Random Acts of Love (Random Series #5)

by Julia Kent

  “Trevor, too.” Liam finished the beer and got a second one.

  “Explain,” I demanded, standing and wobbling a little. Normally, this much beer would have me peeing for three minutes, grinning the whole time. Drinking when you’re angry brings a completely different feeling to the buzz that comes along. I was unmoored, like a gyroscope with a dent in one of the rings. Loopy and uncentered. Unbalanced and unhinged.

  “Do I look like the Dr. Phil translator for you guys?” he barked.

  Sam walked in, carrying a bottle of vodka, a half gallon of orange juice, and a giant box of tampons.

  All three of us halted and stared.

  “Don’t ask,” he muttered, turning bright red. His blushing was about as masculine as, well...that purchase.

  “We are whipped with a capital P, aren’t we?” Liam muttered. He stood, got four glasses from the cupboard (none of which matched), put ice in them all, and poured enough vodka to choke a horse, with a splash of orange juice.

  It was a fruit, right? Vitamin C. Good for us.

  Gulp. Mine was gone in three swallows. It burned. Good. I needed to simultaneously stop my emotions while I enhanced my body’s sensations.

  This would help.

  “Look at Sam!” I exclaimed, suddenly feeling such affection for my poor friend. “He got kicked out of his house, his dad beat the shit out of him, he went to college anyway, hooked up with the girl who got away, and now he gave her a rock and he’ll only ever dip his wick in the same pussy pool forever and ever.”

  That speech sounded a lot better in my head.

  “And that is so—”

  “Sad,” Joe muttered. “The same pussy forever, huh?”

  “And you were only getting half a pussy, dude,” Liam said to him, his drink half gone.

  Joe bristled. “Huh?”

  “With Darla. You two shared her. Half a pussy.”

  “It wasn’t half. I got the whole pussy.”

  Sam and Liam looked at me with expressions of assessment. “So you were the only one who put it in the...” Sam’s voice trailed off and he blazed like a candy apple.

  “Ass. You were the assrider?” Liam finished for him.

  I frowned. The room spun. “What?”

  “If Joe got one hundred percent of the pussy with Darla,” Liam asked, slowing his words, “then that makes you the brown starfish expert.”

  “He means you’re the one who shoved it up her ass when we had sex,” Joe said bluntly.

  I shrugged. Liam was grinning like he expected me to be ashamed or be offended by this.

  “It’s cool,” Liam said, giving Sam a meaningful look, but Sam wasn’t catching.

  “Not really. But why does it matter? Sex is sex,” I added, deciding it was time to pour myself another vodka and orange juice. Except this time I had a brilliant idea and decided I would leave out the orange juice part. And the glass part. I just lifted the jug to my lips and drank it like nectar.

  “You know,” Sam asked, leaning in, “is it better when there’s three of you?”

  The room froze, just like in that new Disney movie. We all became Disney princesses and began singing as the wall melted. Okay, that part may not have actually happened anywhere except in my singular mind, but it could have.

  If Joe had some acid.

  “What?” Joe asked, stretching his legs out on the coffee table, knocking the remote onto the floor.

  “The sex,” Sam persisted. “Is it better with three, vs. two. I’ve always been curious.”

  “Find out for yourself.”

  “I can’t. I’m with Amy,” he said simply.

  “Ask her about finding another woman and getting it on,” Liam joked.

  “Or another man,” I said.

  Liam’s idea of a threesome and mine clearly did not square, because he scowled at that suggestion.

  I imitated his face. Made me feel like a bulldog in heat. “What’s this?” I pointed to my own scowl. “What the fuck is wrong with two men and a woman together?”

  He held his palms up. “Nothing’s wrong with it. Just not my thing.”

  “Your thing is fucking every piece of meat you could get your hands on until Charlotte waltzed back in and yanked the leash she has you on.”

  He tensed. “That is not what happened.”

  “And neither is what you think about me and Darla and Joe. And yeah, Sam, it’s way better.”

  He gave me a skeptical look. “You’re not making much sense, Trevor.”

  “Good. Give me a hit of acid or a button of peyote or some pot-laced firecracker sandwiches and I won’t make any sense at all, which is where I want to be an hour from now.”

