Random Acts of Love (Random #5) (8 page)

“How the hell am I supposed to know which secrets to keep and which ones to spill.”

“Why would you ever divulge one of my secrets?”

“When Dad bribes me to.”

“HERB!”

Gene walked into the kitchen with a smirk on his face, covered in sweat, wearing bike shorts and flip flops. In April. In Massachusetts.

“Any almond milk left? You didn’t drink it all, did you, Joe?”

Mom and Dad bickered next to us, their voices tight and clipped, like listening to two lawyers go at it over technicalities. Which they were.

“Nope. I tried to drink the raw milk.”

“Tried? Did it go bad?” Our conversation went on as if my six-four bear of a father weren’t getting his ass reamed by my pocket-sized mom.

“No. I was drinking it when mom walked in and acted like I was a sex slave trafficker for chugging straight out of the carton.”

“Well,” he said pleasantly, pulling out a blender and a handful of ingredients for a smoothie, “that’s one step above whale killer.”

“Who’s killing whales?” Mom asked, completely ignoring Dad, who was in mid-sentence and red faced.

“Joe,” Gene said without stopping his task, pouring almond milk into the blender, adding raw cocoa powder and chia seeds. I had a sudden pang for fried green tomatoes and coconut shrimp at Jeddy’s diner.

“You’re killing whales?”

“Yep. Killed three today, all before dawn. Great way to start the day. Like getting a hymen restoration.”

Gene’s hand halted on the bag of fresh spinach.

“A what?” Dad asked.

“Never mind,” I called out as I walked back to my room, where Paul was on the phone with a supplier asking for joint compound that didn’t have gluten in it for his crazyass client.

Mom followed me. Paul closed the door gently. I heard a few choice words like, “I know!” and “She pays me by the hour. Negotiated that a long time ago, Manny!” and “How the fuck should I know? Maybe she eats joint compound in her sleep?”

“Look what you’ve done! Ruined my anniversary surprise.”

“Just tell him I’m the one getting the hymen surgery.”

Her glare could double as a surgeon’s scalpel.

“You keep walking away and I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not walking away.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

She pursed her lips. “You,” she said, pointing a finger for emphasis, “need to find a woman.”

A flash of Darla whipped through me like someone unrolling a long piece of silk and letting it ride on the wind.

“I have plenty of women.”

“Not the ones you buy in bars after your concerts.”

“Buy?”

“With a few drinks.”

“That’s not how it works, Mom.”

“You’re telling me the floozies don’t hit on you after you do your thing?” She waved her hands like she was shooing gnats. My thing. That’s how she referred to Random Acts of Crazy. Just a thing. A trifling. Something that got in the way of my future law career.

“Sure they do, Mom. I’ve got the diseases to prove it.” I smiled and showed way more teeth than normal.

Alarm took over her face, perfect eyebrows arched up. Ah. The Botox had worn off. “You’re using condoms, aren’t you? We’ve taught you from day one that you can’t get diseases. You just can’t. With your heart condition—”

“I don’t have a heart condition.”

Her face twisted into a snarl of disbelief. “Don’t you tell me you don’t have a heart condition, Joseph Herbert Ross! I was there the day they cut you out of my body, blue as could be, and resuscitated you in the surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I was there when the doctor came in and told me you’d survived, but you would need life-saving open heart surgery to save you. I was there when some doctor who had to pretend he was God for hours and hours, cutting and sewing your little veins and arteries the size of sewing thread. I was there when the pediatric cardiologist explained more than I ever needed to know about infant heart conditions, so don’t you dare say—” 

“I had a heart condition, Mom.
Had
. I don’t have one now.” I pulled my shirt up and exposed the still-distinct scar tissue. My finger slid down the long, ragged white line. “Had. It’s done. You’ve been treating me like I’m a fragile infant for twenty-four years.”

“Because you are!”

“Only in your head. Not in reality.”

“And you need a good woman to make everything better,” she added, as if that were part of this conversation. The non-sequitur threw me off. Damn it. It shouldn’t. A good lawyer stays in the moment at all times, ready for whatever logic—good, bad, or nonexistent—is thrown their way.

“What the fuck does a woman have to do with my heart condition?” 

“See! You admit it. You have one.”

