New Adult Romance Box Set

by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose

  “Uhh... no.” My answer was indecisive at first and then clipped at the end, more a function of needing to think it through than of any actual hesitation about the emotional impact of his question. To the left I had an opportunity to take a road that would extend our journey but not get us unreasonably far from home, so I grabbed the chance. Might as well buy five or ten extra minutes.

  “Why do you think Trevor ended up out here?” I asked.

  “Because he's a dumb fuck.”

  “Well, there's that.” I laughed. “But why would he get so fucked up and then what—hit the road naked? I don't get it. I don't understand.”

  “Me neither,” Joe answered.

  “Why did he get so fucked up in the first place?”

  “You mean back home? I don't know. It's what we do, it's what Trevor does especially. Eating that entire bag of peyote though...man,” Joe made a low whistle. “That's some fucked up shit. I haven't seen anyone do that before.”

  “Do you think that he was trying to get himself so deeply in trouble that someone would have to rescue him?”

  Joe pounded his chest with a flat palm and said, “It worked, didn't it?”

  I smiled and we shared a conspiratorial grin and then I got serious. “No, I don't mean that way. I mean more...maybe it was a cry for help.”

  Joe pulled his chin back, his face shocked. His eyes roamed down over the dashboard to the floor, he stared at his feet and then looked straight ahead at the horizon where my headlamp beams seemed to force the bare trees to part for us. “That's not Trevor,” he said. “That's not who he is. He's never been like that. If he were gonna do something like that he would just do it, he wouldn't...” He seemed to struggle with his words and then said simply, “No.”

  A huge internal sigh of relief whooshed out of me but I couldn't hint at it. “Good,” I said, nodding slowly.

  We drove in a nice sort of companion quiet, neither of us feeling the need to talk until Joe rested a warm hand, for the briefest of seconds, on my shoulder and then pulled back. “I see why he likes you,” Joe said.

  Something in my belly tightened and my throat went loose, my heart slamming against my ribcage as Joe's words triggered a reaction that made me lick my lips and try to quell the butterflies that fluttered down below. This was not how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to be excited to go see Trevor and grab whatever little bit of time we had, wringing it until we squeezed out every last lustful drop. He could go back to Boston and live his life and I could stay here and live mine.

  And the way that the presence of these two men changed the execution of time for me would come to an end.

  Joe

  It just seemed so weird to me that I couldn't keep my eyes off of her. Here we were, hurtling along these weird country roads, in her little rusted out box of a car. It looked like something from those Soviet era movies that we were forced to watch in AP World History, but with only the grimness, none of the fascination. She had a glow, a purpose and a grounding to her and she seemed to be completely unaware of it.

  At home, everyone, guys and girls, were so focused on making sure that they controlled as much as possible what other people thought of them and at the same time were thoroughly manipulated by what other people thought of them. The congruity of opinion was what helped you to stay popular, or at least to stay not not-popular. Being on the fringe was the kiss of death. In fact, I couldn't really name anybody who wasn't part of my circle. We were all the captains of the sports teams, the heads of debate clubs and outdoors clubs and Young Whatever Political party clubs. I was editor in chief of the newspaper and part of the academic decathlon team. Finding an answer to “What do you do?” was what we did. It was who we were, meeting these milestones, fighting for a high school resume that showed the world that we weren't as inadequate as we thought we were on the inside.

  And along comes Darla. Really?

  She was the kind of girl...no, she was a woman. The kind we don't have back home or, if we do, they don't live in Sudborough. I could see why Trevor was taken with her, I got it and yet it seemed a little too much like slumming. If we knew we were around for months or even years I'd understand more because this wasn't someone you fucked and left. This was the kind of person that made you stay.

  A thin tremor of fear shot through my right arm and I gripped the car door handle to steady myself. Was Trevor thinking about staying? Is that why he was so cagey when it was time to leave? I did not want to be the messenger to Mrs. Connor with that missive.

