, especially when I was drunk, And I know the last time I spoke to you was pretty nasty…”

Wendell listened intently, but cocked his head to the side.

“Anyway, I wanted to say… if there’s any way I could make up for it… please tell me.”

Wendell sipped his bourbon, then got up and headed to the bar. “So, to be clear, you came here to my home to ask me if there was any way you could make up for... “ He paused, and looked at Tucker. “What, specifically?”

Tucker was confused. He was sure Wendell hadn’t forgotten the mistreatment. Maybe he just needed to say it explicitly. “Last time I saw you I made fun of you at a bar. I was really nasty to you all throughout college, and… well, to be honest, the reason I was always so nasty to you and everyone was because I was so uncomfortable with myself. I was never really at home in my own skin.”

“You were the biggest kid in school, the first guy with muscles, EVERYbody’s high school crush. You were good at everything as a kid--everything except school, which nobody cared about. And you’re telling me now that was suffering?”

Tucker nodded. “It’s part of my disease. Damn, man, no matter what the outside looked like I was always in hell on the inside. Drinking gave me some short term ease and comfort from that suffering but the aftermath was always worse than before. But I want to make up for it. Honestly. Just tell me what I can do.”

Wendell listened, nodding, then smiled. He pulled out a remote and pointed it at the fireplace. With a click, the fire died down. “I have a birthday party tonight,” he said. “A few good friends. I rented out my favorite bar. You know what you could do for me? You could join me.”

Tucker narrowed his eyes. “You want me to come to a bar?”

“That won’t be triggering for you or anything, will it?” Wendell said. “There won’t be anyone there I don’t know. Seriously, invite only. I paid for a private get-together. Cozy little dive bar, but they make italian sodas that will knock your socks off.”

Tucker had no plans for the rest of the day, and he’d promised his sponsor he would be ready and willing to do whatever was asked. “You got it. When’s the party?”

Wendell tossed back the rest of his bourbon, sucking on the ice cube before spitting it into his glass. “My driver’s pulling around right now, in fact.”

Tucker couldn’t believe the size of the town car that came to pick them up. The inside seemed bigger than the outside! Wendell grabbed a chilled bottle of Pellegrino from the car’s mini-fridge. Tucker took it graciously. He felt his phone buzz.

It was Al. Are you planning on telling him you’re gay?

Nah, he said. I don’t think he’s heard through the grapevine and I don’t think it’s important.

The bar was called The Atlas, a place Tucker would have never noticed if Wendell hadn’t pointed it out, signified only by a tiny sign and some narrow stairs heading down to a door between two other, much busier bars. The bouncer lit up at the sight of Wendell, eyeing Tucker’s muscular body with a gaze that seemed hungry.

“This is my buddy from way back,” Wendell said, intoducing himself to the beefy, swarthy man working the door.

“Pleased to meet,” he said in a deep voice with a Russian accent. He offered a huge hand that dwarfed Tucker’s ball-carrying mitts, but his handshake was completely limp.

Tucker couldn’t tell if the underground bar catered specifically to gay men or if that’s just who Wendell invited. They all raged from slightly effeminate to over-the-top flaming, all of them different degrees of nerdy. All of them stared at Tucker like he was a snack.

He wasn’t unaccustomed to the attention. Tucker was 6’3” tall, 250 thick muscular pounds stuffed into a purposely tight blue polo and fitted khaki pants that showed off his ass--in all honesty, he had worn them thinking that Wendell would have gone easier on him like that. He might have considered covering up more if he’d known he would be spending the night around gay men he’d never met.

The bartender, a chubby balding man with a moustache, paused his glass-polishing to shake Tucker’s hand as they were introduced. “This is my buddy from way back!” Wendell said. “His name’s Tucker!”

“Big old beefcake!” the bartender said, licking his lips. “I’m Avery.” Wendell leaned over the bar and whispered something into Avery’s ear. Avery’s eye went wide, then he winked at Wendell.

“What did you say to him?” Tucker said quietly to Wendell.

“I just wanted to let him know you don’t drink anymore,” Wendell said. “But I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” Tucker said. He took the pink sparkling beverage Avery served him and paused before taking a sip. “No booze, right?”

“No way!” Avery said with a wink. “I don’t need booze to make a tasty beverage. Tell me what you think of it.”

Tucker took a sip. It was light and fruity, but had a metallic aftertaste. “What is that, mango?” Tucker asked.

“Passionfruit,” Avery replied. “Wendell’s favorite!”

