“I-76,” I told Joe. “Near…?” I looked at Darla and made a questioning gesture.

“You’re between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”

“I’m – ”

Joe interrupted me. “I heard her. So you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

“That’s exactly how it’s described on Google Maps.” I clicked the Speaker Phone option on her phone (who knew flip phones had that option?) so my other hand could slide along her jaw line, admiring her soft skin, her silky hair.

The car slowed down as Darla turned on the blinker to exit. Rest area. Hallelujah! My prayers were answered, hand sliding higher, I felt how hot she was, her face implacable, impossible to read. But getting off the Interstate and finding a place to get out – and get off – told me what I needed to know.

“Ask the woman you’re with – ”

“Darla.”

“Who the fuck is she, Trevor? Last thing I remember you were telling Judy all the reasons why you wouldn’t fuck her, but you were naked as the day you were born and asking her if you could borrow her Diva cup to insert it to understand what it’s like to be a woman.”

Speaker phone was a bad idea, Darla’s shrieks and howls of derisive laughter, filling the car as she pulled into a parking spot, reminded me that I was an idiot. I clicked out of the public option and shoved the phone to my ear.

“I did what?”

“You were so fucked out of your mind, Trevor. We all passed out and when we woke up, you were gone.”

“Woke up?” I looked around in the darkness and pulled the phone away from my ear. 8:09 p.m. What?

“I’ve been gone for nearly twenty-four hours?” I screamed. Blood pumped hard through my chest, down to my hands and feet, my thighs tightening and flexing, body and brain finally really waking up and understanding the mess I was in. Naked – without a single stitch of anything to cover myself – and coming down off the most fucked up state ever.

And worst of all – I was in Ohio.

“Yep.”

“My parents must be freaking.”

“I told them you were over here crashing at my place, but you probably have a fuckton of text messages on your phone.”

Phone. My phone! Must be with my clothes. And my memory. And my common sense. What the fuckall had been in the cocktail of crap I fed myself yesterday? Blackouts weren’t my thing.

Neither, apparently, were clothes.

“Let me get this straight. Last night, some time after midnight, I was naked in the basement and high as a kite. You guys woke up this morning and I was gone. I just started to sort of come to about an hour ago and found myself naked, by the side of the highway, carrying my acoustic guitar and wearing a spiked collar, a straw cowboy hat shoved inside the guitar. That’s the complete inventory of my possessions.”

Joe’s laughter cackled out into the silent car, Darla’s eyebrows arched, her face poised to hear more. “Trevor,” Joe said, gasping for air, “it’s like you’re auditioning for a Hangover movie.”

Chapter Three

Darla

Poor Trevor. Whatever his friend was telling him made his face fall. I couldn’t hear much now that he’d taken it off speaker phone, his face redder than a farmhand’s neck at harvest time. A Diva cup? Up his ass? What kind of parties did they have there in Massachusetts? Around here we just get a few bottles of Boone’s and go cow tipping. I only really did that once. Mostly we hit the Huddle House and eat pancakes half-drunk, then crash on the couches in someone’s grandma’s double-wide.

Classy.

“And now the guitar was shattered when we hit a raccoon, and the hat – where’s the hat?” he said, fumbling and searching for it. A quick look in the back seat and I found it, and I handed it to him. He clung to that damn thing like it was his child. I guess when you have three possessions and one shatters and you threw the other out the window, the final thing becomes your lifeblood, even if it is an ugly hat.

The hat made a nice penis cozy.

“No, I’m not going to put her on!” Trevor said with a hiss. Uh, oh. Whatever twist the conversation had taken, I had zero desire to talk on the phone to some tight-jawed preppy boy who thought it was fun to lose track of his menstrual-cup shoving, peyote-chewing, naked friend.

“I don’t have a show out here, you freak.” Show?

“Show?”

“He’s a singer!” the voice in the phone shouted. “For Random Acts of Crazy.”

“Random Acts of Crazy?” Had I heard that correctly? Did Trevor’s friend just say that one of my favorite ba –

Trevor. Trevor? As in Trevor Connor?

“You’re Trevor Connor?” I gasped, completely agog, my hand shooting to his thigh this time, resting on the soft skin, the peppering of leg hair tickling my palm.

He sat up, putting the phone on top of the hat, which was on top of his dick. “Do we know each other? Am I really in Ohio, or are we just somewhere in western Mass like Westfield and you’re part of an elaborate joke to fuck with my head?”

“No – you are definitely in Ohio, my dear,” I said, patting his leg sympathetically. His hand clamped over mine and slid both our hands slowly, under the hat. Where I found a pleasant, erect flesh toy purely there for my amusement.

“You’re the lead singer for Random Acts.” It was a statement, a marvelous acknowledgment of a mini dream come true. I knew exactly who he was now, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made the connection before. But who in the hell would ever expect the lead singer of one of the most famous underground viral bands on the Internet to be a naked hitchhiker in Ohio?

