First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances

by Kent, Julia

  The paperwork was easy to complete, and walking without phone pressed against my anus was a remarkably freeing feeling. After grabbing scones and coffee at a shop in the lobby, we walked outside and hailed a cab.

  “Just think – dating will be so much easier now.”

  “Huh?”

  “You just have to say, ‘Siri, find my clitoris’ and the guy will – ”

  I punched her – lightly – in the shoulder as she laughed, a cab responding to my raised hand.

  This time I paid.

  And she was right—I didn’t hate her.

  Right now she and Dr. Alex were my favorite people.

  Aside from Sam, that is. A quick check of my phone showed three messages from him. All were just little check-ins, the kind of text you send when you’re in a relationship.

  How’s it going?

  Miss you.:)

  Call me. You free soon?

  Little check-ins that had bzzzzzed me to a new level of horror, but that turned out to be so banal, so ordinary, that the juxtaposition against what I’d just experienced seemed surreal.

  Everything seemed surreal.

  Because it was becoming more real.

  And there’s no app for that.

  Chapter Seven

  Sam

  As I walked toward the apartment, beaten and bruised from eight hours of moving couches and end tables and boxes, I had $150 cash in my pocket (the owners tipped us—a nice bonus) and the new job lined up for tonight, so life was good.

  Amy hadn’t answered my texts all day, so I jumped when my phone rang. Maybe this was her?

  Nope. Trevor. “Hey, you got any ideas for a new permanent bass player? That new guy sucked.”

  “It’s hard to join an existing band,” I said diplomatically. The problem, as we both knew, was really that he wasn’t Joe. Nobody would be as good with us as Joe. And we didn’t need anybody dragging us down—but saying the new guy sucked was taking it a bit too far. “I don’t have any ideas, though,” I admitted.

  “That’s cool,” Trevor said, sighing. “I’ll give Tyler another chance. He definitely picked up some attention from the chicks in the crowd.”

  “That means Darla thought he was hot.”

  “Shut it.” Trevor barked. I’d hit a nerve. And then it was his turn as he asked, “So, what’s going on with Amy?”

  Aha, I thought, that’s why he’s calling. Because who calls another person instead of texting? Calling was so 1990s. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I have no idea. I just know that Darla called me this morning and asked for Amy’s address, and I haven’t heard a word since.”

  “Huh. Well, wherever she is, and whatever she’s doing, I think Darla’s with her,” Trevor said.

  Aha, another layer to this. So, was this why Trevor was really calling? “You can’t find Darla?”

  “No, no,” he said, quickly. “She’s been texting me, but I just wanted to figure out what’s going on.”

  “Is something wrong, do you think?” I asked.

  Trevor’s voice was calm and soothing, not that I needed it. “No, no, man. I’m sure everything is fine. It’s not like they’re out fucking chickens.”

  Goddamn Trevor. He had his shit together; he could even laugh at himself. My snort died out quickly. Where the hell was Amy? If even Trevor was calling to find out the story, whatever had happened must be big.

  “Amy hasn’t answered my texts all day. Can you ask Darla what’s up?”

  “Already did. She said she’s on her way home right now. No mention of Amy.”

  “I hope she’s OK,” I mused.

  “Something bad go down between you?”

  I cleared my throat and lowered my voice. “No. Actually, something good went down between us.”

  Silence. And then a burst of knowing laughter. “Gotcha. Nice. About time, dickhead.”

  “I’m a late bloomer.”

  He chuckled. I heard a series of clicks and swipes in the background, then Darla’s voice. The phone went muffled and then Trevor came back. “Darla said Amy should be at her apartment now, but she’s not feeling well, so give her some space.”

  Confusion set in. “If she’s not feeling well, why shouldn’t I see her?”

  More muffled voices. “Darla said do whatever you want, but just know Amy’s under the weather.”

  “Under the weather?”

  “Whatever, dude. Just repeating what she tells me.”

  “’K. Thanks. I’m at the front door right now so see you in a few seconds.”

  “Darla,” he shouted right into the phone so I could hear it, “hide the sex swing and the cuffs!”

