by Julia Kent
Joe
Becoming the existential equivalent of a human robot has been drilled into me so thoroughly that it was no problem making it through the rest of the dinner party at the Connor’s house.
My mom was my mom, and Dad just tolerated her, enjoying his conversation with Trevor’s dad. Trev’s mom talked mostly with me, while my mom grilled Trevor on his plans for the summer, whether he’d made Law Review editor at Harvard, and all the ways he’d allegedly fucked up his entire career path because he didn’t telepathically listen to her.
I was going out of my God-damned mind.
That human robot thing worked really well when it came to being crushed by my mother’s forked tongue.
Not so well when Darla crushed my heart.
Had she just broken up with us? We’d had fights before, but she was always the one who chased us down. Made us talk. Forced us to sit face to face and deal with whatever petty issue made us feel torn in thirds.
This was different.
Bone rattlingly different.
This was like opposing counsel walking away from a plea deal. There’s that moment when your gut turns inside out and you realize there’s nothing you can do to stop the runaway train of losing control of your case.
Your life.
Your heart.
Everyone around me at the table turned into a talking fleshblob. Except for Rick, who was sitting on the piano bench playing a beautiful, classical version of some Spongebob Squarepants song. Rick was good at taking cartoon music and turning it into a masterpiece.
Wagner would have been a good choice, too.
“Joey,” Mom asked, turning to me with a genuine smile that defied plastic surgeon’s needles, “You’re done!” She gave her hands two quick claps.
“What?”
“Done with the year. Year two. You’re two thirds there.”
“Done?” I repeated stupidly.
“Your paper. You turned it in.” She played with the stem of her wineglass, then picked it up and took a sip. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”
Paper. Law school. Oh, fuck. I’d abandoned my paper back at home, just coming downstairs for a quick cup of coffee, running into Gene, learning Mom and Dad were here, with—
Darla.
Why did my heart feel a sharp pain? I put my hand on it.
Mom freaked. “Something wrong with your heart?” she said in a clipped voice. That whole robot thing under strong emotions might be genetic, after all.
“No,” I said, rubbing my chest. “Just a twinge.”
“A twinge? You don’t get twinges!”
“How would you know? I haven’t lived at home for six years. Maybe I get twinges sometimes. I’m human,” I snapped.
“You need to see your cardiologist,” she answered, reaching below the table, grabbing her purse. She snagged her phone and slid it open, then went to Contacts.
“You have my pediatric cardiologist on speed dial?”
She made a sour face and said nothing. I grabbed the phone out of her hand and shut it off.
Mom looked at me, stunned.
“My heart is fine,” I declared. That was a lie.
Everything about my life was a lie.
“You have a delicate heart condition—”
“Had. I had a delicate heart condition. And I know you went through an ordeal when I was a baby—”
Cutting each other off was genetic, too. “An ordeal. Did you hear that, Herb? An ordeal. That’s like calling a groupie a band manager.”
Trevor shot to his feet. I didn’t get the joke, but he sure as hell did, and whatever it was left a bad taste in my mouth as he stormed out of the room without saying a word.
“Mom, I’m nearly twenty-five. If I need medical assistance, I’ll call for it. I can manage my own life.”
“You can’t manage your way out of a paper bag,” she snorted, looking to Trevor’s mom for support. Connection. Confirmation.
An audience.
The queen expects one, right?
Except Trevor’s mom didn’t react at all. Instead, her eyes flicked over to watch me.
This was some kind of rite of passage I didn’t have a blueprint for. Trevor’s exit emboldened me.
Darla’s departure cracked my world in half, leaving a sinkhole the size of...
My mother.
“If that’s true,” I said calmly, all the eyes in the room on me, “then you are a failure.”
I might as well have just slapped her.
“WHAT?”
“You.Are.A.Failure.As.A.Parent,” I said slowly, “if I am a twenty-four-year-old man who is incapable of handling his own life independently of you. Your job as a mother is to raise me with the skills to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible.”
