Random Acts of Hope (23 page)

“Keys are in my pants. Thank you!”
Liam said hoarsely.
 

Maggie winked at me and within five minutes was back, keys and Liam’s glasses in hand.

I slammed the door on her scrawny ass and marched into my bedroom to find my first-aid kit
and take care of my so-called Dom
.

Liam

“
We’re going to have sex that doesn’t involve blood loss,” I told Charlotte as she stretched up for a kiss. Deliciously naked and sweetly soft, she was under me, the friction between our sweat-covered naked bodies turning my entire being into one big erogenous zone.
 

Her hand reached down and made a slow inventory of my shaft. “Is
that
where all the blood went?”

We’d already done it twice. A small routine asserted itself these days: I worked a gig and drove straight to her place. She opened her window and I performed the part of a criminal, breaking in (legally). We showered, fucked like barnyard animals, she pulled out some ice cream, and we watched whatever documentary looked good on Netflix.

And then we were ready for Round Two.

Round One was like when you’re starving and you start cooking a really amazing meal, but your stomach makes sounds like a T-rex in heat, so you feed it junk food to get it to be quiet
while you wait for the good feast
.

Tonight, though, we were at my apartment. Charlotte wanted to come into Boston and had taken the train in, so she also got to see my little shithole before I moved into Amy’s place. If you’re going to bare your soul, might as well show your apartment.

I used my tongue to demonstrate how delightful Round Two could be as Charlotte squirmed under me, her nipple between my teeth, trapped.
I could glance up, just enough, and without my contacts my vision was razor sharp. One advantage to severe near-sightedness: you get to see everything as your face is shoved up against the pink rosebud when you visit the lush valley of the Y.
 

Inches from her breast, her nipple rolling between my teeth, the stark relief of her
pale body
hair across the curve of her mounds made me fall a little deeper in love with her,
so strikingly different from her onyx waves
. The glow of candlelight made her skin a canvas, a road map, a treasured scroll. Something divine.

Her hand stroked me, then moved to cup my balls, sneaking between my thighs and shyly experimenting—
there
. Oh, yeah.

That
made me hard as a rock, and then her hand slid down, a condom unfurling, her voice sure and steady.

“You. Inside. Now.”

Feisty, insistent Charlotte was fucking sweet. “Yes,
m
a’am,” I said, sinking into her divine warmth without further ado, my eyes drinking in her face. With closed eyes, lashes long and dark against porcelain skin, she looked like a saint.

I was defiling a saint.

And I was going to do it very, very well.

The moment you make the slow, deep entrance into a woman is indescribable. People joke that it’s like warm apple pie, or soft butter, and companies have developed a million pussy simulators to try to get poor stiffs their version of a girlfriend you can conjure with a flick of a wrist and $99.99 plus shipping.

But this? No. Nothing could replicate it. Not the butterfly touch of her fingers on my back, tracing lines down either side of my spine, giving my ass a special squeeze at just the right moment to make my balls fill and my mind shatter.

No plastic could ever be able to wiggle and shift, finding that perfect touch for that one spot, that maddening spot on the underside of my shaft that magnetically sought out that little stretch of pink perfection inside her, and when the two joined it was like creating a whole new religion.

“Oh, God!” we cried out in unison, bodies clenching, muscles releasing and tightening in movement like the best, most-coordinated Patriots play
ever
.

It was that good.

As we came down from our sex high, I realized that men think of sex as this great, mind-blowing moment where our little brain gets to be all happy and anticipate this big, fireworks-like moment. Then it happens, the cocooning by the woman we love, and we spurt and we’re done.

And then we want to do it again.

And again.

And again.

I don’t think women view sex the same way, but the cuddling is supposed to be the least-favorite part for guys, right?

Then other guys are idiots, because having your satisfied, sighing girlfriend slide her wet thigh—that you just soaked—up your leg, to rest where your limp, grateful dick is hanging out is one of the best moments
ever
.
 

As I pulled out of her,
ready to get that cuddling,
something felt wrong. Off.

Loose.

And it wasn’t Charlotte. A slippery sensation that was both completely bizarre and tantalizingly familiar made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, because—holy shit.

Th
is
was something sexual I’d never experienced,
and I’ve not only been around the block, I’ve circled it so often I’ve left a deep groove in the pavement
.

A broken condom.

“What are you doing down there, Liam? That feels really—” She sat upright as I pulled the ring of rubber, still on the base of my cock, and held it in place, the shre
d
ded slips of latex coming out like a broken bal
l
oon, slick with my semen and her juices.

It was unsettling, to say the least, but Charlotte’s reaction was a blood-curdling scream that made me so glad—so fucking glad—we were in my apartment and not hers.

“THE CONDOM BROKE?” she shri
e
ked, jumping to her feet. Those lu
s
cious breasts bobbed in the moonlight, mesmerizing me, making me sit there like a complete dork as she freaked out.

“
Yep.”
 

“I am not on the pill! I can’t get pregnant! Oh my God, get dressed. Quick! Now!”

“Why?” What on earth was her rush? We couldn’t do anything now, anyhow, and besides—what, exactly, would
w
e do? Run out and buy her a douche kit? Not that it would work.

“We need to get to a twenty-four hour pharmacy and buy Plan B. Or get me back to my apartment, and fast. The sooner we—”

“
P
lan B?”

“Liam, don’t play dumb.”

“No, ser
i
ously—what is it?”

“
You have the nickname ‘The Kegger’ for tapping everything with a vertical taco, and you don’t know what Plan B is?”
 

I
just stared her down.

“Emergency birth control,”
she sputtered.
“You take it in cases like this! Except I never thought I’d ever have to take all the advice I hand out at work and apply it to me!” Her voice went high and hysterical and she started to laugh with a wheezing, giggly sound. She was losing it. Totally losing it.

