Random Acts of Love (Random #5) (6 page)

“Trevor Connor?” a girl’s voice behind me whispered. 

Oh, shit. Caught. Going out in public in our neighborhood near the colleges in Boston was becoming a landmine these days. As the band grew in notoriety, our privacy shrunk. That’s the trade off. A guy couldn’t try to get his woman off using a phone while grocery shopping without having a group of fans attack him.

“Hi,” I said, turning around and flashing a group of giggling young women a quick smile.

“Who you ‘hi-ing’?” Darla’s voice sharpened. I sighed on the inside.

Joe wasn’t the only one who could get insanely jealous.

“Mrs. McCarthy. Just ran into her.”

“She grab your ass and tell you what a bad girl she’s been?”

I snorted as the cashier ripped the receipt from the register and handed it to me like I was robbing her at gunpoint and the receipt was a pile of money I demanded. “No, she did not grab my ass.”

Giggles turned to snorting and the sound of fingers smashing against glass.

Great. I was being videotaped from behind.

“I’ll grab your ass if you’re feeling neglected, Trevor,” someone said. My skin began to prickle, my ear attached to my phone, and if Darla could have teleported herself through my operating system she would have given the owner of the mouth that made that comment a smackdown. 

“You being ogled?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I mumbled as I pinned the phone between my shoulder and ear and snatched the two six packs off the counter. The parking lot was packed as I made my way down the road, neck starting to ache. I was only two blocks from the apartment.

Shuffling sounds behind me made me stop and turn.

Five. There were five of them, following me.

What the fuck?

I turned away and kept walking. They stayed a respectful ten feet or so behind me, like I was the king and decorum required it.

“Trevor?” Darla’s voice softened. “You okay?”

I couldn’t walk quickly with the phone like this while carrying two six packs. I shoved one under my arm and grabbed the phone with my now free hand, picking up my pace.

“Spare change, man? Got fifty cents so I can buy a beer?” a street beggar asked as I paused to shift my load.

I looked at all the bottles in my arms. Fuck. Normally they bag everything, but the cashier had been a wreck and I just took them by the handles. I pinned the phone to my shoulder again and grabbed the neck of a bottle, handing it to the guy.

“Here.”

“FREE BEER!” The beggar’s gravelly voice called out, street people coming out of cracks in the sidewalks. I swear, that’s what it seemed like. They appeared as if summoned by a demigod.

I bent, slowly, with my senses attuned. There was no way out. Obsessed chicks behind me. Pee-soaked street people in front of me. I was the monkey in the middle.

With Darla now nearly screaming at me.

“Trevor? Trevor? Say something! Who’s screaming about free beer?”

“I’m caught between a bunch of panhandlers and a group of fans.”

“Go for sanctuary with the panhandlers,” she replied without hesitation. “You know how nasty the fans can get.” 

The video of Liam and the snake flipped through my head. He was being undressed by a crowd of hungover college girls when that happened. I didn’t think I’d be rescued by a six foot snake fucking a blow up sex doll, though.

Poor me.

“Gotta go!” I left the six pack with the missing beer on the ground, grabbed the other one, and charged around the beggars. Running fast, I considered this my workout, shoving the phone in my back pocket, abandoning the call with Darla.

“TREVOR!” High-pitched girly screams crowded out the sounds of traffic as I bounded up the stairs to my building, hoofing it. This could be an Olympic event. The Beer Groupie Chase. Sponsored by Budweiser and Snapchat.

The apartment was empty. As I closed the front door, my heart pounded hard, like Sam’s bass drum. The six pack’s cardboard handle cut into my fingers, and I pried them gently off the thin band, setting the beer on the counter.

Was this my life now? I couldn’t go out for basic errands without being spotted—and chased? The band had struggled for more than seven years to become something. Only in the past two years did we make enough money to even hint at being a minor success. Darla’s management of our career had fast-tracked us, and the big gig at the Island of Eden had skyrocketed us.

The big tour and record deal being offered was a thorn in everyone’s side. We had time to decide, but we were split.

