Random Acts of Trust (5 page)

And then there was my body. I liked to think that I was just a head. Literally. A head that walked around attached to this thing that I required in order to function in daily life. My body didn’t really matter to me, until it
did
. Some people like to use the word voluptuous. My mother called me curvy, while my grandma called me chunky. No one was mean about it, but it was there, as if having extra curves on my hips or a thicker than acceptable waist, and breasts that filled a cup and then some, were a quiet damning. An indictment of a body that didn’t fit in with modern society.

My ex, Brent, hadn’t seemed to care too much about my weight, though I would catch him ogling other women, most of them a good twenty pounds lighter than me. The paradox was that the same body that I pretended to ignore was the one that I explored so tentatively, and at other times aggressively, in trying to understand the core of myself.

What I wanted was someone else’s hands to do that work, someone else’s obsession to be zeroed in on me, a man’s desire to be at the center of finding Amy’s sensual self. Instead, there was only me and my books, and essays, and readings, and the occasional prop ordered discreetly online. None of those, not even Brent, came close to being a substitute for the richness that I knew was out there in the world.

Couldn’t I find that one person who would come to treasure me? Who would view me not just as a mind, as a bodiless head wandering around, or not just as a headless body, there to be fucked and thrown away,—but as the whole package? What I wanted most wasn’t Sam, although as I settled back at my table I found myself searching the crowd and the stage for him.

It wasn’t the
idea
of Sam that I wanted; it was the reality of a partner who would go the distance with me. Someone I could give up the entire world for, so that we could go deep and burrow into each other—mind, body, soul, and everything. I knew it was possible...it had to be, right?

If I could think it, it could be real.

As I looked up and found Sam on stage, getting ready for the next song, and wondered if he could be the one, I saw Darla walk over to him. No,
past
him. She reached for Trevor, who reached back with a familiar embrace, and then a kiss that...
whoa
, practically set the stage on fire. Jeez, the two of them needed to get a room.

I finished my drink, the watery taste of melted ice cubes and alcohol familiar, like the words “the end” on the final page of a book, and then, out of the corner of my eye, Darla stepped away from Trevor as a hand slid up her back, under her shirt. The hand was attached to...
Joe
? Who then proceeded to...oh, dear. If they showed any more tongue I would think I was at a butcher shop.

Who on earth was she
actually
with? The kiss with Joe went on and on until my own face started to flush, and the creeping red from my chest stretched up, then
down
.

I felt like a voyeur, as if I weren’t supposed to be watching this, but what are you supposed to do when they’re onstage in front of a crowd? Trevor’s hand splayed across Darla’s ass, an ass about the size of my own. There I went comparing again—does any woman not? I admired whatever was going on in a sickly kind of way, my stomach twisting in knots. Was it possible? Were the two of them...no,
the three of them...?

And then Sam approached her. My whole body turned to melted chocolate, and then tensed up to granite, revolving in a cycle that left me weak.

Then very, very angry as Darla reached out for Sam.

Oh, no, she didn’t.

I stood, hands twisted into fists, the blood pounding at my scalp, making the lights on stage go dim. Liam McCarthy jumped to the mic and shouted, “Are you ready to party?”My mouth went dry as I watched him own the stage. Hadn’t seen him in years, either.

Seeing the person who took your virginity really should generate an emotional reaction, right?

The crowd leapt to their feet and my view of the stage was obscured. Damn it! The raised arms, shrill whistles and screams from about a hundred fans made me lose track of what, exactly, Darla was doing to—or with—Sam.

Liam tried to calm the crowd, arms out, palms down in a gesture of quiet. “Let’s get the raffle out of the way.”

Anemic cheers.

“Three prizes tonight.”

“Free drinks!” Someone shouted. That got another round of hoots and some clapping.

“Sorry—go hook up with someone in the crowd for that.” Loads of giggles from the women. Groans from the men.

“First of three prizes—free tickets to our next concert!” I pulled my ticket out of my pocket. Why not? Going home with a prize was better than going home alone. Standing on tiptoes, I kept trying to catch a glimpse of Sam, and to see what Darla was doing to him. With him. Whatever. Liam called out a number that wasn’t mine. As the crowd settled back in their seats, I saw Joe and Sam setting up equipment in the background. No Darla. Good.

“Second prize—a CD from our best live performances.” He read off a number.

Not mine.

“Third and final prize.” Cocky grin. “Let me call out the number and then I’ll tell you what you get.”

“A night with you, Liam!” some drunk girl screamed.

He cocked one hell of a sexy eyebrow at the crowd and leered. “That would make any woman a winner.” He drew the word
winner
out like a finger running down a woman’s breast, over her ribs, down her torso...and the women in the crowd shrieked.

And then he called out my number.

“Anyone?”

I was frozen. Holy shit. What?

“I’ll take you if someone doesn’t claim it!” a woman cried out.

“Me, too!” screamed five or six other women.

The waitress happened to pop over and look at my ticket. “Here! She won! Right here!” She pointed at me with a big gesture that caught the crowd’s attention.

No no no no no
. Sam couldn’t know I was here.

“What are you waiting for, honey? Don’t be afraid. Go for it!” With a mighty shove, she pushed me out into the crowd, a spotlight finding my face.

“Hey there! Our winner! And it’s a chick—whew!”

Every woman I walked past looked at me as if I’d won the MegaMillions lottery. I got to the stairs to the left of the stage, feeling like I was walking a death march. A red EXIT sign glowed to me right. If I bolted right now...