Wendell blew a kiss to Avery. Tucker felt a little awkward, but sat back on the seat.

After all of Wendell’s guests (nearly 20 gay men whose names Tucker failed to record) arrived, Avery brought out a tall, round cake.

“No candles?” Tucker asked.

“Oh, we have something better than that.” Wendell stood up and whistled to get everyone’s attention. The guests in the dimly lit bar all quieted down.

“I just want to thank you all for joining me here for my very special day!” Wendell said to a round of applause. “The absolutely gorgeous man here is NOT my paid escort, by the way,” Wendell said.

“Yeah right!” one of his friends responded to some cheers and cackles.

“No, seriously, his name is Tucker and he did a very brave thing today, didn’t you?”

Tucker blushed, staring down at the last few sips of his drink.

“Seriously, though,” Wendell continued, “I don’t mean to put the poor guy on the spot, but he did want to make up for all the things he did wrong to me in the past. So I figured we could bring them all up here and we could clear the air! For my birthday, that is.”

Tucker felt uncomfortable. “Wendell, I… this kind of isn’t the right… place for this…” He gazed at the door, planning an early exit. The Russian bouncer stood in front of it, his thick arms crossed.

“Now, everyone here knows I am an absolute genius in my field, and our buddy Tucker here just consumed one of my experimental technologies,” Wendell said, sliding his glasses up his nose. His guests whistled and cheered, but Tucker set the drink down.

“Wendell, what the fuck?”

“See, you’ve got some living machines, all smaller than your cells, spreading through your system right now,” Wendell said. “Nanotechnology, my friend. And they’ll all respond to whatever I ask them to do. I could melt you down into a thinking pile of shit if I wanted to.”

“Do it!” someone cheered. Tucker was on his feet, backing away.

“Wendell, this is fucked,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

“Stop right there!” Wendell said--and Tucker’s feet were planted to the floor as if they’d been glued. Tucker strained and struggled, finally bending over and grabbing at his shoes with all his might, but he wasn’t moving. “Now, sweetheart, you said you wanted to make things up to me, so I’ll give you the chance, right here, in front of all my friends. You confess to all the ways you wronged me and then we can all go back to having a wonderful night, no harm done!”

“Dammit, Wendell!” Tucker said, starting to panic. “I already--I mean, at your place, I already…” He considered handing over the written paper in his pocket, but as his pulse quickened, he started to feel some anger coming up. He reminded himself to breathe, wishing he could sneak away from the crowd to call Al.

“For every sin you don’t confess to, however,” WEndell said with a wink, “I reduce your height by 12 inches.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Tucker said. Al had told him that not everyone would be receptive to his amends. Clearly Wendell was out of his mind--maybe he had a drinking problem too. But Tucker had to get out of there--except for some reason, he couldn’t move. “I told you… last time I saw you, in a bar, I humiliated you. I made fun of you and got you kicked out. And in college I was pretty shitty to you too.”

Wendell leaned toward Tucker, holding an open hand over his ear. “That all, baby? No, take your time. Let it all out!”

“That’s it!” Tucker said. “Well I wasn’t nice to you in high school either. And I let people make fun of you in elementary school.”

Wendell nodded, looking at the rest of his friends. There was murmuring in the crowd. Tucker wanted to flip a table and beat the shit out of all of these guys--but again, he couldn’t move.

“Do we believe him?” Wendell said to mixed reactions. “Honestly, folks, I think he’s truly sincere. The only thing is, he’s leaving a bunch out.”

Tucker looked at the crowd, who had started to boo him, then up at Wendell. “What are you talking about? Leaving out what?”

“You can move again,” Wendell said, and Tucker’s feet came free. “But tell me exactly how you humiliated me at that bar the last time we talked.”

“I called you a…” Shit, was he really going to admit this in front of all of these guys? “I called you a queer and had the bouncer kick you out.”

“Wrong!” Wendell said. “Well, it’s merely a lie of omission. You DID call me a queer, but what he did, everyone…” he said, gesturing to his friends, whooping them into a frenzy, “was, he told me a friend of his was gay and had a crush on me. So I summoned up all my courage, bought a shot for this guy, walked up to him and introduced myself… and was humiliated to find out that guy was there with his girlfriend. All while Tucker videotaped the whole thing! And THEN he called me a queer, folks. And had me kicked out of the bar.”

Fuck! Tucker had been wasted that night--so drunk he had blacked out parts of it. But he remembered doing all of that to Wendell. In the retelling of the story, he had altered the facts so he hadn’t looked quite so nasty, then repeated the story so many times he had forgotten it started out as a half-truth.