  The air was warm enough that Darla had the windows down or, perhaps, they just didn't roll up. Her blonde curls, little tufts, flew out behind her face, her ponytail heavy and thick but her eyes animated and a little wild. Her excitement was for Trevor, I knew that. I'd been Trevor's second best for a long time. He used to say that he didn't understand why, that I was like something chiseled out of Esquire. But Trevor had something I lacked and frankly that I didn't really want because it was a bit too untamed. And that drew women to him—the wrong women, of course. None of them actually wanted to be licked by the flames of the fire in Trevor's belly. Darla looked like she wanted to be slow roasted in it.

  “Darla?” I asked, quietly, my voice barely above a whisper. It made me feel weak so I cleared my throat and asked with a deeper, more authoritative voice. Her back straightened as I opened my mouth and said, “What's it like?”

  She turned her head, frowned and looked at me. Then her eyes went back to the road. “What do you mean? What's what like?”

  “Living here. Your life, your future.”

  She snorted. “Future? What future?”

  “You have fifty or sixty years left. What are you going to do with it?”

  She exhaled and her shoulders slumped, just a bit. Her foot moved on the pedal as she slowed the car down and turned down another road. I didn't remember the drive between her trailer and the hotel being quite this long but I didn't care much either. This was the most enjoyable conversation I'd had in a long time and for once the focus wasn't on my looks or my permanent record.

  “Around here, Joe, people don't...” she faltered, clenched her jaw and then relaxed a bit, “people don't think that way. If you're gonna go to college it's either because your parents have enough money to send you away or because you need to be a nurse or get a criminal justice degree to become a cop, or maybe some specialized training like computers, or auto-tech. A lot of that can be done in high school, though, for free. People here, we work construction, we clean the houses of people like you though—there aren't many around here. We don't think in terms of futures and careers beyond, 'Oh, I want to have a family some day,' though, more likely it's, 'Oops, I guess I'm having a family now'.”

  That made me laugh, and not in a funny kind of way. It made me nervously sick. The handful of girls I knew our age who'd gotten pregnant just got abortions. I wasn't going to say that aloud right now to Darla. She was opening up to me and I didn't deserve it after being such an asshole to her. Blowing it again meant that she wouldn't give me a second chance.

  I nodded. “I think I understand.”

  “No, you don't.”

  “Well, give me a chance.”

  “It's not about chances.” The car turned onto the gravel road of her trailer development and an immediacy, a sense of urgency swept over my entire body, making me tense without the usual irritability. “Your whole life is about having plenty, even if it's plenty of things it doesn’t even occur to you to want. You have plenty of food, plenty of nice space in your house, plenty of nice cars, plenty of good tutoring, plenty of orthodontics.” She pointed to her crooked teeth. They were straight on top but the bottom jaw was a mish-mash of teeth thrown hither and yon inside her gumline. “You have plenty—but you also have plenty of rules, and around here we have our own set of rules. One of them is: don't make too many plans, because people who don't have money don't get to have that kind of control over their life.”

  “So it's about money?”

&n
bsp; The polite thing to say would have been 'no' and back home, if I'd asked that question, someone would have given a socioeconomic diatribe that explained that no, it had nothing to do with money, that it was about culture and that the working class were a morphism and blah, blah, blah, blah.

  Darla's refreshing answer, “Fuck yeah it is!”, made me double over with laughter.

  I finished my chuckle and held my palms out, knowing she'd be offended if I didn't explain right away. “I'm laughing because you're so honest.”

  “That's funny?”

  “It's awesome.”

  She pulled the car into her spot next to her little shed and our eyes locked. Before I could think about it, I began to lean forward, just wanting some part of her earthiness. She was the most real person I think I'd ever met. Her face softened and I swear she began to lean in, too.

  And then tap, tap, tap! Trevor was at the window.

  Darla

  “So, where's your uncle?” Joe asked me, pulling back and acting as if we hadn't just had a moment. Trevor waved and smiled like a minor maniac out there, his shoulders raised and hands shoved in his pockets. A slight night chill made me feel a bit sorry for him. Maybe I should grab a flannel shirt of Mike's to keep him warm.

