by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose
She tensed in my arms so I pulled back and just smiled the fakest, most pretend-sincere smile I could manage and said, “We need to get together more often.”
Brushing a stray strand of hair out of her face, the ends of her overgrown haircut split and frizzy, she smiled a wan, bland grin. She looked so tired, so beaten down and literally beaten up. “I'd like that, too,” she said, breathlessly, as if it were some new thing that I'd brought up for the very first time, like we were brand new friends getting to know each other. “Let me see when I can,” she said and a genuine smile pranced across her lips as she turned and wrote some numbers down on an inventory sheet.
The next half hour was filled with school kids coming in and out, buying soda and candy and crap, littering the bottom of their cars, floating along on joyrides because around here that's about all you could do if you weren't in an after-school sport. A few short years ago, we were those kids and it pained me to think about the fact that we would never be that way again. I vowed to never be the way that Jane was, trapped and miserable.
As she went to leave I reached out again and touched her forearm. Her brown, stringy hair floated in front of her face and she kept sweeping it back with one hand, brown eyes ringed by dark circles, her skin paler than I remembered. She carried a little bit of pudge around her hips but otherwise was thinner than we'd been in high school, which surprised me. I took a good, long look at her for the first time in what felt like forever and said, “Tell Lucas his Aunty said 'hello'.”
“I will. You take care of yourself, Darla.”
“You too, Jane.”
My mouth was bursting to tell her everything about Trevor, to tell her all about Joe, about the hidden BMW in my trailer parking lot, the purple passion place that she would be thrilled to know existed. I'd talked about doing something like that for years and had only recently actually executed it. There were so many things I wanted to share with her, so much I wanted to explore with a friend, and the impact of choosing to be so self- sufficient was starting to take its toll on me. If my one friend could evaporate into the shadows of Jared so quickly, leaving me a recluse without a confidante, then maybe that said more about me then it said about Jane.
Jared, on the other hand. I knew that two phone calls, one to my Uncle Mike and one to just about any guy who'd ever liked Jane in high school, could make it so that Jared learned a lesson that would at least buy Jane enough time to get through her pregnancy without being struck like a dog. I also knew that it could backfire. If Jared got the shit kicked out of him by a crew of guys at the bar he was smart enough, clever enough—really, sociopathic enough—to figure out how to turn it to his advantage.
There had to be a different way to disgrace him, to either make him either leave, which was about as likely as me leaving this town, or to make Jane leave. I didn't think she would. The Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says had become her mantra lately and the Bible seemed to be Jared. Whatever he said the Bible said, she took to heart, and she had decided that she just wasn't submissive enough. At least, that's the rumor I heard. I wouldn't know it from the horse's mouth because Jane had turned into a ghost of her former self. Was that my future if I stayed?
Over the next few hours customers came in, customers went out, and I operated on autopilot, knowing the job so well that I could have done it in my sleep while whacking off as I watched Magic Mike... ew, that's one hell of an image isn't it? I think I need to revise that in my own mind. At any rate, you know what I'm saying. The job was dull, robotic, and it didn't take more than three brain cells to do it—which described pretty much everything in my life at the moment...except for Trevor.
I finished my shift, handed the keys off to my boss, who had come in to fill in to keep labor nice and low. As we changed drawers, I smiled to myself and then my phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hi, Darla?” It was Joe. That was about the last voice I thought I'd hear on my phone.
“How'd you get my number?” I asked, confused.
“You had Trevor call me,” he said, slowly.
“Oh, oh, yeah, you're right. What's up?”
“Can you come get me here at the hotel?” I hadn't thought about that but it made sense.
“Sure. Sure. I'm gettin' off shift right now. Gimme ten minutes.”
“Will do. Thanks. Bye.”
That was probably the most perfunctory conversation I'd had with a human being in years. That was just about all we needed to say to each other. I climbed in my car, unbuttoned my work shirt, threw it in the back seat and made sure that I looked reasonably decent, because after I picked up Joe I'd be swinging back to meet up with Uncle Mike and to find Trevor.
It really was close to the end now. I thought about Jane and Jared as I drove toward the truck stop. If I could just avoid being trapped then I...I what? I'd live like this? Shit. Maybe I was trapped, too, and just didn't know it. It didn't take a baby or two or an abusive husband to make you feel like you had no options. It didn't take a disabled mama or no money either. It was all about your own core, what you thought you could do. Trevor and Joe were just as trapped as I was. The question was: how could we break free?
* * * *
I wasn't looking forward to the trip between Joe's hotel and picking up Trevor. The last thing I needed was another ten minutes of grief in my life, and snobbish grief was really the last thing I needed. So, as I drove to the hotel, I paused and realized that what I really did need was a quick phone chat with my aunt. I had Josie on autodial and thankfully she picked up, the phone ringing twice before I heard her say, “Darla, what the hell are you doing calling me?”
“Oh, just slumming.”
She laughed. “You OK? You finally going to take me up on my offer to move out here?”
“Nope,” I said. Yup, I thought. Where the hell did that come from? There was no way I could actually move out to Boston. She'd been trying to get me out there for years. Mama needed me but now, with Trevor living right outside the city and Joe...
