Human Hieroglyphix - Dex & Leila (29 page)

"Yeah."

I was quiet as I tried to process this information.  I mean, it wasn't
bad
, per se.  It wasn't something that I'd feel comfortable with, but it was a part of Dex, a part of the history of him.

"I was young, Elle.  Young and stupid.  So I was willing to experiment.  Stretch the boundaries, you know?"

"Live free or die," I whispered.

"Yep.  But the thing is, some things you do when you're 'twenty-dumb'  you don't want to do again.  It was an experience and I explored it and found out that's not what I wanted after all."

"I get it, honey.  Kind of a 'been there, done that'."

"Exactly, babe."

"Night, Dex."

"Night, Elle."

*.*.*.*.*

Leila was out like a light, but Dex couldn't find his sleep as easily.  Not after having his past, in the form of Edie, come back into his present, his present with Leila.

He had heard most of what Edie had said from his vantage point in the small laundry room that led to the garage, and was more than a little shocked, at both the language she used so casually and the actions that she described as if they were things that were done every day and by everyone.

Which just illuminated how much he had changed, had grown and out-grown, settling into himself over the years until he was comfortable with the life he had created.

There were a few girls during his time in Casper, Wyoming but only three stuck out in his mind.

Lisa, Dahlia and Edie.

Lisa was married but her man was doing a dime in one of Kansas' state pens.  Dex had really liked her but she made in clear from the beginning that they were just fuck-buddies and not even exclusive at that. 

Which had been fine by him. 

The nicest part of being with Lisa, besides the out of this world sex, was that she didn't mind doing it just at her place.  He hated taking a girl back to the house he shared with Holler since Holler and his ol' lady were very vocal when they were getting some.  While Dex was all for talking during the act, he found it was not so much fun to hear someone yelling about his girl's hot snatch or how they were going to 'blow his wad' into said piece of her anatomy.

Lisa also always made Dex breakfast when he stayed over, something not even Nancy had done.  Lisa's breakfasts were almost better than the sex, and Lisa was pretty unbelievable in bed. 

She took time to show Dex what women liked and needed to get off, and the different ways to do it.  He was good student to Lisa's tutelage and felt kind of guilty for his time with Nancy, his lack of knowledge. 

He even recognized that their vanilla, missionary sex, that he had found so unsatisfying, was probably his fault.

Dahlia and Edie were girls that he had been with in between his nights with Lisa.  It just hinged on which one was in the bar when he worked that determined who he would be with that evening or early hours of the morning, depending when his shift was over. 

Dahlia and Edie were roommates and Dex didn't think it bothered either one of them that he was screwing them both until Edie caught him and Dahlia in the act of mutual masturbation in the storeroom of the bar on a slow Monday afternoon.  She screamed and yelled, yanking Dahlia's long red hair to pull her off him.  Dex remembered he had immediately tucked himself back into his jeans, instinctually knowing that having his junk out with an angry women in the vicinity was asking for trouble.

As soon as he was out of the danger zone, Dex started paying attention to what Edie was yelling about. 

It wasn't that he was giving it to Dahlia, but that Dahlia was giving it to him. 

Up until then, he didn't know that the two of them had a thing going on under the covers and seeing Dahlia with him had put Edie over the edge.  And as Dahlia tried to calm Edie down, Dex got to watch his first girl on girl action which soon turned into a threesome, right there in the stockroom floor of Sally's Lounge and Bar.

Which is how Dex started to learn his boundaries after his melt down.  What made him feel good and what didn't, what was okay to experience once and what left a bad taste in his mouth, what he would treasure and what he would avoid.

And he hadn't realized just how far he had come, how much he'd grown until Edie showed up at his house with Leila inside it.

He sighed as he remembered taking Edie outside and telling her, as gently as he could, that he was with Leila now.  That Edie couldn't count on staying with him anymore when she came in town.  She had looked at him long and hard, long enough for him to realize that she had no other place to go and no money to do it with.  So he slipped her his half of his tip money from the day's work as Edie explained that she was there to see one of the Milosevic brothers the next morning. 

Dex hadn't cared if she had an appointment with the Pope, he didn't want Edie anywhere near him or Leila.  And even if Leila didn't make a big deal out of it, he wondered if she now had reason to think about his past, about the man that she was involved with and if she worried that she'd made the wrong choice by taking him back.

For Dex, it was a long night, filled with dark memories, only alleviated by the gift of the woman deeply sleeping so trustingly against his chest.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Thursday, Caitlin called to see if Dex and I wanted to meet up with her and Jake for, and I quote, the best burgers in town. 

Dex was all for it and he arranged to come at my house so we could take his motorcycle.  And I was all for riding any time we got a chance and we'd had more than a few chances as Dex's Jeep was still at Skeet's, the local auto repair.

I was a little surprised when we got to our destination and found it was Greatway Lanes, our town's one and only bowling alley.

"This is kind of cool, honey," I said when we on our way in. 

The lanes were on our left and down a couple of steps and the diner was up by the bowling counter on the right.  I could see that more than half the lanes had groups of people at them and their scores were projected on the drop wall above the ball return.

The diner was the kind of place where the menu was listed up on a lighted board above the window of the kitchen and I saw they must have had twenty-two different burgers listed and five different types of fries.  While the drinks weren't listed on the board, you could see what they had on offer in the glass fronted refrigerator that was off to the side, behind the counter.

We looked around the dining area but we must have got there before Cait and Jake, so we placed our order and carried our beers to an open booth in the busy diner.

