Destroy Me (Crystal Gulf Book 1) (27 page)

They never say no.

I take her hand and lead her through the filthy party house, across the lawn, and into my house. I lock the door just in case someone with light brown eyes wants to stop by for old time’s sake. I lead Stephanie, Terry, Marie, I don’t fucking know her name, to my bedroom.

“I thought we were going to dance,” she says when I slam my bedroom door closed. I lock that one too.

“We will,” I tell her, taking my shirt off. “Later.”

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” She laughs, running her hands down my body.

“No.” I grab her hips and bring her close to me.

“Well I want to dance. Lay down. I’ll dance for you.” She pushes me back to my bed until I fall on top of it. “You have anything to play music on?”

I fight not to roll my eyes. I don’t need to be teased right now. I want to fuck her so she can leave. I take my phone out anyway and open my music folder. Some gritty, sexy rock song Justine downloaded on my phone fills my room. I have to remember to tell her not to do that shit. She’s not the one paying the bill. Shit. I force myself to pay attention to Fanny.

She smiles and puts her hands in the air. “I’ve seen you at Mike’s place before,” she says.

Who’s Mike? “Mhm.”

“You never noticed me though. But I noticed you. Your eyes are kind of hard to forget.”

My room is disgusting. There are clothes all over it. It smells too. Doesn’t she smell it? She slides her hands down her body, over her stomach, and touches the waistband on her jean shorts. They’re already undone. She’s wearing a bikini underneath. My dick is as limp as it’s ever been. I don’t even bother touching myself. I’m not drunk. Girls like Fanny only work when I’ve had a few drinks.

Her jean shorts fall to the floor, revealing her tiny lime green bikini. She turns around, shaking her round ass in my face. I pretend it’s fuller, with curvy hips and a tiny waist, that her tits are fuller and higher. Her legs are longer too, her face softer, eyes light brown, and her golden brown hair frames her beautiful face. Instead of ripping her clothes off and pulling her down on top of me my eyes sting.

“Are you crying?” Fanny demands in complete and utter shock. And okay, maybe even a little bit of revulsion. She bends down and pulls her jean shorts back on. “What’s your problem?”

I sniff like a pussy. A complete and utter pussy. “You can leave if you want.”

I’m freaking her out. “Umm … are you sure?”

“I’m sorry.” I look her in the eye. “I really am. I shouldn’t have come over there just to bring you back for sex.”

She sighs. “Don’t act like you bamboozled me into coming over here. You’re not that slick.” She came here for the same thing and now she has to deal with a grown man bawling. “Am I a rebound?” she guesses. “Great. Just great.”

“Just go.”

“You’re not going to like, hurt yourself, are you?” she checks, half-way out of the door.

“Make sure you lock my door when you leave.”

Once she’s gone I lay down on my bed. Sex isn’t going to work. It stopped working a long time ago. I push to my feet and go rummaging around in my kitchen. I take the bottle of scotch on the counter and pour it down the sink the same way I poured Harley down it. The light brown liquid swirls away from me forever. I want to go with it, let it take me wherever it’s going. Instead, I search my cupboards for anything else to drink.

There’s an old dusty bottle of gin behind Dylan’s old instant soups and one solitary dusty bottle of some spiced winter beer Dylan must’ve bought on sale. I shrug. Beggars can’t be choosers when they’ll choose anything. I pour the gin and the beer into one cup and take my riches with me to the couch. My living room smells like piss. I hate piss.

I think about cleaning my house up. But only until I remember I’ll actually have to give a shit. I don’t. I yank on the video game controllers and power on the console. I want to blow some shit up. I want to not think until the booze kicks in. Once it does I’ll go take a shower, get unused, and then I’ll go out and use everything I can get my hands on until I pass out. When I wake up I’ll do it all over again. I’ll do it until the wood chipper spits me out on Harley’s perfect mansion lawn.

The thought makes my eyes sting again. I don’t want to do this anymore, or tomorrow, or the next day, but I don’t have any other option. This is who I am. I have to get used to it again. How could one woman disrupt my life so completely? The thing that kills me is that she didn’t even try. Harley came in with her good and her heart and showed me everything I wanted was everything I couldn’t have.

Jona finds me that way the next afternoon. I haven’t moved from this spot except to pee. Fanny never locked my door. Anyone could have come in. Anyone. But they didn’t.