  Or maybe I could just keep him warm...

  I looked around—no truck. Hmm...that was weird. Sometimes Mike'd bring it home without a trailer attached although the manager of the trailer park didn't like that too much. It stirred up too much dust and rutted the roads so I knew he'd been parking it and then driving his junky, old beater truck here but neither vehicle was within sight.

  “Hang on, let me call him,” I said. I could see Joe's agitation level rising. I wasn't sure how much of it was from our being interrupted by Trevor and how much was from Mike not being here. A little part of me hoped that it was more the former than the latter.

  How could I be doing this? Who finds themselves attracted to two guys at once like this and doesn't feel bad about it? That's the part I didn't understand. I didn't feel bad about it—I felt exhilarated, like there were more possibilities than I'd ever imagined. I knew that from just meeting Trevor, it had been pounded into me—literally—by our time together but now here I was leaning in for a kiss from his best friend and...nope, not a pang of guilt. Nothing. More than anything I seemed to think I should feel guilty rather than actually feeling guilty, and that was all kinds of fucked up crazy.

  “Hello? Uncle Mike? Where are you?”

  “I'm here.”

  “Here where? At home?” Craning my neck, I looked around again for a sign of him.

  “No. Here at Jerry's.”

  I groaned. “Oh man, how much have you had?”

  “Cut it out, Darla. Not that much. What's up?”

  “Remember my friend's car?”

  I heard the distant muffled sounds of the bar, the clanking of glass against glass, a pool cue cracking against a scratch ball. “Aw, shit,” he muttered. “Sweetheart, I forgot. It was a long haul. Uh...dammit.”

  “You've had too much to drink to drive.”

  “Yeah.”

  One rule dominated our family. You never, ever drank more than one and then drove. Even that one Mama hated but Uncle Mike and me, we were good—we'd drink, wait an hour at the least before getting behind a wheel.

  “Let's do this,” I said, watching Joe's face turn from bewilderment to barely repressed fury and Trevor just looked at me with a neutral expression. “Me and Trevor and Joe will come to Jerry's and we'll get you and then you come back here. Meanwhile, you drink a bunch of water and coffee because my friend really needs your help.”

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  “Mike.” I heard voices in the background over the phone. “I mean it, you better be ordering water and coffee.”

  “I am, babygirl.” His voice was a little slurred. “Don't worry.”

  Click.

  Joe ran an angry hand through those perfect, wavy black locks. “Let me guess,” he said, an acerbic tone that made my stomach tighten. “He's at your local bar, drunk.”

  “Not quite drunk,” I said, tipping my head back and forth while weighing out what the right word might be.

  “Fuck!” Joe screamed, banging his hand against the side of the trailer. A piece fell off and he kicked it as hard as he could. It landed in a giant rut in the dirt and gravel road. “The only person in town who can fix my car is a drunk.”

  The only answer to that was to be matter-of-fact, right? This time of night, all the guys in town capable of fixing Joe's car were on their third beer. At least. “Yes,” I said. “Or you could wait until morning and maybe I could find some guy who—”

  “Nope. No way. If your uncle is the only one who can help then let's just go get him. The faster I can get out of this giant clusterfuck, the better.” Joe turned to Trevor, hands on his hips, abs brushing in a rhythmic pattern up against his shirt as he breathed hard.

  I was more turned on than I had any right to be, just watching him process all of this.

  Trevor clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder and said, “I'm sorry, dude, but we'll get out of this. We'll get you home.”

  Joe sighed. “You mom is going to be so wicked pissed when you call.”

  “I'm not calling.”

  Joe looked at his phone. “I have nineteen texts on here. How many do you want to bet are from your mom and how many are from mine?”

  “Only way to know is to look,” I said.

  He started scrolling through. “Most of them are my mom. Let's see....”

