Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

  Maggie and Liam both started talking to me at the same time. She shut up and Liam took over.

  “You’re right. You shouldn’t. I’m not asking you to, either. I’ll just go to the student center until your office hours are over and I’ll come back then. And if that’s not good, I can just come back some other time.” His eyes had this pleading look in them, like he wanted nothing more in the world than for me to hear him out, but he knew that I had all the power.

  All the power and a parasite the size of a grain of rice making me feel like I was rolling down Niagara Falls in a barrel.

  “I think you should go and talk,” Maggie said in a too-even voice.

  “I think I should finish working,” I said archly. “It’s only twenty more minutes.”

  “That’s right,” Maggie snapped back. “And I can handle twenty minutes.”

  Liam’s head ping-ponged back and forth. Normally he’d open his mouth now and make a snarky comment, but he was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Fine.” I grabbed by purse and looked at him. “Where to?”

  He looked toward my apartment.

  “No fucking way.”

  “That settles that, then. And I wasn’t trying to imply—”

  “I don’t care what you were trying or not trying. We’re not going into my apartment. So it’s coffee shop, pizza shop, library, or lounge. And I really don’t want to talk to you in public.” I paused, and it hit me. Going anywhere on campus was dicey, because eventually someone would recognize him, even though he looked more like a young, blond Christian Grey than a rock star.

  “My apartment. Fine.”

  “We can have coffee.”

  My stomach growled in protest. “God, no coffee. No coffee!” A giant, imaginary blanket of barfing doom enveloped me. I had to stop, my stomach growing five inches in belching, nauseated protest.

  “Don’t…even…talk…about...coffee…with me.” An image from The Exorcist came into my consciousness with alarming alacrity. I’d be spewing pea soup in seconds if the scent of coffee touched my nose.

  “I’m not the only one who’s changed,” he joked, and then stopped. “Oh, shit. Is it morning sickness?”

  “Are you and Maggie secret twins? Keep your voice down!”

  “Sorry.” He frowned. “What does Maggie and twins have to do with—twins? Are there twins in there?” he rasped, and reaching for my belly instinctively.

  I grabbed his arm and dragged him in my apartment. “We’re not staying, so whatever you have to say to me, say it now. And make it fast. I’ll have to pee again in about three minutes.” While the baby inside me was the size of a Tic Tac, so was my bladder, apparently.

  The look on his face made me feel like my skin was covered with cotton, the world distilling down to nothing but his eyes. So scared and anxious, worried and repentant. I stopped and focused on my breathing, watching every move he made like it was in slow motion, his breathing as deliberate as his entire look.

  Wow. I couldn’t ever have imagined Liam looking like this. Professional. Grown up. Like any of the businessmen you see in Boston on the train, headed to the Financial District day in and day out to greet the corporate world anew, brokering deals and closing sales, updating profit and loss sheets and making money from other people’s money.

  The short haircut made him model perfect, just long enough to cover the thin scar where I’d clipped. And the suit—I hadn’t seen him in a suit since my high school graduation, when he’d dressed up to go out to a formal dinner with my mom and me.

  All his rambling, loose confidence was gone, though. He wasn’t awkward, but stiff. Not nervous, but chastened. A man trying on a new identity because he felt he needed to. Not wanted to.

  “I’m here to say I’m sorry.”

  That was a good start.

  “And that you don’t have to forgive me.”

  Even better.

  “Because you were right all along.” His hands started to shake so badly it made my stomach flip. Then his shoulders. A wild, uncaged look filled his eyes as he searched my face, seeking something he plainly wasn’t finding.

  “I…oh, God, I made a terrible mistake. A horrible, wretched mistake and I’m so, so sorry.” And then Liam McCarthy took four steps toward me. Just when I expected him to envelop me in his arms he bent down and put his head on my shoulder, one hand splayed flat on my belly over the baby, and he said:

  “I went back to my old doctor. They did new tests. Oh, Charlotte, I’m so sorry. Our babies. Our babies.”

  And that was the moment I got my friend back.

