Chapter 5McCormick
CHAPTER
FIVE
MCCORMICK
Belching loudly, I kick the empty pizza box aside and prop my prosthetic leg up on the coffee table, leaning back into the sofa to stretch out. “I’m stuffed.” I rub my belly. Even though it’s flat, it feels like I swallowed a basketball.
“Me too,” Stiles sighs. “Well, I should get going. It’s getting late and I have to work tomorrow.”
Huh? Aw crap. I reach for his hand and squeeze, trying to ground him in the present. “You’re staying here for a while, remember?” Of course, he doesn’t remember. “You have fleas. Your landlord is exterminating.”
His thick, dark brows scrunch. “Fumigating?”
“Whatever. Your clothes are in that box.” I point to the box we left next to my front door.
Stiles rubs his temples, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “My head is killing me.”
He always gets these headaches when he forgets. It’s usually worse at night when he’s tired. It’s like the old chicken with the egg scenario. Does the headache cause forgetting, or does the forgetting cause the headache?
“Why don’t you go lay down in my bed? I’ll get you some painkillers.”
“What about you? Where’re you gonna sleep?”
“I’m fine right here.” I slap the couch cushion and a cloud of dust billows into the air. It’s old and worn, like my body, but comfortable. “Go, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Slowly pushing to my feet, I go through his box and pull out a clean pair of his boxer shorts and a T-shirt. From the kitchen, I grab two pills and a bottle of water. Stiles is spread out on top of the black comforter, half asleep.
“Sit up and drink this.” I place the pills in his hand and unscrew the cap from the bottle.
“Thanks,” he says in his gruff voice, deepened by exhaustion and pain.
“Don’t go to sleep in your clothes. Change into these.” He struggles to sit up and I slide my arm around his back to help him. “Do you need help with the rest of it?”
“No, I think I can change my pants by myself.”
“Just throw the dirty ones on the floor and I’ll take care of it.” I grab my hot dog blanket from my closet before shutting the bedroom door behind me.
I settle back down on the couch and slide my prosthetic off, propping it beside the couch. It’s made of carbon fiber and is pretty lightweight. Even has an artificial knee and ankle. I’ve got about five different prosthetics, each one cooler than the next. They’re not cheap, and without the financial assistance of BALLS, I couldn’t afford them. I'd be stuck with a solid plastic hunk of junk, a standard VA issue. Next, I roll the protective sleeve down my thigh and lay it on the coffee table beside the pizza box. My skin is slightly red and itchy. Usually I rub it with lotion, but it’s in my room and I don’t wanna wake Stiles.
I hate that he forgets.
I hate the look on his face when he remembers or realizes he's forgotten something, like he’s disappointed in himself.
Helping him keep everything straight is my responsibility. One I took on willingly. Our friends are close, but nobody knows Stiles better than I do. He often smoothes over things he’s forgotten and plays it off like it’s no big deal. But I know when he’s forgetting something. And I know when he’s lying or smoothing things over. He doesn’t do it as much with me, because he knows he doesn’t need to.
It’s one of the many unwritten rules of our friendship.
No lying or bullshitting each other.
Sometimes life gets ugly, but we’re here for it. I can show Stiles my messy, ugly, toxic bullshit, and he can be perfectly imperfect, damaged, fucked up, and insecure around me. It doesn’t change a damn thing. In fact, I think it makes us stronger—our friendship. It can survive anything. God knows we’ve tested it so many times.
When he comes over in the middle of the night because I can’t get off the kitchen floor, stuck in the past. When the ankle broke on my prosthetic, leaving me stranded in the bathroom after we ate Mexican for lunch. It was either call him or crawl. I called.
The night I had to take him to get his forehead stitched because he forgot the name of the woman he was in bed with, and she hit him over the head with a wine cooler. She wasn’t buying his short-term memory excuse. Every time Stiles loses a job because he’s too hungover to make it to work, I’m there to pick him up out of his sorrows and help him turn things around.
With Stiles, I don’t have to be the best version of myself, but he makes me want to anyway because if I don’t have my shit together, I can’t help him be better.
I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me.
I lay my head down on the throw pillow and spread the soft blanket over my legs. Reaching for the remote on the coffee table, I click the TV to the guide channel and look for something to watch. Damn, there’s a Pimp My Bike marathon. Hell, I can’t watch it without Stiles. It feels like… cheating. I can’t cheat on him.
Instead, I choose a documentary about seabirds. It doesn’t matter, I just need something to fill the silence. Background noise. Too much quiet freaks me out. Voices from the past… memories… they creep into my head to occupy the void.
Stiles always complains that I talk too much, and maybe I do. I definitely do. But it’s because I hate the silence so much.
I don’t even realize I’ve fallen asleep until I jolt awake, startled by a dog barking down the hall. Pain shoots up my leg. It’s cramping because there’s no room to stretch out, and in my sleepy confusion, I grab my crutches propped against the wall beside the couch, and shuffle into my bedroom. It's not until I feel the solid weight and warmth of Stiles’s massive body at my back that I remember he’s in my bed.
Fuck it. I’m tired and he’s asleep.
He feels good next to me. Comforting. I scoot closer, bumping my ass against his body, and close my eyes. I could get used to falling asleep like this every night.
