Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

  Trevor happened to walk in the door, six-pack in hand. He took in the scene. “What’s up?”

  “Darla and Amy are defending their perverted bestiality porno shit reading,” I declared.

  “It’s NOT shit! I don’t write shit!” Darla shouted.

  “And it’s not porn!” Amy added.

  “Write?” Now I understood, and turned to Darla. “You wrote that story? Knots in penises and werewolves? What do they teach you in those English classes at Harvard?” She had been bragging about her part-time schedule at the Harvard Extension school for the past year.

  “A hell of a lot more than you’d think,” she snapped back. Trevor unloaded the beer into the fridge and came back into the living room. Sam disappeared back into the bathroom.

  “Explain,” Trevor said, settling on the couch next to Darla.

  Amy and Darla exchanged a look.

  “Spill,” Trevor said, his hand stroking up Darla’s wrist to her shoulder, lips nuzzling her neck. A hot blast of want plowed through me, except I wanted to do that to Charlotte.

  “I’m writing,” Darla said. She was uncharacteristically brief, which was fine with me. That woman’s mouth was turned on more often than a horny seventeen-year-old guy at a porn movie awards show.

  “You’re writing werewolf romance novels?” Trevor pried.

  “Yes.”

  “For class?”

  “Sorta.”

  “You can speak in more than one- to two-word sentences,” Trevor coaxed.

  “I know.” A smile twitched at her lips.

  Trevor reached for the e-reader. Darla swiped it from Amy and sat on it.

  “That just gives me an excuse to grab your ass,” Trevor announced. Great. Like we needed to see Trevor grab Darla’s ass any more than we already did. Made me think about Charlotte’s ass, nice and snug against the cloth of her skirt, the curve of—

  Get out of my head, Charlotte. She kept creeping in every time I saw one of my friends with their chick.

  “I’m a little hurt,” Trevor gasped as he wrestled Darla on the couch. Amy skittered out of the way and ran into the bathroom as Trevor and Darla looked like they were Greco-Roman wrestling. At least they were clothed.

  “I don’t want you to read it and think it sucks,” she gasped as Trevor prevailed and got the e-reader.

  “Do you write about me?”

  “Do you have a double-knotted penis?”

  “Shhh. That was our little secret.”

  “Little.” I laughed.

  Trevor glared at me. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m not the guy who sleeps with you two. Speaking of which, where is Joe? We have a gig next week and he said he’d be here this weekend to practice. Sam and I have to strip tonight but we have tomorrow to practice.”

  “He’s on his way,” Darla announced as Trevor began reading the e-reader.

  “Travis? Your main character’s name is TRAVIS?” he shouted. “And….” He tapped the screen, scanned, and then repeated that a few times. “Josh?” He rolled his eyes. “You’re writing werewolf romance novels about Travis and Josh and—”

  “Danielle,” she muttered.

  “Oh, this isn’t autobiographical or anything,” he said with great sarcasm.

  “Are you a secret werewolf I don’t know about?” Darla spat out.

  Trevor started to laugh as someone knocked on the door. “No, but you make me want to howl at the moon and do crazy things involving my un-knotted dick,” he said just as Joe walked in the door.

  Pissed.

  “Jesus, Trev, you knew I was coming home today and you still can’t stop keeping her to yourself? Thanks a fuck of a lot.”

  “Right. That’s exactly what I was doing. You nailed it, Joe.”

  “Looks like you were about to nail it.”

  “I thought you two didn’t get jealous of each other?” Amy asked. “Isn’t that the whole point of how your threesome works?” She looked to Darla for clarification, but Darla looked like she was a beet attached to a bicycle pump.

  “Shut up,” they all said in unison.

  “Hey!” Sam barked. Somehow the room went from friendly ribbing about Darla’s werewolf porn writing to a massive testosterone standoff in three seconds.

  Joe had that effect on people.

  “It? I am not an it,” Darla protested.

  “No, you’re a chick who writes werewolf porn,” I said. All eyes were on me in a glare. Shit. Time to go grab a beer.

