Blast from the Past

Climbing the stairs, Sean could hear loud laughter from the main floor. It sounded like his mom and her friends were having a good time. He felt relief when he reached the top stairs as he didn't spill any of his drink on the climb.

"--your mother? Oh no, that sounds more like you're taking after your Aunt Gabby," Gabriella pointed out, laughing.

"Maybe, maybe not," Lacey responded.

There was a momentarily hush from the women as Sean came into sight, but once they realized it was only him, they went back to talking.

"Hey, buddy, I heard you almost beat Harvey," Bridget said with a big grin while holding out an arm for a hug from her son. "And what are you drinking? Oh, that's Harvey's favorite."

Oh boy. Mom seems a little tipsy already, Sean thought as he gave her a brief hug. Looking around, he noticed bottles of both red and white wine sitting on the kitchen island, along with a laptop, a scanner, and stacks of pictures.

"What's going on here?" the teenager asked his mother.

"We're putting together all our old pictures and scanning them, so we each have a copy. That's what my strong son carried in for me." Bridget patted his bicep while pointing over to the floor by the dining room table and to the empty box he had carried in from the trunk of her car earlier. "Tinny sent a whole crapload over the internet for us to have too."

"Does this have something to do with Aunt Cassie?" Sean inquired.

"Absolutely, that's where the idea came from. We each had great pictures of her and want each other to have them. I'm planning on giving her parents and Finn copies as well. There are tons of great shots of her and the ones she took. That girl loved her camera almost as much as her books," Bridget noted with a wave of her arm at all the pictures scattered over the island. "I didn't think I would be able to start until next week, but Harvey's letting us use his laptop and scanner. Now, we should have it all done by the charity ball."

"I could have sworn this was a lot fuller when I checked earlier," Rachel remarked as she pulled out another wine bottle from the small wine fridge sitting on the kitchen counter. "Like several bottles fuller."

"Maybe the kids grabbed them. Who cares? Just pour me some more," Gabby stated.

Sean's attention drifted away from his mother and her friends as he caught sight of a toned ass wiggling as its owner bent over. The owner of the awesome ass picked up a towel that had fallen in front of the stove. Standing back up, Chastity turned around to see the dopey grin on his face.

"I saw you!" the friendly honey blonde remarked, wagging her finger at the now terrified teen.

"What? I didn't--"

"Don't think that I didn't see you peeking," Chastity put her hands on her hips as she cut him off.

"No, I wasn't checking out--"

"When the cupcakes are ready, then you can see them. Not earlier. You got that, Mister Sneaky Pants?"

"Huh? Oh, right, the cupcakes!" Sean exclaimed in relief. "Yep, you caught me."

"Hey, Sean, check out these over here," Lacey called out, beckoning him over to the dining room table. Thankful for the distraction, he hurried over.

"Holy shit," Sean remarked. He had thought there was a lot of old photographs on the kitchen island, but the long dining room table was packed with piles of pictures and photo albums.

"No shit. Our moms loved to take pictures growing up." Lacey shook her head in amazement at all the memories laid out before her. "Remember this? It's my fifth birthday party," the redhead said, picking up a stack of glossy prints.

"The pizza party at Luigi's? Of course, I do! I badly wanted my next birthday party there. But my mom said we made such a mess in that back room that she was too embarrassed to rent the hall," Sean recalled with a laugh as he looked over Lacey's shoulder. The shorter girl slowly skimmed through each snapshot.

"Yep, here's where Nate and Lana started throwing pizza at each other," Lacey stated. The next image showed an angry Peyton, who looked to be ordering them to stop. Sean's attention was drawn to the girl in the corner of the photo wearing a green dress with strawberry blonde pigtails. This would have been one of the first times he met Ramsey, even if he hardly remembered her from the party.

"Oh, gawd! Her in that outfit still shows up in my nightmares," Sean moaned, as the next account from Lacey's birthday party showed a blond-haired girl in a shiny, blue dress preening for the camera. "She wouldn't stop pestering me. Pulling on my hair, ordering me to get her a drink or a piece of cake."

