Random Acts Of Crazy (3 page)

“And what?” His words had just faded out as he examined a shard of guitar like it was the Hope diamond.

“And what?”

“Is there an echo in here?”

“Oh.” He startled. “I need to call Joe. My friend. In Mass. He can help me get home.”

Disappointment filled me. So no sexy time. Eh, it was too big a hope, anyhow. Good enough to kiss, but not sweet enough to fuck at a rest area. The man had standards.

Besides, he did wear a collar. I had standards, too.

“Here.” I handed him my mobile phone.

“A flip phone? Did I travel back in time as well as space? Is it 2005?” A privileged sneer curled his lip, his eyes cold suddenly. Wow. What a change.

What an asshole.

“Sorry it’s not an iPhone 69 complete with an asslicking app and a reacharound. ’Round here all I have is my little cheapy flip phone that doubles as a horse whip in an emergency. But it will call your butler in Massachusetts so he can retrieve you, Mr. Thurston Howell III, so just shut up and use it.”

Trevor

Way to go, Trevor.
Kiss the most magically spectacular woman you’d ever met, with an ass to fill nine pairs of hands and a tongue that could play bass and lead guitar all at once, and piss her off with one mouthful of stupid.
Damn it.

The thing is, I really
hadn’t
seen a flip phone since 2005; no one in Sudborough would be caught dead with one. The line at the Natick Collection (we don’t even call it a “mall” – that’s too common) Apple Store during a new hardware release looks like a soup kitchen line during a famine. Except everyone’s wearing Abercrombie and Juicy couture and pretending not to care about their new $600 phone.

The sad part? They kind of
don’t
. Because in a few months, they’ll just get a new one. Flip phones? We gave those to domestic violence shelters as part of high school service projects, madly scribbled on our ivy league college applications and never thought of again. So this was where old phones went to die, huh?

And, apparently, where cocks died, too, because my ignorant mouth killed off what had just promised to be a rocking fuckfest with Miss Darla here.

“Hey,” I said, finally finding a small strand of decency tucked somewhere deep up my ass. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“But you were. We weren’t all raised where men go naked and wear dog collars. Pardon me for not living up to your – ” her eyes combed over my naked body, and not in an arousing way – “obviously higher standards.”

Touché. She had me there. Lounging on her rattletrap’s shredded seat completely naked was becoming a little too comfortable. Clothing wasn’t optional in society; I was at her mercy, completely. Aside from needing to apologize and mend whatever mess my mouth had created, I had two goals:

1. Find a way back into her good graces so she’d let me make love to her.
   
2. Get some pants, shoes and a shirt. In that order.
   

I had to admit, though, that sitting here, naked and vulnerable, I felt a kind of freedom that was impossible to have back home. Or anywhere my regular friends were. Or – OK,
anywhere
I went. Except on stage. I’d been singing since elementary school, but when I was in eighth grade Mom and Dad let me take electric guitar lessons. Open to what my fingers could do and where the music could take me, it was such a revelation – a place where standardized tests, grades, and sports didn’t tell me how valuable I was.

The music did.

Drugs replaced that high for a while, but the music stuck around, too. A last-minute need for a junior prom band had brought me, Joe, and Liam together to practice for two weeks solid in my parents’ garage, and from there we’d formed the band Zombie Merit Scholar. It seemed cool when we’d just taken the PSATs, you know? We added Sam as a drummer when we realized we Liam was better on guitar, and voila – we were instantly hot.

A name change our freshman year of college and boom – we were Random Acts of Crazy.

Karma’s a bitch.

My hand shook as I struggled to remember Joe’s number. Once you program a number into your contacts, you don’t need to know it, so my brain worked overtime to envision it on the glass of my iPhone. Shit . 508 – 87something. 874 – I guessed, taking four tries before finally getting it right.

“’lo?” a groggy voice answered. I kept my eyes straight ahead as my dick went limp and rested on the faded vinyl upholstery like a chided puppy. Darla had that look girls get when they’re trying to act like they’re not going to cry, her eyes facing straight ahead, her throat working overtime to swallow. My heart sank. Damn it.