But Tucker was done with this shit. The crowd was about to turn on him. He headed toward the door, facing down the big bouncer who was the only guy in the room anywhere near Tucker’s height.

“Out of the way,” Tucker ordered, squaring up his thick body, but a strange tingling overcame him. He started to feel dizzy. The burly Russian smirked as Tucker stumbled backward a moment. His tight clothes suddenly felt baggy! He looked down at his shirt, watching as the sleeves pulled away from his huge arms. He felt his pants starting to slide over his wide quads. He actually had to grab his belt to hold them up! “What the fuck?” Tucker said as his feet slipped out of his shoes. He looked up and found himself staring into the beefy pecs of the Russian bouncer. He had to look UP to see the bearded man’s grinning face!

“Anything else you want to admit to before you lose even more of that height?” Wendell said.

Tucker backed away, suddenly without his shoes. He wanted to run back to grab them but the other partygoers were on their feet, crowding around him. Some of the guys he had looked down on before were taller than him now, although many were the same height as he was! Even the shortest guys were almost the same size. His anxiety spiked in a way he had never experienced before.

“How the fuck is this possible?” Tucker cried, backing toward the bar as the Wendell’s friends started shoving him playfully. Tucker shoved a guy back, letting his pants fall to the floor. As he bent to pick them out he felt someone slap his ass. He whirled around, unable to identify the culprit. These guys may have been the same height as he was, but none of them had the muscle he did! (Except that Russian, but luckily he was by the door.)

“Well back in college, Mr. Beefcake Football Stud there had to do some initiating when he first joined the football team, isn’t that right, Tucker?”

“Fuck,” Tucker mumbled as he realized what Wendell was about to bring up.

“And to get in good with his football buddies, he gathered up some other freshman jocks to fill a car with horse manure!”

Tucker pushed a few of Wendell’s friends away, then shouted, “Dammit, Wendell, I’m sorry!”

“Too late, baby!” Wendell said, clapping his hands. “You could have picked anybody but you picked me, and you stopped by my dorm room to say hello just so you could swipe my keys. He may be pretty, folks, but isn’t he a nasty thing?”

It happened again: his whole body tingled like crazy and his clothes--and the men surrounding him--got even bigger. His pants were now ludicrously large, the still-buckled belt hanging wide around him like a hula hoop with the legs pooling under his feet. His polo shirt hung on him like a night shirt now, and he was definitely staring UP at all of the other guys! He would have to get on his tiptoes just to be eye-level with their chests.

From behind, someone shoved Tucker and he sailed out of his pants. The collision with the ground knocked the wind out of him. Luckily, he still had his underwear, as ludicrously large as they were. He held them tightly as he stood, desperate to keep his manhood covered (especially at this size!). He could no longer see Wendell through the crowd, although he could hear his cackling.

Someone shoved Tucker down and before the muscular man could react, he felt himself yanked off the floor by his boxer-briefs. He kicked his legs in the air as he got the first wedgie of his life, his face going red as he swung back and forth from his undies. When he hit the ground again, his underwear was buried so far up his ass that, despite how big they were, they weren’t falling off.

Tucker found himself almost the same height as the stool he was sitting on. He peered through the crowd, wondering if there was a way he could just charge through them.

“Back in high school, our senior year, we were both honored at the National Honor Society awards night--proving that even dumb neanderthals were given good grades in high school if they were big and strong and wore the right uniform… while the rest of us had to work for it!”

“Wendell, please!” Tucker shouted, his voice having shrunk with the rest of him. So many big hands were grabbing at him. It was all he could do to shove them away.

“And when it was my turn to be honored, they were supposed to show a picture of my winning science fair entry on the screen behind me. But what did they show? Tell all my friends what you switched that picture with and I won’t shrink you again this time!”

Tucker couldn’t say it. He could barely confess it to himself, let alone all of the lecherous buzzed men closing in on him.

“Too slow, Tucker! He showed a picture of me kissing a boy behind the bleachers! Big tough uber-jock had to out the defenseless nerd--and get this, earlier today he said it was because he was uncomfortable in his own skin! How comfortable are you now, Tucker?”

“I was gay too!” Tucker shouted. “I mean, I am gay! I came out two years ago! I was going to tell you…”

But it was too late. The tingling set in and everything around him started to expand. His boxer briefs dropped off and he found his polo shirt hanging down to his ankles. His shoulders were barely wide enough to hold it on at all. Only his hands stuck out through the sleeves.

