Randomly Ever After (3 page)

“What am I supposed to say?” she asked, cocking one hip and raising an eyebrow.

“The truth. That my penis is huge. Enormous. So big it can’t possibly fit and—”

“Oh, Liam, your cock is so big it split me in two!” she
intoned
, using a sing-songy voice that made Sam laugh. “It’s so big it takes two mouths to fit it in!”

Trevor had walked in the room and was leaning against the threshold. He pointed to Esme. “That explains her.”
 

Charlotte made a decidedly indelicate sound that made me like her even more.

 “At least I don’t have a chicken fetish,” Liam said loudly, grabbing Charlotte by the ass and lifting her off the floor in a great big bear hug. She was dressed so well, a black A-line dress with a big, wide red leather belt, matching earrings and white-and-black shoes. My own outfit made me feel like, well...

Esme 3.0, who was wearing a band t-shirt, a short skirt,
red lipstick
and—I looked down.

Chuck Taylors.

I cringed. My fashion tastes were the same as a fetish doll’s. Something was terribly wrong.

“
Fuck you,” Trevor barked back. The jokes about Trevor’s ex-“fiance,” the chicken he’d stolen while high on peyote and naked on the Mass Turnpike, never got old. The band’s recent performance involving a live chicken on stage had generated viral video so popular that the band was making great money on internet advertising alone.
 

“I love Mavis,” Liam sighed. “But not the way you do.
I love her for the money.
”

T
revor threw an empty water bottle at Liam. It bounced off his forearm and hit Esme 3.0 in the head.

“What do you mean the fuse is shot?”
Darla screamed
into her phone.
My eyes went to her and I calmed down. She wore a tattered flannel shirt, old
“mom” jeans, and her hair was held off her face by a headband that was last popular when Bill Clinton was first elected.
 

She really was my tribe after all.

Charlotte peeled Liam off her and set Esme down on a chair. The doll’s face was frozen in permanent surprise, and she had the balance of a drunk
en
frat boy. As she fell sideways and slid on the floor, poor Esme 3.0 gave the distinct impression that she
was unlucky at love.
 

“
Poor Esme,” I muttered.

“
Amy got into law school today,” Sam blurted out.
 

E
ven Darla paused to stare, mouth open to a silent O for a single beat before she mad a loud whooping sound and chaos descended.

Snippets of conversation flowed over me like a verbal waterfall, mostly along the lines of “I didn’t know you wanted to go to law school!” and “Congratulations!”

Joe wandered by, bass in hand, and muttered, “Just what we need. More lawyers.”

“You can always leave Penn,” I shot back.

He gave me a half smile. “Maybe you know me better than I thought.”

My raised eyebrow was my response.

His answer: “Good job, Smithson.” Darla gave me a hurried hug and dragged him off, muttering something about the wrong cables for his bass.

Liam exchanged an odd look with Sam, whose fingers twitched at his hip, tapping some unseen beat. I grabbed his hand and interlaced my fingers with his. A long time ago I’d memorized the callouses between his fingers and on his knuckles, well worn from years of drumming. The pads of his fingers were a bit swollen, oddly enough.

I gave him a quizzical look. “Did you hurt your fingers?”

He and Liam gave each other those inscrut
a
ble looks again. “No,” Sam said quickly, snatching his hand away and shoving it in his back pocket.
Was he not telling me something? Did my admittance to law school trouble him more than he was letting on?
 

My turn to look at someone, and it was Charlotte, who watched the scene with another arched eyebrow and an evaluative look. She shrugged.

Men
.

I shoved my hand in my back pocket and my fingers brushed against the folded piece of paper I’d jammed in there earlier today.

My throat went dry.

Not that I needed that piece of paper. The song lyrics for the tune I’d written for Amy were seared in my brain. I couldn’t get the chorus out of my head, a chanting loop that filled
up
, well...all the space in my mind:

The space in between

Silence and love is filled by you

You’re my bridge, my tightrope, my lifeline, my lifeboat

My heart out there

Yes, you....