Talking wasn't impossible but since the diner was a part of the bowling alley, it was sometimes hard to hear each other.

"I didn't think a bowling alley would be so busy on a Thursday," I said.

"Think this is league night," Dex said.  "At least, it used to be.  We used to have a team from Hiero but it kind of petered out after a couple of seasons."

"You used to bowl on a team?" I asked.  Don't ask me why but I just couldn't imagine my too cool to be believed fella wearing a bowling shirt and shoes.

"Was pretty good, too," Dex said with a smile as he took a sip of his beer.

It was the smile that I thought gave him away.

"Calling Bullshit," I said before taking a drink of my own beer.

"On which, the team or me bowling?"

I thought it over.  The only person at Human Hiero that I could even imagine bowling was Benny and that was only if he was half-drunk.

"Both," I announced.

"You'd be wrong on
both
counts, princess.  We did have a team and we were actually not that bad but it really did became more of a hassle as the shop got busier, so we stopped bowling.  We started doing it really as kind of a marketing thing, to bring in more customers and let the locals get to know us.  Quite a few people around town thought that just because a couple of us rode motorcycles occasionally and had body ink that we were in some kind of Satanic Cult."

I couldn't help my laughter imaging my neighbor, Mrs. G, running into Dex and friends and getting a petition together as fast as possible against them.

"Did you wear those funny bowling shoes and the bowling shirt?" I asked, the giggles still bubbling up.

"The shoes, yeah.  But we had t-shirts printed," Dex said snagging my hand.  "Are the giggles because you don't think I could make bowling shoes look cool?"

No, I didn't think my man could make
anything
he wore uncool.  Luckily, I was saved from answering by Cait and Jake's arrival. 

Caitlin made for our table and Dex saw that our order was up and went to stand by Jake.

"This is so cool!" I told Cait.

"I know, right?" she said with a smile.  "Jake and I had our second date here.  I didn't believe him about the burgers being the best in town, though.  But they really are."

Dex came back with three huge plastic baskets of food lined with parchment paper.  The burgers were humongous as was the 'spicy' basket of fries that practically overflowed.  I pulled out one to taste and it was amazing.  I think they tossed them with chili powder and something along the lines of the red pepper flakes like you put on pizza and they came with ranch dressing.

But the burger was, without a doubt, the main attraction.  I had order the swiss, mushroom burger but didn't realize when I ordered it that it could feed a family of four for a couple of days.  It was huge.  Dex went back up to the counter and asked for a knife so I could cut it into something more manageable.  Dex cut his Burger Club, which was piled high with sliced turkey, cheese and bacon, too so I didn't feel like such a wimp.

"You were saying that you two had your second date here?" I said in between bites.  I saw Caitlin glance up at Jake and saw the blush creeping across her face as she gazed at him.

"Uhm, yeah.  Yeah we did," she murmured.

He-man extraordinaire, also known as Jake, looked at Dex with a grin.  "You bring the bike tonight?"

"Yep, why?" Dex said wiping his mouth.

"Shame, bro.  Need a car after having one of the burgers.  Can't get busy on a bike like you can in a car." Jake said tilting his forehead down to touch Cait's, his eyes soft.

I had no clue what Jake meant and when I shared a glance with Dex it appeared he didn't know either so we let it go.

We'd finished our burgers and, since he was sitting on the aisle portion of the booth, Dex cleaned up our side of the table as I begin to tell Cait about Edie's visit yesterday afternoon. 

By the time Dex was back at the table, I just had related the 'he's really good between the sheets' statement, which already had both her and Jake in stitches, Jake with his hand over his eyes and his other hand gently slapping the tabletop.

I felt Dex's arm move to drape along the back of the booth as I carried on with Edie's division of duties regarding Dex and why she, as a guest and all, should go first. 

Jake and Cait were laughing so hard they were rocking against each other, food totally forgotten. 

When they had quieted down a touch, Dex decided to add his two cents.

"You guys know that Dr. McCarthy here is becoming pretty 'street'," he said and I felt his arm descending from the booth back to lay across my shoulders.  "Go on, Elle, tell them what you said was going to happen to Edie if she tried to do anything with me."

I shot him the 'Leila Death Ray' but again he was impervious and just kept smiling. 

I kept my mouth shut.

"Not willing to tell, huh?  Okay, guess it's up to me."  And I watched as he turned back to our friends on the other side of the table.  "Our very upright and straight-laced professor here told me she was going to be 'tossing dogs' if Edie ever tried to make her share."

Which, of course, had Jake practically falling out the booth from laughter.

Caitlin looked a bit confused but was still smiling.

"Okay, so I know now that I was supposed to say 'throw dogs' to keep up my street cred, but when you tried to call me selfish later, what happened then, huh?" I countered.

"Yeah, you got me, babe.  I was teasing her about her becoming selfish since she didn't seem to want any more than two in our bed.  She brought up someone that has asked her out and said now that she thought about it, it might be alright."  Dex raised his hands in surrender.  "I had to call Uncle, Dude."

Jake nodded his understanding even as his shoulders gave evidence to his still unrestrained glee, as Cait looked to him, her man, for info.

So I just had to get it in, just had to say it.

"And what were my final words to that conversation, honey?  Do you remember?" I asked trying to look as innocent as possible. 

Dex leaned down and gave me a nose slide.

"And this is the God's honest truth, too." Dex explained to our friends, before exclaiming, "Boo-yah" and doing the karate chop movement.

All four of us were laughing our asses off and it took a
long
time for that laughter to stop.