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"I don't ever want to hear his name come out of your mouth. And if that video ever leaks, I'll fucking kill you with my bare hands."
"You wouldn't."
"Fucking try me, Aniyah. You can't blackmail your way into the only good thing that's ever happened to me and expect me to treat you like anything other than the conniving bitch you are."
"Why don't you want me?!" she cries.
"Other than you're a crazy fucking bitch that's blackmailing me?"
I try to keep my voice down, but I'm close to blowing my top.
"You're not him."
CHAPTER 32
BRYANT
"I hope you had a Merry Christmas?" Susan, one of the regular AA members, asks as I help her stack the chairs. As much as I don't feel like being social, I really don't want to go home right now. There's too much of him there to remind me how fucking angry I am.
"It was alright. Quiet. How was yours?" I ask, deflecting the conversation away from me. She talks a little about getting to see her kids. They were taken from her after she got caught drunk driving with her kids in the car when they were three and five years old. That was four years ago, and they’ve been with her parents ever since. She's been sober since the night it happened, but only recently started getting unsupervised visits with her kids again. She's hoping she can get them back next year.
"You seem lost in thought," she says, and I realize I wasn't listening.
"I'm sorry, that was rude. I'm a little off. Holidays, you know."
"Wanna go grab a cup of coffee and talk about it?"
"Thanks, Susan. I'm good. I have your card, though." She offered me her contact information after I started coming to meetings and admitted I'd relapsed. Of course, I haven't mentioned that I've been drinking somewhat regularly, although not to excess like I did that first night.
She gives me a polite hug, and I head out to my car. I don't go home, I just drive around, looking at Christmas lights. It's peaceful. I don't even turn on music, I just keep driving, letting my thoughts overwhelm the silence.
Honestly, I wish I could talk to someone about it. The student I fell in love with got engaged yesterday. I know he's not in love with her. At least, I think he's not. But they look pretty convincing in the engagement photos I saw on social media.
Why would he have sex with me in a bathroom, with a high risk of getting caught, if he was about to pop the question? Maybe it's just something physical for him? It seems a little far to be just a cover.
I remember he said he loved me. He said it first. But I was drunk enough to let him top me, so maybe I'm remembering wrong?
Maybe he's not gay at all, and the novelty, the experimentation, gives him something that a pretty girl with perky tits can't give him?
I love him. I guess that makes me gay. Maybe I’ve always been gay, and didn't realize it, and that's why I never really had a meaningful relationship? I thought it was because I didn't have the best example of healthy relationships growing up, since my parents hated each other and fought all the time. But now that I’ve met Jack, I'm wondering if maybe I was just looking in the wrong places.
My tires take me three towns over, and I pull up at a place that Google informed me is a gay bar. It doesn't look gay from the outside. Although, honestly, how would I know what a gay bar in the middle of Texas looks like? I'm not trying to stereotype anything or anybody here.
I sit in the parking lot for so long that I expect the place to close soon, but when I look down at the clock on my dash, it's only just after eleven, which I suppose is still early for a bar. A couple of very normal-looking guys wearing jeans and cowboy hats walk in. It must be some kind of cowboy bar.
With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, I decide I may as well go in and see what it's about. Can't hurt anything. I grab my jacket and put a ball cap on, pulling it down low over my eyes. My job is already on the line. I don't need to be recognized right now.
It's dark inside, but clean for a dive bar. I have a seat at the bar and order their best scotch on the rocks. Then I sit with the bar to my back and look around.
It's really just like any other dive cowboy bar, aside from the fact that there aren't many women. There are a couple over by an electronic jukebox, and one or two at various tables. There's an upbeat country song playing, and a few people are doing a line dance. It's so… normal.
Honestly, the only thing that could out this place as a gay bar is the banner of tiny flags at the very top of the shelf behind the bar. That, and the shirtless guy in tight jeans slowly riding a mechanical bull. I can't see much of his face because his black cowboy hat is pulled low over his eyes. He's got one arm up, holding the hat to his head, the other holding onto the rope handle on the mechanical bull. The bull rolls and bucks, smooth and slow, and the cowboy rolls his body with the movement. His hips undulate, abs contracting and rolling. His skin is covered in a sheen of sweat that makes the light catch on each defined muscle. It's definitely erotic. And I can see the appeal, but I don't feel that spark of heat until I imagine it’s Jack up there. I imagine how his abs would contract, how his hips would roll forward and snap, and my cock starts to press against the front of my jeans.
My eyes glaze over, and I'm lost in my own imagination. Until I become aware of someone standing right in front of me.
It's the guy from the mechanical bull. He's close enough that I can tell the glossy sheen to his skin is some kind of oil, not sweat. He's young. Probably not as young as Jack, maybe in his late twenties. The hair that peeks out from under his hat is sandy blonde, and his eyes look to be a dark green color, but other than that, I could pretend that he looks somewhat similar to Jack. If Jack had a slimmer build. This guy has full lips like he does, but a thinner nose, a more pointed jaw.
"Like what you see, Daddy?" The cowboy says, looking at me appreciatively. My brain tries to morph his Texas accent into Jack's Alabama twang.