I stood and went over to her, grabbing her gently by the wrists, forcing her to look at me. “Charlotte. Charlotte.” I got nice and firm, lowering my voice, like talking to a scared animal. “You’ll be fine. The chances of pregnancy are….”

None
.

I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t put those words out there. We still hadn’t talked about what happened years ago. It was like
a
third partner in bed, except one that was a voyeur, watching but never partici
p
ating. Just observing and collecting data, as if ready to use the information
i
n the future for purposes not yet revealed.

The lack of talking was creeping me out, but the intimacy
(
and, ahem, the sex) was worth the trade-off.

Until now. God damned shredded condom. Same brand I’d been using for years. I guess the
o
dds finally caught up with me.
Long shot.
 

Of all the people. A broken condom would have been so much better with some chick on the pill,
or
someone I didn’t—

What was I thinking? A broken condom sucks no matter what.
N
ow it opened up a whole layer to this barely reconnecting thing with Charlotte.

“You don’t need to rush. We can just get dressed and I’ll take you back to your apartment and you can get the pills you need.”

“
N
o. The sooner the better. I can’t get pregnant, Liam. I can’t. I just—I can’t.”

“Why are you so hysterical?”

Wrong words.

“Why am I?” she roared. “You think I want to go through what I went through five years ago all over again? You think I want—” Her chest heaved convulsively, a keening sob ripping through my apartment. She looked like she was about to have a
s
eizure and my mind raced, instinct telling me that calming her down was more important than any talk we needed to have.

“
I
t’s okay, Charlotte.
I
t’s fine. We don’t need to get into this right now. You’re not going to get preg
n
ant. You’re not. You’re totally fine.”

“What the fuck is the matter with you, Liam? We just had sex! I’m in my ovulation cycle! We used a condom and spermicide, but we beat the odds once before!” Her voice crackled with anger. “We’re so lucky that way, aren’t we? And if you think I’m going to let you knock me up again and dump me like you did, then fuck you!”

“Fuck
you
!” The words roared out of me and I was ba
r
reling down on her. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her—couldn’t hurt her—but five years of everything rol
l
ed through me, and we were face to face, screaming at each other, the words a bloodbath.

And then, when she paused to take a deep breath, I said:

“You can’t get pregnant because I’m sterile.”

Charlotte

Oh, his face as those words poured out of that twisted, cruel mouth.

Because I’m sterile.

I actually laughed, howled, really, because What the Fuck? That was one sick joke. Sick, sick, sick.

Like me, right now, at the thought of being pregnant. Not Liam’s baby. Not again.

“I have slightly more self-control now,” I hissed
as the laughter died in my throat, which throbbed as if recovering from being sucker-punched
, “so I won’t slap you, but you’re an asshole for making a joke like that.”

All the blood drained out of his face. “
I
t’s not a joke.”

All the blood drained out of my heart. “What?”

“Charlotte, I can’t get you, or anyone else pregnant. I’m
sterile
.”

“Since when?”

“Since I was sixteen.”

No.
No no no.
 

“
You’re lying,” I whispered, but I could tell from his face he was telling the truth.
 

“
N
o, I’m not.”

A whirling buzz of everything flew through my mind all at once, like a tornado above only me. Sterile. Sterile, how could he—

“How?”

“
R
emember how I had m
ump
s my sophomore year?”

“That can make you sterile?”

He just nodded. “
I had…a complication. Testicular swelling. It’s rare, but it can make men sterile if everything lines up just right.” He snorted. “And it was a long shot, but…”
 

“You’re sure?”

“Mom
and Dad
made me go to two specialists in Boston. Sperm tests were definitive. I can’t father children, Charlotte,” he said with a deliberate slowness that sucked all the oxygen out of the room. There was a kind of wild pity in his eyes that made me want to tear my own eyes out so I could never, ever see that look on his face as the dawning realization poured through me.

“Then, then,” I gasped, my breathing harder to maintain, “then five years ago, when I told you I was pregnant, you—oh my God!” The room began to spin, hard and fast, like someone turned a roulette wheel and I was the ball.

Whirrrrrrrr.

I sat down on the floor and pulled my chin to my knees, completely exposed and utterly ill. “You, oh my God, Liam, you threw me away, threw the baby away because you assumed it wasn’t yours?”

Silence.

“You thought I…I’m going to be sick.” I stood and clawed my way down the little hall to his bathroom and threw up, the dinner, the glass of wine, all of it coming back up, as if my body were trying to purge itself of five years of poison to make this all make sense.

And still, from Liam—silence.

I vomited until all that was left was bile, then the tears poured down me, sliding through the valley between my breast
s
, peppering my shoulder as I pressed my cheek against the cold porcelain toilet, my ass on his cracked tile floor, grief rippling through me. I cried without logic or purpose, just emptying myself until—some part of me hoped—I was hollow enough and cleansed enough to go back
ou
t into the living room and face a scenario that had never—not once—crossed my mind.

That Liam had broken up with me because he thought I was trying to pass another man’s baby off as his.

I’d dump my ass too if I thought that.

But that meant Liam would have to assume I’d cheated on him, and
that
was the part that slammed into me, over and over like a malfunctioning steamroller.

Motherfucker actually thought I cheated on him? Never told me he was sterile? Put two and two together and got four on the outside, but relied on medical
c
ertainty to explain what his emotions co
u
ldn’t?

And I spent a long, cold night bleeding out, then in an ER having our baby scraped out of
me
, alone and desperate—
abandoned
because Liam was sterile and didn’t tell me,
and
made assumptions about me that weren’t true.

Were never true.

Couldn’t
be true.