Ward
“Hey, hey!” I called over the music. A few heads jerked up, and I jabbed a finger at the two screwing around near the table. “Don’t go fucking that up!”
The guy shrugged and grinned sheepishly before he pulled the woman he’d been groping away.
She gave me a pretty unimpressed look. I’m sure she was thinking the same as I had, that I could afford the loss.
I could, but that wasn’t the point. They were here because I wanted them to be, and that could be changed real fast. I was all for debauchery and hedonism, but wasting the stuff that had them flying high and horny was stupid.
Fun stupid was entertaining, but stupid stupid was just...stupid.
I leaned back into the huge couch and looked at the barely controlled chaos unfolding around me as I grabbed my drink and took a sip. The bartender I’d hired for the night was spectacular, and I had to remember to keep her in mind for the future.
“Someone has earned themselves one hell of a tip for the night,” I said with a chuckle as I swirled the glass. I could almost hear the clink of the ice sphere, but alas, the music and conversations were far too loud.
Beside me, someone leaned over, smiling and looking at my glass before she spoke. When I raised a brow, tapping my ear, she leaned in closer with what was supposed to be an inviting smirk but was a little too sloppy to be appealing. “Something interesting in there?”
“Where?” I called, frowning as I realized the music must have been turned up without my noticing.
It had not been this hard to hear people earlier, and as much as I was all for making sure the music was loud, I still wanted to talk to someone without bellowing.
It was precisely why I preferred having these kinds of ‘gatherings’ in my penthouse or a VIP room at a club with soundproofing.
She leaned over and tapped my glass. “In there...you were staring.”
I scoffed. “Just wishing I could hear the ice hit the glass.”
“Why?” she asked with a frown, which was understandable; it was a weird thing to say.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug, giving the glass a little wiggle and imagining the sound of the ice that I swore I almost heard, but it was just a trick of the brain...or maybe a trick of the other things I’d indulged in. “Just gives me this little tingle in my head, I guess.”
“I guess,” she repeated, and I wondered if she realized she’d done it...or even if it was significant. “Do you know the guy who’s running the party?”
“We’ve met,” I said with a smirk. “Why, is it not to your liking?”
“Weird with drinks and weird with words,” she said with a laugh, her nose wrinkling again. “And I like the party just fine, but I have to say, the guy hosting this has to be a little weird too.”
“Probably,” I agreed with a smirk. “But what makes you say that?”
“I mean, look around,” she said, and I did, even though I had a pretty good idea what was happening.
I wasn’t diligent and paranoid about everything, but I was aware enough to know whether there was trouble.
..at least within eyesight. When you were hosting a bit of debauchery, it was always a good idea to make sure things didn’t go from bordering on degenerate right into an emergency.
The key was to make sure there were people with enough sense to sound the alarm when something went wrong. After that, it was just a case of taking care of whatever mess happened and keeping it as clean as possible.
Expecting a problem was the first step to knowing how to deal with it. I’d had to clean up my fair share of messes in the past, so I was good at dealing with them when they popped up. Not that I was looking forward to using that skill set again anytime soon.
“I’m looking,” I informed her as I looked around before turning my attention back to her. “What’s your point?”
She scoffed. “C’mon, you can’t have a bunch of people over to tear the place up without being a little weird.”
“It could just be that he has a lot of money and doesn’t worry about spending it.”
“Yeah, well, when you’ve got that kind of money, I guess you can be weird. Shit, it probably helps.”
“Now there’s an idea,” I said, meaning it. “A bit of the chicken and the egg.”
“What?” she asked, her nose wrinkling again, and I almost concluded she was the sort to turn her nose up at anything that might be ‘weird’ to her.
“It’s a philosophical question. What I was getting at was, do you think the owner of this place is weird because he has money? Or was he weird beforehand, and the money just lets him be his weird self?”
She rolled her eyes and put her hand on my thigh. “You’re still weird, want to find somewhere that doesn’t have people and uh...well, fuck?”
