Free Random Acts of Love (Random #5) by Julia Kent Page A

drowning. “My God, no! Oh, Joey, let me call. He may have to redo the surgery all over again!” She darted out of the room, already on the phone and demanding to speak with her surgeon as her footsteps pattered down to silence.
    Paul and I looked at each other.
    “Surgery?” he finally asked. 
    “You really want to know?”
    Paul paused and thought for a good few seconds. “Nah.”
    “Smart man.”

C HAPTER 3
    Darla
    “You want me to go to dinner at your parents’ house tomorrow?” 
    “Yes.” We were in the afterglow, cuddled naked in bed. Joe was on the other side of me and his entire body tensed up.
    “Why now?” he asked in a choked, angry voice. “Why would your parents do this?”
    Trevor sighed. “Mom says now that we’re headed toward twenty-five it’s time to think about real life. Futures.” 
    “We’ve been primed for our futures since we were two and getting ready for Montessori preschool,” Joe snapped. But I could tell he was troubled by something else. Something more. Not just what Trevor was saying. I also knew not to pry. Not just yet. Eventually I could get whatever was coiled up inside him to come slither out. And not just his cock. The guy had emotions, even if he liked to deny it and pretend he didn’t. But teasing them out was as hard as getting a four year old to leave Chuck E. Cheese.
    And involved as much tantrumming.
    “Don’t snap at me. I’m just the messenger.”
    Now, all that stuff about knowing not to pry? Just because I have some wisdom after nearly two years with these guys doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes do stupid, impulsive things. Like saying:
    “I think Trevor should tell his mom and dad to invite you, too.”
    “Me? Why?”
    “’Cause if I’m Trevor’s girlfriend, then you’re his...”
    (Even I knew not to say boyfriend)
    “...something.”
    Joe sat up just enough to look at Trevor across my naked body and say, “You’re my something. Isn’t there a new Hallmark holiday for that? Happy Something’s Day.”
    “Let’s invent it if it doesn’t exist. I can give my something a something.”
    I whapped Joe’s slick chest. He had less hair than Trevor, but his muscles were tighter. Each rib muscle was so well defined it was like one of those late night informercial guys with the knives had hand carved him.
    “You know what I mean,” I protested.
    “You are my something,” Trevor sang, replacing the word “sunshine” for my ill-thought-out term.
    “Hello, Justice Scalia. Why, yes, I’d like to introduce you to my Something. This is Trevor.”
    “Uh, you got that backwards,” Trevor said smugly. “If anyone’s introducing anyone to a Supreme Court Justice, it’ll be me.”
    “Can’t we just be husbands and wives?” I snapped.
    That shut them up.
    “Actually, we can’t,” Trevor said, rolling away and staring up at the ceiling, his arms slid over his head and under his pillow. Unlike Joe’s darker, compact torso, Trevor’s stretched out, golden skin and more hair now than when I met him. My eyes took him in, trying not to turn to him. If I did, Joe would get jealous. Instead, I surreptitiously catalogued him. His body had definitely changed. Matured. Filled out. 
    Mine was the same. Joe’s was the same. But Trevor was still maturing.
    “Mike and Dylan got married and then they proposed to Laura,” I blurted out. I worked for my Aunt Josie and her friend, Laura, who was in a relationship with two billionaires. Had a little girl with them and was pregnant with their second child. We’d all met up at a local diner and at least now I had a kind of a road map for how the three of us might move forward.
    “I’m not marrying my something,” Joe protested. “Especially Trevor.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
    Trevor sat up, fast. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you marry me? There’s nothing wrong with me.” He sniffed his pits. “Nothing a shower won’t cure.”
    “You are not marriage material,” Joe snapped. 
    “Says