by Megyn Ward
“Patrick?” Saying his name caused my heart to knock against my ribcage and I suddenly feel his thick, hard cock pressed into the cleft of my ass, the size and heat of it causing my mouth to go dry.
“No,” I say, forcing myself to smile at Trevor. “Nothing happened.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He’s not buying it.
I look up to see Trevor staring at me, mild concern etched into his generically handsome face. We’re at the restaurant and the valet has my door open, his hand dangling in my mid-air, offering to help me out of the car.
“Yes,” I say, placing my hand in the valet’s hand. “I’m just hungry is all.” I smile again and climb out of the car.
Seventeen
Patrick
The minute I come downstairs, I get catcalls and wolf-whistles. Gilroy’s regulars giving me shit. It’s still early in the night. Things don’t start getting crazy until after ten but fuck if I’m sitting in my apartment until then.
“Look at this dandy,” my Uncle Paddy calls out, flipping a pint off the bar while he takes in my button-down shirt and dark jeans—a far cry from my usual Gilroy’s attire of cargo shorts and thrift-store T-shirt. The glass rolls from one hand to the other, as slick as can be, landing under the taps where he builds me a Guinness. “Here you go, boyo,” he says, setting the pint in front of me before giving me a long, hard look. “On your way to church then?”
His remark has nothing to do with my shirt. My uncle’s been running Gilroys for almost twenty years now—he knows when someone comes into his bar looking for trouble. I just grin and raise my pint. “May the Saints preserve us,” I say, mimicking his thick Irish brogue, earning myself a loud snort. “Conner around?”
“That altar boy of mine is in back.” Paddy throws his towel over his shoulder before heading down the length of the bar to attend to another customer. I take my glass and head for the back of the bar.
“Nice shirt, asshole” Conner says, tucking a receipt between the pages of he’s book he’s reading.
Gatsby. Always Gatsby.
He sets it aside while I slide into the booth across from him. I flip him the bird. “At least it’s clean,” I say and he laughs.
As soon as I’m settled, the waitress sidles up to the table. “Need another, Patrick,” she says, eyeing the dregs left in my pint. Her name is Lisa and with her dyed black hair, candy-pink mouth and fake tits, she’s about as un-Cari as it gets.
Another drink is the last thing I need but my nerve is a tenuous thing. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out.
It’s Cari.
“How about a Jameson. Neat,” I say, offering her a slight smile while I dump the call.
“Sure thing…” she smiles back before heading to the bar.
Conner leans back in the booth, watching the exchange, a slight smirk on this face. “Caught a look at Legs comin’ through here a few minutes ago with her date...” he says as soon as Lisa’s gone. “she did not look horrible.”
I don’t say anything. Just wait for him to say, I told you so.
Instead, he seems content to state the obvious. “It’s been six months now.”
“Yup,” I say before swallowing the last of my pint. Six months of being fucked with. Six months of letting myself get wound so tight I feel like I’m about to lose my mind half the time—and for what? Laughs? An ego boost?
“How’s it going?” he asks, but he knows. Everyone knows.
“It’s good,” I lie through my teeth, wishing Lisa would hurry the fuck up with my drink. I have a feeling I need to be drunk for what’s coming out of Conner’s mouth next.
“You are a horrible fucking liar.” Conner leans back and sighs, like I’m a burden on his back and he’s finally going to set me down.
I look at my watch. “It’s getting late. Isn’t it about time you start looking your nightly bathroom hook-up?”
“That happened forty-five minutes ago. Twice.” Unfazed, Conner smiles. “Look, cousin. You know what you need to do, right?” he says. He’s exactly five months older than me but if sexual experience were measured in years, he’d be a fucking dinosaur.
I shrug because as pissed as I am, I don’t want to seem like I’m hanging on his every word. Which I am… I mean, I know what I have to do but maybe hearing Conner say the words will give me the kick in the ass I need to get the job done.
“You need to wake up your inner-asshole,” he says, all sage advice and knowing smile.
Not really the advice I was expecting.
