by Julia Kent
“No one’s saying anyone has to procreate. Just have the fun associated with—”
“STOP! STOP IT! We are done with this topic! Thank you for the prize, but I need to be done before my vagina joins a convent in self-defense!”
“My diabetes landed me in the hospital yesterday,” Mama blurted out over my little hissy fit.
That stopped me mid-rant. “Hospital?” I rasped. “Oh, Mama, why didn’t you say somethin’?”
“I am saying somethin’ now,” she said primly.
“What happened?” The room suddenly looked foreign to me, all modern and freshly painted, with carpeting that had no stains, complete baseboards and real potted plants a service came and watered. The hues of the walls were designed to be soothing, but right now I was anything but serene. Mama was in crisis and I—I was here. Here. Hundreds of miles and a lifetime away.
“It’s those test kits,” she said in a hushed voice. “My insurance don’t cover as much as it used to.”
“And you’re not testing enough?” I couldn’t keep the exasperation out of my voice. She’d been like this when I lived at home, and there was nothing I could do about it sometimes. That woman was as stubborn as…well…
Me.
“You can buy your cigarettes but you can’t buy test strips?” I blurted out. I knew the words would make her righteously pissed at me, but I couldn’t help it. Hurt seeped through my statement because she should have told me. Should have asked for help. Should have turned to me, her only daughter—
Who had left.
Now guilt took over.
“I quit, Darla.”
Knock me over with a feather. “You quit smoking?”
A triumphant tone popped into her voice, and it made my eyes go wide. “I am using the patch and it’s expensive, but I’m saving so much money. And Mike got me one of those electronic cigarettes. It’s helping.”
“But the e-cigs have nicotine!”
“Not the flavors I use. Cotton candy is my favorite.” She sounded like Buddy the Elf, her voice was so infused with pleasure.
Mama quit. Mama quit smoking. I couldn’t imagine my own mother in my mind’s eye without a ciggy between her fingers, always searching for an ashtray to rest a lit one, or to flick ash.
“And you still can’t manage the testing strips?”
“It’s not just that. The machine died. Insurance…” She sighed. “And a pipe burst, and Mike’s not getting the miles he normally gets…”
“Let me send you some money,” I said quickly. “Cash my checks.” Unlike Aunt Marlene bugging Josie constantly for money, my mama had never, ever asked. Wouldn’t take. Wouldn’t hear of it.
“No!”
Remember the stubborn part? I kept sending her checks, around a hundred dollars a month, but she just returned them. Uncashed.
“Yes! If you’re gonna send me lubrication devices and condoms that taste like a breath mint, the least I can do is send you money to help save your life.”
“Darla.” One word could bring tears to my eyes. It was the closest thing to “yes” she could manage.
“Okay then, Mama, case closed.” My heart was breaking. “You safe? Jane still coming to help you?” My old high school friend was my mama’s home health aide.
“Jane’s the one what got me to the hospital, Darla,” she said sadly, the spark in her voice now gone.
“Then Jane deserves one of your winnings. She need some kitty litter?”
The laugh we shared almost took the tears out of my eyes.
Almost. Mama said her goodbyes and hung up, and it was like the earth had shifted direction.
I could take a wild guess at how much money a broken pipe cost. What the trailer needed was an overhaul, all-new plumbing, and a new heating system. We plugged space heaters in and played the game of Pop Goes the Fuse Box every winter.
Four figures, I guessed. Even my hundred-dollar checks wouldn’t help.
Fuck.
A deep sigh filled the room, and given that I was the only one in the room, it sounded like me. Confused. Confounded. My fingers brushed against the envelope on my desk.
Breaking the seal seemed like a sacrilege, my fingers tracing the lines of the paper’s folds, the weave like linen in printed form.
I smelled it, just to see if it smelled like fresh cash. That’s what it reminded me of.
With a shaking finger, I slid the tip under the open corner and felt the tear of the envelope’s lip like I felt my own hymen breached back when I was a virgin.
(Quit laughing. I was one once, too.)