“Joe?”

“Trevor? Jesus, where the fuck are you?” Out of breath and his throat clogged with God-knew what, Joe’s voice still felt like a life preserver after the Titanic. I wasn’t quite clinging to the back of a broken door, but this was close.

“I’m in Ohio.” I let the sentence hang out in the air for a few beats, and then added, “And where are my clothes?”

Darla made a choking laugh and I flashed her the best
come fuck me
grin I could muster. Maybe I could salvage this. A sidelong glance from her and a crooked, sultry smile were my reward. Hope springs eternal. So did my cock, which began its not-so-slow ascent, making her look again and blush this time.

So much hope. Where was that rest area, again? Taking a chance, I put my hand on her knee again. She inhaled sharply but said nothing. Good enough. We could go slow.

Plus, she was 100 percent in charge, right? All I had were my wits and charm, and right now, the wits were pretty well blown.

Charm, don’t fail me now.

“OHIO?” His shout was so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear and Darla hunched her shoulder up, flinching. “How’d you make it to Ohio?”

“Well,” I answered, staring at my own nude flesh, “I didn’t fly or take a bus, so one of you assholes must have driven me here.” A dawning realization that yeah –
what the fuck? How did I get here? –
soaked in.

“Where, exactly, in Ohio are you?”

“In the middle of a wheat field on some Interstate.”

“I-76. And it’s corn, not wheat,” Darla said loudly. My hand slid further up her thigh in gratitude. She squirmed. My mouth began to water. So did my dick, a tiny dot of pre-cum forming on the tip, my asshole tingling as all the muscles in that area prepared to deploy, body nearly groaning for release. If I had to exist in a state of constant nudity, shouldn’t I get some sort of benefit out of it?

“I-76,” I told Joe. “Near…?” I looked at Darla and made a questioning gesture.

“You’re between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”

“I’m – ”

Joe interrupted me. “I heard her. So you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

“That’s exactly how it’s described on Google Maps.” I clicked the Speaker Phone option on her phone (who knew flip phones had that option?) so my other hand could slide along her jaw line, admiring her soft skin, her silky hair.

The car slowed down as Darla turned on the blinker to exit. Rest area. Hallelujah! My prayers were answered, hand sliding higher, I felt how hot she was, her face implacable, impossible to read. But getting off the Interstate and finding a place to get out – and get
off
– told me what I needed to know.

“Ask the woman you’re with – ”

“Darla.”

“Who the fuck is she, Trevor? Last thing I remember you were telling Judy all the reasons why you wouldn’t fuck her, but you were naked as the day you were born and asking her if you could borrow her Diva cup to insert it to understand what it’s like to be a woman.”

Speaker phone was a
bad
idea, Darla’s shrieks and howls of derisive laughter, filling the car as she pulled into a parking spot, reminded me that I was an idiot. I clicked out of the public option and shoved the phone to my ear.

“I did
what
?”

“You were so fucked out of your mind, Trevor. We all passed out and when we woke up, you were gone.”

“Woke up?” I looked around in the darkness and pulled the phone away from my ear. 8:09 p.m.
What?

“I’ve been gone for nearly twenty-four hours?” I screamed. Blood pumped hard through my chest, down to my hands and feet, my thighs tightening and flexing, body and brain finally really waking up and understanding the mess I was in. Naked – without a single stitch of anything to cover myself – and coming down off the most fucked up state ever.

And worst of all – I was in
Ohio
.

“Yep.”

“My parents must be freaking.”

“I told them you were over here crashing at my place, but you probably have a fuckton of text messages on your phone.”

Phone. My phone! Must be with my clothes. And my memory. And my common sense. What the fuckall had been in the cocktail of crap I fed myself yesterday? Blackouts weren’t my thing.

Neither, apparently, were clothes.

“Let me get this straight. Last night, some time after midnight, I was naked in the basement and high as a kite. You guys woke up this morning and I was gone. I just started to sort of come to about an hour ago and found myself naked, by the side of the highway, carrying my acoustic guitar and wearing a spiked collar, a straw cowboy hat shoved inside the guitar. That’s the complete inventory of my possessions.”