In a fit of madness the words spilled out of me one night, the only piece of paper I could find in the apartment a flyer for some pizza joint down the street, and I’d scribbled the words half-blind in the living room while Amy slept in my—
our
—
bedroom.

The space in between silence and love

That’s what she filled. That’s who she was to me. She really was my lifeline, and the rest of the words had come slowly, in fits and starts, the whole picture of the song filling in.

Sharing it with Liam a month ago had been harder than writing the damn thing.
We’d been at a practice with Trev and Joe, and Trev was in the can while Joe went out for coffee for us all.
 

Expecting
Liam
to laugh, I’d shoved it at him and said, “I want to perform this for Amy at one of our gigs. Like Trevor does for Darla.”

He’d read it carefully, frowning, then looked up at me, with a tilt to his head, eyes serious. “That’s really good.
It’s short, but good.
What’s the tune
?”
 

“Tune?” I’d said, a sinking feeling hitting me. Fuck. Tune. I
t
needed music, didn’t
it
? Lyrics weren’t enough.

“You’re not going to do a drum line to it while you sing, are you?” He’s snickered, the tension broken. “You need music. And to figure out which instruments you want.”

“Instruments?”

He parroted me. “Instruments. You know, those musical things the
rest
of us play on stage.”

“Fuck off. I know what an instrument is, I just...”

Flush.

The sound of running water, then Trevor came into the practice space. “Instrument?” He snatched the lyrics sheet from Liam and asked belatedly, “What’s this?” Squinting, he’d read the song in the warehouse’s shitty lighting, then looked at Liam with an appraising look.

“Not bad.”

Liam had pointed to me. “Sam wrote it.”

Red embar
r
a
s
sment pounded through me.

“Really not bad,” Trevor had added. He’d read through the song once more and said, “Ukelele,” as if it were the most natural word to utter at that moment.

“You-keh-
huh
?” I’
d
asked.

“Ukelele. Perfect.” He’d picked up a guitar and started riffing through the first few lines.

“That’s it!” I’d shouted. “
T
hat’s the tune in my head.”

“Then
l
et’s get it out of your stupid head and onto this paper.”

An hour later, it was done. Scribbled notes on a score sheet gave me the song. Only one problem had remained:

“I don’t play ukelele,” I’d groaned. The end result of the first go of the song had been something wistful and longing, a little cute and folksy, but it worked. It was honest and true and I had hoped Amy would like it.

“You’ll play,” Liam had growled as Joe had shoved his ass against the door bar and exploded into the cavernous space, carrying cups of coffee big enough to drown a Great Dane in.

And during the next month those guys had taught me, by God.

The only problem?

Now I had to follow through.

Amy excused herself and was animatedly chattering with Charlotte, pointing to Esme and
frowning
. I pulled the page out of the back pocket and mouthed as I read along:

The Space In Between

I used to think

That silence was my only hope

That if I stayed quiet I couldn’t break my heart

But then you came into my life

And words weren’t enough

Suddenly

You made me want you more than—

The space in between

Silence and love is filled by you

You’re my bridge, my tightrope, my lifeline, my lifeboat

My heart out there

Yes, you....

Too many years

I left you in doubt

And pain and more

Now I’m here to tell you all the words you deserve

I love you, I need you, I want you, I feel you,

I—

Can’t fit them all in the space, the enormous space between

Silence and love...

The space in between

Silence and love is filled by you

You’re my bridge, my tightrope, my lifeline, my lifeboat

My heart out there

Yes, you....

Shit. It was corny, right? Cheesy and immature and
all wrong
. I couldn’t do this. What was I thinking? Amy had said over and over how romantic Trevor’s song was, how she wanted me to write one for her, how she didn’t want to pressure me, but...

You date someone for more than a year, love them for more than six years, and a simple song doesn’t seem like a big request.

What she didn’t know was that not only had I written her a song, but that folded note wasn’t the only thing I had in a pocket, waiting for her.

