by Julia Kent
RANDOM ON TOUR: LOS ANGELES
JULIA KENT
Copyright © 2015 by Julia Kent
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book deals with the very difficult topic of sexual assault and rape, and I’ve taken great care to address this with the sensitivity and respect it deserves.
None of the scenes in the book contain sexual violence, though the characters do tell their stories of past sexual violence. None of those descriptions is graphic or gratuitous. This book is about hope and healing, but the characters do have past trauma that they discuss.
For those readers who may be triggered, please be aware, and if you need assistance, contact RAINN, an anti-sexual violence organization with resources for survivors: https://www.rainn.org/get-help
RANDOM ON TOUR: LOS ANGELES
Prologue
Maggie
Liam began banging a plastic fork against a plastic Champagne flute. “Again! Again!” he cried out as we imitated him, the dull sound of plastic on plastic making me laugh.
I was with the band, Random Acts of Crazy, on the rooftop of the building that housed the concert hall where they’d just played, and the band’s drummer, Sam, had just proposed to his girlfriend, Amy.
She’d said yes. We greeted their resulting kiss with cheers and catcalls, more alcohol and lots of cake. So much cake.
Liam’s girlfriend and my best friend, Charlotte, had invited me to the concert and I’d come up for this after-party, reluctant to be around human beings this day of all days. It was an anniversary of sorts for me.
One I’d like to never celebrate.
But it celebrated me, like it or not.
Seven years ago, to the day, I was gang-raped by three men on my college campus.
Seven years ago I was torn into tiny little pieces of Maggie. It had taken a lot of glue over the last seven years to make those pieces fit together again and make up something resembling a whole.
Watching Sam kiss Amy so tenderly, her engagement ring sparkling in the glow of lights on the rooftop, I smiled. It was a real smile, one filled with mirth and appreciation and a little too much Champagne, perhaps. Getting drunk might not be the most responsible thing to do right now, but I didn’t much care.
“Someday, you,” Charlotte said to me, her own voice a little loose.
“You first,” I said, my eyes flitting over to her boyfriend, Liam. They’d reunited after years apart, a simple misunderstanding finally cleared up after fate stepped in and made them see each other again. We were outside on this fine, clear evening, a few stars shining through the obscured city sky, the bright lights and teeming activity on the roads below us a reminder that we were in a tiny little cocoon. Just a bubble.
The world outside us went on, oblivious to the massive shift that had just taken place for Sam and Amy. When the world is so big, what feels like a tectonic plate shift on a personal level is nothing more than the movement of a hair in the larger sense.
I guzzled another flute of Champagne and froze, the liquid in my throat, waiting to be swallowed.
Tyler was here.
We’d met a few times before, in passing. He was the substitute bass player for the band; I was the lead guitar player’s girlfriend’s best friend. In that weird sort of social circle thing where Venn diagrams get laid over different groups, Tyler and I were bound to be in the crossover once in a while.
He looked so hot. Short brown hair. A few days of beard. Bright green eyes that were more guarded than a Russian mobster’s. He was sleeved, the colorful tattoos a tapestry, but every time I met him I couldn’t quite see them. We only saw each other in dark concert halls, or tonight, under the stars.
He gave Sam a rare smile and a hearty handshake, forearm muscles bulging. I wondered what it would be like to have those hands on me. My fingers tracing those tats. Listening to him tell me the story of his naked body while he forgave mine.
Forgave it for failing me.
I shook my head fast to banish the thoughts that drew me into places so dark they became black holes of the soul. The gravity of trauma had a way of sucking all the good into it, and tonight I wasn’t going to let that happen. The opposite, in fact.
Tonight I was going to fuck Tyler.
He didn’t know it yet, but that was okay. He would. Soon.
“Maggie?” Charlotte handed me another drink and gave me a half-smile. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”
I ran one hand through my orange hair and drank some more courage. Not too much, but not too little. The only action I’d seen in five years involved my own hands and devices with batteries, and that had been torture. I didn’t quite count a few kisses with guys in bars on dance floors that smelled like sour alcohol and bleach. Those furtive attempts to prove I could let someone touch me sexually had been more like mini therapy sessions than anything arousing.
Tyler was definitely arousing.
“I’m ready,” I whispered, willing the shake to leave my voice.
Her already-big eyes widened, like white globes with brown pools in the middle. Charlotte’s dark, straight hair was cut with bangs that were so perfect they were like a blade.
“Tyler? You’re picking a guy whose nickname is Frown for your first...oh, Maggie, are you sure?”
My eyes met hers.
“You are sure,” she hissed, sucking air in through her teeth. Charlotte was nothing if not tactful and cool under pressure as long as she was dealing with someone else’s crisis. She was clearly weighing her judgment. “I know you were thinking about doing this, but...him?”
I just nodded, then shrugged. “It has to be someone, right? He’s nice. Kind of rough in an appealing way. Non-judgmental. Not at all hard on the eyes.”