“Get him up on the bar!” Tucker heard, but couldn’t see, Avery issue this demand. Two men each grabbed an arm and hoisted Tucker easily in the air. He kicked his muscular legs as they plopped him on the bar.

The polo fit like a dress now, and as he shuffled back and forth he worried about tripping on it. He could see guys passing around his discarded clothes. One guy was holding a sock against his face like a gas mask. Another guy was sniffing the crotch of his khakis. Two guys were fighting over his underwear. Tucker turned around to leap off the back side of the bar but Avery held up his hands.

“Sorry, bud,” Avery said. “It’s Wendell’s birthday, and he’s my best customer. He gets his way tonight.”

“And it gets better!” Wendell said. “Remember the homecoming dance our freshman year of high school?”

Someone dumped an icy beer over Tucker’s head. He shivered and slid around on the bar. He knew what he had to do: “I confess, I… I rounded up some guys and had them spraypaint the F word and the N word on your locker! A-and we got caught and we got away with it because we were football players.”

Wendell shook his head. “Almost, big guy,” he said. “Almost! Although I can’t tell if you’re leaving out that one crucial detail because you’re ashamed of it or if you’re still so deeply in denial.”

Tucker panicked. He had hazy memories of getting wasted after spray painting on Wendell’s locker. He hadn’t thought of it in years, but… he had ended up at Wendell’s house for some reason, wasn’t he? He remembered waking up in Wendell’s backyard when the sprinklers came on and bolted before anyone caught him there.

“I don’t remember anything else!” Tucker said. “I was wasted!”

“Too bad!” Wendell shrieked, downing a dark shot someone handed him. He smacked his lips and smiled. “Then this is really going to sting when you hear it: big football stud, with his homecoming crown still on his head, climbed through my window wasted that night and kissed me while he jerked me off! Oh, how heartbreaking it was the next day when he didn’t remember--and then I saw my locker! Can you imagine how that felt, Tucker?”

“I’m sorry!” Tucker shrieked, but the tingling had begun. He actually felt himself sliding into the polo shirt, which enveloped his whole body like a tent. He felt fingers poking and hands grabbing him through the shirt but could only slap back at the invading hands.

Someone yanked the shirt off his head and tossed it into the crowd. He stared up at the massive men looming overhead. Tucker was smaller than a midget now--both hands held over his junk as Wendell’s friends reached out to pinch, poke and prod his naked, muscular body. He felt a huge finger slide up the crack of his ass and whirled around to see Avery with a grin and wide eyes staring down at him.

“Damn, you are so much hotter than the stripper we were going to do this to!” Avery.

Tucker sprinted to one side of the bar and considered leaping to the ground, but too many HUGE guys shoved him down. A single hand was enough to press him flat against the bar. Someone blew a cloud of cigarette smoke at him. He choked and wheezed, struggling to get away, sprinting across the bar to the other side where he received more of the same abuse.

“Back in seventh grade, that hunky little muscle stud up there, who now needs a stack of phone books just to use a urinal,” Wendell began, “invited me to a sleepover at his house. I thought it was just going to be me and him, but when I got there, he and his buddies jumped me and beat the ever-living hell out of me.”

Tucker winced as he heard the story. In all honesty, he had actually planned an evening with just the two of them, watching horror movies like they’d done as young boys. But before Wendell had arrived, Tommy Scoric showed up with wine coolers he’d pilfered from his mom. A few other guys showed up with stolen booze in tow and they all got wasted before Wendell arrived, dropped off by his parents with a bag packed and a grin on his face.

Tucker hadn’t even wanted to beat Wendell up, but with Tommy cheering him on and booze in his belly, he threw the first punch.

It was too late to explain his side of the story, Tucker knew. Suddenly he found himself staring at pint glasses that came up to his chest. He dodged a big hand that reached out to grab him, realizing it could wrap around his whole body with ease. Avery yanked his soda gun up from behind the bar and held it over Tucker’s head.

“How about some tonic water, big man?” he said, and Tucker choked and sputtered on the chilly bitter bubbles that blasted out at him.

Someone grabbed him from the bar by the waist. Another hand grabbed a leg while another grabbed his arm. Tucker suddenly realized he was in a room surrounded by GIANT MEN who were extremely drunk--and no one seemed to be stopping all this!

“Calm down, calm down,” grunted a gruff voice. Tucker’s heart leapt as he saw the big Russian bouncer pushing through the crowd. Calloused hands grabbed Tucker and held him close to the Russian’s beefy chest like he was a little pet. Tucker was so beaten down he allowed himself to be cradled that way.

