Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

“—then at this point we can’t do anything about it. Maybe send a reminder about overnight guests.”

  That perked Jordan right up. “I’ll do a text blast right now!” She skittered off and back into the building.

  Maggie groaned. “Overeager new RA. She’s not even on duty!”

  “They’re all overeager until they key into a room where there’s an orgy. Or remember last year, after ComicCon, the Harry Potter cosplay thing?” I tried to scrub the image from my mind. Nothing like walking in on Harry Potter and Snape in the middle of some wild sex.

  “Or the RA who insisted that 413 in Entenmen was growing pot plants on the windowsill, and ate a bunch to prove his point.” Maggie shook her head sadly. “Turned out to be some half-poisonous plant and he had to have his stomach pumped.”

  “Power corrupts,” I said with a chuckle, eyes on the crowd.

  “And tiny amounts of power seem to make the battles so much bigger,” she added.

  Liam waved to me, and the entire crowd turned as one monolithic group of faces, agog and shrewd, watching carefully.

  “Excuse me, miss? Are you in charge here?” he asked.

  Maggie turned away, laughing too hard.

  “Why yes, sir, I am. Technically, though, my friend Maggie Pritchard is the resident director on duty.”

  Maggie froze suddenly, her face serious. “You need help?” she called out to Liam.

  “I need a shovel.” Nervous laughter from the crowd. “Any way you can help me to…” He waved his arms toward the crowd, the women still touching his arms and back. He took a few steps back and they moved with him. “I need to get in my car and go home.”

  The crowd peppered him with questions and comments and requests.

  “Where were you last night? Which room?”

  “No! Don’t leave! My friend Heather is on her way and she wants to get a picture!”

  “You just got here—where’s the rest of the band?”

  “Is Trevor here?”

  He shrugged and tried not to laugh.

  Just as I was about to call them all off, a piercing scream filled the air. And not the kind you hear from an excited groupie.

  “OMIGOD GET AWAY GET AWAY!” one of the girls yelled, and en masse the chunk of fused human flesh that had simply become Liam’s harem parted, leaving him in front of an empty driver’s-side door.

  The screams escalated. The back of my neck started to tingle, because there’s one thing you learn when you live with hundreds of women for years on end, and that’s how to distinguish a good scream from a bad scream.

  “Thanks, ladies,” Liam said, grabbing his chance to leave. Instinct made me rocket down the dorm’s entrance stairs in bare feet, shooting past the gape-mouthed women as he climbed in. His car door slammed shut just as I reached the passenger side door, the women’s screams filling my ears.

  And then I saw it, just as Liam began shouting, “WHAT THE FUCK!” and scrambled to get back out of the car as fast as he could. The women stood on the periphery, recording every moment. Some tiny sliver of awareness in the back of my mind made a note to check Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat periodically throughout the day. And YouTube.

  Because in the passenger seat of Liam’s car, there sat Esme, her shocked expression well suited for the fact that her mouth was being face-fucked by the head of a six-foot-long boa constrictor.

  Chapter Nine

  Liam

  “These videos are amazing. Can you get your fans to tag them #RAOCROX on social media? Because at the rate these things are appearing and going viral, we could get a blip on Google Trends for the band.”

  “You’re speaking Greek to me, Darla. What the hell did all that mean?”

  “It means that whatever you were up to at Charlotte’s place, do more of it. The blowup sex doll and the snake combo is brilliant. We couldn’t have planned better promotion!”

  “I didn’t plan a fucking thing.” I shuddered. Charlotte later texted me to tell me Ernie thought it would be funny to put the doll in my front seat, when he put the parking pass in there. So he did. No one knew how the snake got in my car, though the rusted-out hole in the back seat probably made it damn easy.

  Most of the videos were mercifully short, with all the major, most embarrassing action in a single sixty-second part.

  “Now we know that your falsetto range is a good two octaves higher than we realized,” Darla said with a slow shake of her head. “I haven’t heard a guy sing notes that high who still has his balls attached.”