“Oh man, what is that smell? Did you shit yourself?” He kicks the gin bottle out of the way and gets a good look at me slumped down in Dylan’s gaming chair. “What the hell happened to you?”

I shield my eyes from the light glaring in through the open door. “Close the damn door. I’m almost going to beat this level. Dylan and I could never beat it. But I don’t need Dylan for anything. I never did. I don’t need anyone.”

“Dude,” he says, coming back once the door is closed. He sits on the end of the coffee table. He raises his eyebrows as his gaze roams over me. “You all right? Because you don’t look all right. How are we going to host the good and evil poker party tonight at the frat when you can’t even walk?”

“That’s tonight? Run, run you stupid shit!” I scream into the mouthpiece. The nerds on the other end squeal with virgin delight. “Yeah, man! Now go in the building. I think there’s some more ammo.”

“Roger that, Wood Chipper,” the nerd leader says back.

“Yeah it’s tonight,” Jona insists. “What’s wrong with you? You look like a zombie, dude. You’ve been slipping these past few weeks.”

“I don’t need anyone,” I tell him, ducking behind a building as most of my unit follows. The rest are taking up the rear. We’ve been getting caught unsurprised all night. “Pay attention to the rice field,” I order. “Their uniforms blend in.”

“On it, Wood Chipper.”

“Great,” Jona grumbles. “I need your ass to go take a shower and get dressed. Please tell me you have a suit. The girls want us in suits. All black too. They’re going to be in white.”

I don’t want to leave this chair. “Do me a favor? Go get me some more gin. There’s some money in my wallet.”

He reaches over and snatches the controller out of my hands. “I’m trying to talk to you, man. I’m not your maid. Get it yourself.”

I get up too quickly, ripping my earpiece out, and end up tripping on my own feet when I get lightheaded. I haven’t eaten. “Give it back.”

He gets a better look at me. At my bloodshot eyes, my cracked lips, and overall panty dropping appearance. He doesn’t drop his panties. He holds my controller out of reach when I try to reach for it.

“What happened, bro?” he asks, serious in a way we’ve never been. Jona’s my party buddy. He’s just like me. I look more closely at him, wondering what’s wrong with him if we’re just alike. I should have wondered that before, but when you find someone to run with you asking them why seems pointless.

I miss Dylan. I want Dylan. Dylan would know what to do. I miss someone else more, and I hate myself for it.

“You have any E?” I ask him instead. “Coke, dope, anything?”

“I have some in my car if you want that. I don’t normally say this to people, because let’s be honest, I’m the one they should be saying it to, but I really don’t think you should be getting high right now.” He looks unsettled that he’s had to say that to me.

“Go get the pills or suck my dick. Go!” I shout when he just stands there looking at me like I’m pathetic, weak, and disgusting.

A light goes off in his eyes. I see the idea like a smoke ring floating right to his brain. “It’s Little Miss Perfect, isn’t it? Justine told me you and her were hooking up but I didn’t believe her. You never go for preps like her. And you’re, well, you know…” He shrugs. “Like me.”

Yeah, I knew …

“You two have been hanging out a lot lately,” I note purposely, giving him a look that will shut up even the dumbest man.

He doesn’t get the hint. “She’s just a girl, dude. There’s like so many out there. How am I doing? I’ve never had to talk to you about girls before. You usually have more than I do.”

I stare at him for a long time. I’m not going to kick his ass. Jona’s a moron. He can’t help it. “Get the E.” I fall down on the couch. “Now!”

I can hear the nerds shouting in my earpiece on the floor. I’m letting my unit down. They’re going to get killed because I’m not covering the sniper we all know is hiding in the dilapidated building at two o clock. Dylan is going to get killed because I let him go. Harley’s right. I just let him go. I kept doing the same shit that he didn’t want to do anymore. He left me here with my piss smelling apartment for snipers at two o clock.

“Here.” Jona drops a little baggie on my chest. “Just take one. They’re strong.”

I sit up and grab the empty bottle of gin off the floor. I shake out both pills, making sure Jona sees. He shrugs, as if to say “It’s your body.” It is my body. I crush the pills with my bottle. After I scrape them into lines I rip the edge of a magazine off and roll it up, using it to sniff up both lines.