  Removing myself from the line of fire, I buried my head in their fridge. Darla practically lived there, and with Amy’s frequent visits the two managed to keep a decent amount of food here. My dinky studio had a dorm-sized fridge, which meant it barely held enough beer for me for one night.

  Trevor and Sam had actual green and orange vegetables in their fridge. Dairy products that hadn’t expired. And much better beer. I grabbed a Fat Tire and listened in. Watching fights between Darla, Trevor, and Joe was better than catching any reality show on cable. Someone should start a Threesomes show.

  “We weren’t talking about having sex with each other,” Darla told Joe. “We were talking about my writing.” She reached over for him and kissed that puckered-mouth asshole’s cheek. He really was an anal-retentive, condescending pseudo-blue blood even when he didn’t realize it. Still, he was great at business and had something I couldn’t put my finger on when it came to playing bass. Without him, the band lacked a spark. A small one, but it was obvious.

  “Writing? What are you writing? Sweepstakes entries for your mom?”

  And there you go. Asshole couldn’t help it.

  Amy gasped and began chattering a long string of feminist stuff at Joe, who just smirked. They had a routine, like an old married couple, except more bitter. Darla clutched the e-reader to her boobs like it was a hungry baby. Trevor put his hands on his hips and caught my eye. Then he looked at my beer.

  Grab me one, he mouthed, so what the hell—I got one from the fridge, tossed it to him, and the two of us just watched.

  “I am writing a romance novel,” Darla declared.

  “Why?” Joe asked. Laughed his way through the question.

  “My creative writing professor at Harvard said I should.”

  That stopped his laughter. “She did?”

  “He. He did.” She cut her eyes over to Amy. “He’s hot. Like, really hot. And his writing has won awards…”

  “Why would a Harvard prof recommend writing romance novels?” Joe sneered.

  “Because it’s what he does for a living when he’s not teaching at the extension school.”

  The sneer melted.

  “Huh?”

  I had to admit, I was as confused as Joe. Romance novels are those silly books with the half-dressed woman from the 1800s with some dumb jock type with a barrel chest trying to sniff her to death.

  “He makes way more money writing romance novels than he does teaching,” Darla explained.

  Joe cut her off. “Then he must not be a good teacher.”

  “He’s tenured at Harvard.”

  “Oh.” That meant Joe’s categorization of the world was falling apart. This was going to be fun.

  “Your professor at Harvard told you to start writing werewolf porn for a class?” I asked, nudging Trevor. He gave me a grin and then snuffed it out when Darla and Joe gave him the side eye.

  “It’s not porn!” she and Amy shrieked in unison. “It’s romance.”

  “What’s the difference?” Joe asked.

  Darla took a deep breath as if she’d planned for this question. “A romance novel has one woman and one man and an emotionally satisfying ‘happily ever after’ ending.”

  “What about gay couples?” Sam asked.

  “Okay…they count,” Darla added. She looked at Trev and Joe with a dark expression. “But not threesomes.”

  “So you can write about werewolves falling in love and it’s a romance novel but three humans can’t have a happily-ever-af
ter?” Trevor said, agog.

  “Not when one of the guys keeps hogging the woman,” Joe said darkly, under his breath.

  Amy interrupted. “I think you can, but everyone knows writing menage romance is a career ender. Darla would be finished before she even got started. No one wants to read threesome romance.”

  Darla frowned. “Amy and I disagree on that one, but for now she’s right, and my professor says the same thing: if you want to make a good, part-time income, you write male-female romance with a happily-ever-after and hairy feet.”

  “Huh?” All four of us guys grunted at the same time. She sounded like those women on douche commercials. Like she spoke a language I didn’t ever want to understand.

  “Animal shifter romance is what I like to write, and so far, I like to read it. My professor had us take the ‘monster’ classics—Dracula and Frankenstein—and write a short story of our own based on a classic monster. I picked a werewolf,” Darla elaborated.

  “Why?” Joe put his arm around her and seemed to thaw. That guy could be jumping her bones right now if he’d walked through the door with a better attitude. Instead we were talking about romance novels and hairy feet.

