Random Acts of Love (Random Series #5)

by Julia Kent

  A prickly feeling began between my shoulder blades, crawling up the back of my neck as her words washed over me.

  “Who threw themselves into your band? Me. Who encouraged you to keep on going to whatever law school you wanted? Me. Who juggled the long distance relationship? Me. Who adapted to learn more about how to manage and promote the band? Me.”

  “I’m sensing a pattern,” Trevor said.

  She was breathing hard at this point, her chest rising and falling faster and faster, and I could feel how she hesitated, weighing out Trev’s words, trying to figure out which side of the line they went on. The line dividing the world of Darla and the world outside of it.

  “Bad joke. Sorry,” he added.

  She let out a long sigh. “I don’t want to go back to being together if I’m something to be ashamed of—and that includes me. I can’t keep hiding the way I love. I just can’t.”

  Love. She said love.

  “But I also can’t keep being the only one who bends. You guys assume I’ll be along for the ride, but what if I’m driving the bus? Will you be a passenger in my life if I want something different from what you want? I been riding your buses for two years.”

  That sounded just dirty enough for a wave of lust to ripple through me.

  Her eyes lifted, catlike and keen, as if she sensed the erotic disturbance in me. I wasn’t boiling this down to sex; it was a full-blown wave of need that overtook me, acute and keening.

  I had made my decision, in going to get Trevor from jail, driving with him to Ohio, finding our way through this backwater town with a GPS, two hands, a flashlight and a privileged boy’s sense of how the world should work.

  What I wanted was for that decision to go through. I wasn’t entitled to her return, or to her love. I knew that. But I could hope.

  And if I got what I wanted, I’d never let go of it again. Or take it for granted. Or make it—her—feel lesser because I couldn’t be the grown up she needed. When you decide to hand your heart and the rest of your life over to someone, you expect that they’ll give their all in return. Anything short of that means you’ll live in a state of half-aware madness, your soul standing at the bottom of a deep, dark pit trying to find fingerholds to crawl out and see the light.

  I’d done that to her. So had Trevor. We’d driven her to the breaking point with the casual insistence that she let us take her for granted.

  Darla stood there, bathed in the glow of the street lamp, daring us. Daring me to be the man she knew I could be for her, yet hadn’t been. How could I?

  I hadn’t yet been that man for me.

  Trevor

  We had been coasting.

  For two years, we tried to take Darla back to Boston and make her fit in to our idea of a life. We made our lives Our Lives + Darla, like she was a side car we could attach to our life’s motorcycle, rather than swapping out bikes and doing a complete design overhaul.

  We expected her to come join us.

  But we hadn’t expected to join her.

  Oh, man, I could see that unfold in my mind’s eye as little moths flocked to the light of the lonely streetlamp bulb above us. I couldn’t see it back home, in the hustle of law school and studying and practice and concerts. In the steady way she was just there, rising to whatever occasion we threw her way.

  But when had she ever asked more of us?

  I hadn’t understood why she left. That day had driven me to a point of despair that only someone else can trigger. The wild party, the drugs, the chicken (that I did not sleep with or harm in any way) and the video, my curses—none of that helped. None of it made a difference. We weren’t ashamed of her. That’s what I’d thought she’d thought and it had royally pissed me off in a way that even Joe hadn’t understood, and he’s the king of being angry.

  I’d been destroyed by her leaving because I walked away from the true us long before she made it formal.

  My eyes met Joe’s and I saw a mirror image in there of a man whose soul is on fire with the knowledge of his own failings. We’re all human. We all fall from our own grace eventually, struck dumb by the understanding that if the people around us are fallible—

  So are we.

  Darla watched us with eyes that tried not to hint at expectation, but she failed.

  Ah ha. So there was hope.

  “This is hard,” Joe said, his words halting, so carefully spoken. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  The light shined off the tears in her eyes, pooled and pregnant at her lower lids. She blinked and they spilled, two perfect trails down to her luscious mouth.