“No, not at all,” Charlotte said, interrupting me. She rolled her lips in as if fixing her lipstick. I knew she was curating Tyler. Evaluating him. Biting her lips and assessing him like a specimen. Was he Maggie worthy? She was deciding.
“And he doesn’t talk. No feelings to worry about. Easy peasy. How many guys get a one-night stand offer from a chick?” I asked, my tone far lighter than my heart. My palms began to sweat. My face, too. I felt a drop trickle between my breasts. I’d worn actual lingerie today, a bra and panties that were made in this decade and that matched.
Just in case. Just...in case.
She snorted. I took the moment to drink some more. The fuzzy warm blanket coating my skin made my idea seem so much better. Fucking brilliant, in fact. Sleep with a friend of my best friend’s boyfriend. Tyler couldn’t be a total asshole to me, right? He had as much invested in being decent to me as I had in getting him to help me just get this over with.
Reboot my sexual self. Defragment my clit. Clear my hard drive. Something like that. Damn, that Champagne was good.
“Don’t ask Liam that question,” she said in a sour tone. Oh. Ouch. Her turn to chug a Champagne flute.
Darla walked over with two plates in her hand, pieces of celebratory cake the size of lion paws resting on them. “Eat,” she ordered. Darla was the band manager and Trevor and Joe’s girlfriend. Brash and big, blonde and bold, she was a tour de force and had no filter.
I liked her. She, Trevor and Joe were in a threesome that Liam mocked endlessly, but it worked for them. More power to them.
I watched Tyler and licked my lips. Charlotte took both plates and handed one to Liam, who took it absentmindedly and returned to his conversation with Trevor. They were discussing electric guitars the way Charlotte talked about vibrators with Amy.
Charlotte returned her attention to me, her mouth full of cake and her eyes full of questions.
See, I don’t do this. That whole seven year thing happened for a reason, and the reason is that I don’t do this. But there are only so many therapy sessions and web searches and nightmares and group therapy sessions and late-night rescues with students at the college where I’m a Resident Director that you can manage before you go out of your mind with wanting to get the Big Fucking Deal Moment of your trauma history out of the way.
And fucking Tyler would accomplish that.
I hoped.
Was it a good plan? Was it a safe plan? Was it a rational plan?
Probably not.
But when you’re trying to escape from the internalized identity of That Gang Rape On Campus Girl, you stop caring after a while.
After about seven years.
Tyler
The chick with the multi-colored hair was giving me the eye. And the creeps. But mostly the eye. I knew that look. That was the look of a nervous but desperate woman who wanted sex.
I didn’t play that game.
I was here because Darla called me and said that I should come. I didn’t play in the concert, but I came tonight to watch and because Darla asked me to join the engagement party. Sam was a cool guy. Amy was the kind of girl who looked down on me for the three years I was in high school, but she wasn’t like that to me. She was just that kind. The kind of chick who thought she understood anything about the world she could put into a neat little box.
Eventually they learned. I guessed. I guessed they learned that the world doesn’t work that way. I didn’t know any women like that up close, so all I could do was guess.
“Hey, Maggie!” Darla called out, walking over to her with two plastic cups of Champagne. Maggie. That’s right. I sucked at names.
I didn’t suck at faces. She’d stuck in my mind since the first time we met. She was carrying a blow up sex toy doll that day.
You didn’t forget that kind of thing.
Long, dyed hair. Three or four colors. She had eyes that were so fucking blue they must have been painted on. Fake lenses. A ton of piercings and a nasty scar up one cheekbone. That made me pause. What the hell happened to her? You don’t get that kind of mark from living a pampered life like most of the people at this party.
Maybe I misjudged her.
I didn’t fuck chicks who came on to me like I was something you try on, like a dress at a store in the mall you thought it would be fun to slip into for a minute. A disguise. A distraction. I’d been offered plenty of tester pussy. Like getting spritzed at the perfume counter at the mall—here’s a sample. Check out my scent.
They liked to get their turn on the bad-boy inked-up dude ride. And then they went home to their perfect houses in the suburbs, where Mommy and Daddy paid for everything and expected them to live cookie-cutter lives.
Been there, done that, had the memories of uncomfortable looks when I asked for a second date burned into my brain like a brand.
I was the guy you fucked so you could tell your friends you had a bad boy.
I wasn’t the guy you brought home for dinner.
Maggie, though...that scar. The hair that looked like something out of a My Little Pony commercial. All those studs in her nose and ears. Women who made themselves look like that did it to filter out the world.
So did guys.
“How’s it going?” she asked. Darla handed me a beer and walked away, a satisfied smile on her face. I had a hard time with words but not with facial expressions. More than one woman here wanted to see me with Maggie. I felt like a gazelle being watched by a pack of lions on one of those nature shows my dad left on after he passed out from his nightly twelve pack. The gazelle at the watering hole during a drought, being looked over by the pack of hungry lions.
Cougar, actually. Maggie’s a good five years older than me.
