AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fat chance of not being mad. I’ll call her again since she’s my mother, but I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being mad at the entire world over the loss of Wilder Lynx.
February 15 - Wilder
“You called her a hooker?” Gus asks, twisting the cap off the beer bottle. He hands it to me, and I swallow half in one gulp. “That’s not your smoothest move there, buddy.”
“I know.” I slam the beer bottle on Gus’s kitchen counter and inhale sharply. The taste of a beer hitting my tongue usually has a calming effect. This time, I want to hurl the bottle against the wall and make Gus’s kitchen tile hurt as much as I hurt.
“Do you feel bad because you called your girl a hooker and hurt her, or do you feel bad because cuffing season is over?” Gus asks.
I study Gus and his ridiculous handlebar mustache. He smirks at me because he’s been my best friend for over ten years and knows me better than I know myself. “You know damn well that it’s both. I’ll never admit that again, though,” I add, jabbing my finger in his direction. “Don’t you tell a soul I have cuff remorse.”
He holds his hands up like he’s being held up in a bank robbery. “I just find it entertaining that the guy that walks away from his cuffing partners without a backward glance is in my kitchen, chugging beer to try to wipe away the memory of his most recent.” He wipes a fake tear from his eye. “Our little player is growing up into a nice, young man. First, you turned down a threesome last fall. Now, you’re crying in my kitchen.”
“I’m not fucking crying,” I grumble, turning away from him because my eyes are filling with tears even as I deny it.
I tap my foot on the floor and lean over his counter, trying to catch my breath. The air around me feels like it’s choking me, and I struggle to inhale. The exhales don’t come easy, either, and I spend a minute consciously making my lungs work, making my chest move up and down like I’ve forgotten how to do it.
Gus pats me on the back, rubbing clockwise circles between my shoulder blades. “What’s happening to me?” I ask, and I hear the anguish in my own voice. I hate it. “Am I dying?”
“No, man. You just broke your own heart. And hers.”
“I didn’t break her heart. She did this for the money. Turns out, she never gave a shit about me. This was all to get money for her last year of school. She broke my heart.”
“The guy who used her for room, board, and pussy?”
I squint into the kitchen counter, leaning forward more and taking gulping breaths. “I’ve been horrible to her, haven’t I?”
“To all of them, mate.”
How could I have been so selfish? So immature? “Why am I like this?”
“I’m not saying that you have an excuse. Whether or not you can be forgiven by the other years, well, that’s up to them. But you’re my best friend, and I like to think I know you. I know that you got done wrong when you were a kid. If I had to guess, you learned that some people in the world have no loyalty, even to their kin.”
A tear rolls down my cheek, and I wipe it away before he can see it. If he notices, he doesn’t comment. He wouldn’t usually hesitate to make fun of me for crying over a girl, so the fact that he doesn’t immediately make fun of me tells me I’m in deep shit.
“When your mom gave you up and turned you over to foster care, I can’t imagine that did anything to help you learn to form attachments in relationships. Hell, man, you don’t even have an attachment to a place. Sure, you bounce around the same few counties within the same state, but I think that’s more so you don’t have to make new friends that let you crash in their houses when the tornado sirens go off or change your license plates.”
“I’m broken.”
“You got broke a long time ago, dude. Maybe it’s time for you to let someone try to put you back together. Glue. Duct tape. Let someone try, Wilder.”
“I don’t know how to be attached,” I mumble. Everything he’s saying is spot on, and I can’t believe I haven’t listened before.
“Yes, you do,” he laughs. “You got attached to her. Why? What made her different?”
I rub my eyes with my palms. “I have no clue. She just is. Sure, she’s beautiful, but I don’t cuff with ugly women. She’s smart, but so was 2020. I don’t understand.”
“Maybe it was the whole package,” Gus suggests. “She was kind to you. Giving. She wanted to please you, and you loved pleasing her. There was something innocent about her. The experts always say it’s the little things. Not to get too personal, because we don’t do that, but was the sex different with her?”
“Yes,” I say, dropping my voice. Gus and I don’t usually talk about sex except if we’re discussing which respective woman we’re taking home from the bar or what position we’ll be in if we happen to share.
“How?”
“Stop asking for details, you dirty pervert,” I chuckle. It feels weird to feel anything but overwhelming sadness or anger.
“I’m not asking for positions. I just want to know if you felt something. Something besides the obvious friction, that is.”
I slap my hand on the counter. “Are you asking if I felt love?”