  “Me neither,” she said. “I feel like someone died.”

  His face crumpled and I swear, his eyes filled with tears, too.

  She was right. It felt like someone died. If I didn’t say the right words, right now, our entire sense of how we functioned in the world in a relationship together was going to die as well.

  And I wasn’t ready for that.

  It had to be us. Joe and I had to take the first step. I led, moving across the invisible barricade. He followed, on equal footing. With each step I felt her resistance. Her hesitation. Her deep fear that she would fold, give in to desire and we’d go back to the way we’d all worked together and her attempt at breaking free from our selfishness would just be a blip.

  No.

  I wouldn’t settle for letting her let us accept less from life than we all deserved.

  Just as my hand twitched to reach for her, the main doors flew open and Mike came flying out, a giant ball of white t-shirt, jeans, and bellowing.

  “You damn well better learn to keep that mouth shut, Mikey, ’cause if you don’t love Darla unconditionally then you’re no brother of mine, and a shitass uncle to boot!” Cathy screamed, as hot on his heels as she could be with a limp.

  “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Joe said under his breath. Normally, I would have hit him, but the way Darla was acting was so calm. Morose, even. She wasn’t her typical, emotional self and it was scaring me.

  I knew enough about love to understand that hate isn’t the opposite of love. It’s apathy. Indifference. Coldness. If she was that walled off already to us, it might be too late.

  Please don’t let it be too late.

  Darla

  All the great moments in my life involve nudity, intoxication, Trevor, and Joe. As Mama and Mike screamed at each other in the parking lot of the bar over which one treasured me more (I was feeling the love all right), the only thing missing was nudity.

  And then out came Aunt Marlene.

  Check off nudity on that list, ladies and gentleman. We have it all.

  “I do love Darla! And after Charlie and Jeff died, who the fuck do you think came in and tried to be the closest thing to a daddy either of these little girls ever had!” Mike screamed.

  Josie and Alex came outside. Josie ran to Marlene and pulled Mike’s shirt around her shoulders, while Alex bent down and checked old Jack’s pulse. Since all the attention was now on two grown adults having a stubbornfest in a bar parking lot, I watched Alex as he patiently took the pulse and, satisfied by the results, gently turned Jack on his side and walked over to Josie and Marlene.

  Who promptly bellowed:

  “WHY ARE THE TWO OF YOU RUINING THE BACHELOR PARTY BY SCREAMING ABOUT WHICH ONE OF YOU LOVES THESE GIRLS MORE?”

  Marlene has a voice like a foghorn.

  “I think this is our cue to leave,” Trevor whispered in my ear, his hand suddenly on the small of my back, an old gesture that felt so achingly perfect in this moment. If I looked up and over at his face, I’d kiss him.

  I wasn’t ready for that.

  Not quite.

  Damn close, though.

  He opened the car door and I climbed in back, by choice, while Joe grabbed the passenger seat. As we slowly began to pull out of the parking lot I heard Mike holler:

  “I LOVE YOU BABY GIRL!”

  and then Mama shouted:

  “YOU BETTER LOVE HER, ’CAUS
E YOU SCARED HER AND HER BOYS AWAY AND NOW YOU GOT 40 MASON JARS TO FILL WITH GUMMY BEARS, YOU DRUNK FUCKER! I AM A SENSITIVE BRIDE AND YOU ARE RUINING MY WEDDING!”

  I started humming “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”

  “Wait!” Uncle Mike started running toward our car, a sight which was not unlike watching a rhinoceros approach you on roller blades. During a tornado.

  “Darla?” Trevor asked as he gently pushed on the brakes.

  “Yeah. Stop. I’ll talk to him.” I rolled down the window. Mike was moving like molasses for the last ten feet. Really. I could have poured a bottle and the stream of goo would’ve won.

  “Don’t have a heart attack, Mike. Take it easy.” My voice didn’t quite sound like me. It was more centered, more adult. Like I was resigned to the world working a certain way, even if I didn’t like it.