“I’m afraid the asshole gene skipped me over,” I say, shaking my head. Inner-asshole? He might as well tell me to jump off the roof and fly.
Now Conner laughs at me. “Bullshit,” he says, lifting his own pint. “You’re a Gilroy—that means you’ve got asshole in spades.” He gives me a shit-eating grin. “You just have to stop giving a fuck.”
“And how do you suggest I do that?” I say but I already know, don’t I? It’s why I came down here. Why I put on a clean shirt and brushed my teeth.
Conner must’ve been reading my mind because he laughed. “Take a look around this bar, man,” he says, stretching his legs out in front of him under the table. “There isn’t a woman in this place that would say no to me—you know why?”
“Because you’re a sexual Sharknado?”
This earned me a laugh. “Fuck you,” he finally says. “And yes, I am... but that’s not why. It’s because I’m an asshole and for some inexplicable reason, the vast majority of the female population love assholes. They love deluding themselves into thinking they’ll be the one to change me. Fix me or some shit.”
“Being an asshole isn’t a super power, cousin,” I say but by now, he’s got me half-convinced that it actually might be.
“If you do it the right way it is,” he tells me. “It’s time you use who you really are to get what you want. More to the point, who you want.”
I shake my head again, spinning my empty pint between my fingers. Who I really am is miles and miles from the guy he’s describing. Going upstairs to finish the Yankees game is starting to sound like a good idea. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Seeming to know that I’m halfway buying his bullshit, Conner goes in for the kill. “You know what Tess and Cari call you behind your back?” He leans back, head cocked like he can’t look at me head on and say it at the same time. “Predictable Patrick.”
I feel my spine stiffen like he’d rabbit-punched me in the kidney.
Predictable Patrick.
Safe. Boring. Harmless.
That’s what Cari thinks about me. It’s how I feel and it make me sick.
Conner lets out a rough sigh. “Look, cousin—” Before he can lay it on me, Lisa comes back with my Jameson, along with a water.
“Here ya go,” she says setting the rocks glass on the table in front of me. Then she slides the water onto the table alongside it. “Paddy says to tell you it’s holy water,” she says with a shrug and I can’t help but laugh. It’s my uncle’s way of telling me not to start trouble in his bar.
From the corner of my eye, I can see Conner watching Lisa with avid interest. I’m suddenly sure that instead of telling me what I need to do, he’s going to show me. Before I can stop him, Conner reaches for Lisa’s hand and pulls on it gently, giving her the same lopsided grin I’ve seen him give a hundred women—and watched it work every time. “Sit down for a minute, Lees, I want to tell you a secret…”
I’m not surprised when she does what he says because I’ve never met a woman who wouldn’t. I watch while Lisa allows herself to be tugged down into the booth beside him, angling her shoulders so that they’re pressed against the hard expanse of Conner’s chest.
Watching him slip a tattooed arm around Lisa’s waist, he leans in close to whisper something in her ear—something that makes her blush—was like watching myself. Or a much more adept version of myself. He’s got his large, callused hand splayed across her abdomen, the tip of his work-roughene
d pinkie finger slipping inside the waistband of her shorts, making contact with bare flesh. That contact, coupled with whatever Conner is whispering in her ear is enough to loosen the lock Lisa has on her knees. They fall apart just a bit—enough to make it obvious that she’s more than down for whatever it is my cousin is proposing.
I am no longer halfway convinced that being an asshole is a super power.
I am a true believer.
I’m about ready to excuse myself from the table so they can have some obviously much needed privacy when suddenly Conner leans back, unwinding his arm from her waist. Now I notice Lisa’s got her eyes locked on me. She’s looking at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. Like I’ve got something she wants. She stands, skirting the table until she’s standing right in front of me.
And she’s holding out her hand.
I look at Connor and he’s grinning at me—that dimple of his promising a boatload of sin. Don’t say I never gave you nothing, cousin, I can practically hear him say it. He reaches across the table and palms my Jameson, offering me a silent toast before he drains the glass. In its place, he leaves a strip of foil-wrapped condoms.