  “Asshole.” But it made me laugh. We both clicked out and I immediately checked my texts. Nothing.

  Not well.

  Under the weather.

  Give her some space.

  Was this some kind of chickspeak I didn’t understand? Code of some kind I couldn’t read that meant I needed to back off? Or maybe she’s actually not feeling well, I told myself, and I should quit worrying.

  I walked in the door to find Darla in a black leather coat, like something out of The Matrix, and Trevor in his underwear, He had a lacrosse ball shoved in his mouth like a ball gag. Darla held her palm flat against his cottoned ass and pretended I wasn’t there.

  “You left your dirty socks on the hamper lid. Ten smacks!”

  “Mmmmfff mfff mff mff,” Trevor said.

  “Guys, cut it out,” I said, smacking Trevor’s ass as I walked toward the bathroom to shower. My slap had more oomph to it than hers; the lacrosse ball shot across the room and hit the neck of Joe’s bass, toppling it over. Encased in its black cover, it was fine.

  Peals of laughter from Darla filled the air. “Told you he wouldn’t be fazed.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it too many times. Except, when Darla does it to Joe, there’s always a strap on. You can’t top that, Trev” I yelled as I shut the bathroom door

  “I never did—” was all of Darla’s protest that I heard before the sound of the shower cranking on drowned her out. I stripped down and ducked under the hot water. Shower, dinner, and a two hour nap—with earplugs—and I’d be ready to report to my first bachelorette party tonight. That was my focus now.

  And a text from Amy wouldn’t hurt.

  Amy

  After a good, thorough scrubbing, my phone had proven to be as hearty as my vagina. Darla had so helpfully made that claim, and now I couldn’t help but think about it as the phone rang and I put it to my ear. No caller ID flashed, so this could be anyone from a telemarketer to my mom, calling from her office.

  “Amy,” Evan said, breathless. Shit. His was the last voice I needed to hear right now. All I wanted to do was to answer Sam’s texts and talk.

  “Hi, Evan,” I said. This was not going to be good. The only time Evan ever called me was when he was in trouble.

  “Amy. Amy, I have to hurry,” he said, his voice hushed and urgent. “I need you to come and bail me out.”

  “Whose house are you at and where’s the car?” I sighed.

  “Not like that. For real. I mean it, I need you to bail me out.”

  My voice felt like it had razor blades in it. “Where do I need to come and pick you up?”

  “Middlesex County Jail,” he said.

  I never expected that one. Not, at least, for a few years. “Middlesex County Jail?” I repeated.

  “Look, there’s this really scary guy standing here and I only have one more minute. They’re giving me the warning. You need to come and bail me out. It looks like my bond is—”

  “Bond? What’s a bond?” Click. Conversation over. I imagined him in some kind of holding cell with an old payphone and three burly guys standing around him, ready to reenact that famous scene from Pulp Fiction. No matter how weary I was, and sick of Evan dominating everything in our family, I wasn’t going to abandon him.

  I also knew that I couldn’t call Mom. I’d never had to bail Evan out of jail before. Show up to
a huge house party with vandalism and a bunch of drunk teenagers with Evan in a police car? Sure. Twice, they’d been nice enough to release him to me. Evan had been warned by the local cops if it happened again he’d be arrested. Had he finally crossed the line? What if it was something worse? How bad was this? What the hell had he done? And what was a bond? How do you bail someone out? I don’t have that kind of money. Should I call my mom? My mind started to race, and my pulse followed suit.

  As if I didn’t have enough shit going on in my own life, now I had to deal with something out of a reality TV series. Who do you call when your baby brother is in jail and you need to get him out? Calling Mom was out. Our grandparents didn’t live in the area. No dad. No family. No friends who knew anything about this kind of activity. Fuck. I could feel my shoulders tightening and I thought I might actually start to hyperventilate until it occurred to me: I actually did know one person who might have an inkling about how this all worked.

  Darla.