And then my eyes must have looked like Jack’s a minute ago as I drank in the words.
Dear Ms. Jennings,
You are cordially invited to join me…
And then my phone started buzzing like mad.
Chapter Two
Trevor
There are three words no guy in his early twenties ever wants to say to his parents.
Bet you thought I was going to say “She is pregnant,” right?
Nope.
(But she’s not, thank fucking God. Let’s not even go there).
Those three little words are:
You
Were
Right.
Law school was so much better than I ever imagined. A million times more interesting than undergrad, and high school was like being water boarded by comparison. Sure, the law professors were, by and large, pompous people who thought they were the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s gift to law. And a few were—especially the ones who went on to become senators and Supreme Court judges.
The rest—especially the theorists—were just assholes. And then there was the international law expert who was a secret Brony. Let’s not go there.
Quirky people weren’t new to me. Look at my girlfriend. And my, uh…whatever Joe was to me. We had a man-code agreement that we wouldn’t—couldn’t—name each other. No labels. No boxes (except Darla’s). If we didn’t call it something, it didn’t have any power over us.
And power was a tricky topic between me and Joe.
He had less than I did, and he hated me for that. What the hell was I supposed to do, though? Not headline the band? Not go to Harvard Law? Not be the one to stay in Boston with Darla? A thousand little choices we make every day led us to this moment, and Joe had made one big choice—moving to Philly to go to Penn Law—that led to the imbalance of power.
Not that I minded, because I had a sweet deal. All the ass and tits I wanted, plenty of sweet sugar from Darla, an interesting future career and right now, a case about whether a guy who shoved his cell phone up his ass had a claim against the cell phone carrier for legitimate damage that was under warranty.
Seriously? You couldn’t make this shit up.
Researching tort law and contracts should be dry. Boring. Ennui on top of brittle despair, and yet…it lit me on fire. My mind went down so many legal mazes and what-ifs, like playing chess with my brother Rick, except real life, real laws were at stake.
I loved every fucking minute of it.
Ding! The doorbell rang. Who rang my doorbell but didn’t text first? Darla was at work, plying people with sweet talk to get them to sign up for the threesome dating service where she worked. Joe was in Philly. Liam and Sam were—who the fuck knew where. Taking their clothes off for random strangers as strip-o-gram dudes and making bank doing it, I supposed.
A glance at the clock as I stood and went to the door to buzz the person in told me that they couldn’t be stripping. Maybe—
“Mr. Connor?” a sultry woman’s voice asked. My dick twitched a bit. Don’t blame me. Dicks do that when they hear the female voice, like Tom Brady cries when he loses.
“Yes?” I tried to keep the sex out of my voice, my cock failing me. When did Darla get home?
“I have a special delivery for you,” she crooned. Ah, fuck. This was Stacey the delivery chick. The one who wore that tight little brown uniform like she was dressed for a quickie porno video job.
&n
bsp; Bzzz. My finger reached for the button to unlock the door as if guided by my now-throbbing cock. Not my fault. The penis did it. When it doubt, blame my pants.
The thump of her footsteps made my palms sweat, my heart palpitate, and as I looked through the apartment door’s peephole I felt like a pervert in the back of a sex-toy store, peeking at a nudie show. Yes, they still have those.
Knock knock knock. “Hi, Trevor,” Stacey’s breathy voice intoned on the other side of the door. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and steeled myself as I pulled the door open, arm flexed and occupied, the grip on the doorknob about as strong as the grasp of Darla’s hand at the root of my cock when she—
“Someone has been a very, very good boy,” she whispered. Doe eyes the color of brown silk stared up at me from under silken eyelashes, and her long, straight hair was pulled back in a ponytail that made her look about sixteen. Athletic calves flexed as she bounced in place, pulling up to her tiptoes in running shoes, breasts bouncing like melons caught in a giant popcorn popper.
Agony. She was sexual agony in a brown paper wrapper.