I don’t want to think about Cari anymore. I don’t want to want things I can’t have and I don’t want to worry about how this will make Lisa feel afterward or about what kind of guy this makes me.
I’m done thinking. Thinking is for nice guys and tonight—right now—that isn’t me. I swipe the condoms off the table and shove them into my back pocket before I give Lisa my hand and let her take me to church.
Eighteen
Patrick
Cari and I have one roommate rule. It’s hard and fast—non-negotiable.
No bringing home conquests. The moment Lisa takes my hand and pulls me out of the booth, I know I’m going to break that rule.
I could pull a Gilroy and fuck my uncle’s cocktail waitress in the ladies’ room, or I can treat her like an actual person with real feelings. I opt for the latter. I know, I know... not very assholeish of me.
Baby steps.
Somewhere between the booth where we left Conner and the bar my uncle is behind, I start leading her. Pulling Lisa through the growing crowd, we weave our way through a large throng of co-eds—girls drinking cranberry and Malibu and dudes choking down black & tans because ordering a Bud Light in an Irish pub is akin to pissing on a barstool.
I take Lisa’s drink tray and toss it up on the bar as we pass by. On impulse I swipe an open bottle of Jameson from the well. “I’m taking my break, Paddy,” Lisa calls over her shoulder as I pull her up the stairs leading to my apartment. She’s slightly out of breath—whether it’s because I’ve got her running the Boston Marathon or because I’m about five minutes away from getting into her pants, I don’t know and I’m caring less and less.
“I want my waitress back in fifteen minutes, boyo,” Uncle Paddy calls after me. I wave the bottle over my head and keep climbing. I can’t be sure but I think I hear him say something that sounds like, it’s about feckin’ time.
I push the door open and drag Lisa inside after me, kicking the door shut. By now it’s full on dark and I forgot to leave a light on when I left so as soon as I do, we’re surrounded by dark, the only light that cuts through the gloom is the dim glow of a streetlamp. It’s weak and watery, making it impossible to see her and I’m glad.
I lean into her, try to kiss her but end up catching her ear and she laughs softly. “Relax, Patrick...” she says against my neck, pushing my shoulders into the wall, not more than five feet from the door we just came through. “By the time I’m through with you, you won’t even remember her name...”
I feel her hands, sure and practiced, working the buckle of my belt open—the clink of cool metal. The snap of warm leather. She tugs my zipper open, yanking my pants down low on my hips, giving herself enough room to slip both hands down the front of my jeans. One of them cradles my balls while the other wraps its fingers around my cock, a slow, teasing thumb brushes across the head. As soon as she gets her hands on me, her eyes flare for an instant before slipping to half-mast. “Your cousin wasn’t kidding,” she says softly against my neck, her tongue gliding up the rigid cords of my neck.
This isn’t Lisa’s first rodeo.
Pulling the speed pourer from the Jameson, I tip the open bottle against my mouth while pushing my hips against her hand, pumping myself into her grip. I don’t ask her what she means by what she said. Truthfully, I don’t give a shit. Eyes closed, I concentrate on the sensation of her hands on me rather than who has her hands shoved down the front of my pants.
She abandons my cock, her fast fingers working the button of my shirt open until it’s laid open and her tongue quickly follows, licking its way across my pecs. I take another drink and whiskey hits my chin, running down my chest. She laps at it, running the flat of her tongue down my chest and abs, circling my navel. She’s working herself lower and lower, lips and tongue against my hips while she sinks to her knees in front of me. I can feel her breath, hot and fast against my stomach and she yanks at my jeans, pulling them down until they’re just under my ass, but she’s still circling. Still waiting for me to tell her what I want. Like it isn’t obvious.
WWCD? What Would Conner Do?
I cup my hand around the back of her head and guide her to my cock and like I waved a magic wand, she’s got her lips wrapped around it, licking and sucking like her life depended on it. I take another drink because while Lisa is giving me the blowjob of a lifetime all I can see is Cari. I look up from the shadowy head that’s bobbing between my legs and find what I’m looking for in the watery half-light of the streetlamp. The full length mirror I used to watch my roommate get dressed not more than an hour before.