“That's not what I want to talk about.”
“You talk about what you want to talk about, then.”
“I need to talk about a man.”
“A man? How can you talk about a man? There aren't any men out there.”
“No kidding,” I muttered, “but I actually managed to find one.” Maybe two.
“So, who is this man you found?”
“I literally found him, Josie. He was naked, wearing nothing but a guitar on the side of the road.”
Silence.
“What?”
“I'm not kidding.” Why did I always have to say that to her, all the time, and Mama too? “I'm not kidding” had become as commonplace in my daily vocabulary as “Sure, let me help you.”
“He was just standing there on I-76, wearing a guitar and a collar and sticking his thumb out, and so I stopped.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“Wow, way to be blunt Josie. Yeah, of course.”
“How can I be blunt if I'm right?”
“You can be both.”
“I often am but don't accuse me of being too blunt when, in the end, the direct question I'm asking relates exactly to what you've actually done.”
“I don't want to talk about that, either,” I snapped.
“So, what do you want to talk about?”
“I want to talk about this man.”
“What's his name?”
“Trevor.”
“Trevor what?”
“Trevor Connor,” I said, struggling to keep the grin out of my voice.
“Trevor Connor...where have I heard that name? Why is that so familiar?” she said. I paused, giving her a taste of her own silence. “Wait a minute!” she practically screamed. “Trevor Connor? From Random Acts of Crazy?”
“Yup.”
“Darla.” Calm seeped into her voice, the kind of placid, dulcet tones you use with a florid schizophrenic. Or a drunk redneck.
“Yeah?”
“Are you on som
ething? Because you don't just conjure a naked man on the interstate, wearing nothing but a guitar, who happens to be the lead singer of your favorite band. Honey, do you need me to call someone?”
“I swear to God, Josie, I am not making this up.”
“Okayyy,” she said, skeptically. “And you fucked him?”
“Yup.”
“Any good?”
“Hoo boy,” I said.
“That good?”
“Yup.”
“So what's your problem?”
What's my problem? I thought. What's my problem? Great question. That's why I called her, right? She always knew how to get to the heart of something. The problem was that I didn't know what my problem was. So, I said that.
“My problem is that I don't know what my problem is and Trevor is about to leave any minute now and I'm going to pick up his friend Joe, who—”
“Joe? Joe as in Joe Ross, the bass player?”
“Yup.”
“Quit saying yup.”
“Yes, ma'am. Is that better?”
“Actually, yes.”
“OK then, ma'am.”
“You're telling me that you're hanging out with the bass player and the lead singer of your favorite band in the middle of Peters?”
“Yup—yes, ma'am, I mean,” I corrected myself.
“You know they're from Boston, right?
“Well, outside of Boston, some suburb named Sudborough.”
Josie snorted. “More like Snob-borough.”
“I picked up on that,” I said as I pulled into the hotel, right in front of Joe's room.
“Are they being assholes?” she said, coldly. “Because if you need me to—”
“What? What are you going to do, Josie. You're a hundred pounds soaking wet. You gonna go and raspberry them to death? Shake your finger in their faces extra hard?”
Silence.
“Fair enough,” she said. Her voice softened, “So, what's really going on?”
“Well, you knew I already had a fangirl crush on Trevor so the problem is that now that I’ve spent most of the past twenty-four hours with him, I don't want to let him go.” I could feel the mournful tone in my voice and willed away the choking, salty tears that filled my throat.
“So, don't.”
“Don't what?”
“Don't let him get away. Come to Boston. Live with me here in Cambridge.”
“You know I can't do that,” I said through gritted teeth. Her response was the best antidote to my tears and I could feel a defensive tension form in my neck and upper back.
“Your Mama's fine,” she said, soothingly. “You can come out here, you can go on Darla. You can move on.”
“I don't wanna talk about that.”
“Well, I do,” she insisted. “And now you have a place to live, you have a guy—”
“Two guys,” I interrupted—might as well change the subject.
“Two guys? You fucked them both?”
“No... no,” I protested. Not yet, I thought. Where the hell did that thought come from? “Look, it's complicated,” I said.
“It's always complicated,” she said with an acid tone.
“No, actually it's not,” I replied, puzzled. “My life's pretty fuckin' simple Josie. I go to my gas station job, I help Mama with her sugars and I try to find somebody to spend time with who doesn't think that Killer Karaoke is the height of American culture. Other than that, I don't have a complicated life and now, suddenly, in twenty-four hours it's become more twisted and more confusing than anything else in my entire life probably since I was four.”
Something in my words or my tone made her change her entire approach and her voice went soft and gentle. “I'm sorry,” she said. “It sounds like whatever you're going through, it's pretty big.”
“Yup...uh, yes ma'am,” I said.
“How can I help?”
“Tell me what to do,” I joked. “I don't want Trevor to leave—Joe's about to take him away. Uncle Mike's gonna fix his car.”
“Joe's car is broken?”
“Yeah, he got here and then came into my little purple passion place—”
“Your purple what?”
“Oh, nevermind.” I hadn't told her about the shed, she had no idea what I was talkin' about.