  Joe walked out of the room on steady legs and came back in holding a tiny baggie of something and showing it to me. “Here,” he declared.

  I held it up to the light. It looked like about a teaspoon of harmless white powder.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Remember that peyote you ate two years ago in your parents’ basement?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This makes that look like baby formula.”

  “Oooooo.” I opened the baggie, tipped my head up and dumped it in. Joe lunged at me as I shoved him away, snatched a beer from the end table and guzzled it all down.

  “Trev, no, that’s meant to be....” His voice wound down as he realized it was too late. “For ten people or so.”

  “So that was the elephant dose?”

  Joe frowned and rolled his eyes. “Uh... just remember to say hi to the machine elves for me.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “We can find you someone,” Liam said with a nudge. “You’re a free man.”

  A free man.

  “That’s right! I am!” I knew I loved Liam. L-O-V-E-D him. He was so soft and hard and tall like me, and now his eyes looked like Skittles I could just pluck and eat right off his face.

  “And you know what?” I added. “FUCK DARLA! I’ve spent the last two years in chains, and now I’m free. I’m freeeeeeee!” I started singing The Who and that went on so long that after a while I noticed Sam brought a load of laundry into the living room and began folding it.

  And then I grabbed my phone and texted every single contact in there except for my parents, my boss, and the law school advisor and dean.

  PARTY AT TREVOR’S APARTMENT. 9PM. EPIC PUSSY AND ASS. BRING GIRLS, BOOZE, DRUGS, SEX TOYS AND SMALL ANIMALS.

  And hit “send.” Three hundred and twenty-two contacts. People love me. I love them. My hands felt really good when I touched myself. Darla wouldn’t ever let me touch her again with my magic hands. Her loss. I really wanted Chipotle right now.

  Liam, Sam and Joe jumped as their phones buzzed.

  They all looked at me with various expressions of pure love.

  “It’s on,” I said simply, and that’s the last thing I remembered for three days.

  Darla

  Charlotte, Amy, Charlotte’s friend Maggie and me were at Josie’s, having us an ex-boyfriend beat down. Alex had offered to take Josie up to some sweet place in Vermont for the weekend, a romantic retreat that made me want to hurl pea soup and monkey shit at them even while I was happy for them.

  When you just broke up with someone, any people who are happily in love are like the Antichrist.

  Charlotte and Amy were allowed to be with me because they were my friends, and because they brought chocolate liquor, chocolate, and a tray of spanakopita and kebob from my favorite Greek place in Somerville. Otherwise, they were on the No-Fly list as far as I was concerned, Amy’s glittering little diamond-chip engagement ring like a nasty little gargoyle face that taunted me from her hand.

  True love is a myth. It’s this total snow job society sells you to make you buy shit like diamonds and Valentine’s Day cards, but it’s so much more insidious than that. From Disney princesses to big-budget movies to romance novels, nothing sells like the story that one day your princes will come and you will live Happily Ever After.

&n
bsp; Such a crock of shit.

  The truth is that you talk yourself into love. It’s a delusion. And no one is more steadfast in defending an alternate reality that is out of touch with logical fact than a woman who has convinced herself that she has found her soulmate.

  “Those fuckers!” I interjected as Charlotte brought me a heated plate of baklava. Start with dessert, right? Fuck yeah.

  “They’re assholes,” Maggie said, nodding her purple-haired head. Damn, that chick changes hair color more often than Jessica Simpson changes clothing size.

  “They are!” I mumbled through a mouthful of honeyed goodness. “Ashamed of me. You can do a lot of shit to me and I have the tolerance level of Russell Brand on smack, but God DAMN you don’t treat me like I’m something to be ashamed of. I put up with it and grit my teeth until they snapped into tiny little tic-tac pieces in my mouth and now I’m done.”

  “I can’t believe they did this to you,” Amy whispered, playing it safe. She was on my shit list, too, just for being, you know—happy. I’m not proud of it, but feelings are feelings.

  “They’re assholes,” Charlotte added, rubbing my back. She knew how to care for a woman whose heart has been ripped into two by jackals pretending to be rock star law students.

