Random Acts of Hope (14 page)

Because in the passenger seat of Liam’s car, there sat Esme, her shocked expression well suited for the fact that her mouth was being face-fucked by the head of a six-foot-long boa constrictor.

Liam

“These videos are amazing. Can you get your fans to tag them #RAOC
ROX
on social media? Because at the rate these things are appearing and go
i
ng viral, we could get a blip on Google Trends for the band.”

“You’re speaking Greek to me, Darla. What the hell did all that mean?”

“It means that whatever you were up to at Charlotte’s place, do more of it. The blowup sex doll and the snake combo is brilliant. We couldn’t have planned better promotion!”

“
I didn’t plan a fucking thing.” I shuddered. Charlotte later texted me to tell me Ernie thought it would be funny to put the doll in my front seat, when he put the parking pass in there. So he did. No one knew how the snake got in my car, though the rusted-out hole in the back seat probably made it damn easy.
 

M
ost of the videos were mercifully short, with all the major, most embarrassing action in a single sixty-second part.

“
Now we know that your falsetto range is a good two octaves higher than we realized,” Darla said with a slow shake of her head. “I haven’t heard a guy sing notes that high who still has his balls attached.”
 

“Fuck you,” I snapped back. “I was scared. You try getting in a car with a killer snake and not scream like a little girl.”

Enough chicks videotaped that entire scene to cover the event and turn me into a screaming weirdo that now it was all anyone wanted to talk about. There I
was
, on clip after clip, freaking out when I got in the car, pushed the key in the ignition, and turned to find a giant snake thrashing in my front seat while doing unspeakable kinky shit to my blowup girlfriend.

You try staying cool through that. Of course, I shouted and got the fuck out of my own car as fast as I could. Charlotte was on the passenger side of the car, staring at Esme and the snake with a dum
b
founded expression. All she ke
pt
saying on video after video
wa
s, “Are you al
l
right? Did you get hurt?”

The genuine emotion in her voice
wa
s what ma
de
me watch these stupid clips over and over.

“
Did you and Charlotte get back together?” Sam asked, sauntering in from his bedroom. I figured Amy would emerge in a few minutes. Instead, I heard the shower go on. Sam’s head tipped up, like his ears were on fire, and then he abandoned his question—and me—to march into the bathroom.
 

E
veryone was getting some. Me? I spooned last night.
Spooned
. You know how sexually satisfying spooning is to a guy? About as much fun as taking a shower while wearing a tie.

Meaning it makes zero sense.

“You gonna answer his question?” Darla asked, staring at me with a gleam in her eye. She was hot to learn more about what transpired la
s
t night out at Charlotte’s college, and not just because some stupid escaped snake made the band an overnight viral sensation. Or, at least, me.
I
was the sensation. Me and my blowup girlfriend and our snake.

“We’re not together,” I said as roughly as I could to get her off my back. “Don’t you have vampire penises to research?”

“What?”

“Your writing. You’ve moved on to vampires now, right? What about zombies? Zombie sex is popular.”

She threw a couch pillow at me. “Fuck off. Zombie sex is disgusting. Everything would fall off in the middle of doin’ it. Who wants a guy’s tongue to break off in the middle of—”

Trevor chose that exact moment to walk down the hall in his shorts. The look on his face as he heard what Darla was saying mirrored mine, and he turned right around and walked back to his room. Couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to hear this shit either.

“Then again,” she rambled on, “
t
hat zombie love movie was okay. Maybe you’re on to something, Liam.”

I said nothing. Sometimes that shut her up. No luck today, though.

“So you and Charlotte?”

“
T
here is no ‘me and Charlotte.’”

“Then what were you doing at her university?”

“Hanging out.”

“You dating someone from there? With Esme in tow? C’mon. Spill your guts.”

“I don’t have guts to spill. Besides, if I did, they’d just end up in one of your new books.”

“Your guts?
No. I told you I don’t write about zombies.
”

“
H
a ha.” I really didn’t want to talk about this. Really. My mind was a blender of confusion about Charlotte, and add in the adrenaline surge from finding that fucking snake in my car… At least Esme was gone. The snake popped it while squeezing her. Animal control threw her in the dumpster where she belonged, and took the snake somewhere I didn’t care about.

Just get it away from me.

If you watch
ed
the videos on YouTube, there
wa
s only one (so far) where you
could
actually hear what Charlotte sa
id
to me in that moment when I
was
in the car and freaking out. And it
wa
s faint—so faint you ha
d
to turn the sound on your phone all the way up
until the static and the screams from the girls were unbearable
—but I swear she sa
id
:

“I can’t lose you.”

Which mean
t
some part of her
thought
she
found
me.

That
ma
de
me ache and burn all at once, all at the same time. Why didn’t I talk to her when I had the chance? The rush of security people and animal control and EMS paramedics checking me out meant she faded off, gone by the time the hoopla was contained. I left with an empty car and a full chest, emotions too big to be held inside my ribcage.

“
You really think she cheated on you, all those years ago?” Darla asked quietly.
 

I closed my eyes, just focusing on my breathing, like I did most of the drive home this morning (except for the eye-closing part). When you just inhale and exhale and that’s all you are, sometimes you can coax the little shattered pieces of yourself to come back for a little bit.

“Yes.” It’s a truth I’
d
known with such conviction and pain that I
couldn’t
imagine answering that question any other way. Because if I
was
wrong, oh, God, if I
was
wrong…

But I
wasn’t
. I’m sterile, and you can’t get anyone pregnant when the swimmers don’t swim.

“
What if…” She frowned and put down her phone. As she leaned in toward me, I saw
confusion in her eyes. “What if you’re not?”
 

“Not what?”

“Sterile.”

