Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

Chapter Four

  Charlotte

  “You sure about this?” Maggie whispered furiously. For a woman with green hair and an attitude bigger than a Pats fan after a win, she seemed surprisingly meek right now.

  “Yes, I am. I’m just doing my job.” We were cruising down the Mass Pike toward downtown Boston. Random Acts of Crazy had a gig in a place that impressed me. A bar somewhere between a frat-boy pit and a condemned artist’s studio (with alcohol). They were moving up in the world, it seemed. Even with my first paper of the semester staring me in the face like a showdown in a Quentin Tarantino western, I was taking the time to deliver Liam’s goods to him.

  Quite publicly.

  Maggie looked nervously at the back seat. It was the twentieth time.

  “Is she…okay back there?” Maggie asked, stretching out the word “she.”

  I smoothed my skirt over my legs and tried to formulate an answer. Instead, I just rubbed the shiny cloth of my new purple dress against my sweaty palm. Mod Cloth’s pickings were fabulous for my figure, with a small waist and a big chest and butt. Liam used to tell me I had the most luscious—

  No. No. I was not going to do this. I wasn’t about to let all those lovely memories of compliments sway me. Nor would I think about how he took his time inhaling deeply from my skin, or how he stroked me from toe to eyebrow, the lingering trail making me glow….

  Damn it.

  The dress tied in a red bow right behind my neck, and my hair flowed over it, curled with big rollers like the fifties pinup girls wore their hair. Mary Janes were my favorite shoes, and Maggie and I looked like some kind of Battle of the Decades reality show. She was more Marilyn Manson than Marilyn Monroe in her torn black leather and crazy hair.

  Our backseat companion wore a t-shirt someone in college had given me, one of the earlier prints for Random Acts of Crazy. “I hear they’re from your hometown,” Jared had said, beer goggles firmly on back then. He seemed to have thought that giving me a t-shirt would get him laid, but instead he got a sneer and twelve hours of sobbing from me.

  He’d wandered out of my room and found another sophomore for a booty call. But the t-shirt remained.

  Now Esmerelda (Maggie named her) sat at a half-slump, firmly secured in her seatbelt, face in a permanent expression of surprise. We’d made her up for her first date, because Liam deserved only the best.

  Random Acts of Crazy t-shirt to show she was a groupie? Check.

  Enough make up to make her look like a Bourbon Street stripper? Check.

  G-string that would cause most women to be cut in two via anus? Check.

  Maggie had found an old pair of neon puffy pants (“Eighties party at my old school. What?”) and Esmerelda looked gorgeous. Her plastic brown hair didn’t do much for her, but the makers of the blowup sex doll had given her lovely red lips and a mouth that turned into a six-inch tunnel, a perfect cylinder that touched the back of her head.

  Who needs brains when you have a mouth like that?

  The interchange between I-90 and I-95 meant we needed to slow down and pay the toll. As I stopped the car and reached out with my money and the ticket, the toll booth operator, a Chinese dude about our age, barely looked up.

  He did look up just enough, though, and did a double take.

  “Nice friend. She looking for a hook-up?”

  Maggie snorted.

  “She’s taken, actually,” I said.

  He gave me a WTF? look and peered in the back seat. “Nice shoes she’s wearing.” Maggie had given some freshman a pair of thrift shop white leather sandals and told them we were having a Mardi Gras contest. The freshman took them back to her room and together with a bunch of friends produced a masterpiece you could only find on Pinterest.

  Smuggling Esmerelda out of my apartment had been second hardest part of the night. Delivering Liam’s new “girlfriend” would be the hardest.

  Five years.

  “Have fun in town,” the toll guy said as he handed me my change. I hit the gas and Maggie laughed.

  “Five fucking years and all he says to me is that he’s buying female sex replacements and wants me to hand-deliver them,” I muttered as we sped over the bridge toward Newton. “Fucker.”

  “You don’t have to do this.” Maggie’s voice was so reasonable all it did was make me see red.

