Random Acts of Fantasy (5 page)

She scanned the page and then smiled, her voice loud as she commanded our attention. “You are welcome to bring Ms. Smithson as a guest, with all expenses paid,” she announced.

Sam looked like he was about to cream his shorts. “Can you believe it?” He slung an arm around her shoulder and kissed her sweetly on the cheek. It made me smile.

Hell, it made Liam and Trevor grin. Everyone was all sappy happy until Joe muttered, “Kumbaya and all that. I think it’s a scam.”

Amy frowned, twisting a lock of hair around her finger as she snuggled in to Sam’s chest. “Why?”

“Because who does this?” he spat out. Joe could be terse. He could even be an asshole sometimes. What was driving him right now, though, into evil-dude territory was his need to finish the damn semester and come home to me and Trevor.

“Don’t you have a paper to write, hon?” I asked in a calm voice, the kind of voice you use on angry wild boars you find rustling through your garbage.

“Don’t patronize me!” His knee was bouncing up and down so hard I thought his leg had turned into a pogo stick.

“Not patronizing,” I said soothingly. “Just asking.”

“This isn’t helping! And Marley and demon and dinosaur sex!”

Eh? “Come again?” I asked.

“That’s what she said,” Liam muttered under his breath.

“Original!” Trevor joked, punching Liam’s shoulder. Liam hit back. The two started to joke wrestle, powerful, muscled legs entwining quickly, taut arms groping to gain the advantage.

“Amy!” I shouted. “Get the bottle of oil while I rip their shirts off!”

Sam looked like his eyebrows were about to knit together as he stared at the screen and said, “Dinosaur sex?” to Joe, Liam grabbed the hem of Trevor’s shirt and pulled. Hard.

Riiiip!

“I was joking!” I screeched, as Amy came running back from the kitchen with a big old bottle of olive oil.

Her face fell. “Oh,” she said quietly, garnering Sam’s attention.

His eyebrows shot up. “You want to see two half-naked men oiled up and touching each other?”

“Who wouldn’t?” I couldn’t help but mutter. Sam ignored me.

“If I wanted to see that,” she shot back, “I’d just make sure I came to one of your bachelorette party gigs.” Sam’s stripping job was a bone of contention between them. Still, apparently.

“Or maybe you just want to see Liam shirtless.”

All motion stopped and Liam and Trevor’s faces tipped up to look at the couple. Oh no.

I smiled nice and tight, the way women around here did. Like they smeared Preparation H all over their lips. Someone needed to break the tension, because Amy was furious, and calm, placid Sam’s fingers began tapping against his hips like they had a life of their own. When Sam did that, you knew trouble was brewing.

“We have just been given the opportunity to get a nice tropical vacation and each earn more money from one gig than from the last six months of them,” I said. “Not that I’ve earned a penny off your gigs. You people are rolling on the floor like something out of
Borat
—”

“Dude,” Liam said to Trevor, “no balls in my face, okay? Save that for when you’re with Ross and Darla.”

Oh no he
di’int
.

Man Code, according to what Trevor and Joe had told me, dictated that 1) you never talk about a friend’s balls touching another friend’s balls unless they had been officially married in a lovely beachside Cape Cod ceremony in Provincetown and 2) you definitely never talk about our threesome and how Trevor and Joe related to each other within it.

But, of course, Liam had
gone there
. Because Liam was a loose cannon.

When in the ever-loving hell had this meeting turned into the beginnings of a brawl? Now Amy was whispering furiously with Sam, pulling him to the hallway. Liam and Trevor were playacting at being angry with each other, and Joe was hissing about his paper and something about how Liam could bite his ass. Which I don’t think helped, because Liam said:

“You want
another
guy in the band to touch your ass?”

And Joe shouted (to the extent that you can shout through the glass of an 8.9-inch screen), “We don’t touch! You fucker! Stop saying that!”

This was all too much. I felt like Chris Harrison from
The Bachelorette
breaking up a cat fight, except this one involved six-pack abs and my strung-out, law-school-hating, Mountain Dew-addicted boyfriend.

And my other boyfriend wrestling his hot bandmate while all I could do is feel my head spin from it all. Pea soup was about to come shootin’ outta my mouth if this didn’t end
now
.

“HEY!” I shouted. “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE INSANE.”

They ignored me. Shit. I’d used that line a few too many times since I’d been around the band, huh?

“I AM PREGNANT!”

Dead calm and all eyes on me suddenly. I could, of course, only use that line once. I’d just blown my wad.

Like Joe needed to.

“You’re what?” Joe choked out, going so pale he looked like a whiteboard. He turned to Trevor. “You fucking ass—”

“NOT pregnant,” I rushed in. “Just tired of you people arguing and ignoring me.”

“Lying about a pregnancy is one of the shittiest things a girl can do,” Liam said, his sudden personality change daunting. He looked at me like I was dogshit dipped in diarrhea.

“Good thing I’m not a
girl
.” One long, drawn-out look at my abundant, overflowing bosom was enough to make Liam shrug one shoulder in concession. Hah. Call me a girl? Might as well call him a zygote. And speaking of zygotes…

“Good thing you’re not pregnant,” Trevor added. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Trevor

Liam’s arms went super tight, like he was ready to punch something. I moved back, tensing up, worried about the way he looked at Darla. My own heart was slamming in my chest after Darla’s really fucked-up way of getting our attention. The fastest way to get a man to go into shock was to tell him he had fathered a baby he hadn’t intended to.