Worse than all the physical abuse, the powerlessness, the fear of being squashed by all these men, was the idea that everything Wendell had said was true, and Tucker had been lying to himself about his abuse of Wendell all this time.

“I’m not a bad guy!” Tucker cried as the Russian gently stroked him like he was a ferret. “I swear, I’m not that guy anymore! Really!” But his voice was so small, so squeaky and high-pitched, that no one could hear him over the frenzied crowd.

“And lastly, probably the most cruel,” Wendell said, wincing as he went back to the painful memory, “was in third grade. On Valentine’s Day before school, under the slide, little Tucker told me he loved me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Then later that day I gave Tucker one of the store-bought Valentines my mom had given me--the only one I had the guts to give out, and I still did it in secret, slipping it in his bag when no one was looking. And what does our boy Tucker do? He brings it to the goddamned PRINCIPAL! You know they brought me into the office? Called my parents? I had to go to counseling for a few weeks because of that!”

Tucker cringed at the long-buried memory. Tommy Scoric had found the Valentine before Tucker had. He couldn’t let his classmates know that the black kid had given him a store-bought Valentine. He acted like it grossed him out, even though he hated doing so, and went to the principal only after Tommy suggested it.

But it didn’t matter. Tucker couldn’t even project his voice loudly enough for anyone to hear him at that point. As the tingling over came him, he felt sick to his stomach. The Russian’s hands spread around him as he shrank into them. A single finger was twice the size of Tucker’s body! He dared to look over the edge of the Russian’s cupped palm only once. He almost puked when he saw the dizzying distance to the floor, so far away it was blurry to him.

The beasts growling and shouting all around him were unfathomably huge. He screeched as huge hands reached for him, sure he would be torn in half or squashed, but the Russian’s hands made a protective dome over him. Tucker bounced with every one of the Russian’s footsteps. He felt the grooves of the Russian’s fingerprints and felt like he was going to pass out if he truly tried to grasp just how small he had gotten.

The warm shell of the Russian’s hands suddenly split open and the palm beneath him tilted. Tucker flailed as he sailed through the air, plunging into an icy pool. When he surfaced, he clung to an ice cube, staring up past the edges of the glass at Wendell staring down at him.

“Good thing I’m done,” Wendell said with a wink. “Because one more and I’m pretty sure you’d disappear entirely!”

“I’m so sorry!” Tucker shouted, unsure if Wendell could even hear him over the loud dance music that had kicked on as the crowd dispersed. “I swear, I wish I could take it all back!”

Wendell nodded. He took a sip from the glass; as its contents tilted, Tucker’s stomach lurched. He tried desperately to hold himself against the side but when Wendell upended the glass, his little three-inch body tumbled toward the open mouth. He fell against the big, warm lips that slurped in a few of the ice cubes, but thankfully Wendell stopped, letting Tucker slide back to the bottom of the glass.

“Don’t worry,” Wendell said, chewing on an ice cube. “It was just soda water. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize that sobriety of yours!”

Tucker stared out at the horrifyingly gigantic men, warped by the curved edge of the glass.

“You want to know what will make it all okay?”

Tucker nodded weakly up at Wendell’s gigantic face. What was he going to ask? If Wendell wanted to swallow him, he could, and there was nothing Tucker could do to stop him. There was a growing part of Tucker that realized he would have deserved it as well.

“I want you to perform my greatest fantasy,” he said. “I want you to jump out of a cake for me. I’ve dreamt of it my whole life. You do that, and let me lick the buttercream off you, and we’ll call it even, deal?”

Tucker’s eyes went wide. What could he even say? He nodded, but as he tumbled around the inside of the glass during their trip to the bar, he panicked as Wendell’s fingers plucked him out and dangled him over the cake that had been brought out earlier.

Now it was bigger than a swimming pool to Tucker. Wendell let the muscled little mite go and he tumbled down, landing in the pillowy-soft frosting with a splat.

The eruption of laughter was so loud Tucker thought his eardrums might burst. Huge hands pointed at him, mocking him as he wriggled around in the sticky confection. Wendell extended a finger and poked at Tucker’s body, shoving him into the cake’s spongy innards.

Everything was muffled as Wendell smoothed the frosting over the hole his little body had made. He sat there, wondering if he would suffocate, when he heard Wendell’s voice. “All right homecoming king! Time to pop out of my cake--and make it sexy!”

Everyone started singing happy birthday and he knew what he had to do.