Random Acts of Love (Random Series #5) Read online

  “Can’t we just be husbands and wives?” I snapped.

  That shut them up.

  “Actually, we can’t,” Trevor said, rolling away and staring up at the ceiling, his arms slid over his head and under his pillow. Unlike Joe’s darker, compact torso, Trevor’s stretched out, golden skin and more hair now than when I met him. My eyes took him in, trying not to turn to him. If I did, Joe would get jealous. Instead, I surreptitiously catalogued him. His body had definitely changed. Matured. Filled out.

  Mine was the same. Joe’s was the same. But Trevor was still maturing.

  “Mike and Dylan got married and then they proposed to Laura,” I blurted out. I worked for my Aunt Josie and her friend, Laura, who was in a relationship with two billionaires. Had a little girl with them and was pregnant with their second child. We’d all met up at a local diner and at least now I had a kind of a road map for how the three of us might move forward.

  “I’m not marrying my something,” Joe protested. “Especially Trevor.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  Trevor sat up, fast. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you marry me? There’s nothing wrong with me.” He sniffed his pits. “Nothing a shower won’t cure.”

  “You are not marriage material,” Joe snapped.

  “Says who?”

  “If anyone’s marrying him, it’s me,” I muttered.

  See? Wisdom don’t mean shit unless you use it.

  “You want to marry him?” Joe said in a tight voice, the sound of a steel door being slammed shut between him and the world.

  “No.”

  “You don’t?” Now Trevor’s hurt voice poured over me from his side.

  Aw, fuck. How in the hell did this happen? One minute we’re doing the three-backed nasty and having sweaty orgasms, and the next minute I’ve managed to offend both of them.

  Welcome to my life.

  “I like our relationship the way it is,” I said, trying to soothe both hurt egos.

  “You like living with Trevor and Sam and Amy while I live separately from you?” Joe spat out.

  “That’s not what I—”

  “And you just said you wouldn’t marry me,” Trevor barked. We were now a tangle of naked bodies and twisted sheets, both men pulled back from me, the absence of their skin making this worse somehow.

  “You’re both twisting my words!”

  “Your words are clear!” they shouted in unison, then looked at each other in shock.

  And then those motherfuckers high fived each other.

  Men.

  “I think you two need to marry each other,” I said in a verbal Hail Mary pass that had the intended effect.

  Their looks of self-righteous satisfaction melted to the look of Pete Carroll in the waning seconds of Superbowl IL.

  “I’m not marrying him!” they said in unison. No giddy high five followed.

  “Why is he good enough for me to marry but not good enough for you?” I challenged Trevor, whose face puckered in consternation at my turn of logic. Heh. You live in a relationship with a guy at Harvard and Penn Law and you learn a few things.

  “She’s got you there, Trev,” Joe said with a smirk.

  “That goes double for you,” I said to him, tilting my head and studying his fine ass as he sat up, head against the headboard.

  “Double?”

  “Why can I marry Trevor but you can’t?”

  “My mother would sooner eat canned Spam than watch me marry Trevor.”

  “She got something against gay people?”

  “WE’RE NOT GAY!” Joe and Trevor shouted in unison, yet again. This time they both grabbed a blanket and covered themselves.

  I was left untouched, uncovered. Unmoored. Unmarried.

  “You don’t have to shout.” The air in the room was charged. A simple request for my attendance at dinner at Trevor’s parents’ house had turned into this.

  “I never said you’re gay. Besides, I know you’re not gay. If anyone knows you’re not gay, it’s me, you dumbasses.”

  Bzzz.

  Saved by the phone.

  It was a text for me. Sam. Then a quick one from Liam.

  “We have a meeting in fifteen minutes. Remember?” I said, climbing over the bed at Joe’s feet and grabbing fresh clothes from my drawer. “I’ll take the first shower.”

  Joe and Trevor exchanged one of those looks I never understood.

  “Why waste water?” Trevor said as he rooted in his dresser for new clothes. “I’ll join you.”

  Joe grabbed his clothes from the floor. “Me too.”

