Random Acts of Love (Random #5) (23 page)

No. Seriously. Especially if I was still walking like I had a ten-foot cock between my legs, like I was right now.

I opened the delivery and found myself staring at a case of five pound bags of gummy bears.

Alex walked by and did a double take, then said, “Another sweepstakes winning?”

“Yep.”

He just shook his head with amusement and helped Josie tuck a large suitcase in the trunk. Alex would fly out separately in a couple of days, and we were bringing his stuff.

“Darla!” Josie shouted. “C’mon! We need to beat rush hour.” It was the butt crack of dawn. Well, the butt crack that hadn’t been flayed alive by wax, Goo Gone, and an overly enraged aunt of mine.

“I’m coming! Let me put these gummy bears away.” I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half, my stomach too queasy to manage anything. Water was about it. The thought of gummy bears, oddly enough, made my stomach settle. They’d been my comfort food as a little kid. Family lore said Mama potty trained me by using them as a reward.

Some kids get sticker charts. I get food dye, sugar, and chewy shit that triggers cavities.

Thank God Mama loved me.

“Are those gummy bears? Damn, you get that bag at Costco?” she called back.

“Nope. Sweepstakes,” I said as I gingerly made my way to her porch.

“Throw ‘em in the car. I hate them, but they’ll make good road food for you.”

At the mention of the word
food
my stomach growled. Not in a friendly way.

“Okay,” I said, uneasy as I lurched forward and tossed one bag in the back seat. Josie had chips and baby carrots and two giant coffee thermoses in there already, plus an entire gallon of water and two smaller quart bottles Alex insisted I take. She’s kind of a road trip freak. She hates to stop. Hates it so much I swear the woman would wear a diaper if she could get away with it so she can beat her old record. She thinks we’re gonna get from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Peters, Ohio in eight hours.

Delusional.

I put five more bags of gummy bears in the trunk for Mama.

“Here,” Alex said, shoving a huge tube of something at me. 

“What’s that for? I don’t exactly need lube these days,” I cracked.

“Lidocaine. Numbing cream.” He gave me a sympathetic look. “You’ll need it for a while.”

“Thanks. I guess.” I stuffed it in the pocket of the car door.

Josie and Alex had a long, soulful good-bye kiss that made me want to barf on their shoes. People who were in love made me sick. It was like they were showing off. Showing off their intact hearts.

That was just so...arrogant. And cruel, like flaunting your filet mignon in front of a starving kid in North Korea.

But I might be a little biased.

We settled into our respective seats and she backed out. Ten or so hours in the car was going to be bad enough, but I came prepared with earbuds, my phone charging cable, and an eye mask. If I had to pretend to sleep the entire way, I might escape the endless bitch session she clearly had planned for me.

As she got the car on the main streets to pick up the Mass Pike, I watched her eyes twitch with calculation. Here’s the thing about Josie: she’s competitive. Super competitive. And when it comes to driving long distances, she competes against herself. Her all-time record for getting home was nine hours and seventeen minutes, and I knew she had one goal here:

To beat herself.

If I just let the world spin and tried not to sit in a way that made my cooch feel like it went through a paper shredder, I could make it through a little more than eight hours.

I closed my eyes, listened to anything but Random Acts of Crazy, and settled in for the ride.

The ride to my Mama’s wedding.

* * *

Two hours in and my bladder was about to explode.

“I need to stop,” I said.  

“Can you hold it for fifty-four more miles? If you can, we will be averaging seventy-seven miles per hour and I can justify a three minute pit stop.”

“I am not a Formula One racing car, Josie. I have a bladder that’s about to make the floor of your car turn into Niagara Falls,” I snapped back. Besides, the thought of hot, salty urine all over my raw inner thighs and butt crack made me want to cry.

She pulled over two miles later and I was back in the car in four minutes. Yeah, I counted. I also spent an extra minute giving myself a wide stance over the toilet, spreading all my nibbly bits as far as possible so no salt water might touch my skin. There’s no greater accuracy when it comes to peeing than a woman who is hairless, skinless and riding for six hundred miles with a single tube of lidocaine to sustain her and ninety-nine square inches of ripped skin.  

