Random Acts of Hope (20 page)

But s
ometimes you just need to be fucked silly against your shower wall,
water pounding your back.
 

And your guy pounding your backside.

Liam yanked the shower curtain open and pulled me in, the needling spray making my body tingle. I made a squealing sound as his wet hand slipped between my legs, fingers finding my clit, his movements making me groan and flower, open for him.

The shower quickly made his hair turn dark, long lashes sprinkled with globes of hanging water as he pushed against me from behind, hard and slick, his shaft riding up the cleft of my ass as his fingers played me to perfection.

Guiding me, he used his free hand to lift my right leg up, propping it on the edge of the tub. My breasts smashed into the wet tile, the water pulsing against my back, the insanity of so many good sensations drowning out my own conflicted, uptight mind.

Go away, Ms. Goodie-Two-Shoes
, I ordered.
You’re not wanted right now
.

Liam peppered my shoulders with little bites, just hard enough to make the pain cut through all my ecstatic centers, and then cold air hit my back for a split second. Ah. The condom.

The rush of fulfillment as he entered me from behind, his tip up and in me with a delicious groan from us both, made me wish we ha
d
a soundtrack. Something from classic rock, a 1970s beat that would drive me out of my mind and make us crack the wall.

“You are so fucking hot, Charlotte,” Liam said as he pu
l
led back, then hammered me
w
ith three quick strokes, so deep I gasped and held my breath. One of his hands tilted my hip just so, the adjustment allowing his tip to touch something inside me that made every muscle
scream at once like I was—
 

“I’m coming, oh, Liam,” I cried out, shaking from some inner core I didn’t know I had. He pounded me from behind, his thighs tight, the steam from the hot water enveloping me as my hands splayed against the tile, fingers curling to grab something, anything, everything, my body vibrating with some frequency I’d never heard.

“You…” Liam drew out the word as his hand clamped my breast, digging hard, his cock bearing down as he rode to his release, the sudden halt in movement behind me barely noticed as I struggled to stay upright. My legs were rubber bands. He sensed it, pulling out quickly, then turning me around to face him, our wet fronts connecting.

“That was unbelievable,” he growled.

“Unprecedented,” I added, reaching for the soap. I didn’t know what to say, what to feel—I didn’t even want to talk. Didn’t want to waste the energy to form words. The glow that infused my skin, my clit, my eyes, my wholeness was tempered only by my words.

S
o I acted.

Liam

The feel of her hands on my back, soaping me up,
like a ritual cleanse, gave me a peace I hadn’t felt in so long. Years of trying to find something—I didn’t know what—in the arms of too many groupies, chicks who wanted to touch me as a trophy, faded as I melted under her strokes, her caresses, her tender care.
 

The shower was like a baptism, and we could start anew, refreshed and reset. As the blood washed off and Charlotte carefully examined my head wou
nd
, declaring me “
i
nsane, but probably okay, and if it scars it will be hidden by your hair, anyway,” we stepped out into her bedroom with towels and hope, drying off the holy water of shared forgiveness.

Our phones buzzed in unison. Charlotte tensed up, then sprinted for hers.

“Hi, Mom,” I heard her say as I took my time reaching mine. Mrs. Greyson—er, Caitlyn—was a really nice woman, if a bit severe. I felt like she would just as soon have a nice stout with me as rap my knuckles with a ruler. She was closer to my grandma’s age than my mom’s.

Charlotte wrapped a towel around herself and began that kind of meandering you do when you’re on the phone, while I grabbed my phone and answered it without looking.

Apparently, moms around the world all decided to call their spawn at the same time.

“Liam!” Mom exclaimed.

“
Hi, Mom.” I clamped the phone between my ear and neck as I wiped down with a towel. It was weird being naked, post-sex, talking to my mom. Not my fault, though.
 

“Your father says he’s having a hard time reaching you.”

“You mean pressuring me into working for him.”

“You can’t be serious about this stripping thing,” she said for the thousandth time. “It’s…it’s not why we sent you to college.”

“Why
did
you send me to college?” I walked into Charlotte’s kitchen and poured myself a cup of overcooked coffee, grimacing as it hit the back of my throat. Charlotte shot me a sympathetic look and mouthed,
Lecture?
 

I nodded.

“Good old Sybil,” she whispered, her hand covering her phone’s mouthpiece.

Yeah. Some things never change. Mom could be cool about stuff like letting Sam stay with us after his old man beat the shit out of him, but God forbid her precious son be caught shaking his nibbly bits for pay.

“You really should call him.”

“I should.” I let that hang in the air as I searched Charlotte’s cabinets for coffee-making stuff. Everything was military precise. My own cupboards looked like a tornado hit them.

I guessed at the amount of grounds to put in as Charlotte chattered on about Portland and some cottage her mother was going to.

“Who’s in the background?” Mom asked with an arched tone.

“Charlotte,” I snapped. Truth is the best defense.

She laughed without amusement. “That’s a sick joke, Liam.”

So’s this conversation
.
T
he words were so fucking close I could taste them, but Charlotte had some preternatural sense for knowing something was wrong. She ended her call with her own mom and took the coffee scoop out of my hand gently, the side of her breast brushing against my shoulder,
making me want to continue talking with my mom as much as I wanted to go on a date with Joe’s ex, Suzy, wearing a Wilfred costume and being sounded with a coffee stirrer.
 

“Gotta go, Mom. Talk later.” Click.

B
eing independent meant I didn’t have to submit myself to lectures like that.

My eyes ate up the naked ass in front of me, how her feet shifted and her hips moved when she closed the coffee machine and turned it on.

That ass?

I’d submit myself to
that
.

And then I did.