"Whitney? Oh, wow, that's right, she did hang all over you for the party. Now that I think about it, Lana teased her about liking you on the drive home." Lacey looked over her shoulder with a grin.

"I don't know about that, but Whitney was a total brat that day. I've always remembered her from that day."

"Hmm, maybe that was her point. Whoa!" Lacey hurriedly put back the stack of pictures she wasn't even finished with and grabbed another pile. "I don't remember this party at all, but I'll never forget Funland."

"Funland? Let me see!"

"It sucks they closed it down. That place had everything. An arcade, skee-ball, that maze of tunnels, those jungle rope swings, and look the ball pits." She flipped through a series of photographs that first showed a maybe three-year-old Lacey preparing to throw a plastic ball, then her throwing it directly at Sean's head. The next picture showed the outcome with little Sean crying and holding his eye. And the final shot showed a much younger Rachel scolding a guilty-looking Lacey. "I guess that's what my mom meant the other day about being mean to you."

"You really want me to wear an eyepatch, don't you?" Sean remarked with a shake of his head. "Why were we there anyway? We all look to be dressed up."

"It looks like Finn's sixth birthday party. Wow, we're going to need to show him and our sisters this one." Lacey held up the picture that showed a young Finn sitting in front of a cake with six lit candles while Peyton and Lana each kissed one of his cheeks. Another boy stood in the background with an upset look on his face. "Look at how mad Nate is over the girls kissing Finn. And does Barney have a real camera? I think he does."

"These are great. What else is here?" Sean asked, scanning the piles. "This one looks like summer ones." He moved to pick up the stack, but Lacey beat him to it.

"These must have been when we were about six. I think this was right before the Locketts and Toones moved away." The redhead guessed while holding up a picture with Bridget, Tinsley, Cassandra, Rachel, and Gabriella. Sean took in all the women in their small bikinis and couldn't help but feel a stirring from his dick. The women still looked great today, but back then, in their twenties, they looked fantastic.

"I don't think Jared will want to see that one," Sean remarked as the image of a chubby and shirtless Jared came up next.

"Considering the way he looks these days, he's got nothing to be ashamed of. Oh gawd, now I remember this day. We had that crazy water fight. I can't believe I forgot this," Lacey said sadly with a shake of her head.

The series of snapshots showed several different factions of children. JoJo appeared to be ordering Sean, Newt, and Jared to fill up squirt guns. As the oldest of the girls, Lacey was showing Zoey, Juliana, Natalie, and Noelle how to make water balloons. Already at nine-years-old, Lana and Peyton appeared to be sun tanning. Then JoJo and the boys squirted the two older girls in their backs with water, only to be attacked with a barrage of water balloons. An angry Lana, seeking ****, appeared with Nate holding a hose and sprayed all the kids with streams of water.

Sean's joy at watching his younger self having fun diminished when he noticed another group of pictures on the table. He reached down slowly to pick them up. Lacey noticed his odd body language.

"What's wrong?"

"These were from a camping trip two years later. The last summer before Aunt Cassie died," he informed her, holding out the photographs for her to see.

"Oh."

"The Toones came back for a few weeks that summer. We all went up north to a cabin. Most of our grandparents went too. All of us kids had to sleep outside in tents, and it sucked. It was hot and humid during the day, and the mosquitoes were everywhere at night. I hated it and begged to go home. Now I think back and realize that was the last time my mom ever spent together with her two best friends," Sean recalled, his eyes tearing up as he realized what the trip meant.

Lacey leaned over and gave her old family friend a side hug. "I miss Aunt Cassie too. She's the teacher I most want to be like someday."

"I never had her as my teacher, but I know you'll be just as wonderful as her someday," Sean commented, meaning every word.

"Hey, here I am in her class back in first grade!" Lacey exclaimed as she saw a mound of photographs toward the far side of the table. Sean put back the somber stack of memories as his spirits rose from the images she picked up.