“You done?” Josie asked as I opened the door. I climbed in gingerly, and before I could reach back for my seatbelt, she was off for the entrance ramp.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“He pees faster than you,” she hissed, accelerating like we were in a Star Trek movie and going through a wormhole.

“Shut up.” My stomach growled. 

“Eat something,” she insisted. “You’re still half hung over and you look like the underside of someone’s shoe.”

“I love you, too, Auntie.”

She reached into the backseat and grabbed the first thing she felt. “Here.” A five pound bag of gummy bears landed in my lap.

Why not? I opened the bag and plucked a red one out. Set it carefully on my tongue. Closed my mouth. No nausea. Just sweet, flavored sugary goodness.

I reached for a water bottle and drank about half in one long gulp.

“Great. You’ll have to pee again in a few minutes.”

“It’s called hydration, Speedy Gonzalez.”

Her eyes narrowed but she said nothing.

“What the fuck got you in such a foul mood?” I asked before my brain filter could kick in. Fuck. Asking Josie that question was like inviting a vampire into your home. 

“Maybe I’m just a wee bit stressed after having half the wallpaper in my bathroom stripped off by your anus. Plus, I have to go home and see my mother. I’m not sure which is worse.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I took two more gummy bears and rested them on my tongue, sucking.

“I’d say seeing Aunt Marlene. Actually, not seeing her, but having her meet Alex. He’s gonna need pepper spray and a muzzle to keep her from jumping his bones.”

Josie’s nostrils flared and her face turned into a mask of fury. “Thanks. You’re so helpful.”

“I try.” These gummy bears were good. I picked out five of the green bears and one by one bit off their heads, saving their bodies for a single mouthful. My appetite was coming back. I took a handful of the orange ones and shoved them all in my mouth at once.

“That’s a lot of sugar you’re eating,” she remarked.

I looked at the bag, perking up. “Nope. They’re sugar free. Bonus! I got five more bags in the back to bring to Mama. I’m giving the rest to my friends when I get back home from the wedding. I figured they’d make good wedding favors, though, for Mama. You know, put ’em in Mason jars and set ’em out on the tables at the reception.”

“With little bows on top with Aunt Cathy and...uh...Uncle Calvin’s names on them?”

Uncle Calvin.

I stopped chewing, my mouth dry suddenly.

“Uncle Calvin,” I whispered.

Aw, shit. It hadn’t really hit me until this very moment, but my mama really was getting married. I was about to have a daddy figure in my life for the first time since I was four. I was all grown up and didn’t need a daddy, and I already had a daddy, even if he was dead.

But still.

“Darla? You look green.”

My stomach made a weird gassy sound that made us both jump and look around the car as if maybe a wild animal had hitched a ride inside. 

“What the hell? Drink some water,” Josie urged, handing me the bottle.

I complied. I felt better.

“I think it’s just nerves,” I finally said.

Her expression softened. “I understand. It’s a big deal for Cathy to get married.”

“And move out of the trailer. And for Davey and Jane to buy it.”

“And for me to expose Alex to my mom,” she said with a sigh.

My stomach made a sound like Godzilla.

“You need to feed that,” Josie said with a laugh.

I took another handful of gummy bears and followed her advice.

“Sometimes I wonder if my mom will remarry,” Josie said in a small voice. “It would take some of the burden off me.”

“Can you imagine the kind of guy she’d pick, though? Aunt Marlene ain’t got the best judgment, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Josie said with a snort. She upped the cruise control to seventy-eight. “I know. It stops me cold. I hope Alex doesn’t run screaming from my fucked up family.”

“Hey!
I’m
in that fucked up family and Alex likes me just fine!”

“You’re the normal one.”

I choked on a bear. “If I’m the normal one, you’re doomed.” 

“I know,” she groaned. “My mom’ll view Alex as a bucking bronco to be ridden.”

I swallowed, a bit sick suddenly. “Thanks for that image.”

My stomach made a sound like a vacuum cleaner sucking up a sausage.

“Jesus, Darla. What did you drink?”

“We just ate some spiked ice cream! I—oh, shit, Josie, you gotta pull over.” I felt like a giant hydroelectric dam in one of those summer blockbuster disaster films where one brick pops off and a little leak starts. Then another. Then another.