  The key: if I didn’t like it, I was empowered to change it. You can’t change other people, but you can change the way you react to them. And, in the process, they might decide to change a little, too.

  “Darla,” he gasped, giving me a sad puppy look. “I’m sorry. I just love you and the thought of these two punks using you for shits and giggles makes me want to crush a skull.”

  “The shits and giggles were with Josie. Not Trevor and Joe,” I said. He knew the story about my trip out here and laughed, shaking his head.

  “But you sure this is what you want?” he asked, giving Trevor and Joe the hairy eyeball.

  “Yes,” I answered. “We’re just goin’ to talk. I spent two years with Trevor and Joe, Mike. Both of them. They been the happiest years of my life.”

  Mike closed his eyes and huffed. “If you say so.”

  I felt like I was a skeleton in a cavern and someone was shaking me, but I kept my voice as steady as I could.

  “I do.”

  And with that, he gave Trevor and Joe reluctant nods of respect and slapped the car door.

  We were off.

  I knew exactly where we needed to go.

  Ten minutes later, I directed them to a parking spot outside the trailer, real close to my little purple shed.

  The last time I made love here in my hometown was in the hotel room at the truck stop, a night of tentative passion with Trevor and Joe that set the course of my life. Trevor and I, alone, had been intimate in my little shed, but now I knew I needed both of them. Together. With me.

  But first things first.

  I unlocked the shed and turned on the string of Christmas lights that lined the ceiling’s edge. Trevor gave a nostalgic smile and sat on the little bed. Joe looked around the room and just blinked, staying standing.

  It looked like I was getting my chance to drive the bus.

  “I don’t know what I want out of my life,” I said with a slow sigh. I stood and leaned against a wall. Given how tiny the shed was, that didn’t leave much space between me and them. “I do know I like what I have. Or, had. What I had. I want you two.” My breathing became ragged, scattershot and intense.

  They looked at me, patient and waiting. Listening. When we were together, so much of our talk was operational. We were great business partners.

  Yet we had become lousy life partners, ignoring the giant elephant in the room and pretending that if we just pointed fingers we could make the blame go away.

  And the shame.

  But what went away was the trust. And that’s the last thing we wanted to lose. The deep trust that you were steadfastly held in esteem by someone who loved you so much that they wanted you to be whole, inside and out, and who would defend your authenticity and have your back.

  We’d never had that.

  If we were meant to have a future together, we had to agree to make this a conscious part of who we were as a loving team.

  “But,” I continued speaking, “I need for this to be real. Open. For the rest of the world to react to us and not vice versa. We’ve been living life afraid of how people will view our choices. What if, instead, we put the world on notice. We just live life. And the world will just have to adjust to us.”

  “What if we lose people?” Trevor asked. “Look at how Mike just reacted.”

  “I know.” I frowned, thinking about Mama. How she’d known. “And we will. Lose people, I mean. We just will. Just like you lost friends who developed different political or religious beliefs, we’re gonna lose friends and even family who aren’t as open-minded as we need.”

  “Like my mom and dad,” Joe said with a sigh.

  “They love you, though,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, but this...”

  “This is who you are. If they don’t like it, then they don’t really love you.”

  Trevor said that. Not me.

  Joe’s shoulders slumped and he sat next to Trevor, pulling up his knees to his chest like a little kid. It was a vulnerable stance, and it made something in me more hopeful.

  “I know. I’ve thought about this. A lot.”

  “We all have,” Trev answered.

  “And,” Joe continued, “losing your parents’ love is about as destabilizing as life can get.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  Joe’s contemplative face suddenly turned apologetic. “I’m sorry, Darla. You know that more than any of us, with your dad dying when you were so young.”

  A lump formed in my throat and the bridge of my nose tingled. I think that was the first time Joe had ever really acknowledged my daddy. I turned to the small box where I kept Josie’s photo album she made for me. I handed it to him.

  “What’s this?” Joe asked.

  “My daddy. Open it.”