  Joe, call back immediately.

  Joe, Jenny Connor says you're not answering anyone about Trevor. Call.

  Joe, I'm getting close to calling the police to help find you.

  Joe, text me back so I know you're alive.

  Joe, we're revoking the BMW.

  Joe, we won't pay for law school.

  Oh, man.

  As he recited it, Trevor shook his head in abject horror mixed with a certain kind of camaraderie. It was hard to understand, but it seemed as if these sorts of things from your parents were just part of their world. Damn. Mama didn't care what I did as long as I didn't get arrested. These mamas were treating them like twelve year olds. “Is this the way you live?” I asked.

  Both men looked up, surprised. The streetlamp shone on them and there was a pinched fear, an anger, but also something more, like they didn't understand my question or why I was asking it. Like I was the dumbass here.

  “What do you mean?” Joe snapped.

  “Your moms do this? They're on you like this all the time?”

  “It's not like I generally have to drive six hundred miles to pick up Trevor,” Joe countered.

  “Did you tell your mom that?”

  Joe pulled back as if a bit struck. “No. I just told her I was hanging out with my friends.”

  “OK. So you're hanging out with your friends. She has no idea where you are but she knows you're safe. You've been in contact with her, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why do you let her baby you like this?”

  “I don't let her do anything,” Joe argued.

  “Sure you do. Just tell her you're a twenty-two year old man and you can do whatever you want and that she needs to just get out of your business.”

  Joe snorted. “Like that would go over real well.”

  “What's the problem here?” I asked. “Why don't you try it? It's not like the way she treats you now is what you want.”

  He swallowed hard. I could see his Adam's apple bobble a little and Trevor grinned at me, a crazy, madcap kind of grin.

  “She's right, Joe. Loosen up dude.”

  “What? I'm supposed to eat a bag of peyote and end up naked on the side of the road? Is that what you want, Trev?”

  “No, but look at you. You've become a lapdog and she'd threatening to take away your Beemer and your law school tuition because she hasn't heard from you in a couple hours.”

  “The only r
eason you're not in the same position as me is because I'm your buffer.”

  “And you let me turn you into my buffer.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Trevor

  I watched as Joe frantically texted his mom back, trying to make sure that he could get her off of his back and hopefully keep her from calling the police. Everything Darla said made sense, which only pissed me off even more than I already was when it came to dealing with my parents.

  Joe's were worse—his mom really would call the police if he didn't respond and, in fact, she may have already. My mom would just call every friend of mine and bitch until she got what she wanted. Although, I guess if I went truly missing for more than twenty-four hours, she'd call the authorities. That thought gave me comfort even if I resented it.

  Something crackled in the air between the three of us. It was a tension, a push and a pull that didn't make sense. It went beyond Darla and her keen observations about our parents, about the way that they ruled us, and about the way that they infantilized us. It made me feel small and—I hated to admit it to myself, but—weak.

  When I was on stage I was strong. I was a badass motherfucker. I was using my voice as an instrument, something developed and polished and ridden hard by no one other than me and my own drive to succeed. Mom and Dad couldn't co-opt that, no matter how hard they'd tried. It was me who pushed to learn to play guitar so I could play an instrument next to Rick, while he played the piano flawlessly, hours and hours on end practicing the same song. It was all me.

  The first time I'd tried to touch the keys while he played, he'd hit me and thrown me across the room. I didn't remember it but that's what Mom told me. I did remember being four...five...six years old and trying, once again, to join in with him until finally when I was six Dad got me a little guitar and, like true Sudborough parents, they bought me lessons with a teacher.

  Rick grinned, so happy that I'd joined his world when I played with him and it soothed him for me to sit in a chair next to his bench, for both of us to improvise and find new chords, new notes, new rhythm patterns. We even wrote songs together. I had a few recorded somewhere, burned onto a CD. It was probably one of the only things I got to share with him, a realm where Rick and I could meet and be conversant with each other using the language of melody, even when he couldn't speak.