Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) (2 page)

“So what did you do after you left last night, or should I say, who did you do?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. I had gone to her house for a little bit after work. She was always inviting me, and I’d figured it was time.

“Ask Matt,” I replied, referring to her boyfriend. I often joked like this only because she knew it would never happen. First, he was so in love with her, he was shitting her name, and second, Matt was really not my type. Not that I had a type. I had never dated, but if I did have a type, the blond hair, blue-eyed surfer type wouldn’t be it. I could only hear “awesome” and “right on” so many times before I wanted to take a shish kebab stick and give myself a lobotomy. Having never had a date or any guy interested in me, I didn’t have a type. But I knew instinctively that guys like Matt were not it.

“Ha, ha, someone ate a clown for breakfast,” she said sardonically.

If I hadn’t heard her say this before, I would have been really lost, and even though she had these lame jokes and comebacks, she was still my best friend. My only friend. We joked around for a few more minutes, and when it was time for her to go back to work, she asked her usual, “Wanna hang out tonight?” and I replied with my usual, “I don’t know, maybe,” which she knew meant no.

“But Matt’s older brother is in town, and we thought we could double-date, you know.” She looked at me hopefully.

“I don’t know, Em. I hate setups.” I would’ve had to have actually been on a setup once to know this, but I figured it was something the cool me would say. Plus, if I did get set up with someone, I wouldn’t want it to be with a Matt Sr. Negative.

“You’ll like this one, Har. He’s all sarcastically not funny, just like you.” I knew she said this with love, I think.

“I’ll think about it, but no promises.” I only said this to get her off my ass.

She had accepted this with a smile, probably thinking she had me. I would make something up before work ended, and that would be that. I couldn’t even imagine actually going out on a setup. I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with a guy, other than what I had read in books, and that would get me only so far. I wasn’t even sure how you go about kissing someone. I laughed at this thought. If only Em knew…I was the biggest slut who had never even kissed a guy.

All a part of faking normal.

Chapter 2

Deklan

I glanced down at my phone ringing for the third time in the last hour and sent the call to voice mail, again. My brother never called me. Ever.

As I lit up a cigarette, my phone rang again. Fuck. The bastard was doing this shit on purpose. He wouldn’t stop blowing my shit up like a needy bitch until he got me.

“What?” I growled, answering before I said the hell with it and chucked it out the window of my car.

“It’s about time. I’ve been calling your ass for an hour.” My brother had the nerve to sound pissed. Fucker.

“You got me. What?” I took a long draw, feeling the burn of the cigarette in the back of my throat. I fucking hated smoking, but I had to get my head right before I walked into the shithole I called a job. I will say one thing about this job, though: it had its perks.

“You have to come home, Dek,” Matty said quickly.

That wasn’t likely.

“Why the fuck would I want to do that?” I laughed. I was sure he remembered my “fuck you” when I ducked out two years ago, not looking back once. I hated Dacula, the small town in Georgia that was home until I left for Atlanta. I hated that place and everyone in it, except for one person, and even she wasn’t enough to make me stay.

“Because Mom’s sick,” he spat out. I knew he hated asking me to come home, fucking hated it like I hated his ass.

Fuuuuck, if anything could get me back to that shithole of a town, it would be her.

“How long?” I asked, flicking my half-smoked cig out the window. That should make me quit; after all, my mother was dying of lung cancer, but fuck it, I was never one to follow the standards. I knew she was sick when I left, but I still left and didn’t give a shit about anything at the time. Think what you want, but I had my reasons.

“The doctors say not that much longer, a month if that.”

Shit.

I didn’t need this shit right now. Just when I thought I could bury that life behind me, this shit had to happen. I should’ve said fuck it, that it wasn’t my problem, and hung up. But I would’ve been a bigger bastard than the person I hated most in this world if I did.

“I’ll be there by tomorrow night,” I said and hung up before he could say anything else to me. I was already dreading what was going to be a fucked-up family reunion.

