Random Acts of Love (Random Series #5)

by Julia Kent

  “Yes?”

  “Can you go in the kitchen and grab me the bottle of Goo Gone?”

  “Goo Gone?”

  “Yeah, you know. The stuff you use to get tape off of windows and shit like that.”

  He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. Damn, he was an imposing man. Another one of those saintly sighs came out of him.

  “Why do you need Goo Gone?”

  “I need to rub it all over my nibbly bits to get rid of the wax.”

  Another sigh. Man, he needed lots of those to calm down. Where other people just pop Xanax, Alex used sighs.

  “Your nibbly bits?”

  “My hoohaw and poop chute.”

  “You learn those terms in medical school?” he asked dryly.

  I stuck my tongue out at him just as Josie appeared.

  Bad timing.

  Alex turned away from us with a kind of fluid grace that made him look like he was on ice skates, disappearing down the hall.

  “You realize we’re supposed to be in the car tomorrow to drive to Ohio for Aunt Cathy’s wedding?” Josie hissed, her voice like a fresh kill sizzling on a barbecue.

  “Yeah. So. I’ll be ready,” I grumbled. What the fuck was her problem?

  She reached behind me and grabbed the top of the wallpaper attached to me, yanking up. If I’d have been wearing a thong I’d have gotten a wedgie.

  Instead, I felt some short curlies pull out and more tears filled my eyes.

  “Hey! Cut it out!”

  “I can’t believe you destroyed my bathroom, Darla! And HOW?”

  “Waxing,” I muttered.

  Alex appeared with the Goo Gone, eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. “Here,” he said.

  “What’s that for?” she asked him.

  He shrugged and backed away, palms up. Josie was on fire. Smart man, not wanting to get burned. “She asked for it because she needs to remove the wax from her hoohaw and poop chute.” He said those words like some fancy British actor making fun of American slang.

  Josie’s head turned slowly back to me, her mouth agape. “This was a waxing accident?”

  “Yes.” The less I said, the better. I unscrewed the bottle’s cap and whiplashed back. That shit smelled like pain.

  “What were you waxing?”

  “My anus.”

  Masculine laughter burst forth from down the hall.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to send it to Joe and Trevor.”

  “You wanted to send your anus to two guys you just dumped.”

  “Yes.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It did last night.”

  “You mean two nights ago.”

  “Shit!”

  “You can’t. Your anus is closed shut by wax.”

  Double shit. She had a good point. Thank God I didn’t need to go.

  Yet.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I have half a mind to force feed you an entire box of laxatives and just leave you here.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” Alex called out. “I would never let anyone do that to someone. I took a Hippocratic Oath.”

  “That only applies to your patients,” Josie called down the hall. “And stop eavesdropping! Go make yourself useful. Make coffee. Procure a ballgag. Something,” she muttered.

  I held up the bottle of solvent. “You gonna stand there and watch me pour chemicals all over my sensitive parts and rip this wax off like something out of a Steve Carrell movie, or you gonna leave?”

  She left.

  Smart woman.

  The backdrop sounds of coffee being made and Josie and Alex hissing at each other in the kitchen were a kind of distraction as I poured the solution in my palm and just went for it, slathering it all over the giant crotch-sized swath of cold, frozen wax and pants cloth. Imagine what a little kid’s pants looks like when they wet themselves.

  Now add a wallpaper banner and wax.

  The solution stung like holy fuck. But I could start to feel the wax softening, and finally, once the bottle was empty, I had to just wait.

  Waiting gave me a moment to actually look at myself in the mirror.

  I shouldn’t have done that.

  I started to cry, and for some fucked up reason in my mind, there was a memory of a clown crying, too. Man, I was one big, giant, alone mess.

  With a very hard thing to do next. Who wants to give themselves the most painful yank in the world? I was gonna have to pull my pants off and take every piece of hair within a square mile off with them.

  I...I didn’t think I could do it. I’m a brave woman. I’ve stuck my hand inside the sewage pipe of my mama’s trailer back home to pull out a frozen blockage in an ice snap. Chased a possum out of a toilet with a broom. Pulled Trevor off a snake. Brought a non-organic Ambrosia salad to a dinner party in the tony suburbs of Boston.