  “Fuck you,” I snapped back. “I was scared. You try getting in a car with a killer snake and not scream like a little girl.”

  Enough chicks videotaped that entire scene to cover the event and turn me into a screaming weirdo that now it was all anyone wanted to talk about. There I was, on clip after clip, freaking out when I got in the car, pushed the key in the ignition, and turned to find a giant snake thrashing in my front seat while doing unspeakable kinky shit to my blowup girlfriend.

  You try staying cool through that. Of course, I shouted and got the fuck out of my own car as fast as I could. Charlotte was on the passenger side of the car, staring at Esme and the snake with a dumbfounded expression. All she kept saying on video after video was, “Are you all right? Did you get hurt?”

  The genuine emotion in her voice was what made me watch these stupid clips over and over.

  “Did you and Charlotte get back together?” Sam asked, sauntering in from his bedroom. I figured Amy would emerge in a few minutes. Instead, I heard the shower go on. Sam’s head tipped up, like his ears were on fire, and then he abandoned his question—and me—to march into the bathroom.

  Everyone was getting some. Me? I spooned last night. Spooned. You know how sexually satisfying spooning is to a guy? About as much fun as taking a shower while wearing a tie.

  Meaning it makes zero sense.

  “You gonna answer his question?” Darla asked, staring at me with a gleam in her eye. She was hot to learn more about what transpired last night out at Charlotte’s college, and not just because some stupid escaped snake made the band an overnight viral sensation. Or, at least, me. I was the sensation. Me and my blowup girlfriend and our snake.

  “We’re not together,” I said as roughly as I could to get her off my back. “Don’t you have vampire penises to research?”

  “What?”

  “Your writing. You’ve moved on to vampires now, right? What about zombies? Zombie sex is popular.”

  She threw a couch pillow at me. “Fuck off. Zombie sex is disgusting. Everything would fall off in the middle of doin’ it. Who wants a guy’s tongue to break off in the middle of—”

  Trevor chose that exact moment to walk down the hall in his shorts. The look on his face as he heard what Darla was saying mirrored mine, and he turned right around and walked back to his room. Couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to hear this shit either.

  “Then again,” she rambled on, “that zombie love movie was okay. Maybe you’re on to something, Liam.”

  I said nothing. Sometimes that shut her up. No luck today, though.

  “So you and Charlotte?”

  “There is no ‘me and Charlotte.’”

  “Then what were you doing at her university?”

  “Hanging out.”

  “You dating someone from there? With Esme in tow? C’mon. Spill your guts.”

  “I don’t have guts to spill. Besides, if I did, they’d just end up in one of your new books.”

  “Your guts? No. I told you I don’t write about zombies.”

  “Ha ha.” I really didn’t want to talk about this. Really. My mind was a blender of confusion about Charlotte, and add in the adrenaline surge from finding that fucking snake in my car… At least Esme was gone. The snake popped it while squeezing her. Animal control threw her in the dumpster where she belonged, and took the snake somewhere I didn’t care about.

  Just get it away from me.

  If you watched the videos on YouTube, there w
as only one (so far) where you could actually hear what Charlotte said to me in that moment when I was in the car and freaking out. And it was faint—so faint you had to turn the sound on your phone all the way up until the static and the screams from the girls were unbearable—but I swear she said:

  “I can’t lose you.”

  Which meant some part of her thought she found me.

  That made me ache and burn all at once, all at the same time. Why didn’t I talk to her when I had the chance? The rush of security people and animal control and EMS paramedics checking me out meant she faded off, gone by the time the hoopla was contained. I left with an empty car and a full chest, emotions too big to be held inside my ribcage.

  “You really think she cheated on you, all those years ago?” Darla asked quietly.

  I closed my eyes, just focusing on my breathing, like I did most of the drive home this morning (except for the eye-closing part). When you just inhale and exhale and that’s all you are, sometimes you can coax the little shattered pieces of yourself to come back for a little bit.

