Random Acts of Hope (4 page)

I would, too,
I thought.
In fact, I had…
 

“Sure. No problem.” Suddenly the sex toy orders seemed frivolous. Almost sacrilegious.

“You okay to handle this?”

“Of course I am.” I could hear my own defensiveness.

Her face shifted to compassion. More for me than for Marian. “C’mon, Charlotte.”

I consciously relaxed my shoulders, which felt like they were a foot above my ears. She was right.

“I just…I saw Liam last night.”

Her eyes flew open so wide I could see the perimeter of her contact lenses against the expanse of the white
s
of her eyes.

“Jesus Christ!”

“He thinks he is,” I muttered.

“Where did you see him?”

I must have blushed, because she added, “Oh, this is going to be a good one.” A smart cookie, Maggie looked at the stack of orders and got a look of dawning comprehension. “Not at the sex toy party!” she gasped, more amused than horrified.

“Keep your voice down!” It wasn’t beyond the undergrads to eavesdrop and post juicy bits on Snap
cha
t and Twitter.

“It was! Holy shit, Charlotte, you saw your asshole ex at a sex toy party you were hosting?”

“Yes.”

“What was he doing there?”

“Uh…” I could hear the click in my throat as I swallowed. Thinking about him all night and day was one thing, but this felt dangerous. Saying it aloud made it real.

She gave me a knowing look. “If you don’t share, it’ll just fester, and then you won’t be able to move on.”

What if I don’t want to move on?

She was right (again). “He was the stripper,”
I admitted.
 

Maggie started choking. Kind of like Sybil last night. Hmmm.

“He was the
stripper
? The son of a bitch dumps you over the phone while you’re pregnant and the first time you see him, years later, is at a sex toy party where
he’s
one of the sex toys?”

“When you put it that way, it sounds so ridiculous…”

“It
is
ridiculous.” She c
ouldn’t
stop gasping with laughter. “Are you okay?” Maggie flipp
ed
between being concerned for me and howling with uncontrollable laughter.

I kn
e
w the fe
e
ling.

“He, well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” I added.

“How?” She hooted. “How could it
possibly
get more complicated?”

“His mother was there.”

All her laughter died in her throat and she looked at me like I told her he’d just eate
n
cow manure out of a fellow stripper’s belly button. “His mom…what? Was she part of his act?”

“GROSS!” I shouted.

Tap tap tap.

I shot her a look that could kill. “Get it together.”
I frantically shuffled the stack of orders and shoved them in a desk drawer.
Then I call
ed
out, “Come in.”

It
was
Tessa from the third floor. Tessa
wa
s a fashion design major
who
talk
ed
at a rate of two hundred words per second. Her hair color change
d
with every boyfriend, and she’
d
only been here for three weeks. Like Marian, she
was
a freshman.

Unlike Marian, she
was
here every weekend and seem
ed
to enjoy sampling the local cuisine of men.

“So, oh! Hi, Maggie. So, um, Charlotte, I’m, like, still having that problem with Becca. She’s using my special peppermint shampoo from back home, the stuff that costs $32 a bottle and that my hair stylist says I absolutely, positively must use for optimal scalp protein development. If I don’t use it my hair will be a crime. A CRIME! And Becca says she doesn’t use
i
t but I know she does because after her showers I can smell peppermint, and even though she says it’s her cheap generic knockoff, there’s a difference. A definite difference!”

Tessa said all of this in one breath. Maggie and I exchange
d
a look as Tessa t
ook
in a great whoo
p
of air
and continued
.

“So she’s, like, using my stuff and says she’s not, and I really wouldn’t care except she brings her smelly boyfriend over and kicks him out promptly at curfew, because she’s not a BAD person. Really. She’s not. But I hate coming home to find a scr
u
nchie on the door handle—”

Maggie’s left eyebrow sho
t
up at this.

“—and knowing I need to stay away. I mean, her boyfri
e
nd has his own dorm room over in Entenman! Why do I have to be the one to give in and sacrifice for her all the time? It’s totally unfair, and she even didn’t pay her share of the tip for the pizza we ordered last week because she said she only had $3 and everyone’s share was $3.50, but she had quarters to do laundry—”

Maggie h
eld
up her palm and Tessa stop
ped
, panting hard.

“T
l
; DR,” Maggie s
aid
.

Tessa underst
ood
internet speak, because T
l
; DR stands for
t
oo
l
ong;
d
idn’t
r
ead
on message boards.

In other words: say it simpler.

“Becca’s a mooch and kind of taking advantage of me and I don’t know what to do,” Tessa blurt
ed
out.

Maggie smile
d
and st
ood
. “I’ll take care of this,” she whisper
ed
to me, patting my shoulder.

Thank you,
I mouth
ed
.

“And let’s do coffee in the morning before staff meeting. We have more to talk about.” And then she wink
ed
.

The door close
d
and I let out a huge exhale. My computer screen start
ed
blinking, warning me that the order I started entering before Maggie knocked
wa
s about to time out. I finish
ed
it, and move
d
on to the next one.

The handwriting
wa
s a chicken scrawl, instantly recognizable.

Liam’s.

Liam ordered sex toys from my party? Oh, Maggie, the story just gets better…

All the basics
we
re there, but he left off his address. Hmm. Credit card info
wa
s there. It
wa
s a fairly big order, and I’
d
make about $25 in commission from it.

That
didn’t
even cover the copay for my D&C five years ago.

H
e’
d
ordered three items: a half-gallon jug of our newest warming gel, a flesh tunnel simulator that attache
s
to a tablet and offers video options for real-life fun, and a blowup female doll, complete with three fuckable holes and “real-life ab-clench simulation.”

Stay classy, Liam.

Under delivery options it sa
id
: in person.

In person
.

