Random Acts of Hope (6 page)

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: do
n
’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 might
y
pull and hurt her more than those words did.

“
Y
our
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
sp
eak
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.

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
s
treet, 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, al
l
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 pu
l
led 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 n
ot supposed to feel! Not when it comes to Liam.” I started to hyperventilate. F
l
ashes of so many memories from five years ago hit me, hard. The phone call with him. Going to
P
lanned
P
arenthood 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 tee
th
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 con
f
irm the pregnancy when I asked
him
to drive me.”

“Jesus. What a gentleman.”

I snorted. “That’s the thing!” I wailed. “He
was
a gentl
e
man! 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.”

“No, no, Charlotte,” Maggie soothed, her arm around my shoulders.

“Except I can’t forget. Can’t forgive, can’t forget, can’t move on, can’t stop thinking and now he
kissed
me and he—GOD DAMN LIAM!” I screamed.

All those trips to the local ice cream stand on our bikes in the summer when we were in middle school. The countless swimming and track meets I went to, watching him compete. Band practices where I was by his side. Going on class trips and riding the buses to Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Disney World for band competitions.

Our first kiss. Roses sent to me at school on Valentine’s Day. Homecoming dances and proms and…all of it.

All of me thrown away with one phone call.
How?
How could he
do
that.

“And worst of all,” I said, “is that I’m sitting here on this bench wishing to God that he’ll walk down that sidewalk.” I looked toward the bar. “And come after me and tell me he’s sorry and he is so
sorry
and how am I and how much he wishes we could have our baby and—” The
new set of
tears t
ook
over the words and Maggie just h
eld
me.

Because really—what else c
ould
we do?

Ten minutes
went
by. A bus stopped and went, the driver a bit confused when we didn’t get up.

Twenty minutes. I c
ould
count time by the big digital clock on the bank across the street.

And, finally, Maggie stood slowly, pulling me to my feet. She reached her hand out, palm up, and I knew what she wanted. I handed her my keys. She wrapped her arm around m
e
and we began the slow walk to the parking garage where I’d left my car.

Liam never did come for me.

Liam

“I can’t believe she just
h
it you!” Sam’s vo
i
ce cut through the crowd as I rubbed my jaw. What the fuck just happened? Her taste was on my lips, scattered across the tip of my tongue, the bite of that smack ricocheting through me.

“Why did she hit you? Because you kissed her?” Darla held the blowup doll, who looked at me with incrimination, that permanent O face an abomination.

“Because she’s a bitch,” Sam answered for me. I flinched, free hand curling into a fist.

“Don’t call her that,” I growled. Trevor looked between me and Sam, on guard. He sho
u
ld be.

Tyler wandered over at a snail’s pace. “Where’s the green-haired chick? She was interesting,” he mumbled.

“Shut up,
Frown,
” I barked at him. He held his palms up in a “no offense” gesture. But it wasn’t working. I needed to beat the shit out of someone. Something. Anything.

“She
is
a bitch, Liam. After what she did to you. She has some fucking nerve…” Sam’s voice trailed off as Trevor shot him a deadly look and shook his head.

I dropped my hand from my face and stared at the main door. My heart smacked against my ribs like a series of jabs in a boxing match. Five years felt like five seconds.
Like f
ive centuries.

I was going out of my mind.

“There a problem here?” Mac, the manager, came over, trying to disperse the crowd. “That slap part of the act?” His words were a joke, but the look on his face was anything but.

“No, sir,” Sam said. “Just…some unfinished business.”

Mac was a bald dude with no neck and a bunch of gold chains buried
in
chest hair
so thick it
made him look half human, half bear.

“Good. Stirs up interest. You got about fifty chicks ready to fuck you after the show now, Liam.” He smacked my back twice and walked away.

I grunted. “Don’t want to fuck any of them.”

“
Your dick broken? Because there’s some fine meat in there,” Mac said over his shoulder. Trevor flashed me a look and pulled Mac aside, whispering something that made Mac shut up.
 

“What was
that
about?” Darla asked again. “I know she was your girlfriend, but…”

“She cheated on him. Got knocked up by another guy
our senior year, right before prom
, and now she comes here and
slaps
him,” Sam explained.

“That about sums it up,” said Trevor,
who was back now, a troubled look on his face
.

“How do you know it wasn’t yours?” Darla ask
ed
before Trevor c
ould
stop her. The familiar napalm-
filled
firebomb ignite
d
i
n
side me.

Sam frown
ed
. “Because…because…” His voice trail
ed
off as he look
ed
at me. “You always just said you knew. How’d you know? I figured it was because of timing, like you hadn’t slept with her during the dates needed to know it was yours, or something like that.”

I c
ouldn
’t stop once I open
ed
my mouth. And right there, in front of a bar filled with customers about to watch Random Acts of Crazy do its thing, I
shared the one thing I’d never told anyone else in the world.
Ever
.
 

“Because I’m sterile.”

Charlotte