"What in the world is that?" he asked in bewilderment.

"It's our nutrition play! Aunt Cassie made us go all-out for our performance by wearing costumes," the perky redhead informed him excitedly. "Didn't your class do it too?"

"Not at our school. Oh, my gawd, Whitney's an actual pumpkin!" Sean couldn't hold in his laughter at the sight of the girl whose father called her pumpkin wearing orange paint and a big round costume.

"Well, yeah, you never knew where her dad's nickname for her came from?" Lacey looked at him in surprise.

Sean shook his head. Lacey then started to point out who played which healthy foods as it could be challenging to tell with some of the costumes. Ramsey represented the fruits as a banana with Paige Noble as a vine of grapes, Rylee Kittle played a strawberry, and Sienna Thirlby the lemon. Vegetables included Olena Olesky as a pepper and Lucas Prescott as an onion.

"What did you play, Lace?"

"Oh, I was one of the bad foods," the petite redhead noted with a laugh. "Did you think I would let anyone else play the cupcake? You know I had that nickname long before this." She showed off a picture with her standing with three other foods representing poor nutrition. On the two ends stood Fletcher Wynwick as a chocolate chip cookie and Wesley March as a donut. In the middle were Lux Chaumont as an ice cream cone and Lacey as a cute little cupcake. Both girls had their hair dyed with Lux in a chocolate tone. Meant to represent frosting, Lacey's was a pale pink.

"Damn, all we did was read our lines from a sheet of paper. Aunt Cassie made it way more fun," Sean stated with envy.

"What are you two looking at?" Bridget asked as she came over to stand next to Sean.

"How Aunt Cassie was a way cooler teacher than Mrs. Mudd," Sean informed his mother.

"Yes, Cassie went above and beyond what was expected. The other teachers at her school felt a lot of pressure to match her energy and creativity. Rachel would often gripe how her third-grade students expected to be entertained once they reached her. But I think your mom managed okay, wouldn't you say, Lacey?" asked Bridget.

"She sure did. It was so cool to have both my mom and Aunt Cassie as my teachers," Lacey said brightly.

"Hmm, there's something I wanted to show you two. Finn found a bunch of old photo albums at his grandparents' house and sneaked them out for us. We didn't want them to know about our surprise. Ah, here it is," Bridget noted, after looking through an album. "You kids remember this party from when you around four-years-old?"

"Oh, wow! It's the Halloween party Aunt Cassie threw for us at their old house," Lacey shrieked in delight.

"That's still the best Halloween party I've ever been to," Sean stated. "Holy crap! It's the Scooby-Doo costumes."

"Yes, those were a handful to make. Tinny and I had to have our mothers help quite a bit. But they were totally worth it," Bridget recalled with a smile as she flipped through the page of the photo album.

Nate Toone portrayed Fred with a blonde wig that seemed to keep sliding off. Of course, Lana wore a purple minidress as the lovely Daphne. Peyton wore a pair of fake glasses as part of her Velma costume, with Finn bringing up the rear as a dopey-looking Shaggy. The Toone twins joined the gang of seven-year-olds, not even yet entering their terrible twos, but already wild toddlers. Natalie and Noelle wore elaborate matching costumes with one twin as Scooby-Doo and the other as Scooby-Dum.

"Aw, the twins were adorable in their little dog costumes," gushed Lacey.

"Probably the last time they were ever called adorable," Sean remarked, earning a nod from Lacey and a look of disapproval from his mother.

"You were just as adorable as Dorothy," Bridget stated to Lacey. In the photo, the redhead, with her hair in pigtails, was dressed up as the main character from The Wizard of Oz. She even carried a picnic basket with a little terrier sticking his head out.

"And Hutz as Toto," Lacey announced with a quiver in her voice as she reached out to touch the picture. Hutz had followed the girl around everywhere as her sidekick until he passed away when Lacey was ten. "I miss him so much."