Liam

After we performed at the resort on the island of Eden, doors flew open. Promoters suddenly knew who we were.
W
hen Darla called to try to book a gig people said “yes” at twice the rate as before, and we were offered dirt-cheap, but crappy, practice space in the basement of a decrepit warehouse not far from Louise’s entertainment offices.

It may have been filled with mildew and mouse droppings, but it was a secured, padlocked space where we could make noise and leave our equipment.

All four of us congregated there, doing sound checks and warming up instruments while Darla and Amy hauled vacuum cleaners and masks and cleaning equipment in.

“This is so gender role normed,” Amy groused as she plugged in
to hoover the place
.

“Someone has to clean it if we’re going to hang out here, and the guys already hauled all the wood and sc
rap
metal away last week,” Darla pointed out. No shit. We busted our asses. The last people to use the space were “materials artis
t
s,” whatever the fuck that means. Mostly it meant they left a mess and we had to clean it in exchange for free rent.

Totally w
orth it.
I
t was Darla and Amy’s turn to help. Amy turned the vacuum on with a snarl and pointed the hose up, sucking spiderwebs like she was exacting revenge.

Darla, meanwhile, tackled the floor.

My ass buzzed and I pulled out my phone. Shit. My dad. I knew it was coming, but still…not now.

Not ever, but especially not
now
.

“You answering that?” Sam asked, impatience in his voice. We both had a gig and the hours to practice were limited.

“Nope.”

“It’s a parent,” Trevor said dryly. He was right, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction
of knowing that. Easier to ignore him.
 

We had to practice without Joe, who had just gone to Philly last week for year two of torture. Whatever he got out of going to Penn Law was a mystery to me. The band was getting bigger and better, and he and Trevor were wasting it all on law school
and pleasing their parents. Kissasses.
 

My mom’s words invaded my brain. “Questiona
b
le morals.”

Fuck that. Doing something you hate because you think you’ll gain acceptance from other people is what I call “questionable morals.”

Bzzz.

I shut my phone off.

Even with the roar of two vacuum cleaners
i
n the distance, we limped through some new songs, getting volume and pacing down. Later, we’d record our better efforts and send them to Joe, who would work on un-wrinkling the kinks. Once a month, we agreed, he’d come back for three days and jam through it all. He also
promised to come
back for every single one of our gigs, even if it meant he missed class. Cool.

The vacuums stopped abruptly while Trevor and I were singing a chorus, the abrupt loss of white noise making our voices crack in surprise. Sam’s beat faltered and we all gave up.

“You done?” Trevor asked Darla.

“I got enough
m
ouse turds in here to fertilize an entire organic farm in Amherst,” she said.

“Better in there than on the floor. Thank you,” he said, reaching for her and trying to kiss her.

“I’m covered in mouse turd dust,” she complained, still wearing her breathing mask. Trevor kissed the center of it.

“Not the worst thing I’ve ever kissed.” He muttered something in her ear and I heard the word “blowfish.” She giggled.

A massive wall of Charlotte sla
m
med through me. Red lips. That ass. The look she gave me when I stripped in the kitchen. Those shaded eyes, telling me everything and nothing in one glowering glance.

Hard again.

God damn Charlotte.

“You look like you’re a million miles away, Liam,” Darla said. Amy’s eyes flickered toward me and she
seem
ed
dangerously
contemplative. She
was
ready to say something constantly, like she was piecing something together, and I hated not knowing what she might say or do. The unpredictability was killing me, because Amy was…

A
bridge. A strange one. After Charlotte cheated on me I went crazy, sleeping with anyone who would have me, and turned to Amy in a moment of weakness. To be fair, she did the same, and we didn’t so much
use
each other as we took refuge in each other’s pain.

Sam had been the source of hers, and we had an uneasy friendship these days.

Charlotte had been the source of mine, and Amy and Charlotte…I just didn’t know. They’d been friends in high school. Not great friends, but
they’d
traveled in the same circles. If Amy knew why Charlotte had fucked some other guy while claiming to love me, she’d never said a word.

I always wondered why, but sometimes it’s better not to ask and know. The truth hurts so much more than just shutting down. Besides, what was I supposed to say—“Hey, Amy, why did Charlotte think I wasn’t enough? Why did she turn to some other guy and let him stuff her hole and lie to me about it when he knocked her up?”

I’d rather cut off my own dick with my car keys.

“I’m fine. My old man is trying to get me on the phone so he can scream at me for stripping,”
I told Darla, grabbing the vacuum at the neck and lugging it toward the door.
 

“Seeing your old girlfriend threw you for a loop, didn’t it?” Darla replied with a look that said she wasn’t believing my bullshit. I wouldn’t either if I weren’t me.

“That? No. Not really. No big deal.”

“And being felt up by your mom—”

“
That
fucking sucked.” My voice sounded like grinding glass.

Everyone went quiet.

Bzzz.
Trevor grabbed his phone and grimaced, holding it out for me to see.

“It’s
your
dad,” he announced. “
It’s bad enough my own dad calls me to hound me, but now yours?”
 

I shrugged, pretending not to care. “He wants to find me, he can just wait. I control my own time. My own money. My own life.”

Sam made a polite golf clap. But he was grinning. “Can’t reattach the apron strings once you cut them,” he said.

“They sure as hell do try, don’t they?” I said,
dropping the vacuum and reaching for my guitar,
plucking out the first few chords of the Stones’ “
You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
 

Because you can’t.

Charlotte

Two weeks after seeing Liam, the order came in. His was—of course—the only one that was a
n in-person,
hand delivery. Some parties involve hand deliveries, mostly for women who don’t want husbands or children to come home and open the package and get a big, buzzing surprise, but the group at that bachelorette party was worldly and
nonchalant
.