  “He said I should expand the story. That I have a gift.” She blushed and looked up at Joe under her hooded lids. Even I couldn’t be an asshole to that. She was hopeful and eager, and if Joe cut her down so help me I’d—

  “That’s cool! But what do you mean, ‘career’?” he asked.

  “My professor says I should try to get my book published. Write a series and make some money. Like Twilight.”

  Every person in the room groaned hard. “You want to write about a woman with the facial expression of dried spooge?” I asked.

  “What expression does dried spooge have?” she shot back.

  “Just hanging around for too long and overstaying its welcome.”

  “I don’t want to write about Bella and Edward. I want to write my own stories. About werewolf cops and—”

  We all burst into laughter. Except Amy and Darla.

  “It’s not funny, and fuck all of you!” Darla shouted. “When you were all snot-nosed little shits someone told you your music had promise. What if they’d just laughed at you and said it was porn and—”

  “Actually, my dad did just laugh,” I said.

  “Someone believed in you!” she insisted.

  I looked at Trevor. “Your mom,” I said.

  He nodded. “She gave us the garage to practice in.”

  “Then be Trevor’s mom for me right now if you can muster it, or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else I’ll make you the victim of a werewolf attack and have them dining on your eviscerated bowels. Liam is a great name for a character.”

  “Lovely.”

  “How about we give you some material for sex scenes,” Joe whispered to her, but loud enough for everyone to hear. He steered her to Trevor’s bedroom.

  She said something to him that included the words “sex toy.”

  Which made me think of Charlotte.

  In the week that had passed, the guys had thought it was fucking funny to make that damn blowup doll show up in weird places. Passenger seat of my car. Their toilet. In their fridge bent in half, hole poking out with a banana in it. Playing Joe’s bass while sitting on the couch.

  I hadn’t seen her—it!—all day, so I knew it was coming.

  But Charlotte…

  Trevor watched Joe walk down the halfway with Darla, then turned to me and said, “Speaking of sex toys…”

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “I was thinking more about our conversation the other night. About Charlotte and the pregnancy.”

  Oh, fuck. I did not want to talk about this, but it was better to go on the offensive. “You mean the fact that I shoot blanks?”

  “Yep.” He gave me a look of pity. “That’s gotta hurt.”

  “No. When I come it feels just as good as it does for everyone else.”

  “Dude.” He gave me a hard look. What was this, the Dr. Phil show?

  “You want me to cry and sob like a pussy about the fact that I got mumps when I was at an age where it can fry your nads? Because that’s it. Simple story. Nothing to it.” That was the most I’d ever said about it to anyone other than my doctor and my mom.

  “And Charlotte knew that and still fucked someone else and got knocked up?”

  I straightened. “Sort of.”

  Sam and Amy watched our conversation quietly. “You never told her,” she said in a flat voice. For some reason, it sounded like an indictment. Like I’d done something wrong.

  “No.” I tried. I really had tried, a thousand times while we dated. But what teen guy wants to confess to the chick he loves that he’ll never be a daddy? Mom and Dad and the doctors confirmed it when I was sixteen. Nothing like shooting off a load in a bathroom with a Playboy magazine and handing your hot cup of jizz off to a nurse while your mother watches.

  When you’re sixteen.

  For two different specialists.

  The test results weren’t a surprise, but they were a source of rage. Shame. Something. My teeth ground against each other and my hands itched to do…something. Hit something. Play something.

  Anything but this conversation.

  Amy closed her eyes and nodded. “I get it. You knew you couldn’t father children. Charlotte got pregnant. You assumed she cheated on you. End of story.”

  “Right.”

  “Is that why you dumped her like that? So coldly on the phone?” Amy asked.

  I whipped around, surprised. “You knew that?”

  “Only later. Maybe…two years ago? Rumors. People got together and you talk and…” Her voice trailed off. “I defended you. I said you’d never, ever be that cold to someone. That you were too kind to do such a thing.”

  Sam froze. My past with Amy wasn’t a secret, but he clearly didn’t like it being aired like this. After he’d disappeared on her, and after Charlotte fucked me over, we’d turned to each other and, in a moment of weakness, slept with each other.