I stood and made eye contact with Dad, Doug and Susan, clearly ignoring my mom as she writhed in pain, struggling to cough out the next barb.
“And with that, I’ll take my grown-up, self-directed body out of here because that is what’s best for me.”
And I did.
Trevor was nowhere to be seen outside, so I climbed in my car and took off, wondering how long it would take before Mom reported it stolen.
In one, single hour every part of my life had fallen to pieces.
I was so dependent on my parents. Even this car—a 2015 version of the one I’d driven to rescue Trevor from Ohio in—was theirs. My law school tuition, my clothes, my Starbucks card, my Visa and American Express—all from them.
They gave me everything. I’d always thought it was just what parents do, but now...
What if it wasn’t generosity?
What if it was shackles?
Darla
You know what I’ve learned these past two years? That Alex is the only damn man on the planet you can turn to in a crisis and he’ll always be there for you. I like to imagine my daddy was like that. Uncle Mike is, but I can’t very well call him up right now and ask him to pull his semi on the streets of Boston and Cambridge to help me move my shit out of Trevor’s apartment.
That’s right.
I’m moving out.
It’s not like I had a lot of crap to begin with. Josie had all the furniture I needed when I moved in with her. Trevor had all the furniture, too. I have books and clothes and paperwork for the band and all the sweepstakes winnings Mama keeps sending me. A lot of that I handed out to the homeless people on the street when I saw them, or gave away in the building at Good Things Come in Threes.
Otherwise, I was pretty light.
Light as a feather.
And gone with the fucking wind.
That was my goal as I shoved random shit into boxes and big industrial-strength trash bags. I needed two cars to move it all. A call to Josie and her own call to Alex and within an hour I had them both here in Alex’s little car that matched Josie’s.
It should be enough.
Sam wasn’t at the apartment, thank God, and I knew Amy was at her college, studying for her final papers and exams. So give me two hours and I could be done. Gone. Cleaned out.
Good thing only Josie and Alex were here, too, because I was a wreck.
“I’ll drive the car back to our place,” Alex said gently as I started emptying the end table drawer into a box. He blanched visibly when I pulled out my prized double-headed dildo. The seventeen inch one with the clit tickler. Shaped like a tongue.
“Thanks,” I sniffed. I held it up. “These all have memories.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I can’t—maybe I should just give them away. They remind me of Joe’s O face.”
Alex’s palms went up flat, as if warding off Joe’s O face. “Um, no thanks. We’re good. Josie has her own electronic torture devices. We don’t need more.”
“Torture devices?” Josie shouted from the next room. “Darla, are you showing him your sex toys?”
“Not on purpose.”
“Oops!” she called back. “I didn’t mean to show you that pussy pocket
! C’mon, Darla. Don’t traumatize my fiancé!”
“I think you just did it for me,” I muttered.
Alex wouldn’t meet my eyes, but instead walked over and grabbed two big black trash bags. “These yours?” he asked, holding them up.
“Yeah. They come with me.” I looked at my tiny little bullet and slipped it in my pocket. “So does this.” I snagged the Fifty Shades of Grey cock ring we’d just bought at Target the other day. It was, oddly enough, right next to the children’s toothbrush section.
“But I won’t be needing this,” I added. “You want it?” I held it up for him to see. “Never been used.” It was out of the package and hung off my finger like a limp teething ring.
“Um, no.” Alex looked like he was starting to gag a little.
I shrugged. “Suits you.” And threw it in the trash can.
Sorting through my (rather large) sex toy collection was not part of what I had to do when I moved from Ohio to Massachusetts two years ago. I’d never touched a sex toy before I moved here. Charlotte was a sex toy party hostess and had rocked everyone’s world. Amy was a fucking expert in electronic devices.