  Sam

  We were watching a rerun of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which was new to Darla. Her cackling at something Charlie and Glen did was great to watch. It was always interesting to see something familiar to me through another person’s eyes as they experienced it for the first time. Joe was visiting his mom and dad. Darla and Trevor had spent the day visiting his brother, Rick, and Darla was cuddled next to Trevor, laughing her head off. I felt an emptiness in the space next to me on the couch and wondered how much longer I could wait before texting Amy again without looking like a stalker douchebag.

  Ten minutes seemed right.

  My nap had been fitful, two hours too full of might-have-beens and should-do-nows to be restorative.

  Darla’s phone rang and she thrust her hand into her back pocket and dug around, finally pulling it out and flipping it open. “Yeah?” she said. “Okay, yeah Amy. What’s up?”

  Why was Amy calling Darla right now when she wasn’t answering any of my texts? What had been comfortable suddenly became anything but.

  I looked pointedly at Darla, raising my eyebrows when she glanced at me. In response she frowned, walking across the living room away from me and Trevor pressing the phone hard against her head and using a finger to cover her spare ear. “You okay?” she said. “Yeah. What? Why do you assume that I… So you called me?” Her voice got louder as her tone became incredulous. And angry. This was not a happy conversation.

  I turned, throwing one arm behind the back of the couch, all my muscles feeling tense. Whatever was going on wasn’t good.

  Trevor caught my eye and shrugged. “What’s up?” he mouthed.

  “Don’t know,” I said in a low voice.

  “You just assumed that someone like me,” Darla said in a mocking tone, “would be able to help you with this?” I could hear Darla’s heavy breathing, her outrage taking over the room. Trevor grabbed the remote, pausing Charlie in mid-scream on the screen. “Okay, al- alright, alright” Darla said, her voice progressively more compassionate. It was a tone that very few people could pull off, simultaneously pissed and nice. “I’m coming. I’m coming, and we’ll figure this out.” She flipped the phone shut, avoided eye contact with me, and addressed Trevor directly.

  “I have to go. We’ll have to watch the rest of this later.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is Amy okay?”

  “She’s fine, she’s fine,” Darla said, but the fact that she wouldn’t look at me told me that Amy wasn’t fine, that she was anything but fine. My mind raced. Was Amy sick? Was it me? Had she changed her mind? Had something gone wrong? Was this her way of reaching out to Darla? “What do you mean,” I said to Darla. “Why are you so upset that Amy called you?”

  Darla opened and closed her mouth so many times she started to look like one of those fish that you put on the wall and that sings when you walk by. “I can’t explain, Sam,” she said, “I’m sorry, but it’s none of your business.”

  “I’m going with you,” I said as Darla grabbed a lightweight sweater to go out the front door.

  She halted and turned to me slowly. The blend of anger and determination in her eyes stopped me. Even Trevor took a step back; they were that startling. “Sometimes people have business that they don’t want other people to know about,” she said slowly. “Amy called me. Not you. So, let me be, Sam. Let me go and help her because I’m the one who has to go in and clean up the crime scene.”

  “There was a crime?” I said.

  She held up her hand, weighing her words, the expression on her face almost comical. “I don’t want to say whether there was a crime or not, but let’s just say Amy is safe.”

  “What’s going on?” Trevor asked, folding his arms across his chest. He was just as pissed as I was, except it wasn’t his...whatever, girlfriend, who was in trouble.

  “Look,” Darla said, “she’s not pregnant, she’s not physically injured, she’s not...it’s not as if she lost her phone up her hoohaw.”

  Trevor and I looked blankly at each other. Sometimes Darla’s Ohioisms were baffling.

  Darla waved her hand, exasperated. “What I mean is, it’s not as if she’s harmed, but if you don’t let me get going, you’re just going to extend her hurt. I’ll make sure she calls you.” Darla reached out and touched my arm, squeezing it with assurance. “I promise.”

  And with that she walked out the door, leaving me with more questions than answers. Leaving me alone to wonder.

  Amy

  “You fucking piece of shit,” I hissed in Evan’s ear.