“Good.” I drank my beer in one long motion, trying not to choke. Her eyes raked over my arm as I lifted it, widening, then going back to normal. Whatever normal meant.
Leave. My internal warning system told me to get the fuck out of here. Do not engage. Do not touch. She was Charlotte’s best friend and you don’t taint the waters when your only paid gigs come from this chick’s best friend’s boyfriend’s band.
I was normally damn good at listening to my inner warning system.
It was hard to listen through that much color.
Her hand landed on my bare arm, two fingers pressing with a feather-light touch against one of my tats. The brush of her fingers made my thighs clench, my throat tighten, and my heart speed up double, as time itself slowed down.
“What’s that?” She gave me a smile so bright it lit up half the world, her eyes guarded but clear. So clear.
“An arm.”
She poked hard with those fingers and nudged me. Making excuses to touch me. My body responded, too. Of course it did. The very small number of words my brain could hold at the same time became even smaller. She smelled like soap and sweat, like sweet wine and kisses.
I couldn’t sleep with her.
Her finger traced a slow line on the border of my tat, following the labyrinth pattern with a kind of aimless wandering. She was using any excuse she could find to touch me and to keep touching me. I looked at her face, her eyes tipped down, her upper lip tucked between her teeth as she tried to breathe nice and steady.
Her pulse fluttered on her neck. She swallowed every few seconds. I narrowed my eyes and really took a good look.
This wasn’t a bad boy fuck pass. She wasn’t slumming. If it had just been that I’d have doubled up on my no.
Damn it, she had something way deeper going on.
And so did I.
Bzzzz.
I jumped, my ass suddenly tingling. She stumbled slightly, her shoulder brushing against my chest, her scent filling me with a madness that made me need to kiss her. What was she doing? What was I doing?
I shoved my hand in my back pocket and pulled out my phone. Looked at the screen.
Double fuck. A text from dad. I scanned it:
Got puled over and stuck n county only had to beers need bail.
Dad wasn’t the best speller, but his English writing skills weren’t exactly his biggest problem.
“Ah, fuck,” I muttered.
“Thought you’d never ask,” Maggie said in a voice that would have made me laugh if I didn’t have a seventeen-year-old brother back home, two thousand miles away, who was about to be abandoned.
And my savings account was about to go to bail out a dad on his third DUI in two years.
We were standing by the rooftop door and she yanked my arm, hard, pulling me behind the brick wall, away from the crowd. My phone almost fell out of my hand but I stuffed it in my front pocket. Her mouth was hot on mine in seconds, my back against gritty brick, the push of my shoulder blades against solid rock registering as her teeth banged against mine.
My brain turned into a pile of ribbons, shiny and slippery and tied in knots. Her hands roped round the back of my neck and she tasted like every drunk girl I’d ever fucked.
I didn’t want her to become just another drunk girl I’d fuck.
That mouth, though. She pulled away, her eyes on my lips, and went for a second kiss, this one less awkward. Warmer, filled with something more than the fumbling of a wasted chick. My hands slipped around her waist and her fingers played with the curve of my ears, trickling down to my jaw line.
She touched me like she hadn’t touched a man in years.
Bzzzz.
“Shit!” I rasped, pushing her gently
away, reaching in my front pocket and pressing the power button to turn the fucking phone off. Turn the problem off. Turn my dad off.
Chicks like Maggie didn’t get involved with guys with fucked up lives like mine. Dad’s arrest, my rescue, my brother’s need.
Everybody wanted something from me.
“Tyler,” she said in a voice filled with longing. A very hard part of me softened. Not the part I wished would go soft, though. I shifted myself in my pants, willing the erection way.
Don’t need a boner when duty calls back home.
“Uh, Maggie, I gotta go.”
“Home?” She bit that lip again and my hands itched to grab her and kiss her. For me to kiss her this time.
No. Women like her don’t get guys like you.
“Something like that.”
“I’ll come home with you,” she said, her words a little hazy. I reached out and touched her chin, tipping her face up. Eyes burning with desire met mine.
I’m sure mine burned, too.
With a layer of rage underneath.
That rage built so fast, like a molotov cocktail, flaring up inside. She was there. She was in front of me. She became the target. I had to protect her from it, but she’d get licked by the flames no matter what.
“I’m not into necrophilia,” I spat out, turning away. Those ribbons in my brain spilled out, unraveling like a kite string as a huge gust of wind hits out of nowhere.
“Huh?” Hurt and fear made those blue eyes the color of an unreal sky.
“You’re two drinks away from passing out, and I don’t do that to chicks. Not my style. I have a thing about that. I like my women awake when I have sex with them. Call me crazy.” Deflect. Turn it around. Make her pissed off. Make her walk away. Then I could just go back to nothing. Forget she ever existed.
Even as my arm ached where she’d touched me. The same fingers that seconds ago were touching me pulled back, like she was about to hit me.
She was white with fury but said nothing. Just stood there, her eyes filled with a bunch of pain caused by me. Me. Fuck.