  “Oh, I have to do this. You want me to deliver your sex hole ‘in person,’ Liam? Fuck you. You’re getting Esmerelda all right.” I was seething (understandably) and a little illogical (okay…a lot). But no—just no way I was letting him use me like this. No mindfucking allowed. I’d let him do that to me for five years and now…what did this mean?

  Cracking open the mind of Liam McCarthy to understand his motives was something I’d spent far too much time trying to do. Understanding him was pointless.

  Challenging him face to face was long overdue.

  “Hold on, Esme,” I said as I floored it. “You’re getting your cherry popped tonight.”

  Liam

  I had to hand it to Darla—this new place was a step up. A giant chasm down from our stage on the island of Eden, but a step up from the usual Boston-area dives.

  A real cover charge, too, which meant we’d get a flat fee for performing plus a percentage of what came in at the door. Real money for once, and not just enough for a few beers and a tank of gas. If she kept booking us like this, Sam and I could slow down or even stop the stripping jobs.

  Sound checks were in place and Darla was at the door, handing out free download cards for new songs and chatting up the customers. She ate that shit up, which was fine. Made her useful. Kept her busy. Tonight, Joe was stuck in Philly, going through some lame-ass law thing he swore he couldn’t get out of. That meant Tyler was here to fill in on bass. The man was a walking mural, so tatted up he looked like the practice canvas for Miami Ink.

  I had started calling him Frown because that’s all he did. The guy warmed up, played, got paid, and left. No hanging out, no partying, nothing. He was an inked-up frown in human form, and while his performance had definitely improved over the handful of months he’d sat in for Joe, he was about as much fun as a wet, dead raccoon.

  “Place is filling up, isn’t it?” Sam said, appearing at my elbow. He chugged down a half-liter of water in a handful of gulps.

  “Amy here?”

  “Nope. Papers to write.” Sam chewed on his inner cheek for a minute and said, “Charlotte, huh?” Sam was the last person I wanted to talk to about this. Hell, everyone was the last person I wanted to talk to about this.

  “Shut up,” I muttered, looking around the rapidly filling room. I spotted Cari from the coffee shop. She had some nice cupcakes. And by cupcakes I meant tits.

  “Liam!” she said, waving wildly. I shot Sam a too bad, so sad look and sauntered off, my eye on my bedmate for the night.

  “You have to pay for her!” Darla shouted suddenly, making me turn away from Cari and toward a growing commotion at the door.

  “If I pay for her, does she need to meet the two-drink minimum?” said a very familiar voice. A voice that made my gut clench and my neck go tight, among other body parts.

  God damn Charlotte.

  The bar was dark, the lights dimmed in preparation for the stage lights to take precedence when it came to commanding attention. My contacts had started to dry out and my vision was already blurred a little. Bad genetics from my dad. Myopia was handed down like a curse between men in the generations of my Irish ancestors, and right now I couldn’t squint enough to make her out.

  It didn’t help that I was on month three of cheap monthly contact lenses, but when you’re broke, you do what you have to do. Can’t exactly get on stage wearing geeky glasses.

  “She looks like she can hold her liquor,” Darla said in a high, giggly voice. Who the hell were they talking about? I took a few steps forward and raucous laughter filled the room.

  As if on cue, Darla and a group of women around her parted to reveal Charlotte, some chick with bright green
hair, and another woman who seemed pretty stiff and formal. Dark brown hair. Bright red, painted lips and a nice flush to her cheeks. Man, she was short, and wearing some kind of bright pants.

  Charlotte stood on one side of her, hugging the woman to her like she was a life raft.

  “Hey, Mac!” Darla shouted toward the bar where the manager was setting up a line of shots. “Add a tequila for our friend here. What’ser name?” she asked Charlotte, who was smirking with her lip turned into a twitching smile.

  “Esmerelda.” The green-haired chick caught my eye and went still. Who in the hell…?

  “Esmerelda, it’s so nice to meet you,” Darla said with a fake kind of formality. She shook her hand and the woman’s hand was stiff and limp at the same time. Weird. Already shitfaced before 9 p.m.

  Hmmm. My kind of girl.