No, not
that
.

A box. From a jeweler.

Tonight I would propose.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, fingers beginning their nervous tap against my leg, guiding my heartbeat.

Please say yes.

I knew.

Sam didn’t know I knew, and in a way I wished I didn’t know, but I
knew
. The jeweler’s box had been rolled up inside a handkerchief in a drawer in his bedside table, and last week we’d been frantic for a condom during round three one night and...I found it.

Round three had been
ah-MAZ-ing
.

Keeping my mouth shut had been the hardest part. Knowing he would propose.
Propose
. Ask me to marry him. Mrs. Sam Hinton.

Amy Hinton.

Amy Smithson Hinton.

To hyphenate or not to hyphenate? That was the question.

No.

Will you marry me?
was the question. My insides turned to liquid fire at the thought. Was tonight the night? Sam seemed so nervous and fidgety. Tonight was probably the night, and it suddenly occurred to me:

I was dressed like a sex doll.

Oh.My.God.

In my rush to get over here and help set up the band it didn’t even flit through my addled brain that maybe I should try to dress better than a character out of a Kevin Smith movie.

“What’s wrong?” Charlotte asked as I gravitated to her.

I pointed at Esme, then to my torso. Her eyes got huge.

“Oh,” she said softly. “I see. Wardrobe....”

“FAIL!” I moaned.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “No. You’re just cutting edge.”

“I don’t want to be cutting edge tonight,” I hissed.

“What’s so special about tonight?”

I cut my eyes to Sam, who was talking to Liam. “Because I think tonight’s the night,” I said through clenched teeth, “and I’m dressed like a tomboy from some
’
70s Saturday morning cartoon show.”

“You’re not—
”
She interrupted herself and looked me over from head to toe. “Um...”

“I know!” I hissed. “And tonight is...”

“The night?” Charlotte’s jaw dropped. “You mean you two haven’t done it yet?”

“Done what...oooooh, no! No no no!”

“It’s fine,” she said, her face folding into an expression of pity that made my stomach shrivel like a raisin in an oven. “There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin at twenty-three. It’s kind of cute, actually.”

“I am not a virgin!” I practically shouted, just as Darla walked by.

“Amy? A virgin? Hell, no. She’s slept with Mr. Red-Blooded Drummer over there. We can hear her through the wall sometimes. Plus she had intimate relations with a variety of electronic devices.”

Charlotte snorted. “Who hasn’t?”

I glared a warning at Darla.
Don’t even think about it
, my eyes warned. Blood pounded through me, unsure whether to make my face flushed, force my heart outside my chest, or to pool inside my stomach and make me faint. It decided to do all three, it seemed.

“Sam bought me a ring,” I blurted out.

Darla’s eyes were as big as saucers. “He’s proposing tonight? I thought he was just singing you the song he wrote for you!”

Charlotte grabbed both our arms and dragged us into the women’s room.

“WHAT?” I screamed, jumping up and down. “Sam wrote me a SONG?”

Charlotte swatted Darla’s shoulder. “You weren’t sup
p
osed to tell her.”

“How the hell am I supposed to remember all these secrets! It’s hard enough not telling anyone Amy got her smartphone caught inside her love tunnel—
”
 

WHACK!
I slammed Darla over the head with her own clipboard before I realized what I’d done.
Charlotte ripped the clipboard out of my hands as Darla reached up and gingerly rubbed her crown.
 

“I deserve that,” she said, backing away from me. “See? Don’t tell me secrets. I don’t share them on purpose. It’s just there are too many really fucking weird people in my life who want me to be the repository of bizarre confessions.”

“Good to know,” Charlotte said drolly as I panted hard, ready to throw up. Who had I become?

“You gonna whack me, too, for tellin’ her about Sam’s song?”

Charlotte’s hands went up in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t know you well enough to hit you.”

“Not yet, anyway,” I muttered. “Just wait.”

“Fuck you!” Darla shouted.

“No need for nasty language like that!” I protested.