Random Acts of Love (Random #5) Read Online Free PDF

on about? Married? Did you have a stroke? Because I ain’t seen you near a man other than Uncle Mike or old Doc Oglethorpe, and I know you ain’t fucking either of them. Doc Oglethrope likes his women with a size six foot.”
    Don’t ask me how I know that. Let’s just say I was twenty-one and me and Jane opened online dating profiles on a fetish site one night after drinking too much strawberry wine and we learned a little too much about the dating habits of a bunch of people in Peters, Ohio. Can’t let a man put a speculum in you for your yearly pap after finding out he has dreams of sticking a Tom Ford deep inside you and fucking the shoe’s insole.
    Anyhow.
    “Darla,” she said, a hiss coming out after her words. Great. That meant she was smoking again. Her voice sounded like she’d turned into a wolf, like in one of the romance novels I was reading. “I did not call you to talk about Wilbur Oglethorpe and how he likes to fuck shoes. I did not call you because I’m clutching my chest and too stupid to call 911 on my own but call my daughter six hundred miles away. I did not call you to be treated like I’m too stupid to live.” Her voice hitched, like she shifted from Gear 1—Angry to Gear 2—Guilt.
    “I called to tell you I’m getting married.”
    Now a blanket of guilt stretched over me .
    “Married?” I squeaked.
    “Yes,” she said in a disgusted, but relieved voice. As if I had finally gotten a punchline that she’d had to explain so many times the joke wasn’t funny anymore.
    “To a man?”
    “No. To a fucking tree.”
    “Mama, you been on the internet a lot, right? Doing your sweepstakes.”
    “What the hell do sweepstakes have to do with getting married?” she said with a laugh and a draw of her breath. Yep. Smoking again. “It ain’t like I won me a man in a contest. I’d rather have cash than that.”
    “Then...where? Is this some email order bride thing? You being sold off to some work crew in the oil fields of North Dakota?”
    Deadly silence. All the hairs on the back of my neck and upper arms started to stand on end. Oh, shit. I’d insulted her, hadn’t I? See, Mama and I don’t have conversations like this. Ever. Mama had never brought a man home. Never talked about dating. My daddy died in a car crash when I was four years old, and while I have vague memories of him, I don’t have a sense of Mama with him. Or Mama as a sexual being.
    Mama as half of a couple.
    My stomach lurched.
    “You think the only way I can get myself a man is to be sold off?”
    Fuck.
    “No! No, that’s not what I meant at all.”
    “Think about what you just said to me.”
    Ice water filled my skin. Think about what you just said to me . That’s the phrase Mama always used when I was little when I’d said something so wrong I was about to get spanked. A flash of panic made me turn my ass so it was up against a wall where it couldn’t get a smack. Muscle memory. Mama loved me dearly but she was never above giving me a good whooping on the butt when I done wrong.
    At the age of twenty-four I could still do wrong, apparently.
    See what I mean about that phone call thing? You just never know when your day will go from glowing sunshine to geysers of shit.
    “Who is he, Mama?” I asked in a tiny voice, so small you could stick me in your pocket.
    “Wilbur Oglethorpe.”
    I froze. Mama would have to have a vagina that felt like a shoe on the inside for that man to—
    Laughter. Peals of hacking laughter greeted me as mama coughed and laughed, choked and brayed.
    “Gotcha!” she said. “As if I’d marry a seventy-five year old man who talked openly at church coffee hour about all the ways you can get Viagra into your bloodstream faster. Pervert.”
    I snorted, but a defensive fear hit me. Hey, Dr. Oglethorpe had his kink. I have mine. If I told Mama the truth about me and Trevor and Joe, would she call me a—
    Pervert?
    “How can you get Viagra into your bloodstream faster, Mama?” I asked