Charlotte

“I can tell by the way your eyebrow isn’t all tensed like you’re wearing a mon
o
cle that you finally had sex,” Maggie whispered in my ear as we sat at a conference table in the student center, stuffed on chocolate-dipped sugar cookies and cafeteria coffee.

Homecoming weekend always brought out the alumni, and we had to mingle at two or more events. We’d already made the rounds and looked for
Jan Murphy
, our boss, so she could mentally (or physically) check us off for attendance.

“You monitor my facial muscles that carefully for signs of copulation?
You need a new hobby.
”

“You’re wound so tight that the difference is pretty extreme.”

“Nice. What a friend.”

“Friends tell the truth.”

I sized her up. “
T
hen I have to say that the orange hair makes you look like
Syndrome from
The Incredibles
.”

Her jaw flew down. “You take that back!”

I snatched one of her tiramisu cookies. “Just being a ‘good friend.’” I added finger quotes to the insult.

“But you slept with him, right?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“How was it?”

“Let’s just say I might not need my shower head for much longer.”

“You’ll give up
your hydro-boyfriend
?” she said a little too loudly. People with white paper name tags looked at us. Luckily, Maggie’s punkish appearance made folks stay away.

“I said might.
Might
.”

“Did he explain what happened five years ago?”

I knew this was coming.

Liam and I had formed a little bubble for that one night, and now I was living in the hars
h
light of day, interacting with other people, finding myself accountable, even, to close friends like Maggie. Okay, my
only
close friend—who knew the score.

Was I
a
wimp for taking him back? For not b
ro
aching the subject of what happened when he left me—and our baby? So many shoulds and expectations and external constructs about how I was supposed to act had filled my brain for years.

Right now I just wanted to feel.
Feel
. To enjoy the little secret smile that invaded my face when I thought about seeing him again next week. Or how it felt to think about him with expectation—and not automatic pain. How he looked all naked and
man
in my bed. How I’d felt so mature and alive and on fire when his lips, his mouth, his fingers his—oh, my—had touched me, licked me, tasted me, driven him inside me to form a connection that drove us to release and just be within the other.

“
Did he explain?
No.”

I choked out a simple answer and stared at Maggie like a deer in headlights. I felt a wave of shame, of carefully created validations for my choice, and as they bubbled up to the surface, screaming to get out, she just examined me like one would a specimen and said:

“Give it time. When you’re both ready, it will all come out.”

That’s it?
I’d braced myself for a long lecture and instead got an even-tempered, almost nonchalant response?
 

“Where is Maggie and what have you done to her?”
I asked through a sip of coffee.
 

She laughed. “It’s true. I don’t disagree with you. It always seemed like there was something special there, but the horror of how things went down five years ago overshadowed the good. Sounds like the good flourished inside both of you.
Y
ou
two
just have to hack
a
way at the scar tissue, and if it’s meant to be, you’ll find your way.”

My chest tightened.

“And if it’s not,” she said carefully, “it’s going to hurt like a sonofabitch, but at least you’ll finally know. Have some peace. And some great sex.” She nudged me and winked.

The
d
irector of
r
eligious
d
iversity caught my eye and started coming our way. “Gotta schmooze,” I explained as Maggie gave him the once-over.

“Hot priest.” Indeed, he was. A smooth
L
atino man from Bolivia with burnished dark skin, wide cheekbones and
i
ntelligent, lively eyes. Too bad he was taken.

By
God
.

“Don’t even think about it,” I joked with her.

“Totally not my type,” she whispered. “Besides, you defile a priest you go up in spontaneous combustion.”

“You keep looking at him like that and your toes will get crispy.”

She let out a low whistle. “Being singed isn’t the worst thing…”

She ran off before she got herself into even more trouble, and I found m
ys
elf engaged in a conversation about bringing more mission trips into the residence life program.

And me? I’d found a little reli
gi
on myself last night.

At least, all those times Liam made me shout, “oh my God!” counted for something, right?

Liam

I was in my shithole watching some documentary on Netflix about aging porn stars when my doorbell rang. So few people ever r
a
ng my apartment bell that I grabbed my phone
by mistake
, thinking someone had changed the ringtone on me as a joke.

Nope.

Too
k
two more rings for me to realize I needed to check out my intercom.

I held the button and said, “Hello?” It felt like I was
Alexander Graham Bell
using the phone for the first time.

“
I
t’s Amy.”
She sounded determined.
 

“Why didn’t you text?”

Silence.

I hit the Enter button and buzzed her in. What the fuck would Amy be doing here? Sam and I weren’t working tonight. She and Sam seemed happy as could be. The band was getting more and more gigs. She was still a bookworm and doing fine as her second year of grad school started up.

And why not text me?

My apartment wasn’t exactly
ready for guests
. Pizza boxes everywhere, a stack of tissues on the floor, dirty underclothes bunche
d
up on the floor where I took them off, old dishes I didn’t bother with, and—

I came to a halt as I scrambled to clean up. Why bother? Fifteen seconds couldn’t amount to anything of use.

Bang bang bang
. She had a strong knock. I opened the door to find Amy there with an expression on her face that said she was just as befuddled by her visit as I was.

“
Hey,” I said, inviting her in.
 

“Hey—oh, wow.” She pulled her head back like a nasty stench hit her. Hmmm. I’d been home all day and didn’t not
i
ce anything,
but maybe I’d gotten used to it
.

“Your apartment makes Charlie Day’s look like something out of a Martha Stewart magazine,” she said.

“Nice to see you, too.” I held back adding
Fuck You
. I had
some
manners with women. Barely.

“You are probably wondering why I’m here.” She started to sit down then bobbed up, repeating the gesture three times before perching her ample (and quite nice) ass on the arm of my stained couch.

“To randomly insult me?”

“That wasn’t random. Your apartment smells like Fritos and the decaying body of a Jeffrey Dahmer victim hidden in one of your walls.”