2. Blaine
1619 Words
2
BLAINE
Grey and I sprawled out on the couch as our latest hookup gathered all the clothes I’d peeled off her a good hour earlier. She put extra sway into her hips while walking to the bathroom.
The second the door closed behind her, my best friend and I glanced at one another. He grinned.
I didn’t.
“Dude.” He chuckled quietly. “It took you for-f*****g-ever to come. Was it her, or did you get all caught up in your head again?”
Closing my eyes, I rested back on the couch’s arm. The woman Grey had found for us and brought home looked like someone from my past, and the sight of her had taken me to a place I’d rather not go.
To dark memories that continued to haunt me nine years later.
Nightmares enough to shrivel any man’s d**k. I was lucky to have gotten off at all.
“She reminded me of a woman…from there,” I murmured as the toilet flushed in the distance.
“Shit.” Grey stirred, but I didn’t open my eyes. “Why the f**k didn’t you tell me, B? I would have sent her packing without a second thought.”
One thing about my best friend was that he always put me first. Every. Time. And I loved the hell out of him for it.
I shrugged. “I could tell you liked her.”
“s**t. Doesn’t matter if I think a woman is hot—she’s a willing, wet hole to get me off, and there are hundreds more out there.”
“You’re a w***e,” I muttered what I often teased him about since the man didn’t care what type of hole he found release in. Male, female, a*s, p***y, mouth—he didn’t discriminate.
“You okay?” Grey’s serious tone made me c***k an eyelid open.
“Yeah, man. No problem. But no more tall women with long black hair and blue eyes. Can’t f*****g handle that shit.”
Just like I couldn’t submit to thoughts of the same s*x thanks to that b***h’s husband.
My stomach pitched at the flashes in my head, images in vivid color captured by a traumatized child’s mind.
Swallowing hard, I fought against the heat flaring inside me, the sweat rising to the surface of my skin that roused nausea in my stomach.
“So petite, blonde, and brown-eyed,” Grey stated in his business tone that promised me he wouldn’t forget. Ever. “Got it.”
The bathroom door opened, and Grey hopped up to be the gentleman so I wouldn’t have to.
I released a heavy exhale and closed my eyes again, trying to not give headspace to my past and how it had created the antisocial, insecure-as-f**k guy I had to look at in the mirror every day.
The hours of penance, the beatings. Sitting in a pitch-black cell of forced solitude and silence in order to better meditate on one’s sins.
“f*****g hell.” I scrubbed a hand down over my face, my teeth clenching up tight. But I refused to let in the light of our living room’s overhead dimmers. I chose the darkness behind my eyelids because I could—it was my choice. I held the power over what I did or didn’t do.
The couch dipped.
“You can open your eyes now, dipshit. She’s gone.”
“f**k you.” I kicked out with a leg, connecting with Grey’s thigh. I still enjoyed my freedom to bask in the dark rather than look at him.
“I suppose I could offer up my a*s if you really want it.”
“Goddamnit, Grey.” I shot him a glare, hating that he knew how to rile me up and control me at the same time.
“There’s those hazel eyes I adore.” He flashed a grin, and I kicked him again. With lightning-fast reflexes, he grabbed hold of my ankle and grasped tight. “Talk to me.”
Strong fingers dug into my foot, rubbing until I sank back in total relaxation with a groan.
The fucker had hands to write poetry about.
“Have I ever told you how good of a buffer you are?” I asked.
“Yeah, but you can say it again. I’ll take an ego stroke any day of the week.”
“You get enough strokes of your own in as it is. f*****g keep it down from now on, would ya?”
“Sorry I get vocal when I jerk off.” His voice held no contrite tone to speak of.
“No you’re not.”
“I’m just hoping you’ll start to enjoy it someday.” He waggled his eyebrows, and I shook my head, unable to help my grin.
“I don’t do dick.”
As if he needed to be reminded. The last guy he’d brought home had all but begged for a threesome, and I’d nearly lost my dinner on the kitchen floor.
“I’ve got a nice one.” He grabbed his junk and flopped it back and forth beneath his mesh shorts.
“Mine’s bigger.”
“Yeah, I know.” His tone lowered a bit, and he tossed my foot off his lap.
“So you do check out the goods when there’s a woman between us.” My turn to joke, thankful for something to help push the darkness away.
“‘Course I do,” he muttered, climbing off the couch and heading into the kitchen. “What horny, bisexual man wouldn’t enjoy looking at a thick d**k and heavy balls? Water?”
“Sure.”
Grey brought guys back to our place just as much as he did women, but I didn’t share in the fun on those nights.
And I also wasn’t about to cross any further into teasing territory that might make things weird between us, even if I did think he was sexy for a guy. No f*****g way would I mess up what I’d found with him. He was my best friend. My anchor. A soul mate if allowed that term for a platonic relationship.
Grey tossed me a bottle of water and crashed in the other corner of the couch again. “So.”
“So,” I echoed when he didn’t continue.
“You okay?”
Goddamn him.
“I hate when s**t gets riled up in my head,” I muttered, turning to peer out the living room wall of windows overlooking the Pacific.
“Want to talk about it?”
“You know I don’t,” I snipped.
“You always feel better after you do.” He pushed like always in his reasonable tone, the manipulative bastard.
“Did you like her?” I asked, ready to quit with the serious s**t.
“Our hookup?”
I nodded, picking at the skin of my hands’ callouses. Work kept my body in prime shape but was hell on my palms.
“Willing hole,” Grey reminded me in his typical vulgar way.
“Someday, somebody is going to turn you inside out.”
He didn’t give me his usual spiel about never settling down.
I glanced over to find Grey studying my face. “What?”
He shook his head and guzzled water, breaking eye contact. Rarely was he the first to look away. The confident, cocky asshole took pleasure in making others squirm.
It was one of the characteristics that made him a good businessman. The fact he didn’t love anyone but himself was the icing on the cake.
Well, he had feelings for me to some platonic extent.
Enough that he’d dragged me across the country after we graduated from high school, saving me from hell.
His rich-as-f**k father had paid his way through college while I’d been gifted the second bedroom in the apartment Mr. Scott provided for his use. I’d labored in exchange for money for the first time in my life, soaking in the California sunshine and slowly learning how to deal with and somewhat move on from my childhood.
Shit still rose in my head like it did thanks to look-alikes and bits of religious rhetoric inadvertently caught on TV or radio, but at least I had my freedom.
Nine years and counting…no one from my life before had found me since I’d escaped.
I couldn’t imagine what I would do if my past ever caught up with me beyond in my mind. As a child, I’d learned the hard way that runaways, even those heard speaking of leaving, would be found and properly punished.
And having grown into a man, those promises, the results of rebellion I’d seen and experienced, made me want to shrink in on myself.
Weariness settled into my bones from the hell my mind had dealt with all night while trying to get off to show Grey my appreciation. He always put in the hard work to bring the woman home for us. I should have wanted to sink into the couch and not move, but my feet grew as restless as my mind.
I got up without a word and gave my muscles reason to flex so I wouldn’t feel the desire to escape even further than I’d done with my best friend. f**k knew I wouldn’t find a safer haven than living with Grey.
Only a few dozen steps upstairs to the second floor I all but had taken over and I shut myself in my bathroom. A hot shower would help to calm me, be the final push to allow sleep once I laid down.
But true rest wouldn’t come.
It never did.
- Writer