I
was split. Joe, Liam and Sam were ready to hit the road and hit it big with the massive tour and recording deal we had on the table.

The couch called out my name and I slumped down, head in hands. The giggles. The shouts of my name. The invasion of privacy. When I tried to talk to the guys and Darla about it they didn’t get it. Didn’t care, even if they understood. For Liam this was the fucking dream. Getting paid to prance and preen, even if he wasn’t getting a parade of pussy buffet like he used to.

We were all settled now. Sam and Amy were engaged, for God’s sake. Liam was getting close to asking Charlotte to marry him. For all I knew, he already had.

And Joe and I had Darla, and—

Fuck.

A groan poured out of me like some subterranean animal lived in my gut and wanted to get out. 

That was it, right?

We weren’t settled.

I couldn’t even tell my own parents the truth about me, Darla and Joe. How could I say we were settled when I kept up this ruse that Darla was my girlfriend—and only mine. Not Joe’s too?

Mom’s call inviting Darla and me to dinner felt like a summons.

Our secrecy felt like a prison.

And being out at the store and unable to buy a fucking beer felt like a sign. Of what, I didn’t know, but it all pointed in the same direction.

This was not how my life was supposed to turn out.

I stood, got a beer, drank it fast, and opened a second. Drank that too, tipping it back to chug it down just as Darla walked in the front door, pink and blonde and round and fired up.

“Again?” was all she said as I caught her eyes, plunking the empty bottle in the recycling bin.

“Again what?” Her eyes searched my face. A giant burp came out, juvenile and ridiculously long. I could have recited the alphabet to M but held back. Had to have some manners. 

“Again with the groupies attaching themselves to you like leeches? Any of them grope you?” Darla had this ability to completely ignore the more base nature of men. The burp didn’t faze her. Neither did socks so crusty they could double as door stops, fart jokes galore, and endless discussions of the best fake tits on porn stars. It all poured over and through her. She had this attitude that said it’s all just part of being human. Very little judgment.

Her judgment came through in different ways, though.

“No groping.” I made a pretend Sad Panda face. She whapped me. I grabbed her around the waist and stole a kiss.

She melted into it. When you kiss someone you’ve been in a relationship with for a long time, there’s a sense of expectation that quickly turns into a hunger. Having the freedom to grab a woman—my woman (
our
woman)—and touch her whenever I wanted was a privilege. All these sex ed campaigns now about asking permission for everything make sense, and I got it. I did. So did my male friends. 

When I was with Darla, though, those basic rules had already been laid out. Overtly or covertly, they were part of the landscape. It was like learning how to drive. First, you studied the laws on paper and in a mind-numbingly boring class that included what to do when a flock of turkeys crosses in front of your car. Then, you took the written test. Next, you went out on the road and shit yourself the first time you actually were put in charge of a two-ton beast that didn’t have parental controls. No driving instructor in the car with a second brake pedal. No one could protect you from your own actions.

You were accountable.

You.

Finally, you took the road test, got to drive alone, and the accountability went through the roof. Mistakes held the potential to be deadly.

This wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t trivial. You held someone else’s existence in your own two hands.

And, of course, your own.

Relationships were like that. And as I was kissing Darla, my tongue sliding through with implied permission, tracing the sleek lines of her teeth, caressing the scalloped edges of her sweet, wet tongue, I was reminded of that fact. 

Muscle memory took us places when we drove, the brain and body attuned with the car to go to McDonald’s. To school. To a best friend’s house or the post office.

Darla’s body and heart were the same for me. Muscle memory told me where to put my arms, how to fill my palms with that glorious ass, which way to twist my hips so the curve of her thigh rested against my aching boner.

The heart is a muscle, too. It has a memory.

It has accountability.

Mine squeezed for a second, fingers diving into the hair at the nape of her neck as she sucked my lower lip into her mouth, the tip of her tongue flicking like she was tonguing my cock.

Darla was not my girlfriend. She wasn’t.

She was
our
girlfriend.