Seriously. The two of them could start their own toy company or, failing that, head up the robotics lab at MIT. They had dreams of grad school and academia and working in universities but if that shit fell through they could make steady bank designing new products that drove people to new sensual heights.
And besides, these toys were my only form of solace, comfort, and orgasms now.
Joe and Trevor were out of the picture.
Kicked out.
By me.
A wave of cold nausea and hot rage whipped through me. I just grabbed the drawer out of its slots and dumped the whole thing in the box.
Move first.
Sort later.
I didn’t want to be here when they came back. When Trevor and Joe wised up and finally came after me. I knew they’d try, at least once.
They would, right? Because if they didn’t, then the last two years of my life were a worse lie, like poor Mrs. Mitchell back home who married a gay man and didn’t know it until he died and she found his diaries and went to Vegas with her friends and learned there were men who like having sex with women. And who don’t require a Xanax and four beers to go down on you.
I just didn’t want them to come here now. And I needed to clean myself out of their life. I needed to show them I was serious. I couldn’t keep living like this. Whatever benefit Trevor and Joe got from keeping the true nature of our relationship a secret—and there was a benefit. People don’t do something unless there is.
Whatever benefit they got was now sorely outweighed by the negative. Hiding wasn’t cutting it anymore, because they were hiding from a sense of shame. A fear of shame.
And I was the target of that shame. The lightning rod.
The Ring.
Fuck all y’all, motherfuckers. Peace out. I’m gone.
Josie came into the bedroom and silently pulled the bags and boxes I’d set near the door out into the hall, where Alex grabbed them with ease, those biceps strong and big. He was a tall guy, bigger than either Trevor or Joe, and had the easy stance of a secure man.
A secure, confident man.
I was dealing with boys in Trevor and Joe, and my mind flashed back to that day at Jeddy’s a while back, when Mike and Dylan sat down with Trevor and Joe and they talked about what it’s like to be in a permanent threesome.
How Joe had just sat there like a statue, constantly looking at the door like he was going to bolt the second anyone asked him to talk about his “feewings”. But before it was over, Mike had told Joe he was making himself miserable with his jealousy, and Mike had done the same thing before, and it was all on him. And Joe and Trevor had just sat there with their mouths hanging open. But then I got in a big fight with Madge about her niece, and Laura and her guys had to suddenly run out the door because of some creepy uncle or something.
Hadn’t they learned a fucking thing from that talk? Guess not. And while I’d uprooted my entire life to come out here and see what my destiny might be away from Ohio and the struggles I’d had living in Peters, Trevor and Joe really hadn’t changed at all, had they? Joe kept doing exactly what Mike had said that day. They went on as planned, going to their law school, playing in the band, fucking me on the side and playing pretend on the surface.
Oh, my God—they had used me. And I’d gone along, like a lap dog, tongue hanging out and tail wagging, eager for table scraps.
There was a time when them table scraps was enough. More than enough.
Now it was just slop.
“Fuck them,” I said through gritted teeth, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Ashamed of me. A groupie and not a manager. Fucking chicken woman, all tight and tiny with a puckered little butthole for a mouth.”
“Chicken woman?” I heard Alex whisper to Josie.
“Don’t ask,” she hissed back. He shut up and returned to being muscle, lifting bags and boxes until we were done.
Josie surveyed the bedroom, bath, and living room/kitchen combo. “Anything else?”
My mouth and eyes felt like swollen balloons, so full they were ready to pop. She rubbed the spot between my shoulder blades. That always used to help when I was a kid. A half smile peeked out from my lips.
“I think this does it. If I miss something, I can call Amy.” She’d be shocked. And she and Sam would hate losing me as a roommate, but also my share of the rent.
Trevor could cover it, though.
Trevor would have to deal with the consequences of his choices.
I wasn’t no shield no more.
