Free Random Acts of Trust by Julia Kent Page A

scaring off a small flock of pigeons.
    What had happened four and a half years ago was somewhere between tenderness and pity on his part, and I knew that. I didn’t want to know it—but I knew it. I could fantasize, and I could remember, I could let memory stretch me back to the first sexual experience of my life, and I could put on the brakes pretty quickly when the emotions kicked in. Those...Sam owned those. I wanted the combination of what I felt for Sam and the burning hot sex I’d had with Liam.
    If only, right?
    If only.
Sam
    What the fuck was Liam doing here? And it turned out Amy had seen me and Joe? This was getting weirder and weirder. Liam was hitting on Amy. There was a familiarity there—I knew they lived next door to each other growing up—but, there was something more. I caught a glimpse of her pink cheeks, the way she ran her fingers through her hair in that flirty gesture that so many girls had. Did she really just lick her lips? And Liam with that cocky grin.
    Plus there was that damn kiss on stage.
    He had bagged so many girls over the years. Groupies loved him—not that we had that many, but...there were a few. He’d pretty much fucked anybody with a vagina except Darla, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have tried. The funny part was, he only slept around after Charlotte dumped him. Before that, he was totally, one-hundred percent a goner for her.
    He’d gone silent at the end of our senior year of high school, said nothing about what was going on with her. She was in college and something had happened, but Liam was like a steel drum welded shut—buoyant and airtight. The speed with which he’d found his way into so many other girls’ pants had been really, really admirable. Most of us couldn’t believe that he could get a girl in bed so quickly. At one point, we’d even timed it—his record was forty-seven minutes. If you were into that sort of thing, it was pretty fucking impressive.
    What the hell was he doing talking to Amy ?
    I overheard their banter; it was flirty without being serious. There was something in his tone that said this was not someone he was after. She seemed to recognize it too; there was a guardedness to her. Amy could be like a little puppy, eager and a little too excitable when she wanted people to approve of her, and there wasn’t any of that here. Then again, I was projecting qualities onto her that she’d had four and a half years ago.
    Now, all I felt was a massive mushroom cloud of jealousy and an undercurrent of rage because if he touched her right now....
    What I needed was to go back home and drum my way out of everything. So, I did, careful to avoid being spotted by the two of them.

    The walk back to Trevor and Joe’s place was short and uncrowded. I got into the apartment and then I grabbed a few drum pads, some headphones, some sticks. A full set of drums wasn’t gonna cut it in an apartment building with hundreds of people so the only way I could practice was to go down into the basement, which was surprisingly clean and dry for an ancient building, and I’d set up my drum pads. They were these little circles designed to practice songs without making too much noise.
    I organized them according to a standard drum set and then I put my headphones on and set up my playlist. If thinking about Amy made my mind turn into a whirling confusion of emotions I had no right to harbor after four and a half years of what I did to her, then drumming could sort out all the pieces and put them in their rightful places. I may not have any right whatsoever to possess some of the emotions that I had for Amy, but I could at least put them where they belonged.
    As I started with a low, quiet beat and then built up to the next level, my shoulders relaxed, the lump that had formed, built of anger and muscle, of betrayal of my own agitation clearing as well. As the song progressed, the tempo carried me out of my mind, away from linear thought and I became my hand muscles,