  Chapter Twenty

  Liam

  “They don’t hate you. I promise,” I assured her. Charlotte looked more nervous than I’d seen her in ages. Our big Halloween concert seemed like the perfect chance for her to come and hang out and watch us perform. To reacquaint herself with Amy, and to get to know Darla. Even Dad said he’d try to make it.

  I hadn’t told anyone in the band that I was leaving. The past few weeks working at the dealership sucked, but nothing could stop the expansive feeling of sheer happiness inside me. Flickering fluorescent lights, stupid, fake jokes, more paperwork than I’d ever imagined, and the slowing of time to a standstill in my little office didn’t matter.

  I had Charlotte, we were having a baby, and life was good.

  Louise asked me to do my final weekend and then I was out of stripping, hopefully for good. Then again, I knew a part of me would miss it. For as much as I complained about it, stripping was a reasonable answer to an unreasonable life, and while I wished it had all worked out—and the band had taken off before…earlier—now I had a whole new life waiting for me.

  Louise left the door open, though. I could always pick up a night here and there if I wanted. Charlotte didn’t care. “I’m the one who gets to touch you without paying for the privilege,” she’d declared with a kiss.

  Match made in heaven.

  But the band…man, if we got that big tour, I’d be on the road just as Charlotte was giving birth. No way. And going to work, managing paperwork and sales teams and quotas—there was no way I could just take off for months on end to eat road food, practice half the day, ignoring Charlotte and our child.

  Time to put it behind me. They could find another guitar player and dude to do backup vocals.

  I figured I’d tell them in a week or two. Help get them the big tour, and then give them a few months to replace me.

  Sometimes, late at night in Charlotte’s apartment, I’d stare at the ceiling fan above her head and think about all of it. How I’d hurt her so badly. How the doctors had been wrong. That she’d been so alone during the miscarriage five years ago. How it felt to hear the baby’s heartbeat this week, faint but very real. Too real.

  Buh-DUM buh-DUM buh-DUM. That was the sound of showing up. Commitment. Love.

  In a few weeks we’d hear the heartbeat again and maybe get an early ultrasound. Charlotte’s earlier miscarriage was ruled as just “one of those things,” and her youth and general health meant this would be a routine pregnancy.

  Right now, though, she was just trying to get through the day without barfing constantly. Hell, to get out of the car in this parking lot without puking.

  “You sure you can handle this?” I asked.

  She nodded, taking a deep breath in through her nose. “Sure. It always gets better after ten at night.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Hormones. Voodoo. Karma. Magic. I don’t know.” She winced, her face going a bit green.

  “I’m so sorry. But thank you.”

  Her face lit up with surprise. “For what?”

  “For going through all this for my child.”

  She took another deep breath and slid out of the new car from the dealership that Dad had given to me on my first day of work. “It’s a floor model from last year,” he’d said, looking at my rusted piece of shit car. “A thousand times better than that hunk of junkyard metal.”

  And he’
d had my car towed off with the other throwaways.

  “The car has that new-car smell,” Charlotte complained, her ass sliding out and off the buttery leather. “It’s nice, but—” She gagged.

  “Sorry.” What else could I say?

  Deep breath. “It’s fine.” She leaned over and kissed me on the lips, her dry mouth quivering.

  “You need a lemon drop?” I reached into my back pocket for the baggie of candy that seemed to help. I’d come a long way in a short time, replacing the pot in my baggies with morning sickness drops…

  “I’m fine.” And with that, we walked down the stinky alley to the back door of the theater, Charlotte clearly holding her breath.

  I didn’t blame her. I hurried her in through the scarred metal door, and the scent of backstage wasn’t much better than the dumpster-filled alley.

  But she could breathe.

  Chaos reigned, but that was just how it worked when it came to performing. Stagehands rushed everywhere, grabbing electronic cords and shouting for random things like chairs, a box, water. From the back we wended our way between all the crap and someone recognized me, pointing me to the rooms where I assumed I’d find Trevor, Joe, and Sam.

