20. Tate

CHAPTER 20

TATE

Dylan came home Sunday with a hand-shaped bruise around his throat, but he refused to tell me who put it there or if it was consensual. Without thinking, I traced my finger across my own throat, recalling the strong press of Brooks’ fingers as he pinned me to the floor and fucked me two nights before.

“Are you all right?” I asked, squinting as he moved around our small space, getting a beer from the fridge before throwing himself down onto his usual spot on the couch.

“I’m fine.” He smiled at me like he wasn’t wearing a handprint as an accessory. “How was your weekend?”

It was impossible to not smile at the question. “It was really great.”

“I’m surprised to see you home so soon.”

I rolled my head along the wall, turning my attention to the black iron fire escape just beyond our window.

“He had plans with his friends,” I said.

“Alex?” Dylan asked.

“I’m sure.” I shrugged. “I didn’t ask for details, I just overheard a phone call about it yesterday morning. ”

“Eavesdropper,” he teased, stretching his leg across the couch and digging his toe into my thigh.

I smacked him. “Hardly. He had the call on speakerphone when I got up and he kept it that way once I came into the kitchen.”

“Good to know he’s not hiding anything from you,” Dylan said.

I smiled softly, swallowing and imaging the way my Adam’s apple had fought against Brooks’ palm for breath.

“He’s not,” I agreed.

“I’ve known you two years.” Dylan shifted his feet to the coffee table. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you date anyone, though I have watched you fuck your way through the city. What makes him different?”

I held out my hand and clapped my fingers together until Dylan passed me his beer. I took a drink and turned my attention toward the ceiling, trying to parse out an understandable answer to his question. There were a lot of things that set Brooks apart from men I’d met before him—and after him—but I didn’t know how to explain them all in ways Dylan would understand.

Before the night Brooks had taken my virginity, I’d tried to date. I just hadn’t gotten far. People were either only interested in me because I was a virgin or terribly turned off over the idea of being my first. It was like the sex and the relationship were mutually exclusive, which I knew wasn’t true. I’d quickly proven myself right, finding Brooks on an unplanned night out and making the whole problem go away in under an hour. Sex with Brooks had of course created a new problem in that I had turned into an insatiable fiend who chased after one particular brand of sex that turned out to be even more difficult to find than a virginity thief. My plan had always been to get the first time out of the way and move on, but Brooks had been different from the drop.

Best laid plans, and all that.

“He makes me feel special,” I finally said, knowing it was enough but nowhere near it at the same time. He didn’t just make me feel special. He was special.

“How?”

I snorted, rolling my eyes at him. “Really?”

He rolled his eyes back at me, snatching his beer out of my hand. “Yes, really.”

“It feels like he really cares about me,” I said carefully, doing my best to articulate the tangle of feelings in the center of my chest. “He is thoughtful and attentive. He…he enjoys spoiling me.”

Dylan’s eyes went wide. “In bed?”

I laughed, returning the kick he’d delivered earlier.

“In it and out of it. He’s just…he’s a good person, I think. To me and other people. I can tell his friends think highly of him, and even though he has more money than God, he puts it to good use.”

“How?”

“For work,” I explained. “He basically helps connect other rich people with charities and non-profits that need donations.”

“So, he creates tax shelters?” Dylan arched a brow, but there wasn’t any seriousness in his expression.

“I don’t think that’s why he does it.”

“Well.” He poured the rest of the beer down his throat and pushed up from the couch. “I suppose that’s good then. Did you want to go grab a drink with me? Someplace that has better scenery?”

What I really wanted was to be back at Brooks’ house, in his bed or over his coffee table, but he was out with his friends—or he had been earlier—and I didn’t want to scare him off by being a stage five clinger.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

“We can go to Tryst if you wanted.”

I frowned, looking at the fire escape. “That’s so far.”

“It’s closer to your boyfriend’s house.”

“I’m not going to his house,” I said. “I haven’t heard from him since I left this morning.”

“You can text him and let him know you’re on his side of town,” Dylan suggested. “After you have a couple rounds with me, of course.”

I fished my phone out of my pocket to check the time. It was barely dinner time, and if I stayed on the couch, time would creep by like molasses. Getting out of the house with Dylan was a surefire way to pass the time, and he wasn’t wrong. Tryst was closer to Brooks’ house, and a boy could hope.

“Alright,” I agreed.

Dylan grinned and clapped like an over-excited kid.

“Just let me change,” I said, rolling off the edge of the couch onto my hands and knees, and then onto my feet. It was two steps around the corner into my bedroom, and I changed into a pair of light-wash jeans and a faded black t-shirt. I found clean socks and my sneakers, which were half shoved under the bed, then I met Dylan back in the living room.

He was waiting when I returned, and I followed him out of the apartment and down three flights of stairs to the street. It was a quick walk to the train and less than half an hour later we were seated at the corner of the bar at Tryst, Dylan’s boss Marigold making us martinis strong enough to strip paint.

With the first round down, Dylan was feeling good and I wasn’t far behind. When Marigold finally got up the balls to ask about the bruise around his neck, Dylan looked like he was about to be sick, and I didn’t think it was on account of the vodka in our glasses.

“It’s nothing,” he said, covering the mark with his hand. I knew Dylan well enough to know that was a lie.

“Dylan,” she said, voice wavering.