  “This ain’t Eden, guys. The shower is a three-foot by three-foot itty bitty thing. Sam and Amy can go at it in there, but that’s only two people.”

  “Are you saying you only want one of us in there?” Joe asked in a cold voice.

  “No,” I said evenly, not taking his bait. “But I am saying that it’s so small one of you might have to take it up the butt from the shower handle if we’re not careful.”

  Joe and Trevor looked at each other. “I’m not sure whether that’s an argument for, or against all three of us in the shower,” Trevor said as Joe lunged at me and I raced into the bathroom, giggling as he grabbed my ass.

  Those men. Take something serious and turn it into arguments and sex. Couldn’t we all just get along?

  I turned on the faucet and soon steam filled the air, Trevor and Joe in the tiny bathroom with me, like a sexed-up locker room. I pulled back the shower curtain and climbed in. No way I would be last. If I’m taking it up the butt, the item in question needs to be attached to either Trevor or Joe. Not the wall.

  By the time all three of us were in there, it was like Michelle Duggar’s vagina. A clown car. I couldn’t actually get any water on me with the exception of Trevor’s drool as his rock-hard cock slid up against the cleft of my ass.

  “Ow!” Joe snapped. “That’s not funny.”

  “What’s not funny?” I asked, all their heat enveloping me, the trickle of water and close proximity to them both making me want to get off. How could we just have sex and I still wanted more? It was like eating a big bowl of ice cream and longing for Oreos. Made no sense. Defied basic biology.

  And yet it was as good as fact.

  “Trevor took the back scrubber and started shoving it in my ass cheeks.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.” I reached back and found the object in question. That’s what was rubbing against my cleft. I pulled on it and held it up for Joe to see.

  “He’s right. That’s not what’s poking your ass.”

  Joe jumped out of the shower in horror, pointing at Trevor. “You asshole.”

  Trevor and I dissolved into a mass of jiggling flesh. Well, I jiggled. Trevor shook.

  “Not my fault. At least it wasn’t the shower faucet handle.”

  “I’d rather get assfucked by an inanimate object than your pinkie dick.”

  “We can arrange that,” I declared.

  “Pinkie dick?” Trevor peeled himself off me and stepped outside the shower in front of Joe. The phrase “pinkie dick” was about as accurate as calling Marshawn Lynch “little fella”.

  “Don’t wave your shit around in front of me like that,” Joe snapped.

  “That’s what we do,” Trevor said slowly. I stood in the shower, enjoying the hot water all to myself, but I let out an irritated sigh, too. Was this ever going to stop? Joe’s jealousy went on and on and on. Going to the Island of Eden and finally coming together as a threesome should have helped. Finishing his first year of law school and, now, coming up on year two should have made a difference. Just being together for as long as we had should have toned down his inner whatever that made him explode whenever he thought Trevor was doing something wrong.

  It was like being in a group of kids who have to share a bag of candy and you have that one extra piece. There’s always that one guy who insists on cutting it nine ways with a knife. I’m more the type to just give it to
the kid who seems saddest, or to pop it in my own mouth when no one’s looking. That’s not morally consistent, but neither are human beings.

  Joe just couldn’t let go. Of anything.

  I guess those kids grow up to be lawyers.

  Bliss comes into our lives in many ways. Great sex with my men, a hot shower, and the eye candy of watching them, naked and glorious, as they argued face to face, was my bliss today. The hum of my earlier orgasm was still tingling through my skin, down past the epidermis and into my bloodstream, like the pressure of my heart pumping had a singular mission: to spread the joy their fingers and tongues and thighs and lips had brought to some parts of my body and make sure the rest felt it, too.

  That’s how you share.

  Bang bang bang.

  “We’re here!” Liam called out. “So cut out the kinky shit until we’re gone.” I poured a glop of shampoo on my hand, rubbed my palms together, then started shampooing my hair.

  Joe rolled his eyes but said, “It’s all kinky shit! Too bad your sex life sucks.”