Like I ha
d
n’t thought about that a million times. But the doctor
s
w
ere
clear. Only eighteen months before she told me she was pregnant, I’d had the test
s
. Zippo. Nothing. No tadpoles, not even with broken tails. My sperm were not showing up at all. My chance at fatherhood was like a ba
d
first date, where you don’t even get a chance. Stood up. No show.

“The doctor confirmed it.” Hopefully my tone of voice would make her back off. “Twice.”

“Shit.” Funny how that word
could
sound compassionate coming out of Darla’s mouth.

“Yeah. So unless Charlotte became Jesus’ mom overnight, the only way she got preg
n
ant five years ago is the simplest way: by fucking someone else.” Normally this conversation ma
de
me angry. Hurt. Betrayed. It triggered everything from five years ago, but not this time. Not right now.

Right now I
was
just sad.

And that’s worse than anger, betrayal,
or even r
age.

The negative emotions are so much easier to bang out, to react to, to
do
something about. The sad ones? Like grief, sorrow, and all that shit? Those you can just feel. You can’t really do anything to make sadness go away. You can ignore it, you can tu
rn
it into something more destructive, you can talk about it (
yeah, right
) or you can let it wash over you like a wave that has an undertow so strong it will pull you out to sea.

And leave you drifting.

Fuck that shit.

I balled up my hands and stood, a plume of fury d
i
rected suddenly at Darla. It wasn’t her fault. She was just the most convenient target right now.

“You looking for materials for a book? I don’t think you’ve ever had a conversation wit
h
me that lasted longer than this.”

“You never talked to me for longer than this.”

“You never let me get a word
in
edgewise for longer than this.”

“
You keep making that joke, but c’mon.” She went serious, and for a split second I thought about opening up to her. Spilling the whole story. She pretty much guessed it, and what more was there to say? Charlotte couldn’t get pregnant any other way than having live semen hit her eggs. And my semen were as dead as could be. Dead like Edward Cullen.
 

Wait. I take it back. Even
he
could have kids.

“You can’t stop thinking about her, can you?” Darla got up and fished around in the fridge for something. A bowl of strawberries came out, her hand already on one, the fruit in her mouth as she spoke around it, mumbling. “A woman you can’t stop thinking about is one you need to try harder with.”

“Sometimes you sound like a really bad country song, Darla.”

A line of red strawberry juice rolled down the corner of her mouth, lending an eerie, vampire-
like
quality to her. She wiped it up with her thumb join
t
and said, “That about sums me up. Your dog lost a leg, your truck done broke down, your swimmers all died and your girl’s come to town.”

Trevor groaned from two rooms over.

“You won’t win
The Voice
with lyrics like that,” I said.

A loud groan, t
h
is one from the shower, split the air.

“Jesus, they at it again?”
T
revor said loudly as he finally got up the balls to come in the living room. The man walked around in his boxer briefs nonstop. Then again, I walked aroun
d
my apartment naked half the time, so who was I to judge.

Naked. Charlotte. My hand on her last night, still touching her this morning until I had to sneak out. Illicit and weird, it seemed so wrong to crawl out a window. I’m a twenty-three year old man, for fuck’s sake. But there was something tantalizing about it, too.

And, hey—it
was
Charlotte
.

“Cat got your tongue?” Darla asked. She was down to the final berry in the bowl. Trevor snatched it up and ate it. She just grinned at him, a smile of love and mirth that made somethi
n
g in me crack.

The last person to look at me that way was Charlotte. Five years without that kind of grin can make you go a bit mad.

“
It’s always nice when pussy occupies your tongue,” Trevor said, grabbing a kitchen chair and turning it around, straddling it.
 

“Dude. Your junk is hanging out.” I turned away. This was my cue to exit. He looked down and rearranged the cotton of his shorts.

Darla reached over. “Let me help you with that,” she purred.

Jesus
f
ucking Christ. Between Sam and Amy re
grouting
the shower with his spooge, and Darla and Trevor acting out a scene in a bad porno movie, this was getting to be Horny Central.

Which would be fine if I had someone to practice resting my horn in.

“Gotta go,” I announced. No one cared. By the time I shut the door,
T
revor had stopped straddling the chair and Darla was straddling him.

Me? I had a hard-on the size of Joe’s bass and no one but YouPorn to turn to. Time to release the swimmers who would just sit there,
flopping
and useless, a constant reminder that I couldn’t give women the one, simple thing other guys could.

From bad country music to a Heart song.

And while I
normally
enjoyed being the exception to the rule, in this case, I’d have preferred being just like everyone else.

Charlotte

Maggie had appeared at my door later that night, and we’d spent the last hour combing through social media. If I never read #RAOC
ROX
again
on Facebook and Twitter
I’d be just fine. And so many photos of women’s cleavage next to Liam’s arms! If nothing else, couldn’t these freshmen aim?

“Nice crotch shot,”
Maggie
murmured. That was the twentieth picture of Liam’s zipper I’d seen today.

“They’re all ridiculous.”

“Now here’s a status:
Liam McCarthy had to sneak out of my room after we had sex in my dorm room. Fuck u RD! #RAOCROX.
”
 

I bristled.

“W
e
know he didn’t actually fuck anyone except you.”

“We didn’t fuck!”

Her face fell. “Damn. I was hoping to live vicariously through someone else’s sex life.”

“Then talk to Rachel.” I pointed to the Facebook status. “She’s the one fucking my ex. In Fantasyland.”

We gave each other looks that
only Residence Life professionals can give each other.
 

“You realize seven women from your dorm are claiming to have had sex with him.”

“Liam’s a virile guy.” I was starting to shake with laughter.

“He gets around. How many windows can the man climb in and out of? Must have strong thigh muscles.” Maggie snorted as she read more on Twitter.