“Don’t make it a big deal, Mari.”

She worked her jaw back and forth, unsure of what to say next, but a patron at the other end of the bar called her attention away and saved all three of us from a conversation no one wanted to have.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him once she was finally out of earshot.

He gave me a quick and sharp smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just bad sex, Tate. You know what that’s like, right?”

I did know what bad sex was like, but now I knew what good sex was like too. I knew that Brooks had almost choked me unconscious before making me come, but I didn’t wear the proof of it around my neck. Whoever had done that to Dylan either didn’t know or didn’t care what they were doing. Or, worst case, both.

“Be careful, Dylan.”

The smile was gone, and he finished the last swallow of his martini, flagging another bartender who wasn’t Marigold down for another. We started our second round, and the vodka went straight to my head while it appeared to go straight to Dylan’s bones. He swayed back and forth on his bar stool and by the third round, my head wobbled like a bobblehead in every possible direction. Against my better judgement, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to text Brooks.

Me : I’m in your neighborhood.

Me : ish.

He was quick to respond.

Brooks : Oh? Where?

Me : A bar with Dylan called Tryst.

Brooks : He works there too, right?

Me : How did you know?

Brooks : Alex told me.

Brooks : How long are you there for?

At some point during my texting, Dylan had gotten up from the bar. I scanned the small space, finding him in the corner beside the jukebox, chatting with a man I’d never seen before. They were leaning in close together talking, and Dylan was so drunk I could see the way he slurred his way through the conversation.

Me : I don’t know. Dylan is a little shitfaced.

Brooks : Are you?

Me : Well on the way but not as bad.

I turned my phone face down on the counter because the texts were hard to read. Marigold thankfully dropped two glasses of water in front of me, and I took one with thanks, sucking down half the contents in one go. Dylan was still off in the corner doing whatever he was doing, and my phone vibrated beneath my palm. I desperately wanted to turn it over and read the message, but my stomach was dangerously close to revolting. Apparently, the change of scenery had been a bad idea.

It was near eight in the evening and I had work in the morning. Dylan had disappeared from his post in the corner, and so had the man with him, and my phone vibrated again beneath my palm.

“Sorry,” I muttered to the device, shoving it into my pocket and stumbling off the stool. Marigold gave me a knowing look as I zig-zagged my way to the long hallway that held the bathrooms. I’d barely gotten the door open when my stomach roiled, and I slammed open the door of the closest stall and fell to my knees. Retching into the toilet, I cursed Dylan for wanting to come out, then I cursed Marigold for her paint-thinner martinis.

Two violent rounds of vomiting turned into five minutes of dry heaving, and I slid down the wall of the stall and bent my legs. I folded my arms across the tops of my knees and dropped my clammy face against my forearms, sucking in small and measured breaths meant to sober me up, not make me want to die.

I closed my eyes, thumping my head back against the wall…the downward angle wasn’t doing anything good for my stomach, and my phone buzzed again in my pocket. From the other stall, I heard the sound of someone getting their dick sucked, the familiar noises of regrettable bar bathroom hookups. Scrubbing a hand down my face, I tried to climb back to my feet, barely getting my knees straight when the ma gical smell of spicy citrus cologne wafted through the otherwise sticky and dingy space.

I hummed, righting myself and blinking Brooks into focus, and found myself immediately feeling sick again. I spun away quickly, dry heaving into the toilet, which I’d never managed to flush. Bracing myself against the wall as best I could manage, I kicked my foot forward to depress the flusher. It was a risky move sober, a worse one drunk, and my legs gave up beneath me on account of not being able to balance.

Stumbling backward, I landed against Brooks’ chest with a whoosh of breath. His arms hooked beneath my armpits and he hauled me to my feet. In the other stall, someone grunted through an orgasm, and we both turned our attention to the door. Brooks’ eyes went wide and I snickered, leaning into him like I loved to do when we were cuddling after sex.

“How much did you have to drink?” he asked, breath warm against my ear.

“Too much.” My body burned from the throwing up and also the embarrassment. “What are you doing here?”

“You stopped answering my texts.”

“This feels stalkerish,” I mumbled.

Brooks turned me to face him and took my face into his hands, inspecting me for…something I was too drunk to make sense of.

“I won’t apologize,” he whispered, tone taking that same hurt defense he had when he worried I was going to criticize the kind of man he was.

“I don’t want you to,” I assured him, swallowing hard. “I would kiss you, but it’s gross in my mouth.”

“I don’t care,” he said, pressing our lips together in a surprisingly chaste and mostly closed-mouth kiss. “Let me take you home, get you cleaned up.”

“Need to check on Dylan,” I said, even though I wanted to go more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

As if on cue, the door to the other bathroom stall swung open and Dylan appeared, the same bruise around his throat as before, but the flush on his cheeks was a near perfect color match. The man he’d been talking to near the jukebox pushed out from behind him, shouldering past me and Brooks to get to the bathroom door.

I was too drunk to drive, but sober enough to recognize the shame that washed over Dylan’s face when he saw me gawking at him. Brooks re-situated his hands on me so I didn’t fall over, his expression unaffected.

“I’m fine,” Dylan said, but I didn’t believe it.

“That’s it,” Brooks said, a definite sense of finality in his voice. “Let’s go. You’re both coming home with me.”