I got out of my car and walked over to Diesel, where I was a bartender and occasionally a bouncer. I hated the douche I worked for. He was the sleazy, greasy-deals-made-under-the-table type of asshole.
I didn’t think twice about it when he offered me a job after I kicked his old bouncer’s ass for kicking my baby, my car. Apparently, his old bouncer, Stone, had been the best fighter he’d ever seen, and I choked his ass out in two minutes flat. The pay was good and I had shit, so I took it.

People came to Diesel to scratch an itch. The clientele ranged from rich men looking for some nameless, fake-tittie bitch to make them forget about their cheating wives at home to the poor middle-class guys who blew their rent drinking away the fact that they had no money. I was here because I knew nothing else. I hadn’t even tried to do the school thing. I had no money, and I damn sure wasn’t getting in on my C-minus grades, and I refused to ask my family for shit, so I did the next best thing—hustled and busted my ass. I wasn’t doing too badly. I had a small shithole to lay my head and fuck, and my baby was in good running condition. I was good. Until that fucking phone call had to go and fuck with my head.

“You’re late, asshole,” Big Mike said, stating the fucking obvious.

“I was busy with your grandma on my dick.” I shoved passed him, getting a “fuck you” and middle finger in return. That was all he would dare do. Big Mike may be a big motherfucker, but he couldn’t get with me and he knew it. I was a good fighter. Not bragging, just how it was. Shit, I had to be with how I grew up. My father was a special kind of asshole and showed me how much so on a nightly basis until I started giving him a taste of his own medicine. Dick.

Throwing my jacket behind the bar, I nodded at Sal, who worked the other side of the bar, then quickly downed a shot of JD to gear up for the night.

Two hours later, I was standing behind the bar getting eye-fucked by a sexy redhead old enough to be my mother’s best friend. It was a busy night, and my tips were spilling over out of the tip jar. And I was about to partake in a perk. I went over and cleaned the bar top where she had been posted for the last hour, getting nice and lit, giving me her “fuck me” eyes.

“Can I get another one?” she shouted over the music, holding up her empty tequila sunrise glass. I was pretty sure she should have called it after that last glass, but who was I to tell her about her limits? I reached for her glass, brushing my fingers on the inside of her palm a little bit longer than necessary. I gave her half as much alcohol than normal and set the glass down in front of her with a wink. She wouldn’t even know the difference.

She gave me the eye—you know, the one that says “meet me in the bathroom in ten minutes”—and I gave her the “hell yes” nod and watched as she downed the drink, then slid off the bar stool and sashayed over to the bathroom.

“Sal, back in twenty,” I hollered. She gave me a look but didn’t say shit. Sal was used to my perks. It wasn’t like she didn’t benefit from them as well. I always gave her half my tips whenever I skipped out and she had to cover for me.

I made my way over to the bathroom, stopping at the supply closet and grabbing the Out of Order sign, then I went in and saw Red standing at the sink, waiting.

“Anyone else in here?” I asked.

She shook her head.

I hung the sign on the door and locked it, then stood behind Red as she looked at me in the mirror. Her breathing was heavy, causing her chest to rise and fall rapidly. Her eyes were slightly glazed, and the only thing she would remember tomorrow was this moment, this first contact. I slid my hand around her waist and pulled her ass back to grind on my hard cock. She moaned, and I thanked fuck she had on a short-ass dress as I hiked it up around her waist.

No panties, fuck yes.

“I’ve heard about you. I’m so hot for you,” she panted as I cupped her sex while rubbing her clit with the pad of my thumb, getting her nice and ready.

That wasn’t something I hadn’t heard before. They all said shit like that.

“Well, let me not disappoint my reputation,” I said as I slid two fingers into her wet pussy. Chicks dug it when I acted like an asshole to them. Hell, sometimes it wasn’t an act. I did learn from the best.

I took my fingers slowly out, and before she could breathe in, I slammed them back in with a force that had her almost on her toes, gripping the sink.

“You ready for me, Red?” I asked as I repeated the motion, coating my fingers with her slickness and squeezing her breast with my other hand. I fondled her nipple through the fabric of her dress, twisting it slightly, then massaging it with my palm.

“Oh god, yes, please,” she begged, grinding her ass on my cock.

No begging needed, Red. This was the part of my job I fucking loved.

