by Aubrey Irons
“You guys are assholes.”
“And your dating life is impossible to keep track of.”
“I’m a busy man, what can I say?” I grin, spreading my arms wide.
“Yeah, dude, you are busy. Heard Dad has you helping out with his Center along with running the bar. How’s that working out?”
Silas snorts. “He’s got incentives when it comes to showing up at the Center.”
Kyle’s brow shoots up as I narrow mine at Silas. “Oh?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Silas grins as he turns to Kyle. “You meet the Ellis’s yet?”
“Dad’s friend and his family?” He frowns. “Nope?”
“Oh.” Silas smiles again, leaning back in his chair. “Rowan has.”
Kyle turns to me, a quizzical smile on his face. “Something you wanna share?”
“Nope.”
Kyle grins as he turns back to Silas. “And her name is?”
“Now, why would you assume there’s a girl?”
My brother and Silas snort.
“Her name is Evangeline,” Silas says with a raise of his brow, taking another sip of beer. “And she’s very pretty.”
“She’s a Bible-thumping weirdo is what she is.”
Kyle laughs. “So there is a girl.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He glances back as Silas. “Is he still this shitty at lying?”
“Apparently.”
“Okay, fuck you.” I flip off Kyle. “And fuck you too.” I turn the hand on Silas. “I’m not going near Eva.”
“Eva, huh?” Kyle grins over his beer at me.
“He’s not going near her because your dad’s friend Leonard is a goddamn psychopath and would literally crucify Row here if he so much as looked at his daughter, let alone touched her.”
Touch her?
The braggart in me wants to open its mouth. The smarter version of that guy makes the enlightened decision not to mention that my tongue was in Eva’s pussy less than a handful of hours ago.
“I’m hitting the head,” I growl as I stand and march towards the bathrooms.
The scene from earlier rushes through my head all over again — Eva, lying on her bed, her legs spread, her breath caught in her throat, those sweet moans dripping from her lips as I run my tongue up and down that sweet, sweet-
“How we doin’, buddy?”
I jump about a foot off the ground, whirling in the bathroom to see Rich leaning against the sink.
“Jesus Christ, man,” I growl, blowing air out through my lips. “Your flare for the dramatics is fuckin’ creepy, you know.”
I notice the distinct lack of his bodyguard Gus this time.
“What the fuck do you want, Rich?”
He grins as he reaches over and locks the bathroom door. “Money.”
“No shit.”
“No, I mean, you owe me more now.”
I glare at him. “The hell are you talking about, I pay you a fortune every month.”
Rich sighs, smiling that sick smile at me. “Federal interest rates man, they’re killer.”
“Federal interest rates,” I say flatly.
He grins.
“You’re a loan shark, Rich. I thought the entire premise of your business was off the record cash.”
“Hey, I’m a respectable business man,” he says with a grin. “And your interest goes up to nine percent next month.”
I swear through gritted teeth. “That’s gonna put me under, Rich.”
“Then sell more fucking beers man, I don’t know. You’re the bartender.”
“And you’re the loan shark, you know what happens when my business goes un-”
“Respectable business man,” Rich says icily. “Don’t make me tell you again.” He lifts his coat open, and suddenly, I know why he hasn’t bothered with Gus this time.
And that would be because of the gleaming silver gun tucked into the waist of his pants.
I clear my throat. “Respectable businessman. Got it.”
He smiles. “See? You catch on quick.” He reaches up and unlocks the door as he readjusts his coat. “Don’t make me come find you like this again, Rowan.”
I resist the urge to mention I in no way made him come find me. But then, there goes my mouth again.
“Aww, do you mean this is the last time we’re going to have one of these heart-to-hearts in the men’s room?”
“Watch it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Evangeline
“And it was at that very moment that I decided to dedicate my life to the Lord and His work.”
“Amen”, my father says, his eyes closed as he knocks the dinner table with his knuckles.
“Amen,” Milton — future fiancé Milton — says feverishly, his brow literally sweating after the story he’s just finished telling. He smooths his button-up shirt down over his roundish belly, and adjusts his tie before he takes a healthy sip of water. Milton’s just regaled us all — me, my parents, and Chastity — with the story of how he found God after his “life of sin.”
It’s worth noting that Milton’s version of a “wicked life of sin” varies from what most people definitions of that might be.
Even I can see that.
With the outreach my father does, and with the evangelical nature of the Grace Church of Salvation and Divine Retribution, I’ve seen and heard a fair amount of stories of people finally finding faith and God in their darkest moments. A light at the end of a particularly long bender, a voice of reason after violence, drugs, or drink has left someone without a home or family to call their own.
Milton’s “darkest moment” was apparently when he realized he’d dropped five thousand dollars over the course of a week on an online video game.
Milton doesn’t, and never has touched alcohol. Or drugs. Or caffeine, apparently. He lived with his mother — in her basement, actually — until his “brush with the devil”, as he puts it, at the age of thirty. He was married the first time soon after that, and as horrible as it makes me sound and feel admitting it to myself, it takes me all of ten minutes of conversation with him to at least sort of understand how that marriage fell apart.