  “Yes.” It’s a truth I’d known with such conviction and pain that I couldn’t imagine answering that question any other way. Because if I was wrong, oh, God, if I was wrong…

  But I wasn’t. I’m sterile, and you can’t get anyone pregnant when the swimmers don’t swim.

  “What if…” She frowned and put down her phone. As she leaned in toward me, I saw confusion in her eyes. “What if you’re not?”

  “Not what?”

  “Sterile.”

  Like I hadn’t thought about that a million times. But the doctors were clear. Only eighteen months before she told me she was pregnant, I’d had the tests. Zippo. Nothing. No tadpoles, not even with broken tails. My sperm were not showing up at all. My chance at fatherhood was like a bad first date, where you don’t even get a chance. Stood up. No show.

  “The doctor confirmed it.” Hopefully my tone of voice would make her back off. “Twice.”

  “Shit.” Funny how that word could sound compassionate coming out of Darla’s mouth.

  “Yeah. So unless Charlotte became Jesus’ mom overnight, the only way she got pregnant five years ago is the simplest way: by fucking someone else.” Normally this conversation made me angry. Hurt. Betrayed. It triggered everything from five years ago, but not this time. Not right now.

  Right now I was just sad.

  And that’s worse than anger, betrayal, or even rage.

  The negative emotions are so much easier to bang out, to react to, to do something about. The sad ones? Like grief, sorrow, and all that shit? Those you can just feel. You can’t really do anything to make sadness go away. You can ignore it, you can turn it into something more destructive, you can talk about it (yeah, right) or you can let it wash over you like a wave that has an undertow so strong it will pull you out to sea.

  And leave you drifting.

  Fuck that shit.

  I balled up my hands and stood, a plume of fury directed suddenly at Darla. It wasn’t her fault. She was just the most convenient target right now.

  “You looking for materials for a book? I don’t think you’ve ever had a conversation with me that lasted longer than this.”

  “You never talked to me for longer than this.”

  “You never let me get a word in edgewise for longer than this.”

  “You keep making that joke, but c’mon.” She went serious, and for a split second I thought about opening up to her. Spilling the whole story. She pretty much guessed it, and what more was there to say? Charlotte couldn’t get pregnant any other way than having live semen hit her eggs. And my semen were as dead as could be. Dead like Edward Cullen.

  Wait. I take it back. Even he could have kids.

  “You can’t stop thinking about her, can you?” Darla got up and fished around in the fridge for something. A bowl of strawberries came out, her hand already on one, the fruit in her mouth as she spoke around it, mumbling. “A woman you can’t stop thinking about is one you need to try harder with.”

  “Sometimes you sound like a really bad country song, Darla.”

  A line of red strawberry juice rolled down the corner of her mouth, lending an eerie, vampire-like quality to her. She wiped it up with her thumb joint and said, “That about sums me up. Your dog lost a leg, your truck done broke down, your swimmers all died and your girl’s come to town.”

  Trevor groaned from two rooms over.

  “You won’t win The Voice with lyrics like that,” I said.

  A loud groan, this one from the shower, split the air.

  “Jesus, they at it again?” Trevor said loudly as he finally got up the balls to come in the living room. The man walked around in his boxer briefs nonstop. Then again, I walked around my apartment naked half the time, so who was I to judge.

  Naked. Charlotte. My hand on her last night, still touching her this morning until I had to sneak out. Illicit and weird, it seemed so wrong to crawl out a window. I’m a twenty-three year old man, for fuck’s sake. But there was something tantalizing about it, too.

  And, hey—it was Charlotte.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Darla asked. She was down to the final berry in the bowl. Trevor snatched it up and ate it. She just grinned at him, a smile of love and mirth that made something in me crack.

  The last person to look at me that way was Charlotte. Five years without that kind of grin can make you go a bit mad.

  “It’s always nice when pussy occupies your tongue,” Trevor said, grabbing a kitchen chair and turning it around, straddling it.