Joe’s laughter cackled out into the silent car, Darla’s eyebrows arched, her face poised to hear more. “Trevor,” Joe said, gasping for air, “it’s like you’re auditioning for a Hangover movie.”

“I don’t have a show out here, you freak.” Show?

“Show?”

“He’s a singer!” the voice in the phone shouted. “For Random Acts of Crazy.”

“Random Acts of Crazy?” Had I heard that correctly? Did Trevor’s friend just say that one of my favorite ba –

Trevor.
Trevor?
As in Trevor Connor?

“You’re Trevor
Connor
?” I gasped, completely agog, my hand shooting to his thigh this time, resting on the soft skin, the peppering of leg hair tickling my palm.

He sat up, putting the phone on top of the hat, which was on top of his dick. “Do we know each other? Am I really in Ohio, or are we just somewhere in western Mass like Westfield and you’re part of an elaborate joke to fuck with my head?”

“No – you are definitely in Ohio, my dear,” I said, patting his leg sympathetically. His hand clamped over mine and slid both our hands slowly, under the hat. Where I found a pleasant, erect flesh toy purely there for my amusement.

“You’re the lead singer for Random Acts.” It was a statement, a marvelous acknowledgment of a mini dream come true. I knew exactly who he was now, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made the connection before. But who in the hell would ever expect the lead singer of one of the most famous underground viral bands on the Internet to be a naked hitchhiker in Ohio?

“Yes.” His voice purred. Oh, those eyes. In the videos I’d watched, his face was always obscured by shadows, the whole point of his music to make you feel whatever it touched in you, not to keep you entertained by a visual designed to make you a gaping monkey, going through the restrictive emotional pathway designed by committee for a pop band. My aunt Josie had turned me on to Random Acts after a friend of a friend sent her a Facebook link with a video of one of their concerts at some college near Boston, and I’d been hooked.

Joe yammered something in the background through the mouthpiece of my phone, but we both ignored him.

“You’re never naked on stage.” I could hear the tone in my voice – accusatory, as if he’d deprived me of more of that gorgeous body.

“The camera hides the truth. I don’t wear pants when I record, and there’s a long line of groupies giving me blow jobs.”

“Trev!” Joe pleaded, his tinny voice. “If she’s about to go down on you, would you please at least tell me where you are so I can get started on this road trip?” Heavy sigh. “And so I don’t have to hear that shit. It’s bad enough having to rescue your sorry ass. No way do I want to hear you getting a hummer.”

“She’s not about to go down on me,” Trevor said into the phone. I hadn’t decided that one way or another, actually, but now that he mentioned it…

“I guess I’m driving 600 miles into the middle of the corn fields to come and get you.” Joe sounded about as happy about that as I was when I had to bail my grandma out of the drunk tank.

“26 Old Farm Road. Peters, Ohio. 44454. Got that?” I practically shouted. Joe needed to get off the phone.
Now.

My hand began stroking Trevor’s shaft, the feeling foreign and wonderful all at once. For the past year I’d waited with bated breath for each new video of his concerts at colleges, bars, and other venues – some groupie had even posted a four-minute video of one of his first performances, at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah. Twenty-seven videos in all, and my aunt had to be the one to bring me into his world of that chocolate voice and those Jack Daniels lyrics. Who would have ever guessed that a preppy boy from Massachusetts would be Trevor Connor? His act was so – God, the cliché made my teeth hurt – soulful and road weary, like someone who had lived on the streets and been an eco-terrorist, all rolled up into Jack Kerouac and Ivan Illich, with a touch of Greenpeace and Anonymous thrown in for spice.

My turn to turn him on. He’d electrified my mind and soul for so long, from afar. Whatever God there was in this crazy universe dumped Trevor Connor from Random Acts of Crazy in my lap – or, rather, I was about to be in
his
lap – and I didn’t need to be given more than the tiniest of hints to grab whatever I could from this fleeting encounter.

Because it would have to last me a lifetime.

“So,” his breath hitched as my fingers played up and down his mushroom cap, “you got that, Joe?”