Mating Theory

Chapter One

Chapter One

Sutton

Pounding wakes me up.

Meetings must have run late in California. I probably took the red-eye back to Tanglewood. The plane was almost empty, only a few rumpled businessmen like me and a sleepy family with Disney stuffed animals grasped in chubby hands. The airport, a ghost town. I bought a cup of lukewarm coffee on the way out so that I could make the drive home. The important thing is that I made the deal.

That’s always been the important thing.

The pounding grows louder, and I groan. I’m more than tired. Hungover? Maybe I stopped by Christopher’s place and had a celebratory drink. One. Maybe two.

I swallow down stale vomit. Jesus.

Every muscle screams a protest when I move my head. Sharp rays of light pierce my dry eyes. The digital clock face says it’s four thirty in the afternoon.

That doesn’t make any sense. My alarm should have woken me up at six. I would be in the office by seven, ready to work on the next deal.

Pain lances through my stomach, making my whole body shudder.

I’ve never been sick a day in my life, but maybe I finally caught the flu. Or something worse. Ragged breaths saw in and out of me. I push up from the sofa, squeezing my eyes shut tight against the wild swirling of the room. What the hell’s in the water in California?

“Sutton? Don’t make me break down the door.”

That would be Hugo, and I snarl against the memories that want to flood me. He has no business showing up here. No business making all that noise.

I stagger to the door, barely able to see, leaning against the door as it opens.

My old friend looks disgustingly un-drunk in a crisp navy shirt and well-tailored slacks. “You look like s**t,” he says, brushing past me into the house.

“Why are you here?”

“Your house looks like s**t,” he adds, taking in the empty bottles and broken furniture. I’m not sure exactly when that happened. The realization hits me like a goddamn wrecking ball—I wasn’t in California closing a business deal. I wasn’t on a red-eye flight. I haven’t even gone to the f*****g office in weeks. I’ve been drunk off my ass instead of working.

I swallow the bile in my mouth. “What day is it?”

A dark glance. “You don’t remember?”

“What f*****g day is it?”

“I thought I’d check on you, because maybe you’d be moping. I didn’t know you’d completely implode.”

I’ve been wasted for six weeks. Six months. I push past him to the living room, shoving aside dirty clothes and a pizza box. I find my phone between the sofa cushions, the screen black. Dead.

There’s a roar that must be me. Frustration. An animal kind of fury. I hurl the phone across the room. It hits the wall with an ominous crack. “Why shouldn’t I get wasted? Everything’s gone to shit.”

Hugo leans against the doorframe, looking almost bored. “At this point I can’t argue with you. This place is a pigsty. Where’s your sister?”

“She left.” That’s what everyone does. They leave.

He curses softly. “The wedding is tomorrow, you bastard.”

I’d had fourteen-hour days of hard labor, my muscles burning, my stomach growling. My body was a tool, hard and sharp. I didn’t worry about how the hammer felt, whether the ax needed a break. My arms carried what I told them to. My legs walked me where I needed them, except for now, when they could not help me stand. Knees folded, and I sank, graceless and heavy onto the sofa.

“Tomorrow,” I say, my voice hollow.

“I suppose you could skip it.”

“I haven’t eaten in forty-eight hours.”

“Though unless something changed, you’re the best man.”

The best man. As if that weren’t f*****g ironic, that the woman I wanted picked someone else. He was clearly the best man. She’s marrying him, and I have to stand beside them and look happy.

Stale alcohol churns in my stomach. A sudden clench. And then I’m halfway across the room, stumbling over piles of mail and empty pizza boxes. The bathroom smells rank from the last time I threw up, the acidity enough to push me over the edge. It rushes out of me with a force that leaves me breathless, gasping, eyes burning. Liquid curls over the edge of the sink, splattering the mirror, the wall, me.

My fists clench the ledge, the marble I picked out. An antique repurposed frame holds a thick mirror with anti-fog features. Which means I can see my bloodshot eyes, familiar and blue and broken. The ones I saw every night before my daddy punched me in the stomach.

When I can move without heaving again, I make my way to the shower. Enough room to fit three people, but there’s only me—story of my life. The polished brass knob turns in complete rotation. It takes thirty seconds for the water to be scalding, thanks to modern technology.

I pull off my clothes and step inside, forcing myself into the spray. It hits me in the face, hard enough, hot enough to make me gasp. I close my eyes. That’s the only concession. The water burns me all the way to my bones. I need the pain, need to feel something, anything. It cleans me; it dissolves me into smoke and steam before turning me back into man again.

Time stopped ticking along when the two people I cared about most walked away. It could be twenty minutes I spend in the shower, feeling the water turn lukewarm. It could be two hours; the cold turns me to marble, a statue with rivulets running down my body, steady runnels defining muscles honed from decades of labor, creating a sheen on the column of my c**k.

A brushed steel drain breaks apart the stone floor, gathering water as clear as it came out of the spray. There are days’ worth of dirt on me, decades’ worth. I was born with too much dirt to ever wash away, but as always, it can’t actually be seen; I can only feel, and God, I feel it.