“If you've got a place on your body that's turning purple from passion, Darla, then there are medications for that.”
“It's not like that.”
“Ookaaayyy.” Again, she drew the word out with extreme skepticism. It was getting annoying.
“I don't want Trevor to leave and Joe's an asshole but he's a really, really, really attractive asshole and I just,” Ahh, I sighed. “I guess it's all on me, isn't it.”
“Yes,” she said. “It's all on you. I can't really help you. I'm here to listen, I'm here to give you whatever advice I can, and I'm here to caution you to please, please use condoms.”
“We did,” I said. “No worries.”
“OK, good because the last thing you need is to add a baby to this mix.”
“I know. I know, Josie, I'm watching Jane go through it. Trust me, I do not wanna add a baby to anything right now.”
“Good girl. I'm going to start clearing out my guest room just in case you wanted to, you know, visit. Or uproot your entire life and move in.”
I snorted. “Fat chance.”
“Oh, I think the chance is better than you think, Darla,” she said.
I looked up and Joe had stepped outside, the glow of the security lamps illuminating that perfect, wavy tousled hair, his face well rested and neutral, his body moving with a languid grace that made me just want to—“I gotta go, Josie,” I said. “Things are about to get even more complicated.”
“Just remember one thing, Darla,” she said before I hung up.
“What's that?”
“Whatever you do, it's your life—not anybody else's. You get to pick what happens next.”
* * * *
The hair at the nape of Joe's neck was damp and he smelled like industrial soap, the scent you get after spending the night in a hotel, with a hint of bleach. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I mimicked, and as I backed out of the parking lot there was just silence between us until I turned out onto the main road to head home. It was awkward, I won't deny it, but I wasn't about to break first. He had been the asshole and I sure as hell wasn't gonna play that nicey-nice game where I would pretend that the assholery was fair and balanced and we were equally responsible. Fuck that. He was the jerk and if anybody was gonna say anything, it had to be him.
That made for three minutes of tense, quiet that was so thick it was like swimming in Davey's brain. Finally Joe cracked and said, “Look, I'm sorry.”
I let the words hang in the air because I wanted to savor them. How many times are you right in this world and someone actually acknowledges it? If I replied with, “It's OK,” I'd be lying because the way he was acting wasn't OK. If I said, “I understand,” that would be a lie too, because I didn't understand. Snobbery seemed so ridiculous to me because unless you earned the money yourself you were just piggybacking off of someone else's luck or fortune and looking down on other people. To me, that just made you a douchebag. Finally I settled on a grunt of, “Huh.”
He smiled a little. “Well said.”
“I may not be eloquent, but I get my point across.”
He studied me; I could feel his eyes crawling over my profile as we drove along, the headlights illuminating a possum that barely escaped my tire, the backs of road signs shining in a quick glare as the headlights bounced off them. Just outside the beams, the thin, spindly twigs and branches of trees still mostly bare between their spring buds gave the whole night the suggestion of a horror movie, except I wasn't creeped out so much as unsure about what the rest of the night held.
“It helps to have gotten a few hours of sleep and a quick shower,” he said, a congenial tone that I had not heard yet in his voice. Relenting a bit, I relaxed and smile
d, turning toward him and just nodding.
“I'm gonna imagine that there's no class at your college for what to do when your best friend disappears and reappears six hundred miles away…naked.”
“If there were such a class,” he said, “that would be at Hampshire College.” He laughed. The puzzled look on my face must have told him that I had no idea what the joke meant and he said, “You guys have Oberlin College around here, right?”
“On the other side of the state, yeah.”
And he said, “Well, Hampshire is similar.”
I got the joke about drugs and nakedness in general, hedonism, and laughed politely. I may have manners so unpolished that if you brushed up against me you'd bleed from hitting a sharp edge but I knew when to shine somebody on as they extended an olive branch.
“Why are you being so nice to Trevor?” he asked. It wasn't an accusation; I could hear a genuine questioning in his voice and a little bit of prodding. He was curious and trying to figure out what he could and couldn't talk to Trevor about. I needed to be guarded but open at the same time. Damn, if these men weren't stretching me in new ways.
“At first it was just because he was so strange standing there, caught in my headlights, totally naked, with those thighs flexing and the guitar covering his nether regions.” I slowed the car down and went an uncharacteristic thirty-five in a thirty-five zone, no need to speed. In fact, I wanted to stretch this conversation out. It was pleasant and I hadn't done pleasant with Joe. Time to see where that could take us.
“And then?” he asked.
“And then it was hey, here's this really hot guy and he's into me so…” I shrugged. “Why not?”
“Why not?” he echoed.
“And then,” I shook my head a little, “he needed a place to stay, some clothes, some food, and once he called you everything sort of snowballed from there and we knew what was happening next. We didn't do anything special, I didn't know he was Trevor Connor from Random Acts of Crazy.”
“Would that have changed anything?” Joe asked. “If you had known?”
I bit my lower lip and thought about that for a minute. I frowned and shook my head, my hands firmly planted at ten and two o'clock on my steering wheel as we now went thirty in a thirty-five zone. Nobody was behind me so I didn't worry about it.