“I wish I could say your directness did you a service, but considering how many drinks and drugs you probably have in your system, it has less to do with your personality and more to do with several lines of coke,” I said, gently pushing her hand off.
“But no, I’m okay for now, I’m sure there are plenty of takers. ”
She scoffed. “Really? What are you, gay? You sound like it.”
“I’m suddenly curious why you think I sound gay,” I said with a raised brow.
The classic ‘gay voice’ had been dug up, burned, and the ashes scattered years ago.
My mother’s insistence on elocution lessons throughout my childhood oversaw that quite nicely.
Those had been less fun than the other lessons I’d been given growing up, but learning how to speak clearly and ‘properly’ was far less interesting than the subjects tutors brought to my attention.
What could I say? Math, science, and everything else were far more entertaining to a lonely, hungry mind than making sure you didn’t drop a ‘t’ because that was ‘lazy.’
“You know, fancy, smart, and you’re cute,” she said with a shrug.
Two decades into the twenty-first century, and there were apparently still people who thought sounding educated and thoughtful was a trait of homosexuality. Ignorance, both banal and baneful, was a state of the human condition I had accepted long before tonight.
“I’m not one to pick a side,” I told her with a shrug, setting my glass on the table and preparing to stand up. “But I appreciate the compliment, poorly delivered as it was.”
“What?” she asked with the same blank look, and I turned away before her nose could wrinkle again. There was bound to be something else at the party to hold my attention and improve my mood.
Not that I had any expectation of that happening anytime soon.
Lately, it felt like everyone, whether friendly, antagonistic, or something in between, wasn’t enough to lift my spirits.
In fact, the whole world was getting more and more gray as I grew older and experienced more.
Once, that lack of color had been at the edge, but now it was creeping inward.
It was slow at first, but its approach was constant, unstoppable.
It was...unsettling.
Until, of course, I’d found a way to inject color.
It was just an injection at first, but it didn’t take long until I found ways to add explosions of color to my life that made everything suddenly.
..fascinating. With a flash of color, I could make out the gray dullness of the chains wrapped around me and holding me in place.
That was back then, when I’d first seen the scope and depth of the life I’d been living, or more accurately, the life I had been forced to live.
Mainly by my parents. Or more specifically, my mother. She had been the one to arrange all my tutors and lessons and had made sure I was given the ‘best’ education. She’d wanted a child who could fit the exact criteria she had determined long before she’d ever had me.
For such an intelligent, capable, and worldly woman, she hadn’t taken into account that children were people—little, undeveloped people who needed to be taught and cared for.
People weren’t sculptures; they weren’t unshaped clay that could be molded to one’s wishes, no matter how hard you tried.
They could surprise you, in pleasing ways, and disappointing ones.
As far as my mother was concerned, I was a source of grievous disappointment.
However, as I looked around my little party, I had to empathize with her; disappointment seemed to be all too common in life.
Especially because, like her, I was the author of that particularly disappointing work.
I wasn’t responsible for the partygoers’ behavior or personalities.
Still, I was the one who had arranged the party in the hope that a new group of people might make things…
interesting. However, it was quickly becoming apparent that new faces were not the answer to my dilemma; boredom and grayness were creeping in further, and perhaps I should consider retiring for the night.
Taking a deep breath, I stopped by the bar for another drink before going through my penthouse toward the back.
My bedroom was and had always been the one place I never allowed guests to go without my being there.
I wasn’t the sort to believe in anything being sacred.
Yet I still believed a person should have a space that is wholly and utterly their own.
My bedroom was one of those places for me.
I stopped as I passed the mirrored doors to the balcony that wrapped around almost my entire penthouse.
There were mirrors all over the penthouse, and this one stood from ceiling to floor.
I peered into it with a critical eye more out of habit than any genuine interest in whether I was still presentable.
Some of the training my mother had insisted on had stuck.
It was just a check to make sure I hadn’t turned into a slob while trying to enjoy myself.