I pulled out a foil wrapper from my back pocket, ripped it open with my teeth, and handed it to her. She wasted no time leaning back and rolling the condom over my hardness. I pumped my fingers in her a few more times, then replaced them with my dick. I slid into her easily, and she cried out, gripping the edge of the sink harder.

“Bend over. This is going to be fast and hard,” I huffed as I guided her back away from me, grabbed her hips, and started giving her the best twenty-minute fuck she would ever have. I looked at her in the mirror, and her face said she was about to come.

I’m right there with you, Red.

Her pussy gripped my dick in a delicious way as I slid almost all the way out and slammed back in. I reached between her legs and pinched her clit slightly and she fell apart, coming hard and babbling incoherently. I pushed into her once more, then stilled as her pulsating sex milked me until the last drop.

Damn, I needed that.

I quickly pulled out and gave her a chaste kiss on the lips. “Last drink’s on me,” I said. I tied off the condom and dropped it in the trash before pulling up my pants and heading to the door.

“Wait. That’s it?” she asked as she pulled her dress down and looked at me expectantly. I hated this part, when we both knew this was not going to lead to something more.

I stared at her and, after a beat, said, “You can take some pretzels, too.” Then I headed back out to do my job. She did help relieve some of the tension I was harboring ever since that phone call, but I didn’t have time for a “something more.” I never did. I was more into the “something right now,” and that was the way I liked it.

Chapter 3

Harley

I dreaded going home. If you had my life, you wouldn’t rush home, either. So when Tom asked me if I wanted to stay a little later to make up the time I missed this morning for being late, I jumped at the opportunity. Plus, it gave me a perfect excuse not to go out with Em and Matt and Matt’s whoever.

“You suck.” She pouted when I told her the news.

“Every night,” I replied. She would never get the self-depreciating sentiment behind that.

“Well, he’s in town for a while, so don’t think you’re getting off so easily. Matt’s waiting. Call me!” she said, then waved and left.

Don’t hold your breath, Em. Not that I wouldn’t call her, but I wouldn’t call her for that. I watched her skip into the parking lot and drop a kiss on Matt’s cheek before climbing in and driving off. I wondered what it felt like to have someone waiting for you.

I busied myself among the rows of books, straightening up what little kids had knocked down in the children’s section and putting magazines back in order. I loved losing myself in my work. It kept my mind off how truly pathetic my life was. I had read enough books to know that my life, or lack thereof, was at most a cry for help. Problem was, I had no one to cry to. I wasn’t some teenager in high school who could go to the guidance counselor and say, “I’m afraid to go home.” No, I was a twenty-three-year-old recluse by force and was afraid of trying at life and failing miserably.

As I switched sections, I started to entertain the idea of leaving my mother, as I always did—it was my favorite pastime. I thought of moving far away so that she couldn’t find me and living a fabulous life and being happy.

Truly happy.

Maybe change my name to something normal, maybe get a goldfish, forget to feed it, and then have a goldfish funeral because that’s what you do.

Normalness.

But with these happy thoughts came the bad ones that had been engrained in my brain since, well, forever. The thoughts that my mother instilled came rushing so fast to the forefront of my mind it made me dizzy. It quickly shut down any thoughts of me being happy. I was in such a downward spiral of thinking as I was crouched down to fix a bottom shelf that I didn’t notice the guy right behind me, and as I went to stand up, I slammed right into his chest. At least I thought it was the guy’s chest—it could have been a brick wall wrapped in leather.

“Fuck, you okay?” Strong arms grasped my elbows to keep me from falling.

I quickly recovered and stepped back out of his grasp to apologize, but I had trouble finding my voice. We got a certain type of crowd in Bookwormz. Mostly it was either middle-aged women or middle-aged men who almost always turned out to be creepers, so I was shocked by the fact that this guy seemed to be around my age and that he looked like he had just stepped off the pages of some bad-boy biker book. Leather jacket, dark low-slung jeans and all.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” I stammered, closing my mouth so the drool that had started to pool in the bottom of it didn’t escape.

“Obviously, but now that you have, maybe you could help me.” He smiled and took a quick look in the parking lot behind me. I didn’t dare look away. His presence demanded my full attention.