Because though Milton might be zealous in his religion, which is exactly why my father likes him, there are other facets to him that have me shifting in my seat uncomfortably and looking at my plate.
Other facets like the fact that Milton is weird.
Facets like his nervous, strangely high-pitched laugh.
Facets like his being extremely creepy in the way he just keeps staring at me through the entire dinner.
“Well, Milton,” my father pushes his plate away from himself as he clasps his hands and levels his eyes at my future husband. “Business was good in Boston?”
Milton’s business — the one my parents keep lauding as an example of how great he is — as it turns out, is a patented course on abstinence that he teaches to high schools, youth groups, and churches across the country. Somehow, this is tied to his “dark past” with irresponsible video game spending, but though he only told the story five minute ago, I can’t for the life of me remember the connection.
“Impressionable minds, Pastor,” Milton says with a heavy sigh. “Impressionable young minds are ripe for corruption, and it’s my job to stop the seeds of the devil from ever being planted.”
My mother fans herself, sighing as she bows her head towards him. “You’re doing the Lord’s work, dear.”
“Indeed,” my father says solemnly.
“Amen,” Chastity parrots.
I mumble something non-coherent into my Diet Coke.
“Evangeline.” Eventually, I’m forced to look up and meet Milton’s aggressively intense smile. “I can’t wait to hear more about your missionary work in the Orient.”
The Orient. Seriously?
I plaster a fake smile on my face. “Korea was a lot of fun.”
Milton sighs. “Just look at the two of us
— both off around the world doing our part to build His kingdom.” He looks at my father. “Truly, this is a blessed and Godly union, Pastor.”
My father beams as he reaches over and pats my hand. “Yes, our Eva is quite the little missionary. Though, I know her true strength will be in the home, raising a family.”
The veneer I’ve been holding together in front of my face all night cracks.
“Actually, I’ve also been considering graduate school.”
Milton and my father laugh.
“Well, dear,” my father says evenly. “That was with your previous situation. With Milton here and the family you’ll raise together, I’m sure your priorities will shift.”
“No, they won’t,” I say flatly. “I’m still actually interested in learning more about-”
“That’s enough, Eva.”
My father’s voice is sharp, edged in that way it gets when it’s coming down with extra heavy hand from the pulpit.
I shut my mouth, but it doesn’t stop the fury from raging inside of me. It doesn’t stop the overwhelming, oppressive feeling that I’m being sold to this man.
And it’s nothing I want.
He’s nothing I want. He’s nothing that sparks me, and marriage and love and all that should spark, right?
I want to say “not like Rowan,” but I know that’s a completely silly thought, considering what we are.
I’m inexperienced, not naive.
“Well that was lovely.”
We’re back at the house after dinner, stepping through the backdoor into the kitchen and flicking on lights.
“Yes, it was,” I say quietly.
My father starts to shrug off his jacket before he stops, glancing at me and then my mother. “Look, I need to swing by the Center. Chastity? Why don’t you come with me, and we can let Eva and her mother talk for a bit.”
His eyes linger on me, and I try to smile, but I can’t seem to manage much.
“Yes, of course Pastor Ellis.”
I want to roll my eyes as Chastity follows my father back out the kitchen door. It’s almost like she’s the daughter he should have gotten.
“He’s a nice man,” my mother says after the door shuts. “Milton.”
I nod. “He is.”
“Very successful business he has.”
“Yes, it is.”
We’re quiet for a moment before she speaks again. “God does have a plan for us all, Eva.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Hey now,” she smiles, her hands cupping my face, “I was even younger than you when my father introduced me to your father.”
“You mean arranged for you to marry someone you didn’t know.”
“Well, clearly he knew what was best.”
“Are you happy, Mom?”
Her brow wrinkles. “Well of course I am, honey.”
“No, Mom, I mean really happy? With your life?”
“I have a good man for a husband, one who brings the good word to people every day and one who leads me like a husband should.” She smiles. “And I have an angel of a daughter who I love very much, Eva. So, yes, I’m happy.”
“Did you ever want more?”
“That’s not for me to want, honey.”
I frown. “Why?”
Please don’t say God has a plan, please don’t say God has a-
“Because God has a plan for all of us, Eva.”
I shut down. It’s not the faith that throws me off — I have nothing against her or anyone having that. It’s the blind, willfully ignorant type of faith. It’s thinking my father is the man who can “lead her like a husband should”.
“I think I’m going to go for a walk,” I say it before I can stop myself, and I know what it means.
“Oh, well, bring a jacket honey. I think I’ll go to bed.”
I hug her. “Goodnight, Mom.”
“Goodnight Eva.”
We separate, and I start for the backdoor before I stop and turn back to her. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
She smiles. “I love you too, sweetheart.”
And then I’m out the door, heading where I shouldn’t; every footstep taking me further from the path others are laying out for me and closer towards damnation.