  “Hi Joe,” called back a woman’s voice. Charlotte. “I’ve been meaning to tell you I saw your mom at one of my sex toy parties last week. Speaking of kinky shit...”

  Joe’s flag pole turned into a wet noodle.

  “That was low, Charlotte,” he called back as he pulled aside the curtain and snuggled up against my wet, soapy ass. His fingers plunged into the giant mass of white foam on my head and began to massage my scalp with a tender grace that was more erotic than anything we’d done in bed just a short while ago.

  “Your comment was even lower,” Charlotte called back, but Joe and I didn’t much care. I could see Trevor watching us from over the shower curtain rod, a perplexed look on his face.

  “Come on in,” I invited. Joe turned his head and jerked it toward us. That was as close to an invitation as Trev was getting from him.

  Trevor’s eyebrows twitched, and he snatched a towel from a hook on the back of the door and grabbed his pile of clean clothes. “Nah. You two have fun.”

  And with that, he left, but by the time the door closed we didn’t even notice.

  Trevor

  Whump.

  Liam and Charlotte all looked toward the bathroom with alarm. “What the hell was that?”

  Moan.

  They both relaxed.

  “Oh,” Charlotte said. “That.”

  “You leave them together naked and that’s what you get,” I explained. Joe didn’t get much time with Darla, so....

  “You leave most people together naked and that’s what you get,” Liam said, giving Charlotte’s shoulder a squeeze. He nuzzled her neck and I averted my eyes. My cock was straining so hard against the jeans I’d thrown on at the last minute. The conversation we’d had last year at Jeddy’s with Darla’s boss’s husbands popped into my mind. They’d been doing this forever. Like, almost fifteen years, with two different women.

  Was this my life...forever? Loving Darla and wanting Joe there, but always the object of his anger? It felt like something I had to tolerate for the sake of a greater good, but over time it got old. Really old. And like my Mom said when she invited me and Darla to dinner, it was time to think about my future. My long future, and not just the next day, the next month, the next semester.

  Time to think about how I want to be treated by the people I’m supposed to allow myself to be most vulnerable with. How real I want to let myself be. How authentic a person should be able to stretch and grow into being, before society’s smackdown hurts so much you waver.

  Joe was so shut down and quick to snap. I’m glad I’m not him. I know I don’t want that.

  What do I want? I want Darla. But do I want her forever?

  One of my classmates at Harvard got his girlfriend pregnant. She’s in her third year at Suffolk Law School, graduating in May. The baby’s due in August, and he’s nervous as fuck. The conversations we’ve had are bounded by how much he’s willing to share. Mostly, he focused on the practical side of it all: getting extra student loans to cover day care, wondering what her growing body will be like, making sure she was comfortable through morning sickness, running through all the times they had sex and knowing it wasn’t a birth control failure, hoping to God the baby comes out healthy and fine, breaking the news to family and friends...

  But in a quieter moment, while we were studying for a criminal law exam, at three a.m. in the morning he laughed and said, “Next year these late-night sessions won’t be so hard. I’ll be up with a baby anyhow. At least, that’s what our childbirth class instructor said.”

  And I was shot through the heart in that moment.

  One of our study group mates hid a look of horror at the thought. I just smiled. Said nothing. What could I say?

  I was sitting in the living room now and watching Liam and Charlotte, listening to Darla and Joe giggle in the bathroom and finish up, and I found myself jealous, too. Jealous of that classmate.

  He knew his future. Didn’t pick this exact path, but at least he knew it, and he knew it on his own terms. He knew who he loved. He knew how he loved. And in our society, even though out-of-wedlock babies still carry a whiff of stigma, it’s nothing like trying to move through life as a permanent threesome.

  I stood up and grabbed three beers, handing the other two to Liam and Charlotte. She demurred.

  “You pregnant?” I whispered.

  She laughed. “No. It’s not unreasonable to assume that.” Liam chuckled, too. “He can be five miles away and turn in my general direction and BAM!”

  “It takes a little more than that,” Liam joked.

  “I’m on duty later tonight and have to drive.”