Could you fuck a woman sideways? Because Darla was getting every orifice for the next three days. And two dozen roses. And all the takeout Thai and Ethiopian food—her new favorite—she could handle if she’d just stay naked and in bed with me.
“I’ve…what?” I muttered. Her last words hung in the air between us.
She reached toward me and handed off a thick delivery envelope. The movement of her body made the scent of cotton candy and lemon fill the air. God, she smelled like a candy shop. Which made me think of lollipops.
Which made me imagine her licking one.
Groan.
“You okay?” she asked, taking a torturous step forward, breasts leaning toward me, her cleavage on display. What a uniform violation. I’m sure the delivery company she worked for didn’t allow the edge of a rosy nipple to jut out. What a bad employee. A bad, bad girl.
She needed a spanking.
“Yeah.” I took a step back and ran my hand through my hair. It made me look down. Sweatpants, going commando, and Stacey didn’t mix well. My erection stood out so straight and hard it could have signed for the fucking package by itself. Who needed a stylus?
“You groaned.” She lifted the stylus to her lips and worried the plastic between her tongue and teeth. “Something troubling you?”
Bzzzz. My phone was in my loose pocket and vibrated against my unleashed cock like something out of an Adam & Eve catalog.
“Holy fuck!” I shouted.
Stacey snickered as I fumbled for my phone. Joe. Texting. I ignored it. Something about an invitation.
“Here,” she said, sidling up to me, rubbing the edge of her breast against my arm. Darla Darla Darla, I chanted inside my head. Stacey licked her lips and held the stylus out for me to sign her little brown box.
Er…you know what I mean. My stylus wanted to go on…in…her little brown box.
Bzzzzz. Joe again. Whatever.
“Trevor, I saw you perform down at that festival last summer,” she rasped, her breasts taking on a life of their own, as if they had eyes. And lips. Vertical lips.
“You—what?”
Bzzzzz! I grabbed the phone out of my pocket and flung it backwards onto the couch. The thwack it made after it bounced off the cushion and hit the end table shook me out of this Tucker Max-like experience.
What was I doing? She was just some random chick, like all the random chicks who hung on after performances and wanted to blow us for some kind of groupie street cred. This time, two shaking hands whipped through my hair as I realized I was way, way in over my head.
Both big and little ones.
I thumbed toward my apartment, my left hand occupied by the thick envelope she’d delivered. “That was my girlfriend, probably wondering who I was doing—uh, what I was doing.”
She made a snorting sound from the back of her throat. “Girlfriend? That big blond beast who slobbers all over you and your bass player at concerts?” The noise of dismissal that came out of her mouth made my blood run cold.
So that’s how it was.
I shot her a grim smile, one corner of my mouth curling up in what I knew was a sneer, but she took it as agreement.
“That big blond beast,” I murmured, tipping down and whispering in Stacey’s ear as I carefully placed one hand on her shoulder, her scent now nauseating me, “has me. Cock, balls, heart and all.” I pulled back and turned away.
“What a waste,” Stacey shot back.
“The only waste,” I answered, my chest expanding with anger at her mischaracterization of Darla, at the notion that someone would think it was acceptable to trash-talk the woman I was in love with (even if we hadn’t said it yet), “is this conversation, Stacey.”
Too many snapbacks. Too many angry words were right there, ready to be thrown out at her.
But why bother? She wasn’t worth it. The bitchy ones never were.
I’d already given enough of my energy over to her. As her ass sashayed down the hall, though, my little devil dick gave a final-death-throes shudder.
It felt like a reverse orgasm.
Fuck.
After stepping back in the apartment, I closed the door and ripped the envelope open. Weird. A fancy invitation, on graduation or wedding paper, was all that was in there. I started to open it—was yet another classmate bowing under the pressure of the parents to marry? It seemed like open season as we all slipped from twenty-two to twenty three, undergrad years gone, degrees earned, and expectations high.
You have a life list, right? Twenty-three is the perfect time to check marriage off, for those who’ve been dating each other since high school.