My body went limp as a rag doll, and I sagged against Josie. I’d dressed all nice and grown-up for dinner at Trevor’s, in a wrap shirt and stylish pants, real shoes with a slight heel on my feet. I even had pearl earrings in my ears. For once, I’d tried to play by their rules—his parents’ rules, I mean. My hair was pulled back, neat and sculpted, the wild waves tamed into gentle curls. I’d worn makeup, and could only imagine I had eyes now like the raccoon I’d run over the day I met Trevor, which seemed about right now.
This whole situation stank to high holy heaven, just like that raccoon had when I’d dumped a naked Trevor onto the floor of my piece of shit Toyota.
Big, ugly tears seized my throat, my mouth, my eyes, my heart, my everything. Josie murmured a bunch of words that added up to nothing but love, the kind of love you feel for someone who is hurting, drawn from compassion and connection more than experience and knowing. Her comfort was all she could give, her presence a gift but no cure.
Alex came and between the two of them, they escorted me to the door. I reached into my pocket and handed the key to Alex. Those deft surgeon’s fingers pried it off the keychain loop, and he placed it on the small table we kept near the door for mail and stuff.
And then I was gone.
Just gone.
CHAPTER 5
Trevor
“Fuck that fucking cold-hearted bitch,” I growled, on my fifth beer.
“I know. My mom’s awful,” Joe snorted. He was sucking on some kind of vaporizer filled with new pot he’d gotten from a friend who grew it to pharmaceutical grade. It was an inlaid wooden box with a digital display and a long plastic tube connecting the box to Joe’s mouth.
“I was talking about Darla.”
Joe’s eyebrows shot up and he coughed and blew smoke at me, but he wisely said nothing. Smart man. Fuck everyone. Seriously. That whole event back at my parents’ house two days ago was a swirling mess of what-the-fuck that still made no sense to me. Joe’s mom was a bitch, for sure, but what Darla did afterward was unbelievable. Unconscionable.
Unforgivable.
“So we come home and she’s just gone? All her shit moved out? She left us her food, but took all the rest of it.”
“Even the sex toys,” Joe muttered, sucking his beer until it was empty. He was staying with us. The past two days had been fucking miserable as we t
ried to figure out where everything had gone off the edge. Darla wouldn’t talk to us. She shut us out. No calls, no texts, no emails, no nothing.
She had handed off all band manager business work to Amy, who was struggling to make sense of it. Charlotte helped, and had called in her buddy, Maggie. Darla did the work of three God-damned women.
How could she dump this on us?
I’d wrapped up my stupid semester at Harvard, Joe was done at Penn, my internship was looming at the biggest law firm in the city, and if my summer job went well I pretty much had an associate position when I finished. The next few months were pivotal:
Do well at the firm and set my future up, or...
Go wild on tour with zero stability but fulfill a dream?
Without Darla, the second option seemed so empty.
And so did the first.
Liam walked in without knocking, grabbed my half-consumed beer off the end table, chugged it down, went to the fridge, got two more, handed me one and popped his own open. He drank most of that, sat down, and muttered, “Women!”
“Charlotte?” Joe asked.
Liam burped. “Yeah. We’re fine.”
“You always think you’re fine,” I groaned. “And then bam—she moves out on you, won’t take your calls, and when you complain she took the best sex toys—”
“You complained?” Joe gaped.
“I was trying to get some kind of response out of her.”
“Did you?”
I snorted. “She texted me a link to Charlotte’s sales site.”
Liam hooted. “Man, she hates both of you. So much. So, so much.”
We both turned and looked at him. “How do you know?”
“Charlotte,” he said easily. “The hens are all rallied around her. Over at Josie’s right now. They’re doing whatever chicks do when they have some asshole who broke up with them. It seems to involve lots and lots of ice cream and Nicholas Sparks movies.”
“We didn’t break up with her,” I protested.
“You kinda did.”
“WHAT?” Joe and I shouted at the same time.
“You humiliated her.”
“My MOM humiliated her,” Joe said.
“Trevor, too.” Liam finished the beer and got a second one.