  But this?

  Nope. Nopenopenope.

  “Josie?” I called out. My voice sounded as pathetic as it felt.

  Footsteps. A knock on the door. Her head, peeking in.

  “You done?”

  “Naw. I need help.” I leaned against the counter and spoke the words to my reflection. How true they were.

  “What do you need?”

  “Can you pull my pants off?”

  “What?”

  “All this wax and Goo Gone and my hair and my skin and I am just afraid of the paaain,” I wailed, drawing out the last word.

  Her face roiled with sympathy, fury, and I swear to God there was a little wicked pleasure in there, too.

  “Alex,” she called down the hall. “Do you have lidocaine cream in your bag?”

  “Yes,” he shouted back.

  She looked at me and shook her head. “We’ll just rip ’em off like a Band-aid and Alex will slather you up with numbing cream.”

  “Numb my vagina? What?”

  “It’s better than not numbing it.”

  I sighed. It sounded a lot like Alex’s sighs. “Might as well numb it. It’s not like it needs to feel anything. No one else is doing anything to it.”

  She ignored that. “You ready?”

  I gripped the bathroom counter and shut my eyes, hard. “Yeah.”

  Her fingers slid into the waistband of my pants like cold little icicles. Like evil itself stroking me.

  “On the count of three,” she said.

  But I knew better. “You always say you’ll do something on the count of three, Josie,” I argued. “When we were kids you used to fool me.”

  “One!”

  “But then you go and do it on the count of—”

  RIIIIPPPPPP!

  And the world went dark all over again for a completely different reason.

  CHAPTER 8

  Darla

  “Hey, Darla! Another package for you,” said the UPS delivery dude. I guess even though I’d moved out of Josie’s a while ago, Mama still used her address for sweepstakes. Well, now I was moved back in.

  This was a medium-sized box that weighed about as much as a dog.

  “What in the hell is in there?” I asked, rolling it around in my hands.

  “No clue, but I have two more just like it on my delivery route. Someone else in Cambridge must like to do these sweepstakes,” he said as he jogged off.

  Huh. Go figure. Someone else in this city was as weird as Mama. Two someones.

  I was barely functional, wandering back inside the house. Josie was packing the car, getting her trusty Honda ready for the six hundred mile drive home. Because Mama had insisted that we both be in the wedding, and Aunt Marlene had guilted Josie into making sure Alex came, we were all in for a ton of fun (that’s sarcasm spread on thick, like Caro syrup on a stack of pancakes) this coming week.

  I wanted to bash my throbbing head in with a rock. The other part of me that throbbed needed a fucking boulder.

  Josie had managed to rip off every hair from the nether regions of my body, plus a few mor
e from a future life, along with a fair amount of my epidermis. Wasn’t her fault, and I’d spent the better part of yesterday and this morning soaking in a bathtub filled with oatmeal and numbing gel, shivering and shaking. Alex gave me a puke bucket, which—I must proudly say—I never needed.

  They think I was just drunk.

  I know Joe spiked that ice cream pie with something that turned us loony.

  I was commando, and Josie muttered to herself as she packed. Mama didn’t want no fancy wedding, so we were supposed to just bring our nicest dresses and shoes and make the best of it. I think the last time Josie wore a nice dress was her college graduation. Or maybe her daddy’s funeral. We’re not exactly the “nice dress” types. I had a ball gown from when we went to the Island of Eden but if I wore that in my little town in the midwest, people would think I was a drag queen.

  No. Seriously. Especially if I was still walking like I had a ten-foot cock between my legs, like I was right now.

  I opened the delivery and found myself staring at a case of five pound bags of gummy bears.

  Alex walked by and did a double take, then said, “Another sweepstakes winning?”

  “Yep.”

  He just shook his head with amusement and helped Josie tuck a large suitcase in the trunk. Alex would fly out separately in a couple of days, and we were bringing his stuff.