Even though the angle isn’t right and it’s dark, I can still see her plain as day—that scrap of bright red lace stretched between her thighs. Her hair lifted away from her nape, exposing the slim column of her neck. My cock is rock hard in an instant. So hard it’s almost painful.
“Her name is Cari,” I say under my breath, whispering it into the bottle I’m drinking from. The mouth between my legs seems to take it as some sort of challenge and flips into high gear. For a second I can smell gardenias and suddenly I’m on the verge of coming. I feel my balls tightening under Lisa’s expert fingers, her mouth a fast glide as she works me against the back of her throat...
Light peals across the wall I’m leaning against, pinching into my narrowed eyes. The bar noises from downstairs are suddenly amplified—college kids shouting drink orders and the loud clack of pool balls. I look up from Lisa’s bobbing head to see Cari standing in the open doorway, watching us.
Nineteen
Cari
Trevor presses his hand into the small of my back, steering me through the crowded restaurant, dodging wait staff and busboys while the hostess leads us to a table for two in the center of the room. As soon as she’s gone, I flip open my menu and bury my head in it like it’s made of sand. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with Trevor.
“What looks good, baby,” he says, glancing at me over the top of his menu.
None of it. I shrug my shoulders, closing my menu before laying it on the table between us. “I don’t know. Sushi isn’t really my thing.”
Trevor laughs at me like I’m a three-year old, faced with broccoli for the first time. “Crunch rolls are my favorite,” he says, flicking his gaze over the menu. “Spicy tuna is good too.” He says it like it’s something dirty, lifting his gaze to pin it to my breasts.
I’m going to burn this dress as soon as I get home.
“Will you excuse me,” I say, pushing away from the table to stand. “I need to freshen up.” Not waiting for an answer, I swipe my clutch off the table and bolt across the restaurant, asking directions from a random waiter on the fly.
The bathroom is a unisex one stall. As soon as I push my way through, I bolt the door behind me. Shoulders sagging, I snap open my clutch and pull out my phone. Dialing
with one hand, I use the other to turn on the tap while it rang.
Please answer. Please answer. Please answer.
The call was dumped into voicemail halfway through the second ring. “Hey, this is Patrick. I can’t get to the phone right—”
I hang up without leaving a message. To be honest, I have no idea why I called him in the first place. What could I possibly say that would make this situation better.
Hey, I know I’ve been a giant cocktease for the past six months. Sorry about that.
Jesus.
Sticking my free hand under the spigot, I let cold water run through my fingers for a few seconds before pressing them to my chest. Not ready to give up, I shut off the tap before dialing a different number. This time the call is answered almost right away.
“Fuck,” Tess says, grunting softly. In the background I hear Poison’s Talk Dirty To Me and the jangle of metal tools hitting concrete. “I thought you were on a date.”
“Where are you?” I say cautiously, even though I know. “Am I on speaker phone?” Tess works for Conner. He owns his own garage a few blocks away from Gilroy’s.
“Competing in the Miss Universe pageant. Where do you think I am?” she says, delivering the last few words through gritted teeth. “I’m in the middle of dropping a transmission—” She grunts again, the sound followed by a satisfied sigh. “And yes, you’re on speaker phone.”
“Take me off.” I can barely say what I need to say out loud, let alone broadcast it across the garage Tess works at on speakerphone.
“Con’s not here,” she says, reading my mind. “It’s just me, Brett Michaels and a ’57 Chevy—so spill.”
I sigh, leaning against the bathroom sink and do what she says.
I spill.
To Tess’s credit, she doesn’t interrupt while I tell her what happened between Patrick and me. In fact, the only way I know the line is still open is because while I’m blabbering, Poison gives way to Skid Row. Even so, as soon as I run out of steam, I say, “Are you still listening?” It’s only been a few minutes but as much as I’d like to, I can’t stay in the bathroom forever.