Seeing the tears trickling down the teenager's cheeks, Sean wrapped his arm around to give her a side hug. He recalled the little dog that never seemed to leave the girl's side. Bridget watched her son's compassionate act with pride.

"I'll always remember that summer your father came home from college with the dog he found lost outside his apartment. Clive looked everywhere for his owner only to discover it had been an elderly woman who passed away," Bridget recalled. "He refused to give the dog up and had to hide him from his landlord for the rest of the semester. Hutz was a wonderful little dog. Such a funny name too."

"Yep, my dad named him for the lawyer on The Simpsons: Lionel Hutz. Lana loved to call him Lionel, but everyone else called him Hutz." Bridget's words helped cheer Lacey back up about her beloved pet. "Mom sometimes mentions getting another dog, but Dad always says it's too soon. If they do someday, it will have to be a completely different breed."

"And he played his part as Toto very well. Not very many dogs would be patient enough to sit in that picnic basket, nor trust the person carrying him. Hutz knew he could always trust you," Bridget said, moving to hug the girl too.

"Hey, I didn't know Ramsey was at this party," Sean said as he saw a little strawberry-blonde girl dressed up as Alice from Alice in Wonderland.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Lacey revealed, "Yeah, we had just met two months earlier when we started preschool. There's Whitney too." She pointed to her other best friend dressed fittingly as Snow White with a black wig. "Aunt Cassie allowed me to invite my new friends."

"There he is," Sean said, pointing to a picture of a dark-skinned boy dressed as a cowboy. "This party was the first time I ever met Jayden," Sean said, referring to Jayden Cooke, a boy he would later become good friends with once they went to the same junior high school. Seeing a cowgirl in the next picture standing next to Jayden, he announced, "And there's Delilah too!"

"Yes, Cassie made sure to invite as many of our old friends' children as possible. Speaking of surprises: there's Beyza like I told you." Bridget gestured to a dark-haired girl dressed as a 1950s schoolgirl in a poodle skirt.

"Wow, when you told us that, I didn't remember her being there at all, and she didn't remember me either," Sean said about Beyza Baris, his first girlfriend. "Maybe I can get a copy of this and give it to her. She said her mom's pictures were ruined when their basement flooded. It might make her hate me less."

"Oh, honey, she doesn't hate you. Young love can be hard, she'll move on at some point, and you can go back to being friends again," Bridget reassured her son before winking at Lacey. "But we'll give her a copy just in case."

"It's strange seeing Beyza and not Aurora, or even Austin too," Lacey remarked.

"Yes, I know Cassie invited them, but Orrin can be funny at times about who Miranda socializes with. He's never liked very many of her old cheerleading friends. He can't do anything about Annette, even though they butt heads all the time. Miranda would never give up her best friend," Bridget explained to Lacey, who nodded in understanding. She knew Mr. Rusk could act cold to her at times.

"There's the Kittles. Geez, Rylee looked skittish even back then," remarked Lacey. Their classmate Rylee, dressed as Maid Marian, hid behind her older brother Reece, dressed as Robin Hood, and peeked around him at the camera. "I bet Lana would love to see Reece in tights like that now. She'd worship his body even more."

Bridget giggled at Lacey's suggestion while Sean rolled his eyes. "Hey, who was dressed up as the robot?"

"That's Wesley March. My dad met his dad in law school, and the family firm only recently hired him," Lacey explained. "He didn't really know anyone at the party and was almost as shy as Rylee.

"And here's my little crew of monsters," Bridget announced, turning another page in the album.

In the next series of snapshots, Sean saw his closest friends as four-year-olds, all dressed as monsters. With makeup, fangs, and eyeglasses, Newt made for an odd-looking Dracula. Covered in green makeup, Jared came across as a chubby Kid Frankenstein. He appeared to be trying to help up a tiny mummy, his little sister, Jules, off the ground, but the girl refused his help. A werewolf appeared to be having a similar issue with a little witch.