And then
thar she blows
.

“I’m not pulling over again. You’re ruining my record! And my bathroom. And—”

“Pull over or I’m shitting in your car.”

“You wouldn’t.”

My bowels answered in the call of my people. It sounded like a bunch of tree frogs inside a tuba.

“Ah, shit,” she muttered as she swerved out of the left lane and into the right, barely catching an off ramp. One minute later my butthole was puckered up, holding back a tsunami. 

What in the hell did Joe put in that ice cream pie, after all? I’d lost two days and all my bowel flora now.

I sprinted to a gas station bathroom while Josie filled up. I sincerely hoped no one was anywhere within earshot, because it must have sounded like we were filming
Dumb and Dumberestest
in there.

Took me a good ten minutes to, uh, evacuate, and by the time I came back out to the car Josie looked like she was about to explode.

 “I think I saw parts of the wallpaper that the Goo Gone couldn’t get off my ass. Call Alex and tell him these gummy bears work better than all his medical science knowledge. Hell, I think I seen something I ate four years ago at the Ohio State Fair in there,” I said, trying to explain.

She punched the accelerator and I nearly whacked my head on the dashboard as we got back on the highway. I had visions of Trevor two years ago, naked and spindly on my little junker car’s floor after I hit a raccoon.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” she snapped.

“I am not doing anything to you. My digestive tract is in full assault mode.”

“You chose to party hard the other day, and this is the result.”

My gut roared back.

Ten minutes later I asked her to stop again.

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“No. Negative. Absolutely not. I’ve already blown any chance of getting there in record time, and at the rate your hungover digestive tract is going, this may be the single worst time I’ve ever—what are you doing?” she asked, interrupting herself.

I had unclicked my seatbelt and was fumbling around in the backseat. My ass let out a sound that reminded me of Sunday mornings at Trevor and Sam’s place after a night of partying and a three a.m. run for Mexican food.

“Oh, gross.” Josie rolled down the window.

I didn’t answer her, but just kept searching.

“What are you doing, Darla?” she screeched.

I farted in response.

“Answer me in English!” 

Finally, my mouth answered her with, “I am looking for a bag.”

“A bag? For what?”

“You ain’t gonna pull over? Then I’m gonna shit in a bag. Right here, in your car.”

“WHAT?” She slowed down. My butthole tightened like Melanie Griffith’s eyebrows at the Oscars.

I began to pull my pants down and held the white plastic grocery bag in one hand.

“OH, MY GOD, YOU’RE SERIOUS!”

“No. I’m not. But my bowels are.”

And with that, she skidded to a halt on the gravel alongside the highway. I scampered out and made it to the tall grasses about ten feet away before, well...I don’t need to describe it.

You can fill that part in.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” she wailed.

“I can’t believe you’re screaming at me while I nearly had to shit in a bag and now I’m squatting by the side of the road, Josie!” I shouted back. I finished up, picking some leaves that I hoped weren’t poison ivy.

When I approached the car, a jar of hand sanitizer came flying out, hitting me in the thigh.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I am so close to leaving you here.”

I slathered that alcohol gel everywhere, climbed back in and reached for the gummy bear bag, offering her some. She plucked it out of my hands and threw them out the window, peeling away.

I sighed. “Josie, I just nearly shit in a bag. It ain’t been the best week of my life, you know? Got mistreated by Joe’s mom, dumped the two loves of my life, adhered my butthole to a wall and now I shat in a bunch of grass by the side of the road. Not beating your personal best driving time is about as important to me as watching Bruce Jenner transition to being a woman. I mean, good for him—er, her?—and all, but it don’t have no meaning in my personal life, okay? Your world-class all-time speed-demon driving record is stupid and pointless.” 

“You suck.”

“I know.”

And that was the last conversation we had until we crossed the Ohio line.

Joe

Day three of waking up and checking my phone to find no text about Trevor. Nothing. Mr. and Mrs. Connor weren’t freaking or anything, because they had no idea he was missing. Not yet, at least. Give it a week and I’d say something, but a week was a long time.