“I hate you.”

She didn’t even react. “You always say that when I’m right.”

“No. I say it when I hate you.”

She stood on tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll start asking my friends at the celiac disease fundraiser if they have any daughters in their twenties we can match with you.”

“What? Now you’re a matchmaker? And what—wait—celiac disease? You have celiac disease now?” Mom self diagnosed herself with everything. Everything except for obsessive compulsive disorder. That, she insisted, she most certainly did not have. She just noticed more than other people. Was more observant, and therefore needed a higher level of attention to detail in her life.

“I don’t have celiac, although since I stopped eating gluten my stools have really improved.”

“Along with your hymen.” At what point did the conversation go from my alleged heart condition to mom’s shit?

Her face tightened. “Stop joking about my vagina. It’s misogynistic.”

“I see. I’m sexist for making fun of your retro, anti-feminist surgery.”

Her hand went to her heart. “Anti-feminist? Me! I’m not anti-feminist. I marched at the ’89 pro-choice rally in D.C. You can’t call me anti-feminist.”

“You got surgery that reconstructs a symbol of oppression for women throughout millennia, a tiny membrane that represents a woman’s purity and, therefore, value in a society and you claim it’s not anti-feminist?” I didn’t give a shit about this topic, but it was fun putting her in the hot seat.

“I did it for fun.”

“Fun? Oh. Right. Most moms have wine night but my mother goes to the gynecologist and spreads her legs for fun.”

Paul happened to pick that exact moment to approach us with a question. His face was a mask of horror. Poor guy. Ten years of working for Mom and Dad should have made him hardier, though.

“Yes?” Mom snapped.

“Uh, all the joint compound on the market has gluten in it.”

“WHAT? I can’t have that in my bathroom, inhaling the fumes.” Her eyes narrowed. “Keep trying.” 

“Mom, I thought gluten was only a problem if you ate it.”

“No—any contact with the body,” she said with a sniff, as if there were gluten right now somewhere in the room. “I have carefully combed through all my cosmetics, hair supplies—even the lube we use for sex is gluten free now.”

Paul turned a sickly shade of green.

“Were you this careful with your surgery?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are your stitches gluten free? The ones the surgeon put in you?”

Her eyes flew wide open and she grasped my arm as if she were drowning. “My God, no! Oh, Joey, let me call. He may have to redo the surgery all over again!” She darted out of the room, already on the phone and demanding to speak with her surgeon as her footsteps pattered down to silence.

Paul and I looked at each other.

“Surgery?” he finally asked. 

“You really want to know?”

Paul paused and thought for a good few seconds. “Nah.”

“Smart man.”

C
HAPTER 3

Darla

“You want me to go to dinner at your parents’ house tomorrow?” 

“Yes.” We were in the afterglow, cuddled naked in bed. Joe was on the other side of me and his entire body tensed up.

“Why now?” he asked in a choked, angry voice. “Why would your parents do this?”

Trevor sighed. “Mom says now that we’re headed toward twenty-five it’s time to think about real life. Futures.” 

“We’ve been primed for our futures since we were two and getting ready for Montessori preschool,” Joe snapped. But I could tell he was troubled by something else. Something more. Not just what Trevor was saying. I also knew not to pry. Not just yet. Eventually I could get whatever was coiled up inside him to come slither out. And not just his cock. The guy had emotions, even if he liked to deny it and pretend he didn’t. But teasing them out was as hard as getting a four year old to leave Chuck E. Cheese.

And involved as much tantrumming.

“Don’t snap at me. I’m just the messenger.”

Now, all that stuff about knowing not to pry? Just because I have some wisdom after nearly two years with these guys doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes do stupid, impulsive things. Like saying:

“I think Trevor should tell his mom and dad to invite you, too.”

“Me? Why?”

“’Cause if I’m Trevor’s girlfriend, then you’re his...”

(Even I knew not to say boyfriend)

“...something.”

Joe sat up just enough to look at Trevor across my naked body and say, “You’re my something. Isn’t there a new Hallmark holiday for that? Happy Something’s Day.”

“Let’s invent it if it doesn’t exist. I can give my something a something.”