But that accountability? That muscle memory? The thought of being open and true with my mom, my dad, my grandparents and extended circle of friends and family, with professors and employers and with the whole fucking world made me feel like I was naked.

Being chased by a band of groupies and panhandlers, all screaming for my soul.

I was an asshole. I admit it. Joe was, too, but he was an asshole on the outside. You knew what to expect with a smug, self-righteous bastard like him.

A tiny moan of pleasure came from Darla as she pulled away and caught my eyes. Of all the moments to make me look at her. I was ashamed and filled with self-loathing, because I couldn’t show her what was really inside me. I couldn’t. 

If she saw that, she’d leave me.

And I just proved what a hypocrite I was, because as I took her into the bedroom to fuck her silly, I realized I was just as fake as my parents, as fake as my teachers, as fake as my fake friends in high school in Sudborough. The same ennui that drove me to get high out of my mind nearly two years ago and hitchhike naked to Ohio, turned out to be caused by me.

Me.

Not the external world.

My boredom came from overwhelm, from the cognitive and emotional dissonance of knowing that if I was true to myself I’d lose so many people I loved.

Darla pulled my shirt off and unsnapped my jeans, her fingers eager and eyes troubled.

She knew.

But she didn’t say anything as we stripped naked. My throat tightened as my cock did, too. There’s a point where a man can have too many conflicting emotions inside his body, the chaos pounding against the walls of his arteries, a parkour of conflict and roiling pain that makes even sex feel inadequate. 

I hadn’t reached that point.

Yet.

Hot blood seized my legs, my arms, my back, my cock, and I sank into Darla’s creamy, welcoming flesh. This was what I needed most. This private world where I was not the lead singer of the band, not the soon-to-be co-editor of Law Review, not the devoted son who would assume responsibility for his adult autistic brother some day.

And not the lying liar who lied to the world about the most wonderful woman in the world.

I was just a guy with a cock that wanted to sink into some loving warmth and make the world go away.

And that’s exactly what Darla gave me.

Joe

No matter how many times I pulled up to the driveway at our house, it was always the same. Mom and Dad installed the small gate at the end of the quarter-mile road when I was eight. It’s still there, a small stainless steel number box that has the same, exact code from sixteen years ago. The first four digits of my birthdate.

Great security they paid for.

I punched in the code and the gate clicked, then pulled back.

I roared the Beemer up the driveway. We didn’t have pets, so no worries about taking one out. I’d killed a squirrel here and there by accident, but right now there weren’t animals scampering about. Mom insisted I come home and if she wanted me, she was going to get me.

Speeding and all.

I pulled up to the garage, a three-bay, two-story building that looked like it could be its own house. Technically, it was. My dad’s law firm partner, Gene, lived there. A two-bedroom apartment above the garage had one office for Dad and Gene’s legal consulting firm, and Gene lived in the rest of the space. Years ago the band tried practicing in the garage. That venture lasted exactly one time. Mom couldn’t stand it.

Even though the house was hundreds of yards away.

Gene had loved it, though. Came downstairs, offered everyone some beer, chilled with a group of geeky high schoolers just noodling around with our faux cocks in the form of guitars and bass.

Mom ruined it, storming down the steps to yell at us about all the noise we were making.

Three chickens wandered by, one white, two a burnished ripple of red and brown. When did Mom get chickens? For years she’d been threatening to make Dad put in a henhouse so she could have free range chickens that boosted her choline levels or something, but she’d always wanted to avoid the mess of chicken shit everywhere.

So much for not having pets.

My eyes tracked one of the chickens. It was brown and red on top and white on the bottom.

I peered closer.

Those weren’t white feathers.

The chicken was wearing a diaper.

I parked the car right behind Mom’s bay door, which she hated. That’s why I did it. As I got out and started for the house, Gene called out to me.

“Hey, Joe! You home for the weekend?” Gene was in his late forties and looked a lot younger. He was outside constantly, skiing in the winter and biking in the warmer weather. He was the guy you would see in the winter biking on snow, covered in goggles and snow clothes.

The crazy fitness freak dude.