Read Online Random Acts of Trust by Julia Kent - Free Book Online Page B

The lilt floated on the air and caught in my ear, echoing like a measure you play over and over again for the sake of something meditative.
    Amy .
    I turned my head to follow the sound, her words less distinct, the voice muffled. My body was frozen and on fire at the same time. Some part of me hardened—the obvious part—and then, others. What was she doing here? After last night at the bar where she disappeared, I didn’t know what to think. Now, I took strong strides in the direction of her voice, as if she were a homing signal.
    I heard the word ‘Evan’. Her brother. A younger kid who tended to move in circles that I tried to avoid.
    And then, the unmistakable tone in her words. I didn’t need to know what she was saying because I knew exactly what she was feeling from the way her voice sounded. She was speaking with a fake smile and gritted teeth—something was wrong in Wonderful Land.
    Amy’s mom was a guidance counselor at her high school. Everybody in debate circles knew that. Now I heard her in casual conversation with her mom. A shrub—she was sitting on a park bench behind it, giving me a perfect opportunity to just watch.
    Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and she was wearing the kind of pants that girls like to wear that were not quite long and not quite short, cutting off at the mid-calf, muscled legs flexing. Her sandals showed little painted toenails, bright red, and the idea that she had spent time making her toes look pretty made me smile. Muscled legs went up to thick thighs and something about the curve of skin and flesh against bone made parts of me even harder.
    I could feel my body zoom from normal to lust in about three seconds as my eyes traveled up over the curve of her hips, her navy pants snug and perfect. My hands itched to touch that waist, to run my hand up her ribcage, to feel the pink cotton of her shirt, the way it rose and clung to the swell of her breasts. I could see it in my head, the two of us together. The memory of a heated embrace and fevered kissing drove its way home into me, one word echoing my head. More. More. More.
    “That’s great, Mom. He’s absolutely fabulous,” I heard her say, and then, her head dipped down and she smiled, a genuine look that made a flush of envy and sadness run through me, mixed in with the rush of hunger for her.
    I hadn’t had a normal conversation with my parents in four and a half years. What must it be like to have parents who care about you? Who are invested in you—not like Mr. and Mrs. Ross, who practically scrubbed Joe’s asshole with a brand new toothbrush every day, or like the Connors who tried to turn Trevor into something he wasn’t—but this? Being able to pick up a phone and talk to your mom for five minutes, ten minutes, and shoot the shit? Must be nice. Must be damn nice.
    A flush of jealousy coursed through me at the same time Amy ran her fingers through that long, brown hair over her temple, behind her ears. And that was it. I was done. A goner.
    But who the fuck was he ?
    “Liam!” Amy said, an enormous grin spreading across her face. A rush of uncontrolled adrenaline set my feet and hands on fire, quads screaming as I crouched behind the bush.
    Amy was dating Liam ? Liam the manwhore? The guy had slept with a groupie who had his name tattooed across the top half-moon of her waxed butthole.
    Ask me how I know.
    Liam uploaded a pic of it to Facebook and titled it “True Love.”
    It was more like a selfie.
Amy
    Joe had wandered away from Sam; I could see it as my mom settled into her monologue. I rolled my eyes at something she was saying, looked back, and then suddenly Sam was gone. Very weird. Whatever Mom’s words were, they just washed over me in a strange sort of ocean of repetition. It felt like we’d had the same conversation over, and over, and over . Everything was about Evan—about the hope that Evan would do better, about the despair that Evan wasn’t doing better.
    The past four years of my life