  They were lounging on couches that would have made frat-house furniture look like something out of Pottery Barn. I expected full-size rats to come crawling out of the torn, fake-velvet upholstery that might have once held cheesy pictures of stagecoaches and horses but that had been so stained it now looked like a weird, sickly sort of lilac grey.

  “Hey,” we all greeted each other.

  Charlotte knew the guys, of course. We’d been a brand-new band in high school and she’d come to more practices than I could remember. All three looked at her and greeted her with varying levels of friendliness and wariness.

  We were nervous.

  The auditorium was huge.

  “Five hundred and seventeen ticket sales so far!” Darla shouted as she marched into the room. She came to a dead halt when she saw Charlotte, eyes narrowing to green triangles. If she’d sniffed Charlotte’s ass she couldn’t have been more obvious.

  Then her face spread into a splitting grin and she threw her arms around Charlotte. “You’re here! I’m so glad!”

  Charlotte gave me a helpless look as short, voluptuous Darla’s bushy blond head came up to Charlotte’s rack, her arms short, the height difference nearly an entire foot. It was like watching a woman’s NBA player hugging a blond troll doll.

  Darla released her, then went right back to her announcement. “We did it! You did it! Everything else is gravy now!”

  “I have to buy my ticket, so make that 518,” Charlotte said.

  “You’re on the house, honey. Girlfriends are,” Darla declared.

  “What about fathers?” asked a familiar voice. We all turned, my jaw already halfway to the floor, as my dad made an appearance.

  And what an appearance.

  1985 called, Dad. They want their concert t-shirts back.

  “Is that an original Rush concert t-shirt?” Joe gasped. He gave my dad a new, appreciative look that was fucking unbelievable, because Joe thought my dad was one step above cockroaches for being a car dealership owner.

  Unless he was cutting him a deal on a new Beemer.

  “Yep. Geddy Lee, man!” Dad played air guitar. Something in me died a little.

  “Nice!” Darla chirped, encouraging Dad. “I see where Liam gets all his talent!”

  “I still got the moves,” Dad said, fingers flying in a series of gestures that looked more like he had hand epilepsy than resembled any finger position I knew on a guitar.

  “Dad. Please. Just…no.”

  “What? My Geddy Lee imitation too much? He was a great guitarist.”

  “He played bass,” I, Joe, Trevor, and Sam all said in unison.

  Dad stopped cold, shrugged, then wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Too much awesome in these fingers for you, son?” He winked, then added in his best Steve Carrell imitation, “That’s what she said!”

  Oh, God.

  The wrinkles around his eyes were a little lighter than the rest of his tanned skin. That was when I realized he wore a spray-on tan, and that his hair was a little thicker up top. Being near-sighted meant I could see every hair follicle, and—yup.

  Plugs.

  Dad was what—forty-nine?—old, but not dead yet. I guess he needed his injection of youth, but wearing a grubby t-shirt that was older than most of the women he dated while playing air guitar wasn’t going to cut it.

  “Great moves, Mr. McCarthy,” Joe said, deadpan.

  “Garrett! Call me Garrett, Joe. How many times do I have to insist?”

  “Garrett, you don’t have to tell me twice,” Darla said, coming forward with her hand outstretched. “Liam’s your spitting image.”

  Dad’s chest swelled with pride. The ex-linebacker’s frame was still mostly muscle; I had to give him that. “Thank you, um…” He looked to me to figure out who she was.

  “Darla, Dad. This is Darla, the one I’ve mentioned before.”

  “Oh, the one Joe and Trevor share?” The words came out of his mouth like he was talking about which perennial to plant along the south side of his house. I had to give Dad credit—he wasn’t a judgmental man.

  But I was a dead man now, as Sam and Charlotte found gouges in the wall that were suddenly fascinating to stare at, while Trevor and Joe looked at me with lasers set to kill.

  Darla, on the other hand, was in mid-handshake with my Dad as his words sank in. Her smile widened, eyes glittering. “That’s one way to put it, Garrett.” She bit her lower lip, pulling it up in a seductive curl as she looked at me with a cocked eyebrow that said, Uh, thanks?