"I remember that. Zoey was afraid of JoJo in her werewolf makeup. She kept trying to hold her hand, but Zoey would freak out," Sean recalled with a laugh.

"What the heck were you supposed to be, Sean?" Lacey asked as she saw a picture of him, JoJo, and Newt. Sean wore a tan and brown suit, eyeglasses, and a safari helmet.

"I played Abraham van Helsing, and it was my job to hunt down all the monsters that my friends turned into," Sean explained proudly.

"Geez, you were a weird kid, I'll tell you that," Lacey said with an exaggerated eye-roll.

"Oh, he was a weird kid?" Bridget asked as she quickly searched for another of Cassandra's photo albums. Finding the correct one, she flipped to a page before commenting. "If he was such a weird kid, then why did you marry him?"

Lacey reacted in disbelief that there was visual evidence of their wedding by doing a facepalm. "Oh, fuck."

"Wow, I can't believe there's a picture of that. Damn, there's a lot of pictures," Sean commented, unsure why Lacey groaned in frustration as his last point. "What's the big deal, Lace? We were four-years-old."

"Whatever you do, Mrs. Tarver, you can not let Lana and Peyton know that these exist. Please?"

"It's alright, honey. It's not a big deal. Lots of kids playact weddings. It doesn't mean anything," Bridget reassured the nervous redhead. "No one expects you and Sean to get married because of these pictures. Although you two looked so cute together. And look, Hutz is the little ring bearer!"

Lacey tried to think of a way to explain her concerns without revealing that Lana and Peyton would believe these pictures to show the hand of fate. Before she could do that, a voice from behind nearly scared the crap out of her.

"Ooh, a wedding!"

Lacey swung around, sighing with relief to see that it wasn't one of their older sisters arriving as she feared. Instead, it turned out to be the always cheerful Chastity, whose face morphed to show even more delight as she spotted the third wedding participant.

"Oh. My. Goodness. That doggie is adorable!" The honey blonde clapped. "What's his name?"

Lacey explained Lionel Hutz's history to Chastity, who had tears in her eyes by the end of the tale. Launching herself forward, she wrapped the petite redhead in a firm hug. Wiping her eyes, the Diamond Corp receptionist's face showed confusion.

"Gee willikers, I thought you were Austin's girlfriend, not Sean's wife."

"She's both," Gabby said, walking over with an impish grin. "Lacey's locked in a torrid love triangle with Sean and Austin."

"No, I'm not," Lacey stated in exasperation.

"And you wouldn't believe who the harlot is that's trying to steal Lacey's husband," Gabby continued, ignoring her surrogate niece.

"Who?"

"Her evil sister. Watch how Lana always tempts Sean with her body."

"Holy smokes...I've seen that!" Chastity gasped, throwing her hand up to cover her mouth.

"Aunt Gabby," Lacey growled.

"And it's even worse. Sean can't stay in a relationship because he's still head over heels for his first love," Bridget added, unable not to join the teasing.

"Mother!"

"Heavens to Betsy. And I thought Mr. and Mr. Diamond--and Whitney-- lived in a soap opera. Now, I find out their friends are straight out of Days of Our Lives!"

"Did you know that Austin has a twin? The only question is over who's the..."

"The evil one!" Chastity finished Gabby's hanging thought.

"Oh, we know who the evil one is," Bridget mumbled before raising her voice. "And have you heard about--"

"Alright, that's enough! You had your fun, but it's time to stop teasing the kids," Rachel declared. The ginger shook her head at her two friends. "I swear, you two are worse than my girls."

"What's that mean?" Lacey challenged but got ignored.

"But I want to know what Mrs. Tarver was going to say," Chastity whined.

"Dear, don't you have to check your cupcakes?" Rachel reminded her.

"I do!" The honey blonde started to move toward the kitchen before she paused. "Is it legal to get married that young?"

Sean and Lacey glanced at each other with a groan. Without speaking, they agreed to steal those wedding pictures and hide them at the first opportunity.