  “And my job! I’m band manager. Can’t be band manager for a bunch of assholes.”

  “Liam and Sam aren’t,” Amy says quietly. “Assholes, I mean.”

  “You are on thin ice, chickie babe.” I pointed to her ring. “This is my bitch session. I say what I want, when I want, and how I want, and you can go sit in the corner and talk to your happy diamond.”

  Amy shut up. I know. I was being a bitch. I burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Amy,” I blubbered. “I just can’t take it. I shook up my whole life for them. My whole fucking life. I moved six hundred miles to be with them. Gave up a good job—”

  “Wasn’t she a gas station attendant?” Charlotte whispered to Amy, who just widened her eyes and said nothing. She always was smart.

  “—and moved in with Trevor after a while, and really thought that after I saw what Laura, Mike and Dylan had, I could find a way to make this work with Trevor and Joe.”

  “Who are Mike and Laura and Dylan?” Maggie asked.

  “A billionaire threesome,” Charlotte said, as if it were commonplace to hear that.

  “Oh,” Maggie said with a nod, as if that were all the explanation she needed.

  “I need more beer,” I said with a sniff.

  “How about Kahlúa ice cream pie,” Amy said, getting up and coming back with an ice cream pie the color of caramel.

  “You’re redeemed,” I declared, “But hide the fucking ring.” She turned the diamond palmside, which only made her look like she was wearing a wedding ring, and then I started to cry harder.

  “I’ll never marry them. Never have kids with them. Never have sex again, never use that new machine we bought that hooks up to a tablet computer and lets Joe program the vibrator...”

  TMI, huh?

  Charlotte leaned forward with interest. “You can find someone else to do that, you know. Plenty of chat rooms out there.”

  “But it’s not the same!” I wailed.

  Maggie just looked like a muppet from that X-rated Broadway show. The one where the puppets fuck on stage. Joe brought me to that at some community theater near Sudborough, and I about died laughing.

  Great. Now I couldn’t look at Maggie’s purple hair without thinking about Joe.

  Tears filled my eyes. “I hate this,” I said. “I hate how stupid I feel.”

  Three sets of arms enveloped me. “You’re not stupid,” Amy said in a soothing voice. “You just fell in love.”

  “Same thing,” I muttered through the sobs.

  All three made sounds of assent. They got it. They knew.

  “All I can do is eat and watch marathons of Sons of Anarchy. And then I see Jax’s ass and think about Trevor!” I declared.

  “Trevor’s ass is that good?” Charlotte asked. Maggie kicked her ankle. Charlotte shut up, those painted red lips pulling in as she bit them. She dressed like an old 50s-style pinup girl, with sleek black hair and round eyes with lots of white showing. Classy. She was big and curvy like me but she knew how to make it work.

  I felt like a flannel-covered female impersonator by comparison.

  “I need to do something. Anything. Whatever it takes to make my heart stop feeling like someone’s attached a fucksaw to it.”

  Charlotte nodded in understanding while Amy and Maggie looked confused.

  “A...fucksaw?” Maggie ventured.

  Charlotte put a manicured hand on Maggie’s arm and shook her head slightly. “You probably don’t want to know.”

  “Is it a sex toy?” Amy asked, her face wavering between disgust and intrigue.

  “It’s a—”

  BZZZZ.

  My, Amy and Charlotte’s phones all went off at the same time. Weird. Fucking weird.

  We pulled them out and Amy instantly shouted, “Don’t read that, Darla!”

  Too late. My eyes skimmed Trevor’s text:

  PARTY AT TREVOR’S APARTMENT. 9PM. EPIC PUSSY AND ASS. BRING GIRLS, BOOZE, DRUGS, SEX TOYS AND SMALL ANIMALS.

  My entire face began to tingle, and I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol yet, though Amy’s pie was beckoning. A fire lit in my belly, flaming up like crumpled newspaper used as a firestarter, the burn fast and furious, designed to catch and hold.

  “Pussy and ass? Those should be Trevor and Joe’s nicknames,” I bit out.