  “But,” she continued, “I just like to think that there’s so much of me that it takes two men to keep me happy.”

  Joe crossed the room and grabbed my arm, hard. “You told him?”

  “He figured it out.”

  “Parents don’t figure this shit out!”

  “My dad does. He’s pretty laid back, and—”

  “And now that he knows, the whole fucking town will know, and my parents are next!” Joe snapped.

  Dad had a canny way of reading people. It’s probably why he was so good at selling cars, at running the biggest dealership in the area for his make, but it also meant he could head off conflict like no one I’d ever seen.

  “Joe, no worries,” he said, making a lip-zipping gesture. “Secret’s safe with me. I’m not going to tell.” His eyes roamed over Darla with friendliness, setting me on guard. Last thing anyone wanted was for Dad to turn into a lech over our chicks.

  “Thank you, Mr. McCar—er, Garrett,” Joe said in a panicked tone. “Not every parent is as understanding as you.”

  Darla just snorted and made a sour face.

  “Not every parent is wound so tight,” Dad said as he reached out to clap Joe on the shoulder, but Joe was so fucking brittle he looked like he’d shatter into a thousand pieces.

  You asshole, Joe mouthed at me, then flashed my dad a people-pleaser smile. Weasel.

  “On that lovely note,” Darla interrupted as she whispered with some sound tech carrying a filthy clipboard, “we need to get on stage.”

  I escorted Charlotte and Dad out to the seating area, ignoring the daggers Joe was throwing me with his eyes. Whatever. My dad really had figured it out. Sort of. He assumed Darla was dating both of them in some kind of open relationship. The words “threesome” and “menage” hadn’t been uttered, so I don’t think he really got that they were together in triplicate.

  Which was just fine.

  We admired the stage from the box area, where tables for four were set up, bar service available throughout the entire show. Dad and Charlotte chatted while I eyed the stage. This place was fucking huge, like Blue Hills Pavilion in Boston, right on the water. About the same size, but completely indoors. Raised stage, and the spot for me was on the far right, Joe far left, with Trevor’s microphone and gu
itar staging area in the middle, right up against Sam’s drum set-up.

  People were paying $19 a ticket to come see us. Hundreds of them.

  Five hundred and seventeen, so far.

  The room shook a little as my eyes landed on Charlotte, laughing at some joke my dad made, the faded lettering on his grey t-shirt up against the table where they now sat, a cocktail server delivering what looked like a Shirley Temple for the love of my life and Dad’s standard drink—a scotch and soda. They were casual and cool, breezy and fun, and some part of me released inside, under the layers of hope and fear and driving hard work.

  It was going to be just fine.

  Everything was going to work out.

  “Liam!” Darla screamed from the stage. “Get your hot ass up here right now! We got sound checks to do and an hour to showtime!”

  “Hot ass?” Charlotte said in an arched tone. I gave her a quick hug and a kiss.

  “No one’s told me I have a hot ass in ten years,” Dad said with a wink, admiration in his voice.

  I gave his seat a quick look and said, “You’ve got a hot ass, Dad.” His laughter followed as I lunged on stage and became Darla’s puppet.

  Time changed as the rush to get everything ready kicked in. Darla went into this crazy flow state where she knew exactly how to manage the thousands of tiny details that all came together to make performances work. After all the tests came back just fine, and we’d blocked out our moves, we went into the backstage rooms and worked on settling our nerves.

  It hit me, like being sucker punched, that this was my second-to-last performance with the band. Ever.

  And they didn’t know it.

  “What’s the count?” I asked Darla, who had turned into a blond blur.

  “Seven hundred seventy-two now!”

  Whoa.

  “Five minutes!” someone said, and my nerves decided to make an appearance, as if coming out of hibernation and damn ready for some action. What was this? I didn’t get nervous like this. I stood and quickly wended my way to stage left, peeking through the curtains, spotting Dad and Charlotte, heads together. The place wasn’t packed, but it was full.