  I set the bottle on the end table anyhow. Someone would grab it. “Gotcha.”

  “You seem pensive,” she added, tilting her head as she watched me.

  I liked Charlotte. We spent a lot of time hating her, thinking she’d lied to Liam for years about getting pregnant with his child. It turned out Liam thought he was sterile from a case of mumps when we were in high school, but the swimmers had regenerated. They’d reconciled. Hundreds of band groupies now hated Charlotte with a white-hot passion, because his party cock was retired for good.

  “Just tired.” Which was true. Tired of Joe and his insta-anger.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Okay.” Charlotte and Amy were quieter types who observed and absorbed. Darla, on the other hand, barreled into situations and said whatever was on her mind.

  “HEY! Charlotte!” Darla screamed, running into the living room wearing only a large beach towel. She gave Charlotte a huge hug. “My favorite person right now! You got any of those dildoes with a suction cup attached?”

  Like that.

  “Sure. You want the waterproof vibrating ones for the shower, I assume.”

  Any other woman would have blushed. Darla just sat down between Liam and Charlotte, wet hair and all, and answered, “Yeah. Got some with the little butt insert thing?”

  Liam took that as his cue to get up and go anywhere but there. And grab that extra beer on the end table.

  Joe came into the living room, toweling his hair, just as Sam and Amy walked in the front door.

  We were complete.

  Sometimes Tyler filled in for Joe on bass, but he didn’t count as a band member. Not technically. Good player, quiet dude, tatted up and kind of morose, but we paid him a flat fee for practices and performances. Besides, Joe wanted to be here more. We hadn’t used Tyler more than a handful of times.

  This was the band: me, Joe, Sam and Liam.

  And these were our women: Darla, Amy and Charlotte.

  Was this my future? Maybe it was already staring me in the face.

  A pink-cheeked Darla tipped her head back against the couch and smiled up at me, upside down. “You good?”

  I reached down and touched a long, stringy piece of her wet hair, lifting it, like pulling on wet rope. It smelled like coconut.

  “I’m good.”

  Joe brought a six
pack of bottled beer into the living room and set it on the end table. Efficient. He then pulled a small dropper bottle out of his front pocket and held it up.

  “Concentrates, anyone?”

  Liam’s eyes lit up. Sam’s face went neutral, a little too quickly to be true.

  Joe took the bottle out, grabbed a spoon, and put a drop of the honey-colored oil on it.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked. Liam got an uncomfortable look on his face.

  “Marijuana extract. Concentrates.” Joe showed her the spoon containing a single drop of oil. “That much is like one toke off a joint.”

  “You don’t smoke it or vape it? Or eat it in a brownie?” Charlotte asked, intrigued. That surprised me. She drank with us, but of the group she was definitely the person least likely to get fucked up on drugs or alcohol.

  “Not today. You can just dose by the drop. It’s processed pot distilled down to a pure oil.”

  Charlotte leaned away from him, ruminating. “That’s a new one on me. I thought most people smoked pot.”

  “Professional interest?” Amy asked.

  Charlotte laughed. “I guess so. The students in my dorm are always inventing new ways to get high.”

  Joe squirted an entire eye dropper full into his mouth. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said in a mumbly voice. I could tell he was holding the honey oil under his tongue to get high faster.

  Good. Maybe it would calm him down for a change.

  “Just keep it under control,” Darla said.

  “How about you get some clothes on?” I asked. She was sitting between Charlotte and Liam wearing nothing but a towel. A big beach towel, but still. Something primal rose up in me, a protectiveness that didn’t quite make sense. At the Island of Eden we’d all skinny dipped in public and been part of a raunchy sexfest that meant clothing was optional—and so were society’s standards.

  Why was a part of me freaking out that she was naked under that towel in front of all my best buddies?

  If emotions made sense, we’d all be robots.

  She pulled the top of the towel out from her tits just enough to give me a very nice eyeful, then muttered, “Good point,” standing and padding down to our room to get some clothes on. She popped into the bathroom, grabbed a pile of clothes, and marched off.