I whapped Joe’s slick chest. He had less hair than Trevor, but his muscles were tighter. Each rib muscle was so well defined it was like one of those late night informercial guys with the knives had hand carved him.

“You know what I mean,” I protested.

“You are my something,” Trevor sang, replacing the word “sunshine” for my ill-thought-out term.

“Hello, Justice Scalia. Why, yes, I’d like to introduce you to my Something. This is Trevor.”

“Uh, you got that backwards,” Trevor said smugly. “If anyone’s introducing anyone to a Supreme Court Justice, it’ll be me.”

“Can’t we just be husbands and wives?” I snapped.

That shut them up.

“Actually, we can’t,” Trevor said, rolling away and staring up at the ceiling, his arms slid over his head and under his pillow. Unlike Joe’s darker, compact torso, Trevor’s stretched out, golden skin and more hair now than when I met him. My eyes took him in, trying not to turn to him. If I did, Joe would get jealous. Instead, I surreptitiously catalogued him. His body had definitely changed. Matured. Filled out. 

Mine was the same. Joe’s was the same. But Trevor was still maturing.

“Mike and Dylan got married and then they proposed to Laura,” I blurted out. I worked for my Aunt Josie and her friend, Laura, who was in a relationship with two billionaires. Had a little girl with them and was pregnant with their second child. We’d all met up at a local diner and at least now I had a kind of a road map for how the three of us might move forward.

“I’m not marrying my something,” Joe protested. “Especially Trevor.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Trevor sat up, fast. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you marry me? There’s nothing wrong with me.” He sniffed his pits. “Nothing a shower won’t cure.”

“You are not marriage material,” Joe snapped. 

“Says who?”

“If anyone’s marrying him, it’s me,” I muttered.

See? Wisdom don’t mean shit unless you use it.

“You want to marry him?” Joe said in a tight voice, the sound of a steel door being slammed shut between him and the world.

“No.”

“You don’t?” Now Trevor’s hurt voice poured over me from his side.

Aw, fuck. How in the hell did this happen? One minute we’re doing the three-backed nasty and having sweaty orgasms, and the next minute I’ve managed to offend both of them.

Welcome to my life.

“I like our relationship the way it is,” I said, trying to soothe both hurt egos. 

“You like living with Trevor and Sam and Amy while I live separately from you?” Joe spat out.

“That’s not what I—”

“And you just said you wouldn’t marry me,” Trevor barked. We were now a tangle of naked bodies and twisted sheets, both men pulled back from me, the absence of their skin making this worse somehow.

“You’re both twisting my words!”

“Your words are clear!” they shouted in unison, then looked at each other in shock.

And then those motherfuckers high fived each other.

Men.

“I think you two need to marry each other,” I said in a verbal Hail Mary pass that had the intended effect. 

Their looks of self-righteous satisfaction melted to the look of Pete Carroll in the waning seconds of Superbowl IL.

“I’m not marrying him!” they said in unison. No giddy high five followed.

“Why is he good enough for me to marry but not good enough for you?” I challenged Trevor, whose face puckered in consternation at my turn of logic. Heh. You live in a relationship with a guy at Harvard and Penn Law and you learn a few things.

“She’s got you there, Trev,” Joe said with a smirk.

“That goes double for you,” I said to him, tilting my head and studying his fine ass as he sat up, head against the headboard.

“Double?”

“Why can I marry Trevor but you can’t?”

“My mother would sooner eat canned Spam than watch me marry Trevor.”

“She got something against gay people?”

“WE’RE NOT GAY!” Joe and Trevor shouted in unison, yet again. This time they both grabbed a blanket and covered themselves.

I was left untouched, uncovered. Unmoored. Unmarried.

“You don’t have to shout.” The air in the room was charged. A simple request for my attendance at dinner at Trevor’s parents’ house had turned into this.

“I never said you’re gay. Besides, I know you’re not gay. If anyone knows you’re not gay, it’s me, you dumbasses.”

Bzzz.

Saved by the phone.

It was a text for me. Sam. Then a quick one from Liam.

“We have a meeting in fifteen minutes. Remember?” I said, climbing over the bed at Joe’s feet and grabbing fresh clothes from my drawer. “I’ll take the first shower.” 

Joe and Trevor exchanged one of those looks I never understood.