  “Esme is here to see her new boyfriend,” Charlotte said in a voice made of chocolate and velvet. I tensed. Who was Charlotte’s boyfriend? I’d expected a call from her after I made that order at her party. Not that I could normally afford to blow that kind of cash on stupid sex toys, but it seemed like a great way to see if she’d see me.

  Okay, frankly, it was a wuss move. If I wanted to see her I should have just said so. Called. Emailed. Sent a message by owl. Whatthefuckever. Instead I played a little game and—

  And now here she was.

  “New boyfriend? Lucky man,” Darla said. She threw an arm around the little woman and whispered something in her ear. It made Charlotte and Green Hair howl.

  I hadn’t heard that laugh in five years. I missed it. A slow burn crept up from my solar plexus through my scalp. Five years of being fucked over by the only woman I’d ever loved was long enough to go without some answers.

  Two more steps closer and I blinked furiously, the dry air and smoke machine tests really making it impossible to see.

  “Liam!” Darla exclaimed, leaving her post to come over and give me a side hug. “Have you met Esmerelda?” She giggled.

  “Actually,” Charlotte said slowly, leaning on the little woman and taking slow steps toward me, “this is Liam’s email-order bride.”

  All it took was two steps for me to realize that my myopia was the biggest fucking cosmic joke on the planet.

  Darla screamed with uncontrolled, raucous sounds that brought Trevor bounding from backstage. “What the hell is—” He chopped his question off mid-sentence when he saw the blowup doll.

  I had to hand it to Charlotte. I had said “in person” for delivery on that order. A rush of rage poured through me, though. Not humiliation.

  Rage. Red-hot rage shot through every vein, every artery, every inch of skin because suddenly those five years spread out between us like a painful set of ropes binding us, the burn from trying to break free so bad it was better to remain imprisoned.

  “I’m here to deliver your new girlfriend to you. Plus the half-gallon of warming lube.” Charlotte hefted it onto the table, where a bunch of half-empty glasses and beer bottles rattled with the movement. “And your flesh simulator for the iPad.”

  I scratched my chin and felt my cheeks turning hot.

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “You ordered it.”

  “Doesn’t make this any less awkward.”

  “One bit of warning: don’t use the warming gel with the flesh simulator. You’ll get lesions worse than rug burns.”

  I flinched, my hand nearly going to my crotch. “Is this supposed to be funny?”

  A single shoulder raised in response in a dismissive shrug. The cloth of her dress slipped another inch, revealing the line of her bra. My breathing slowed and I had to control it and the rush of desire that shot through me. “Was ordering all that shit from me and having me deliver it in person ‘funny’?”

  “I thought you’d call me.”

  “Phones work both ways. Yours been broken for five years?”

  “Only my heart,” I blurted.

  I said that.

  I fucking said that.

  She looked like I’d slapped her. The red creep of shame that covered her neck told me I couldn’t have pointed a steel-tipped arrow at her chest and pierced her with a mighty pull and hurt her more than those words did.

  “Your heart? You—” A sob escaped, ragged and beautiful, brutal and filled with half the wounds we’d inflicted on each other in our minds.

  And then I was touching her arms, my hands around her waist, her lips crushed against mine, hard and furious, that kiss trying to transcend all those years and say something—anything—to replace the silence.

  She broke away first, palms against my chest, hand over my heart and moving in concert with its pumping.

  Her lips parted and her eyes turned up, chin still down, and she uttered the last words I heard her speak before she marched out:

  “God damn Liam.” Her hand flew up and she slapped me so hard I knew I’d have a red flush that matched hers.

  Turning on her heel, she deposited the sex doll in a gape-mouthed Darla’s arms as Green Hair stomped off after her, the entire bar abuzz with whispers about what they’d just seen.

  Whatever the hell it was.

  Chapter Five

  Charlotte

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think. But oh, could I feel. Too much. Too many feelings. My feet took over and began to race through the open main door of the bar, down the street, my brain on fire and my heart in death throes.