  “That’s right,” Maggie said. “Just ignore it. So what if they’re having a party. We’re having one, too.” She looked around Josie and Alex’s living room uncertainly. It was dead quiet, we had a drunk ice cream pie in front of us and a tray of half-eaten Greek food, and I was sobbing most of the time.

  Some fucking party.

  “You know what? If Trevor’s gonna have himself an epic party, I wanna do something epic, too. How about....” My mind went blank.

  “A tattoo?” Amy suggested. I shook my head. I got nothing against ink, but I’m too much of a wimp to do it to myself.

  “A psychic reading?” Maggie offered. I just rolled my eyes. I didn’t need to pay fifty bucks to have someone tell me my future was going to shit.

  Charlotte offered nothing but a calculated look that slowly changed into a sly, slow smile. “Hang on,” she said, holding up one red-tipped finger, typing on her phone with her thumb. “He is within a short drive,” she muttered.

  “Who is?”

  “This...guy. He did a demonstration at one of the regional passion supply workshops I went to. It’s a new trend, and this guy is starting to do this...thing. For people who want a souvenir to give their partners.”

  “I got no partners!” I wailed.

  “No, no, you don’t have to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Or, um, boyfriends.” She looked around the room with a half smile. “Seriously? You want to know what this guy does?”

  We all nodded.

  “He bronzes your asshole.”

  Thud. Three jaws hit the floor.

  “I ain’t having no one pour bronze down my poopchute!” I shouted.

  “No, not like that. He makes a mold of your anus, and then you can take the mold and have it made into a bronze cast. Some people even use the mold to make little chocolates—”

  “Quit messing with our heads,” I insisted.

  She turned her phone towards the three of us and hit “play” on a video.

  For the next seven minutes were were mouth breathers.

  It ended and I whispered, “That’s a thing?”

  “That’s a thing,” Charlotte said, nodding her head.

  “I could cleanse myself of the vestiges of Joe and Trevor by bending like a pretzel and letting some strange man pour putty in my ass and make a cast of it, and later I can send a dozen chocolate anuses to my ex boyfriends?”

  “Yes.”

  I po
ndered that for a couple seconds.

  “Let’s do it!” I shouted. “But I’m gonna need a metric fuckton of alcohol to make this happen.”

  Amy gestured at her alcohol pie. “Four shots per slice.”

  Game on.

  We gobbled down that pie faster than Kanye West jumps up on stage at the Grammys. Soon I was full, tipsy, and ready to have my winking brown eye immortalized.

  And then:

  “What about the hair?” I asked Charlotte as we all stood. Maggie didn’t eat the pie and declared herself our designated driver.

  “Hair? Charlotte’s delicate, perfectly plucked eyebrow shot up like a cat with its hackles up.

  “Yeah. My butt hair.”

  Amy and Maggie stopped moving.

  “Butt hair?” Charlotte repeated.

  “You know...the hair down there.”

  “Don’t you wax?” Charlotte asked.

  “Wax what?”

  “Your anus.”

  “I’m supposed to wax that? Hell to the fucking no.”

  Charlotte frowned. “I don’t know. All the videos I’ve seen of it don’t show any hair in the model.”

  “ALL? You’ve seen more than one of these videos?”

  She just smiled.

  “Did you have it done?”

  The smile faded.

  “Did Liam?”

  The smile turned to an alarmed look.

  “If I’m gonna go and get my puckered exit hole made into the form of a Russell Stover’s candy, Charlotte, you damn well can share a little bit about yourself.” That alcohol had loosened me up a bit.

  “Yes. I did it.”

  “And Liam?”

  “He did, too.”

  “Was his butthole hairy?”

  Amy started doing that wheezy laugh thing.

  “Um...no.”

  “He waxes, too?”

  “Not normally.”

  “But he did for this?”

  “Yes. And that’s it, Darla. I’m not saying anything more.”

  “Do you eat his ass?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Oh, God. Can’t breathe,” Amy said. Maggie was giggling and watching Charlotte, who wasn’t quite squirming, but was about as unsettled as I’d ever seen her.

  “Eat his ass? You mean, do I rim him?”

  “There’s a term for it?” I was learning so much this evening. A term for making little chocolate anuses. Maybe I should have dumped Trevor and Joe a long time ago.