  “Ooh, your girlfriend’s pissed,” said one of the guys in the waiting room as the guard brought Evan out. The guy held two fingers up to his lips and wagged his tongue between them. I rolled my eyes with disgust and turned away. Darla was waiting in yet another room. She’d walked me through the bond process.

  It turned out Evan’s bail was $7,500 which meant that somehow I needed to come up with seven hundred fifty cash, and sign over some sort of guarantee. The only thing I had with that kind of value was my car. Once I realized I didn’t need it in the Fenway, I stored it back home at Mom’s—with strict instructions NOT to let Evan use it. It was paid for, and the blue book value was just over $7,000. Between next month’s rent from my checking account and the title of my car, I was able to bail him out. I didn’t worry that the entitled little son-of-a-bitch would skip out. Evan wasn’t the type to forge out on his own in the big bad world.

  I had to hand it to Darla—she might have been angry that I called her, that I made the grand mental leap that she was the one person in my life that could walk me through bailing somebody out of jail – but I was right.

  She was. Keeper of secrets and finder of smartphone extractors, she also was the only person in my life who had any kind of experience with this kind of thing, or, at least, that I knew had any experience with this kind of thing. Darla knew what to say to the judicial clerks, she knew what to say when we called a bail bondsman, she knew how to tell me where and when to gather my things.

  And here we were, a handful of hours later. It was 9 AM, jail had opened, and Evan was barking bullshit in my ear. “Thank you Amy, thank you so much Amy,” he said, hugging me. “You wouldn’t believe the kinds of assholes in there.”

  “Yeah, I’m staring at one.”

  “Ha ha, no really. It’s not like I really did anything.”

  “What did you do, Evan?”

  “Like, nothing!”

  “The police don’t routinely arrest and detain you, and charge you with shit for doing nothing. It’s not like you were sitting in front of the grocery store selling Girl Scout cookies now, were you?” Darla cracked.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Evan snapped at her.

  “I’m your fairy godmother.”

  “She’s the person who figured all this out Evan, so shut the fuck up.”

  He pulled his neck back in surprise as we walked. Evan looked like our dad; tall, lanky, with slightly stooped shoulders, and no neck. It was a strange combinat
ion. Most guys who are tall and slim have long necks with Adam’s apples that poke out, as if announcing their presence. But Evan looked shorter than he was, and the hunching made him seem more ominous. With Dad’s brown hair, just like mine, and Mom’s blue eyes, there was a pinched quality to him. He had just turned eighteen, and all the juvie records were about to be put behind him.

  This one, though? He was so nailed.

  “What did you do?” I said, my voice like ice chips rattling around in a cup.

  “I just stored some stuff for a friend —”

  “Stored?”

  Silence.

  “You’re a dealer?” I groaned.

  “No. More like held on to something else while driving. And then I got pulled over for ‘reckless driving’ and had more than the legal limit on me.” He threw up a hand to shield his eyes as we walked out the main doors, as if aliens were descending to take him away. I wished they were.

  “Shut up!” Darla said. “You don’t exactly announce that in front of cop central.” Evan glowered at her, but clammed up. She was right. A few hatted heads turned, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

  “I was in Arlington,” he continued, as if that explained anything.

  “You were in Arlington? We...you don’t live anywhere near Arlington.”

  “I have friends in lots of places,” he said smugly. He grinned like a character in a John Hughes movie, the pastel-suited guy with the feathered, flippy hair. The guy you knew—you knew—within three seconds of his introduction, was going to be the bad guy.

  I went cold. “What kind of drug, exactly, were you ‘storing’?”

  He shrugged. “Some heroin.”

  “Oh, God,” Darla groaned. I joined her.

  “Fuck off,” he sputtered.

  “Well, good luck getting home. Call Mom for a ride.” I turned to walk away, my stomach shredded.

  “You can’t tell Mom.” He grabbed my arm, hard. I could tell it would bruise. It wouldn’t be the first time Evan had hurt me, but it would be the last.

  Darla grabbed his wrist, yanked his hand off of my arm, and twisted it. He howled in pain, and two cops nearby watched. I waved and smiled. They still watched.