“Not that I wouldn’t mind kissing a dude,” Liam added. A few guys in the audience cheered
really
loud.

“Because the prize is a kiss from me.” Liam peered down the stage steps and when his eyes set on me, all that confidence faltered for a split second.

A
what
? Couldn’t I just get a CD?

One of the stage hands nudged me to join Liam, and I walked on feet made of electrified concrete.

“Amy!” I heard Darla squeal from backstage.

“Amy?” The way Sam said my name made me nearly vomit.

“Amy.” Liam’s smile spread slowly, his voice like buttered suede. “Our lucky winner.”

Lights sprayed across my face, making me half-blind, as hundreds of eyes watched me and Liam on stage. He put his arm around my shoulders as people in the crowd began began to chant “kiss!” over and over.

I couldn’t even look at Sam. Because I knew he was staring at me.

Covering my body with his to shield the view, Liam’s face came so close to mine I could inhale his aftershave, smell the sweat and musk of excitability the performance must bring out in him. A quick peck on the cheek, and he whispered, “Let’s make this look nice and juicy.”

One hand went around my hip, the other snaked up my back, between my shoulder blades, and he dipped me, the crowd seeing mostly his body and my legs.

The roar made me go out of my mind.

And when he let go, I fled out the side door.

Maybe Sam wasn’t the only one who could just walk away when it was all too much.

Chapter Two

Sam

Unh
.
Gasp. Uhn. Gasp.
I shifted on the couch and turned over, shoving my face into the back of it, trying to block out the sun. Trevor and Joe had a great place here on the Fenway, but I could do without the soundtrack.
Uhn. Gasp.

A door creaked open and I heard Trevor mumble, “Where the fuck is the extra lube?”

I rolled my eyes and turned enough to wedge my entire face into the corner of the couch. Oh, God. Again? It didn’t help that I woke up with morning wood and the last time that I’d actually been with a woman...well, let’s just say I was dating Pamela Handerson or Jennifer Handiston. I had been arguing with Harry Longfellow. Strangling Patrick Stewart. And it made me feel like Hand Solo.

“Right there,” I heard Darla groan.

The bathroom door slammed and Trevor’s feet pounded on the floor as if he were running, and then, I heard the unmistakable sound of bedsprings. Did he just launch himself onto the bed? I crammed the pillow over my head. In my dark little cave I could still hear the sounds of obvious hotness. So, while my friends were acting out something out of an amateur YouPorn video, I was sitting here on the couch with an aching dick and no end in sight.

Amy
. Her name flashed through my head and damn, if the morning wood didn’t grow from a twig to a Goddamn log. She’d disappeared last night, out of the blue. Darla had come up on stage and then
poof!
Amy was gone. I didn’t know what that meant—not that I had a right to know what that meant.

Some sort of slapping sound hit the wall and the bedsprings creaked in a steady pattern. Jesus Christ, this was one macrobeat I did
not
need to hear. Whenever Darla was over here they went at it like ferrets, or bunnies, or whatever rodent goes at it a lot. At least twice a day, usually more. Who the hell has the stamina? Who was I kidding? I had that kind of stamina. I just didn’t have a girlfriend. Amy. Dammit! What was she doing there last night?

“
Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!”
came a feminine chant from the bedroom.

I flung the blanket off of me, threw the pillow against the wall where it smacked with an utterly unsatisfactory sound, and slammed my way into the bathroom down the hall. Peeing was like pulling a tight slot machine lever, I had to use a hell of a lot of forearm force to keep it down or I was gonna end up with splatter in my face.

Morning rituals complete, I wandered back into the kitchen and opened the fridge to see what I had to eat for breakfast. My share of the food consisted of two eggs, and a half a quart of chocolate milk. I shrugged. Better than nothing. Finding a dish was more challenging than figuring out what to eat.

“Get the one with the tickler,” Darla said, the walls impossibly thin here. I shuddered.

A sauté pan caked on with something that probably had been cooked four days ago was on top of the heap of dishes. Joe and Trevor didn’t have a dishwasher—I supposed that, technically,
I
was the dishwasher, considering the fact that they weren’t charging me any rent to couch surf. It probably was the best thing to do. I pulled the plates, and cups, and pans out, stacked them neatly, put them back in and filled the sink with hot water and soap, letting everything soak before I tackled them.

This gave me the chance to set the nasty sauté pan filled with hot water and soap on the counter, give it five minutes and I’d be able to start eating. The chocolate milk, thank God, wasn’t rancid, so at least I filled my stomach before setting down on my bed—that would be the couch—to wait for the water to do its job. That gave me five minutes to obsess about Amy, not that I needed an excuse to think about her. The events of four and a half years ago came slamming through my mind,
boom, boom, boom,
like paintballs, multicolored and painful.

Slap. Slap. Slap.
It sounded like someone’s upper body was being flung against the wall. Why did they have to do it right there? The wall that they were sexually bitch-slapping was the one right behind the kitchen sink.

“No, you climb on top,” a guy’s voice said, I couldn’t tell whether it was Joe or Trevor, and I didn’t want to know. I grabbed my pillow and just curled it around the back of my head, my palms pressing against my ears.

Amy. Amy. Amy
. That long brown hair, her sweet smile, that intense gaze when she was laser-focused on something. Why hadn’t she come up on stage and said something to me?
You stupid idiot
, I thought,
of course she’s not going to do that. You’re the one who blew it
. Four and a half years and I hadn’t spoken to her, nothing. It was as if she didn’t exist. All of that anger, and resentment, and confusion, and desire from four and a half years ago...it turns out, hadn’t really gone away.