“Yes.” His voice purred. Oh, those eyes. In the videos I’d watched, his face was always obscured by shadows, the whole point of his music to make you feel whatever it touched in you, not to keep you entertained by a visual designed to make you a gaping monkey, going through the restrictive emotional pathway designed by committee for a pop band. My aunt Josie had turned me on to Random Acts after a friend of a friend sent her a Facebook link with a video of one of their concerts at some college near Boston, and I’d been hooked.

Joe yammered something in the background through the mouthpiece of my phone, but we both ignored him.

“You’re never naked on stage.” I could hear the tone in my voice – accusatory, as if he’d deprived me of more of that gorgeous body.

“The camera hides the truth. I don’t wear pants when I record, and there’s a long line of groupies giving me blow jobs.”

“Trev!” Joe pleaded, his tinny voice. “If she’s about to go down on you, would you please at least tell me where you are so I can get started on this road trip?” Heavy sigh. “And so I don’t have to hear that shit. It’s bad enough having to rescue your sorry ass. No way do I want to hear you getting a hummer.”

“She’s not about to go down on me,” Trevor said into the phone. I hadn’t decided that one way or another, actually, but now that he mentioned it…

“I guess I’m driving 600 miles into the middle of the corn fields to come and get you.” Joe sounded about as happy about that as I was when I had to bail my grandma out of the drunk tank.

“26 Old Farm Road. Peters, Ohio. 44454. Got that?” I practically shouted. Joe needed to get off the phone. Now.

My hand began stroking Trevor’s shaft, the feeling foreign and wonderful all at once. For the past year I’d waited with bated breath for each new video of his concerts at colleges, bars, and other venues – some groupie had even posted a four-minute video of one of his first performances, at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah. Twenty-seven videos in all, and my aunt had to be the one to bring me into his world of that chocolate voice and those Jack Daniels lyrics. Who would have ever guessed that a preppy boy from Massachusetts would be Trevor Connor? His act was so – God, the cliché made my teeth hurt – soulful and road weary, like someone who had lived on the streets and been an eco-terrorist, all rolled up into Jack Kerouac and Ivan Illich, with a touch of Greenpeace and Anonymous thrown in for spice.

My turn to turn him on. He’d electrified my mind and soul for so long, from afar. Whatever God there was in this crazy universe dumped Trevor Connor from Random Acts of Crazy in my lap – or, rather, I was about to be in his lap – and I didn’t need to be given more than the tiniest of hints to grab whatever I could from this fleeting encounter.

Because it would have to last me a lifetime.

“So,” his breath hitched as my fingers played up and down his mushroom cap, “you got that, Joe?”

“Where is it?” Joe’s voice was getting tinier. Trevor’s hand that held the phone began to drop away as his body reclined, softening. Oh, how I loved this kind of power over men. Enjoying it with someone who seemed to be so purely sexual was going to be a treat. Giving Trevor that was like giving a gift of pleasure that I saved for men who respected me.

Or something like that. I could talk myself into a lot of convoluted things and debate a firmly held conviction into the ground. Right now, though, what I firmly held was his marble-sculpted member and what I wanted was to taste him in the most intimate way possible.

Just because I could.

“My house,” I answered. “Right near the big truck stop. Just call if you get lost.” Trevor’s eyes went loose and unfocused as I threw the hat in the back seat, his hips lifting the tiniest of distances off the seat, reaching out for more of my touch.

“Got that?” Trevor asked Joe again, his voice melting into a hiss, eyelids closing as I bent down and wrapped my lips around his pink tip.

“Yep. See you in about, oh, thirteen – ” Snap. Joe’s voice ended. Trevor slammed the phone shut and sank his hands into my ragged waves, fingertips on my scalp and one palm sliding down the back of my neck. No pressure – just a yearning to touch me as my mouth filled with more wet to cover him, tongue loving the feel of his pliant skin against my taste buds. You would think that a guy who’d just spent the past day completely nude, riding on the interstate would taste nasty, but it was like licking a fruity, citrusy lollipop, with a touch of musk.

Deliciously erotic and exotic, the aroma of Trevor and the way he called out my name in a tortured gasp told me everything I needed to know, my face buried in his lap, his thighs tensing as I flicked my tongue tip against the long flesh line running down to his ’taint.

Slicked up shafts call out for a practiced hand, so I began to milk him, achingly slowly to draw this out. When you get a chance to give your internet crush a blindingly-good night of sex at a rest area, you don’t hurry or skimp. My world view about sex is something like Dan Savage’s: I aim to be good, giving and game. One more thing, though: gone in the morning. Harboring illusions about guys wanting me beyond the booty call just makes for emotional pain that lasts longer than a frat boy’s orgasm after a lap dance. No, thanks.

Trevor was the kind of guy who could have 10,000 of me whenever he wanted. So right here, right now, he wanted me – and me he would have. I needed to make this so good for both of us that it would fuel my dreams – until I gave up on them.