Something was off in the way Liam was reacting to Darla, and it kept me on guard. I nudged Liam’s knee with my toe as I said, “Hey. What’s up? She was joking.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Darla run a hand through her bushy waves, blond hair nestled against her neck, that curve of skin crying out for my mouth. Even Liam’s anger couldn’t tear me away from that sight.

“Bad joke.” His words came out clipped and strained, but Liam took a deep breath and slowly unfurled his fists. I didn’t think he’d actually
hit
Darla—that was certain death by pummeling from me. Hell, Joe really would climb through the tablet screen and beat the shit out of him if he so much as put one feather touch on Darla.

Stand down
, I thought, watching Liam relax as if listening to my silent command.

Too bad the world didn’t work that way. Things would be far less fucked up if people just did what I recommended.

Joe was having a sputtering shit fit on the tablet, going on about the whole thing being a scam, while Darla tried to calm his over-drugged self down. Caffeine alone didn’t account for his state. Not even his insane concoction of Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and dried coffee. Crazy motherfucker.

Snorted Adderall, on the other hand…and I had no doubt he knew exactly how to find it, too. Joe was probably dealing it, making bargains with an enterprising third grader for his stash.

I paused to take in my own invitation. A private island resort. All expenses paid. $10,000. I could use the money (who couldn’t?) and it would be a blast to spend some time with Darla and the band down there.

But my own questions seeped in, making me frown as I stood, leaving Liam alone on the ground. I began to pace. Who saw us and invited us? What kind of resort was this? What had we done to be offered $10,000 each for a single performance? All the songs we’d written and performed rushed through my mind like a fast-moving ribbon attached at the end of a kite, carried off by the winds of chance.

I mean,
we
knew we were awesome and that the rest of the world just needed to catch up and realize our glory.

Had it? Had someone figured out that we were the next big thing?

The next big thing with a fucking awesome deal to test the waters, have fun, and come home with fat bank accounts.

Joe didn’t need the money. Sam sure as fuck did, and Liam was cut off by his old man. Darla…I smiled at her, our eyes catching, her righteous indignation flashing in those ocean-green eyes until she let me steady her with eye contact that deepened.

And then she granted me such a wonderful grin it blinded me.

Love. It makes you do stupid shit, like not saying “I love you” because the power of the feeling is so much greater than the meaning of the words. “I love you” wasn’t just a commitment—which I could handle. It wasn’t just an expression—which was easy enough.

It was inadequate.

In her eyes I saw love. Oceans and meadows of pure, unadulterated joy. In her throat I heard the melody of my name whispered in furtive moments where we claimed each other. That voice was like a luscious stroke up my spine, rendering me dumbstruck. And moments with her and Joe, the three of us united, were like inventing a whole new world and then shaking its axis, as if we were the universe itself.

How in the hell do you shrink all of that emotion into three little words?

It’s easier to say nothing at all.

“Let’s settle this by calling the number,” Liam rumbled, standing. He wore old jeans that were probably from high school, a ripped
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
t-shirt I’d given him for Christmas last year, and an expression of disdain for all of us that was louder than his words.

“No shit!” Joe shouted through the tinny speakers on my tablet. “I’ve been saying that for the past five minutes while you all run around in your little circle jerk.”

“So eloquent,” Amy snapped, turning away from Sam. She barged over to the screen, that long, brown hair fluttering over her face, eyes angry and mouth twisted into a snarl. “Penn has really brought out the gentleman in you.”

“Don’t you have a book to dust off and shelve somewhere, Amy? The grown-ups are talking now,” Joe replied, pretending to be bored.

We were all
waaaay
over the top.

“Hey,” Sam growled. Nothing like ending a fight with your girlfriend by taking on a common enemy. “This shit was old back in high school, but it’s really fucking stupid now, Joe.”

“What are you going to do? Put your thumb on the camera and block me from sight? Turn off the tablet?
Oooooooooh
. Sam’s going all caveman on me to protect his librarian.”

Darla and Liam sighed with tones of shared disgust, looked at each other, and smiled ruefully.

I grabbed my phone and dialed, pressing the screen against my ear, one finger held out to them all in a gesture of silence.

Miraculously, they complied.

“May I help you, Mr. Connor?” a pleasant man’s voice answered, tinged with a European accent I couldn’t place.

The phone might as well have been a copperhead. I snatched it away from my ear and looked at it like it was about to bite.

“What the fuck?” I couldn’t help it. How did he know my name? This had gone from awesome to creepy in two seconds. Someone was playing a very elaborate practical joke on us.

“Did you drop acid in my coffee pot?” I asked Liam.

“Huh? Why would I do that?”

“Because what the fuck? How does this guy know my name?” I turned on speakerphone and held out my screen to everyone, like it was some ancient relic possessed by a demon.

“Mr. Connor?” the voice asked from an echoey distance. “You have set up your caller ID.”

The room erupted into snickers. Good. Let them all be united in making fun of me. Which meant the chicken jokes would be next…

“And I was expecting your call,” he added as I pulled the phone back to me. Darla winked and shook her head slowly, while the others stopped laughing and leaned in, curious.

“I assume you have questions. Are any of the band members with you? And Ms. Jennings and Ms. Smithson?”

These motherfuckers I called friends got the same WTF look on their faces, making me grin. Good. Feel the discomfort. Hah.

“We’re all here,” Joe announced. “So what are the terms of this contract?” He pulled out his invitation. “No one is signing on without seeing the actual performance contract.”

“The island’s owner assumed that your astute legal nature would emerge,” the man told Joe. Oh, man. I needed a shovel. This guy was laying it on thick.

And Joe was eating it up. Metaphorically speaking.

“Yes,” was all Joe could choke out, his eyebrows raised, mouth turned in a frown of impressed approval.