My body sags against the couch. It takes a few minutes to take effect. When it does the rush of feeling nothing floods my system. I am nothing. I have nothing. I never did.

“I had to let her go,” I whisper, unable to move even if I wanted to.

“What?” Jona looks down at me and away from his phone. “You say something?”

“Can you call Justine? Tell her to come over. I need some ass.”

He looks away. “You call her.”

“Your phone is right there. Mine is in my room. Fanny wanted to dance before we hooked up.”

“Fanny?” He smirks. “Did you get her fanny?”

“Nah, that’s Dylan. Apparently he’s into it. Like we’re into pussy,” I add, laughing so hard my ribs hurt. I stop abruptly. “I miss her.”

Jona looks at me oddly. “What are you talking about? High people are so annoying when you’re sober.”

“I want Justine.”

“Too bad. You can’t have her when you want her, Bach, and then ditch her when you’re done. She’s not a toy. She’s a woman. She has feelings. That shit’s not cool.”

“She’ll come,” I tell him, just to be a dick. “She’ll come and I’d make her come. She gives good head. Call her.”

He’s going to hit me if I keep going.

“I love it when my dick hits the back of her throat.”

His fist balls tight.

“Or when I cum in her mouth. She swallows it down like a champ. Loves it, too. Begs me for it.”

I don’t move out of the way when his fist comes for me. When I wake up he’s gone.

“Anrg.” I drop to my knees and go to my room to get my phone. I hit
CALL
and wait for him to answer. When he does I grin. “You dick.”

“You’re late. I get two thirds of the pot tonight.”

I quickly glance down at the time on my phone. He knocked me out for a couple hours. “Does Justine know you want your dick and only your dick in the back of her throat?”

He takes a second to answer. “No,” he admits miserably. “Does Little Miss Perfect know you want to be perfect too?”

“No,” I admit, just as miserably. “When did we become pussies, Jona?”

“Probably about the time we got sick of this shit. Aren’t you sick of it, Bach?”

“Does it matter? We’re still going to keep doing it. What else is there? You think Justine wants you? You think Harley wants me? Hell no. They don’t deserve us anyway. They deserve someone—”

“Who hasn’t put their dick in every girl in Crystal Gulf,” he finishes. “Look, you want to come over and pregame before the party?”

“Are you going to hit me again?”

“Probably. Did you really cum in her mouth?”

If I tell him the truth he’ll probably kill me. He doesn’t want to know the truth. I wouldn’t. Because I know if he came anywhere near Harley, even on a piece of tissue and left it in her bathroom, I’d kill him. “No. I was just being a dick. She does give good head though.”

“Son of a bitch.”

In the shower I stand under the hot spray, trying and failing to shove Harley out of my thoughts. What if things were different? I don’t know why I’m asking. Things aren’t different. And even if they were who’s to say Harley would’ve entered my life at all? Even knowing I got a second of her sin free atmosphere is worth the lifetime I’ll spend without it. I’ve never tried to escape from someone else. Running from my own self was easy. All I had to do was not remember. There is nothing that would make me forget Harley. I could try, but the effort would be lethal. The amount of alcohol, drugs, and sex that would take would kill me. I’m not sure why that image bothers me. I never gave a shit about myself before. I still don’t. I guess it’s because Harley will still be here, changing lives, smiling her angel’s smile, and looking at Dylan with those light brown eyes. Just existing in the same lifespan is enough. It has to be enough.

Justine and Pink Heels are all I’ll have. They will have to do. And they never will.

I picture the night before when she was still sharing her air with me. Her thighs squeezing my head, my tongue in her pussy, and her fingers pulling at my hair as she writhed against me. All I do is remember. I’m not surprised when my dick gets hard. Of course she’s the only one who can do it now and I figure this out when she’s gone. I squeeze some soap into my hand and grab hold of my hard cock, bracing myself against the shower wall as I picture what her pussy would feel like. I move my hand back and forth, in pure fucking need. Tight, wet, and warm. Her pussy would be mine. I’d press my face in her neck, listening to her heavy breaths. If she was with me her breaths better be damn heavy. Her nails in my back, digging into my skin, drawing blood. My name on her lips like a plea. It’s not my hand anymore. It’s hers. Her hand guiding me to my end. I picture the satisfied smile she’d give, still good under the layer of bad I created.

I’m more satisfied with Harley’s image than I am of any potential lay tonight.