Just as I was opening the linen envelope, my phone buzzed again. Shit. I leaned over and found my phone under the end table, along with Amy’s lost bullet thermos she’d been bitching about for the past two weeks. Sam had torn the place apart but never found it. Cool. He owed me now, and Amy would give me more than a wan smile next time she came over.
Nineteen text messages. Joe, Joe, Joe, Darla, Darla, Joe, Joe, Darla, Darla, Darla, Darla, Liam, Darla, Darla, Joe, Sam, Joe, Joe, Darla.
Was the fucking world ending?
And then the door flew open, and my big blond beast stood there, wild-eyed and clutching an envelope that looked exactly like mine.
Joe
Coffee is no longer my friend. Oh, cruel mistress, how dare you disappoint? This fucking paper wasn’t going to write itself, and it was the last damn thing holding me back before I could grab my phone and my dick and start sexting with Darla.
If I had to pull something, I’d rather it be my cock than an all-nighter. But because I didn’t have a choice, I pulled both. Desperation made a man do whatever it took to make the gnawing need go away. Yet it was hopeless, because choking my chicken just increased my suffering and made the prospect of an all-nighter look dim. Why couldn’t my body cooperate?
My eighth shot of espresso and it was only—what? My phone said 3:44 p.m. My paper was due in the professor’s email box by 9 a.m. tomorrow. Plenty of time when I was an undergrad, but now? This was the show. The Big Time. If I didn’t have every comma in place, every period just right, the professor would take my right testicle, ridicule it until it shrunk to the size of a raisin, and cover it in chocolate to feed to the university president.
No—worse.
My mom.
Forgive me if my elegance disappeared with my sleep deprivation, and as my ever-faithful mistress cuckolded me, the caffeine betraying me by withdrawing affection, I found myself sucking down a strange mixture of Mountain Dew and freeze-dried instant coffee, all of it mixed with Red Bull.
Why?
Because I could.
The first semester of law school had officially kicked my ass, and I wasn’t even done. All the parts of law school I thought I would love turned out to be about as interesting as getting blown by Rush Limbaugh.
Contracts and torts?
I’d rather listen to my mom list the difference between organic black beans in a can lined with some toxic plastic versus buying the same beans from some company that may or may not use some toxic metal in the manufacturing process. The professor sounded like the teacher in those old Charlie Brown specials.
Mwah mwah mwah mwah.
The fun part of law school wasn’t materializing, and I was getting pretty pissed. Sure, I was in one of the top law schools in the country. I’d made it. Made it.
And now that I was here, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I felt like I was getting screwed without the reach-around.
Speaking of my cock, an image of Darla pounded my head. Pound. Pounding Darla. Ah, fuck. Here I went, up like a flag pole. I reached down and adjusted myself.
The words on the page in front of me blurred. Study groups with the top students eluded me. Those fuckers were gunning for law review editor and closed me out, because someone tipped them off that I’d been a wait-lister. Being wait-listed meant I hadn’t been good enough on the first round to be accepted here at Penn, so that trickled down into a condescension that would—I knew—follow me for the next three years.
How did I know?
Because in their shoes, I’d do the same. You want to swim with the sharks, you have to be a shark.
I didn’t like being chum.
Tap tap tap. The knock on my door made me shoot up out of my chair like a gunshot had just pierced the air. “What?” I shouted, loud and growling.
“Joe? It’s Marley.” Marley was the hot chick next door. I shared this two-bedroom apartment with two other law school students, Mary and Jake, two high school sweethearts who were so fucking syrupy you could spread them on a stack of pancakes from IHOP and eat them.
Where did that thought come from? Darla had invaded my mind so thoroughly I was drawing on her ridiculous analogies. Goddammit.
“Hey, Marley.” Her roommate was a bizarre gay dude who went by one name—D’Man—and who shaved all his hair except for one long strand he braided. It flopped behind him in a tail that stretched down to his ass. He hated my guts for no reason other than appearing to hate anyone who wasn’t Marley. I’d never seen Marley without him, so I steeled myself as I opened the door and found myself salivating at the sight before me.