Sweet, agonizingly beautiful damnation.
Chapter Thirty
Rowan
The bar crowd died as soon as I relieved Jade tonight, which is giving me a mix of emotions. On the one side – to the businessman side who owes money to fucking everyone, it sucks. But the worn out, mentally exhausted side of me is relieved.
No customers might mean no money, but it also means I can sit here behind the bar on my phone playing Words With Friends with Silas while I sip a beer, instead of dwelling on what the fuck I’m doing with Eva.
Eva who is presumably meeting up with her soon-to-be fiancé. Or husband. Or arranged marriage, or whatever the fuck he is.
But whatever it is, it’s eating at me. It’s eating at me in a weird way I’m not used to, since I never let things with women “eat at me”. Besides that, the whole point of getting mixed up with her in the first place was to just have fun, right? The whole ridiculous premise of “teaching her” things for the guy she’s set to marry? It’s bullshit, and we both know it.
But that was there from the start — an end point. An expiration date. The impetus for getting involved in the first place was the ending, which did not involve me. Which, under normal circumstances, would suit me just fine.
For some reasons, it’s currently not suiting me.
I scowl at the game on my phone, which is apparently disagreeing with me over “cocksucker” being a word.
Fuck this game, I text to Silas before swapping back to the game and glaring at my letters again.
Told you. It won’t let you use swears.
I grin. My friend knows me entirely too well.
I stare at the scrabble-like game another minute before I sigh and just go with “cock”, losing “sucker” and the triple word score that goes along with it. After all, cock is a rooster — they can’t deny that one.
Lol. Silas texts. So lame.
Immediately, the app buzzes with his own word response, and I flip back to it.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter out loud.
“Cauterization”, off of the “C” in my “cock”, and nailing him a fucking triple word score and a triple letter on the goddamn “Z”.
“Fuck this game,” I mutter, closing out of it and grabbing my beer off the back bar.
“Busy place.”
Goddamnit.
I sigh before I glance up at Fiona, standing in the doorway to my empty bar.
“Yeah, it’s…” I trail off and shrug. “It’s an off night.”
“Guess this means you have to talk with me this time.”
I tighten my jaw. “Does it?”
“Well, I’m the only one in here.”
“Not really in a chatting mood, Fi.”
“We don’t have to talk.”
She let’s the words settle, both of us knowing full well what she means by them.
“What are you drinking.”
She smiles as she settles herself at the empty bar. “Vodka soda.”
“Drinking alone or should I expect your fiancé to be joining.”
“Jeff’s out of town on business.”
“Wonderful,” I say flatly as I slide the drink in front of her.
“And you know what they say about mice playing while the cat’s away, Row.”
I frown as I turn to reach for my own half-empty beer.
I have nothing against Jeff. I’ve actually never even met the guy, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t deserve the shit Fiona’s put him through. Hell, the shit I’ve put him through, at that, even if he doesn’t know it.
“Aww, what? We can’t talk now?”
“Now that you’re engaged? No, we can’t.”
“Got a problem with engaged women?”
>
“Yeah, Fi, I do.”
Lots of problems with engaged women, apparently. Eva’s face immediately jumps into my mind. Eva who is currently probably eating dinner or fucking praying, or, shit, I don’t even know what — quoting scripture with her new fiancé.
Not her fiancé, I want to say. But it might as fucking well be. She’s going to marry him, because however fucking insane it is in this year that a twenty-one year old woman’s father is picking her husband, that’s where we’re at with the Ellis family, apparently.
“Look at you with standards now,” Fiona laughs, sipping her drink.
I ignore her, glancing back at my phone and opening Words With Friends again.
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters dryly. “The service here sucks.”
“This isn’t fucking Applebees, Fi,” I say without looking up. “If you want a cheery fucking smile and a five-dollar appetizer menu stuck in your face, go there.”
“Got something else you could stick in my face?”
I roll my eyes. “Jesus, Fiona, have a little-”
I stop as I glance up, my eyes dropping to the light jacket Fiona’s just shrugged off and the teeny white undershirt she’s wearing underneath that clings to every curve of those very much surgically enhanced tits.
“A little what, Row?” she says with that smug look. It’s that look that says she thinks she’s got me. She thinks she’s worn down my walls like she always does and gotten me to say yes to whatever she wants like I always did.
She’s wrong this time.
Call it the new me, or maybe I’ve just found something better to think about then chasing after Fiona’s second-hand scraps.
Maybe I’ve just got a little faith now.
“Class” I say flatly.
She pouts, and I look away.
I need something to do. I can’t just sit here ignoring Fiona and trying to beat Silas at a fucking scrabble app game.
I duck under the bar and head for the office. Might as well grab last month’s account shit so I can at least make a mild effort of going over my own numbers.
“Where you going?” she calls after me.
“Work stuff,” I toss over shoulder. “I told you, I’m not here to fucking entertain you or sell you jalapeño poppers.”