  Not a mistake, but not something I wanted tossed out there in front of Sam right now.

  “You never told me,” Amy said softly. Her big, brown eyes locked on mine with an enormous accusation.

  “I never told anyone, except him.” I pointed to Trevor, who crossed his arms over his chest and glowered.

  “And I kept my mouth shut because you don’t talk about this kind of hit.”

  “Hit?” Amy asked, frowning.

  He pretended to be gut punched. “Yeah. Hit. Can you imagine what he went through? I’d have thrown the phone through a window and gone all Hulk-crazy if that happened to me. Trying to pass off the baby as Liam’s?”

  Thanks, bro.

  “Trevor!” Darla’s voice carried out into the living room. “It’s a full moon and we need your hairy ass in here. Joe’s got the hairy feet covered.”

  “My feet aren’t hairy!” Joe’s cries of protest mingled with the sound of Darla giggling.

  Trevor grinned. “I gotta go.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, watching Sam and Amy murmur a bunch of sickly sweet crap to each other and kiss.

  “Everyone’s got a date tonight except me,” I mumbled. The beer in me was only rented and it was time to vacate, so I went to the bathroom, opened the door and—

  My blow-up doll date was in the shower with a sign taped to her:

  “I’m your number one fan.”

  Chapter Seven

  Charlotte

  “There’s a boa constrictor loose in Boothman.” The call from security at 3:22 a.m. woke me out of a hot dream involving Liam and a blowup sex doll. It was like 9 1/2 Weeks meets Naked Lunch.

  I was wet and throbbing and panting slightly. “A what?” I barked into the phone.

  “A boa constrictor.”

  “As in a snake? A giant snake is loose in one of the buildings?”

  “Yep.” The voice on the other
end of the line was new to me. The start of every semester meant we had a new crop of student workers. This wasn’t Dale Evanston, the assistant chief of police calling me. That voice I knew. A little too well. Or the director of campus security, Sharon Dunston.

  This was Anonymous Minimum Wage Student Worker #17.

  “What am I supposed to do about it?” I asked.

  “I…uh…” He went from being casual to worried. “I don’t know. I just know protocol says I inform the resident director on duty.”

  “Did you call animal control, too?”

  “The students said they did.”

  “Were they drunk?”

  “Um…they said they weren’t, but they also said the reason the snake got loose was because the ping-pong ball from beer pong popped into the cage and they opened it to get it and—”

  I threw off the covers and started fishing around in my drawers for clean sweats. And fresh underwear, because mine were soaked.

  God damn Liam and my dreams.

  “The first rule of working in student services is never automatically believe what the students tell you. What’s your name?”

  “Dan.” His voice cracked.

  “Dan, you call animal control right now,” I said with a long sigh. “What room was this in?”

  “412. They really did swear they weren’t drunk,” he added in a pleading voice. I pattern matched in my mind to the best of my middle-of-the-night abilities. Freshman quad. Four drunk eighteen year olds with a six-foot snake.

  An escaped six-foot snake.

  Awesome.

  “Thanks.”

  “So…you need me for anything?”

  Eye roll. “Just call animal control and document it in the log.”

  “Should I review the security tapes?” His voice was a little too eager, just like my RA Jordan’s had been the other day. The student workers loved to watch security video. I think they’re all destined to become NSA agents.

  “No. If we need to do that, the RDs like me will handle it.”

  Disappointment filled his voice. “Okay. Thanks.” Click.

  “Go into residence life, they said. It will be fun, they said,” I muttered as I threw on new pants and a crappy old hoodie from high school with some band slogan on it. Saturday nights in the dorms were always a bit crazy, but so far this night I’d handled two lockouts because the RAs were busy doing other things, one case of a female freshman coming back to her room and walking in on her roommate having hot monkey sex with her boyfriend, two overstudied premed students who fell asleep in the elevator, and one male student who systematically lit cigarettes and flicked them out of a twelfth-story window, singeing one woman’s butt-length hair.