  “Dude. Your junk is hanging out.” I turned away. This was my cue to exit. He looked down and rearranged the cotton of his shorts.

  Darla reached over. “Let me help you with that,” she purred.

  Jesus fucking Christ. Between Sam and Amy regrouting the shower with his spooge, and Darla and Trevor acting out a scene in a bad porno movie, this was getting to be Horny Central.

  Which would be fine if I had someone to practice resting my horn in.

  “Gotta go,” I announced. No one cared. By the time I shut the door, Trevor had stopped straddling the chair and Darla was straddling him.

  Me? I had a hard-on the size of Joe’s bass and no one but YouPorn to turn to. Time to release the swimmers who would just sit there, flopping and useless, a constant reminder that I couldn’t give women the one, simple thing other guys could.

  From bad country music to a Heart song.

  And while I normally enjoyed being the exception to the rule, in this case, I’d have preferred being just like everyone else.

  Charlotte

  Maggie had appeared at my door later that night, and we’d spent the last hour combing through social media. If I never read #RAOCROX again on Facebook and Twitter I’d be just fine. And so many photos of women’s cleavage next to Liam’s arms! If nothing else, couldn’t these freshmen aim?

  “Nice crotch shot,” Maggie murmured. That was the twentieth picture of Liam’s zipper I’d seen today.

  “They’re all ridiculous.”

  “Now here’s a status: Liam McCarthy had to sneak out of my room after we had sex in my dorm room. Fuck u RD! #RAOCROX.”

  I bristled.

  “We know he didn’t actually fuck anyone except you.”

  “We didn’t fuck!”

  Her face fell. “Damn. I was hoping to live vicariously through someone else’s sex life.”

  “Then talk to Rachel.” I pointed to the Facebook status. “She’s the one fucking my ex. In Fantasyland.”

  We gave each other looks that only Residence Life professionals can give each other.

  “You realize seven women from your dorm are claiming to have had sex with him.”

  “Liam’s a virile guy.” I was starting to shake with laughter.

  “He gets around. How many windows can the man climb in and out of? Must have strong thigh muscles.” Maggie snorted as she read more on Twitter.

  “We should call Guinness. Mi
ght be a world record.”

  “Look at this one, Charlotte. I whispered a prayer on Liam’s cock and now all I gotta say is #RAOCROX.”

  “Nice. That’s Marcia Higgins. A poet and she doesn’t know it.”

  “Isn’t she the university chaplain’s daughter?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, then.”

  The gurgle of my coffeemaker ended with a loud hiss, like a long sigh. I mimicked it, then stood, pouring us both coffees and coming back to stare dumbly at the screen.

  “You ready to talk about what really happened?”

  “You mean you don’t believe he fucked seven different women in the dorm and singlehandedly strangled the boa constrictor that a Muslim terrorist planted in his car?”

  She squinted at the screen. “Is that the latest mashup of rumors?”

  “Pretty much. Give it another day and I’m sure the rumors will devolve into his fucking the boa constrictor in the car while seven women made love to the blowup doll.”

  “That’s better than some of the shit people are claiming on Twitter. Did you see this?”

  The tweet: The only snake that matters is in my pants. #RAOCROX

  “From Liam McCarthy’s Twitter account.”

  “Oh, man. He tweet anything else?” Leave it to Liam to go on the offensive. Why play it cool when you can be arrogant and cocky?

  Maggie nodded slowly, then turned away from the screen. “You need to talk about this.” That was not a question.

  “I need,” I said, peering around her to read the screen, “to know what else he tweeted.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “Maggie!”

  She moved. I read.

  His tweet: And the only woman who matters is the one who won’t admit I was in her room.

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered, suddenly flushed, but it wasn’t just the coffee warming me up. Five years of silence, of being completely frozen out, and now we were thawing slowly.

  Slowly might have been a misnomer, because of all the ways I’d envisioned reuniting on any level with Liam, having part of it captured on photo and video and including a crazy snake wasn’t in the dreams.