  “Darla!” Josie shouted. “C’mon! We need to beat rush hour.” It was the butt crack of dawn. Well, the butt crack that hadn’t been flayed alive by wax, Goo Gone, and an overly enraged aunt of mine.

  “I’m coming! Let me put these gummy bears away.” I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half, my stomach too queasy to manage anything. Water was about it. The thought of gummy bears, oddly enough, made my stomach settle. They’d been my comfort food as a little kid. Family lore said Mama potty trained me by using them as a reward.

  Some kids get sticker charts. I get food dye, sugar, and chewy shit that triggers cavities.

  Thank God Mama loved me.

  “Are those gummy bears? Damn, you get that bag at Costco?” she called back.

  “Nope. Sweepstakes,” I said as I gingerly made my way to her porch.

  “Throw ‘em in the car. I hate them, but they’ll make good road food for you.”

  At the mention of the word food my stomach growled. Not in a friendly way.

  “Okay,” I said, uneasy as I lurched forward and tossed one bag in the back seat. Josie had chips and baby carrots and two giant coffee thermoses in there already, plus an entire gallon of water and two smaller quart bottles Alex insisted I take. She’s kind of a road trip freak. She hates to stop. Hates it so much I swear the woman would wear a diaper if she could get away with it so she can beat her old record. She thinks we’re gonna get from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Peters, Ohio in eight hours.

  Delusional.

  I put five more bags of gummy bears in the trunk for Mama.

  “Here,” Alex said, shoving a huge tube of something at me.

  “What’s that for? I don’t exactly need lube these days,” I cracked.

  “Lidocaine. Numbing cream.” He gave me a sympathetic look. “You’ll need it for a while.”

  “Thanks. I guess.” I stuffed it in the pocket of the car door.

  Josie and Alex had a long, soulful good-bye kiss that made me want to barf on their shoes. People who were in love made me sick. It was like they were showing off. Showing off their intact hearts.

  That was just so...arrogant. And cruel, like flaunting your filet mignon in front of a starving kid in North Korea.

  But I might be a little biased.

  We settled into our respective seats and she backed out. Ten or so hours in the car was going to be bad enough, but I came prepared with earbuds, my phone charging cable, and an eye mask. If I had to pretend to sleep the entire way, I might escape the endless bitch session she clearly had planned for me.

  As she got the car on the main streets to pick up the Mass Pike, I watched her eyes twitch with calculation. Here’s the thing about Josie: she’s competitive. Super competitive. And when it comes to driving long distances, she competes against herself. Her all-time record for getting home was nine hours and seventeen minutes, and I knew she had one goal here:

  To beat herself.

  If I just let the world spin and tried not to sit in a way that made my cooch feel like it went through a paper shredder, I could make it through a little more than eight hours.

  I closed my eyes, listened to anything but Random Acts of Crazy, and settled in for the ride.

  The ride to my Mama’s wedding.

  * * *

  Two hours in and my bladder was about to explode.

  “I need to stop,” I said.

  “Can you hold it for fifty-four more miles? If you can, we will be averaging seventy-seven miles per hour and I can justify a three minute pit stop.”

  “I am not a Formula One racing car, Josie. I have a bladder that’s about to make the floor of your car turn into Niagara Falls,” I snapped back. Besides, the thought of hot, salty urine all over my raw inner thighs and butt crack made me want to cry.

  She pulled over two miles later and I was back in the car in four minutes. Yeah, I counted. I also spent an extra minute giving myself a wide stance over the toilet, spreading all my nibbly bits as far as possible so no salt water might touch my skin. There’s no greater accuracy when it comes to peeing than a woman who is hairless, skinless and riding for six hundred miles with a single tube of lidocaine to sustain her and ninety-nine square inches of ripped skin.

  “You done?” Josie asked as I opened the door. I climbed in gingerly, and before I could reach back for my seatbelt, she was off for the entrance ramp.

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “He pees faster than you,” she hissed, accelerating like we were in a Star Trek movie and going through a wormhole.

  “Shut up.” My stomach growled.