  “Charlotte!” I heard Maggie call out in the distance, but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped I’d be a sobbing mess forever, and I’d already tried living life like that five years ago. It wasn’t to my liking. Just running and running until I was exhausted wouldn’t work either, but I had to put as much distance as I could between myself and that kiss.

  That kiss!

  God damn Liam, all right. How dare he? How dare he! Every second that kiss lasted felt like a contraction, like the loss of the baby all over again. Like the loss of him all over again.

  Losing my friend, losing my baby, losing myself—it was never going to fade, was it? The tears poured down my face as I ran, low heels be damned, click-clacking on uneven pavement as downtown Boston lights became a blur.

  “Charlotte!” Maggie’s voice was sharp, the clasp of her hand on my elbow a yank that jarred me. “Slow down. Calm down. Breathe.”

  “Can’t,” I gasped. “Can’t. If I—if I stop—I…oh, God.” I sagged against her, letting the feelings come in. They flooded like a tidal wave. She pulled me to a bus station bench, the scent of urine overpowering, the lingering staleness of millions of cigarettes smoked here some sort of base comfort. We sat on the dirty aluminum bench and I cried until I had no more tears.

  It took a lot longer than I thought.

  Peeling me off, she fished around in her tiny purse until she found an old coffeehouse napkin, balled up but unused, and said apologetically, “Here.”

  “Oh, God, oh, God, what was I thinking?”

  “You weren’t. You were feeling.”

  “I’m not supposed to feel! Not when it comes to Liam.” I started to hyperventilate. Flashes of so many memories from five years ago hit me, hard. The phone call with him. Going to Planned Parenthood alone, too ashamed to ask a friend to go with me. The confirmation of pregnancy. Going to health services for an eight-week appointment. The talk about “options,” which was code for abortion or adoption.

  “I had a baby in me. I had a baby in me with Liam,” I whispered. The dreams that tormented me, so wonderful in slumber where Liam was attentive and loving, cradling my belly in his hands, talking to our unborn child, always dissipated in the cold light of day when I woke up and realized the only real thing was my nausea.

  Puking before midterm exams. Puking after midterm exams. Puking, once, during midterm exams. Finishing out my semester by the skin of my teeth and only because the professor whose exam I missed when I was bleeding out in a dorm bathroom gave me a pass because I had an A average otherwise
.

  Which left me with a C- in that class.

  “Charlotte,” she soothed.

  “I never told my mom, you know?” I was raving. “My own mother. I was so ashamed. Not at being pregnant—accidents happen, and I was on the pill—but at the way Liam acted. It felt like I’d done something so wrong that I deserved to be treated like something you leave in a dump, so I couldn’t bear to tell my mom. I kept it a secret, and then I miscarried, and she never found out.”

  “I know, honey. I know,” Maggie crooned as I choked and bleated into the early fall night.

  “And five years,” I raged on. “Nothing. Nothing. Not a word. Then the bastard sees me at a party and orders sex toys!” My harsh laughter caught the eye of passersby, who involuntarily steered a few feet away from the bus stop.

  “Sex toys from me! The woman who hasn’t had sex since Liam!” There. I’d said it.

  Maggie startled, her body tense against mine, but she kept her mouth shut, eyes kind and filled with something close to pity.

  “You know what he said to me, back then, after I told him I was pregnant? You know what he said, Maggie?” The wind whistled through a giant hole where my heart was supposed to be.

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘Oh.’ That’s all. Just ‘oh.’” A dark exhaustion began its slow creep through my limbs, the feeling familiar.

  “That’s it?”

  “No—he also told me to ask our friend Amy to take me to Planned Parenthood to confirm the pregnancy when I asked him to drive me.”

  “Jesus. What a gentleman.”

  I snorted. “That’s the thing!” I wailed. “He was a gentleman! We’ve known each other since he was in sixth and I was in seventh grade. I’ve known him since before his voice changed! And all those years of friendship, then more, meant fucking nothing. Nothing. He threw me away like a piece of trash.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “Threw our baby away like a piece of trash.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Which is exactly what happened. My baby became medical waste. Trash. Just…something you throw away and forget ever happened.”