  I turned on a brighter lamp in the shed and he cracked the book open, both Trevor and Joe gasping as the big picture of Daddy appeared first.

  “You look just like him!” they said in unison.

  A huge sob poured out of me. “Yeah. So I know something about losing your parents. But my Mama also figured it out, guys. She knew all along we were a threesome.”

  Joe’s mouth dropped open.

  “Yeah,” I said, sniffling and laughing wryly. “She said she was more embarrassed that I was a hypocrite than she was of my threesome.”

  “Whoa,” Trevor said.

  “Right.”

  Joe stood and opened is arms up to me. “I know we’re broken up, but you look so sad. I just...can I give you a hug?”

  I nodded.

  And then he took a step into that raging void between us and just slipped into my territory, hands on my waist finding their journey like he had a map in his head.

  You know, you can touch a man a thousand times between this moment and tomorrow, a million caresses between now and back through time, and there’s nothing like the sweet solidity of having someone’s skin lie next to yours like it owns the right to do that.

  My tears turned into a keening. Joe’s arms tightened around me, hands stroking my hair as I sobbed into his neck. He smelled so good. I missed this smell. I missed his touch. We were on new ground right now, because I couldn’t think of any time in our two years together where I talked about my inner life and Joe met me halfway. More than halfway, stepping into the sphere of influence where my soul reigned, and just being there for me.

  Maybe, though, I’d never invited him in. Now that I had, he was there.

  Was he there to stay?

  I felt a third hand on me, Trevor’s palm flat between my shoulder blades and rubbing, a slow caress of compassion. My chest seized and a new round of crying began, but I wasn’t crying for Daddy any longer. I was crying because I missed us.

  The us I had right here.

  “I want to be with you, Darla,” Joe whispered in my ear, his voice muffled by my hair. “The real you. The real Darla brings the real Joe out, and no one has ever done that before. I’ve relied on you being the most authentic one of us three, and now I see what a disaster that was. How unfair we were to you.” He pulled back and gently wiped my tears from my face, his eyes shining with his own. “Let me be your equal. Let me h
elp you to be more real. I’m so sorry I didn’t give you that before.”

  Trevor’s breath was hot in my ear as he whispered, “I expected you to do all the changing. All the adapting. That was so unfair. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect if you decide to try again, but know that I’m more aware now.” He squeezed my shoulder gently, then his voice went lower. Rougher. “I’m so in love with you that it’s breaking parts of me I didn’t know could be broken.”

  I had to ask. Had to. With a hitch in my breath, I stammered, “What i-i-if you tell your parents and they disown you? Or c-c-cut you off?” An actual pain formed in my breastbone at the thought. My journey through that question was done. Theirs hadn’t even started.

  Joe’s eyes cast down, then back to me. “Then what Trevor said was right. They only loved an image of me. Not the real me.”

  “And we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Trevor added. “But we will come to it. First thing, when we go home. We need to claim you as ours, Darla. If you’ll have us.”

  Every cell in my body screamed yes.

  I don’t remember actually reaching up to kiss Joe, but I must have. I know I led the way, because the guys were completely following me, letting me make all the decisions. At some point my subconscious mind kicked in and sought reconciliation in the form of Joe’s lips. I felt Trevor’s hands roam up and down my back, sliding up my waist, just exploring the warm terrain.

  The kiss wasn’t tentative. It was bold and clear. You want authentic and real? It’s been here all the time, my men.

  Let’s go forth and explore together.

  I pulled away, fevered and panting, then turned to find myself in Trevor’s arms, my head tilting up higher, my legs going on tiptoes to reach him. His kiss was tender and sweet, a welcome back that was a yin to Joe’s yang.

  “Are we...does this mean we’re together again? All of us?” Trevor rasped against my neck as he pulled me in for a long, hot embrace.

  “I hope so,” I whispered, reaching for Joe’s hand. “If you mean it about being real. About being true to us.”

  “I’ve never meant anything more in my life,” Joe said.

  “Me, too,” Trev added.