  “Eat something,” she insisted. “You’re still half hung over and you look like the underside of someone’s shoe.”

  “I love you, too, Auntie.”

  She reached into the backseat and grabbed the first thing she felt. “Here.” A five pound bag of gummy bears landed in my lap.

  Why not? I opened the bag and plucked a red one out. Set it carefully on my tongue. Closed my mouth. No nausea. Just sweet, flavored sugary goodness.

  I reached for a water bottle and drank about half in one long gulp.

  “Great. You’ll have to pee again in a few minutes.”

  “It’s called hydration, Speedy Gonzalez.”

  Her eyes narrowed but she said nothing.

  “What the fuck got you in such a foul mood?” I asked before my brain filter could kick in. Fuck. Asking Josie that question was like inviting a vampire into your home.

  “Maybe I’m just a wee bit stressed after having half the wallpaper in my bathroom stripped off by your anus. Plus, I have to go home and see my mother. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I took two more gummy bears and rested them on my tongue, sucking.

  “I’d say seeing Aunt Marlene. Actually, not seeing her, but having her meet Alex. He’s gonna need pepper spray and a muzzle to keep her from jumping his bones.”

  Josie’s nostrils flared and her face turned into a mask of fury. “Thanks. You’re so helpful.”

  “I try.” These gummy bears were good. I picked out five of the green bears and one by one bit off their heads, saving their bodies for a single mouthful. My appetite was coming back. I took a handful of the orange ones and shoved them all in my mouth at once.

  “That’s a lot of sugar you’re eating,” she remarked.

  I looked at the bag, perking up. “Nope. They’re sugar free. Bonus! I got five more bags in the back to bring to Mama. I’m giving the rest to my friends when I get back home from the wedding. I figured they’d make good wedding favors, though, for Mama. You know, put ’em in Mason jars and set ’em out on the tabl
es at the reception.”

  “With little bows on top with Aunt Cathy and...uh...Uncle Calvin’s names on them?”

  Uncle Calvin.

  I stopped chewing, my mouth dry suddenly.

  “Uncle Calvin,” I whispered.

  Aw, shit. It hadn’t really hit me until this very moment, but my mama really was getting married. I was about to have a daddy figure in my life for the first time since I was four. I was all grown up and didn’t need a daddy, and I already had a daddy, even if he was dead.

  But still.

  “Darla? You look green.”

  My stomach made a weird gassy sound that made us both jump and look around the car as if maybe a wild animal had hitched a ride inside.

  “What the hell? Drink some water,” Josie urged, handing me the bottle.

  I complied. I felt better.

  “I think it’s just nerves,” I finally said.

  Her expression softened. “I understand. It’s a big deal for Cathy to get married.”

  “And move out of the trailer. And for Davey and Jane to buy it.”

  “And for me to expose Alex to my mom,” she said with a sigh.

  My stomach made a sound like Godzilla.

  “You need to feed that,” Josie said with a laugh.

  I took another handful of gummy bears and followed her advice.

  “Sometimes I wonder if my mom will remarry,” Josie said in a small voice. “It would take some of the burden off me.”

  “Can you imagine the kind of guy she’d pick, though? Aunt Marlene ain’t got the best judgment, you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” Josie said with a snort. She upped the cruise control to seventy-eight. “I know. It stops me cold. I hope Alex doesn’t run screaming from my fucked up family.”

  “Hey! I’m in that fucked up family and Alex likes me just fine!”

  “You’re the normal one.”

  I choked on a bear. “If I’m the normal one, you’re doomed.”

  “I know,” she groaned. “My mom’ll view Alex as a bucking bronco to be ridden.”

  I swallowed, a bit sick suddenly. “Thanks for that image.”

  My stomach made a sound like a vacuum cleaner sucking up a sausage.

  “Jesus, Darla. What did you drink?”

  “We just ate some spiked ice cream! I—oh, shit, Josie, you gotta pull over.” I felt like a giant hydroelectric dam in one of those summer blockbuster disaster films where one brick pops off and a little leak starts. Then another. Then another.