“I can feel you perving on me,” Stiles mumbles, eyes closed. “I swear to Christ, Mac, if I open my eyes and see your hand in your pants, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
Was I shaking the bed too hard? Fuck, Stiles’s sleepy eyes crack open, and the first thing he sees is me sprawled out on my side, wearing nothing but my boxer shorts.
With my hand in my pants.
Also, I’m facing him, which might appear to look like I’m staring at him. Perving on him.
Lightning quick, he rolls on top of me and grabs me in a headlock, pressing his knuckles into my scalp as he rubs the hair from my head. “I warned you.”
“Quit,” I plead, the sound muffled beneath his thick arms. “I was just scratching my nuts.” He doesn’t let up. “I swear!”
Finally, he relents, rolling back to his side of the bed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Dude, I thought you were asleep. And I wasn’t jacking off to you , I just happened to be laying next to you.” Was it my fault we had to share a hotel room on a road trip with the ALR? Was it my fault that I woke up horny? I mean, who doesn’t?
“What happened last night? I feel like I missed something.” He rubs the sleep from his eyes and cracks his jaw wide with a yawn.
“You got one of your headaches and couldn’t remember why you were here.”
“And you put me to bed? In your bed?”
“Of course.”
“Awwwww.” He gets me in a headlock again, but at least this time he doesn’t press as hard. “I can’t take your bed every night. I might have to stay at the motel, after all.”
“Bullshit. Look, we share the bed just fine.”
He eyes my boxer shorts. “Fine, as long as you agree not to beat off next to me.”
“Shit, you wish. Do you want breakfast?” I check the alarm clock over his shoulder. “We’ve got about an hour before I’ve got to take you to work.”
“Sure. But wash your hands first.”
With Stiles gone at work, I have the apartment to myself again. I dick around on the VA’s website for an hour, checking out articles on various claims I have pending for some of my clients, but then I get bored and switch over to porn.
Unzipping my pants, I tilt my chair back and slide my hand down my boxers, breathing out a sigh of satisfaction when my fingers wrap around my semi-hard shaft.
Fuck, that feels good. The chick in the video is blowing some dude who looks a lot like Stiles. Not that it weirds me out—he’s a handsome guy. Thick black hair, thick beard, and built a lot like me—solid, wide… he’s the darkness to my fire. Basically, we’re smokin’ fuckin’ hot.
He’s going to town on her face, making a damn mess of it, and I’m here for it. Whipping off my t-shirt, I take my cock all the way out and spit in my hand, smearing it up and down my shaft with each pass. I’ve got this trick to make me cum in under two minutes. Using the fingers on my left hand, I make a ring around the base of my cock and squeeze until it becomes engorged with blood, which makes it more sensitive. Veins bulging, skin turning purple, I stroke hard and fast with my right hand. My wrist rotates over my fat head with each stroke, and it makes my thighs twitch.
So good. He gags her with his cock, holding her hair back from her face like a gentleman while she struggles with her gag reflex, and that sends me over the edge. The muscles in my stomach contract as a wave of pleasure rolls through me, and I squirt into my T-shirt with a grunt.
After I wash up and find a new shirt, I return to my computer, and my body might be sated, but my mind ain’t. I pull up the dating sites that I frequent, hoping there’s a new hit. Sure enough, I matched with a girl named Breanna. And she’s local!
She sent me a message, asking me to hit her up.
All I can hear is Stiles’s voice in my head, warning me about girls whose names end with the letter A. Collectively, we’ve had enough bad luck with them to last a lifetime.
Serena
Amanda
Kayla
Tanya
Tasha
Then again, we’ve had bad luck with names that end in Y, I, and R. Instead of playing alphabet roulette, I throw caution to the wind and send her a message. After all, beggars can’t be choosers.
RedBedHead: Whatcha doing, girl?
I pour myself a glass of juice as I wait for her reply. Even from the kitchen, I can hear the notification chime from my computer, and I race back to my desk to check it.
LilLonelyGurl: Sitting here, hoping you’d hit me back.
RedBedHead: Consider yourself smacked.
Shit, that was fucking stupid. The read notification pops up below my message. Dammit, too late to take it back.
LilLonelyGurl: So what do you do?
RedBedHead: I work from home.
LilLonelyGurl: Me too! Tell me about your job.
My job? I wouldn’t really call it a job, more like a side hustle. It pays for the gas in my bike and the beer and wings in my belly after group therapy when I go out with the Bitches.
RedBedHead: I help veterans file disability claims.
LilLonelyGurl: Oh, cool. So you work for an insurance company?
RedBedHead: No, I just work for myself. After I got hurt in the Army, I became an expert at navigating the system, and I figured I could make a buck helping others do the same.
LilLonelyGurl: Cool! I think I saw something about the Army on your profile? How’d you get hurt?
Like hell, I was going into that whole sob story with a girl I just met online.
RedBedHead: Took some shrapnel and lost my leg.
Crickets. Fucking crickets for the next fifteen minutes. Oh well, another one bites the dust.
I get up to take a piss because staring at the computer screen, waiting for it to do something, is going to make me lose my fucking mind. Finally, she chimes back.
LilLonelyGurl: So, like, you have no leg?
RedBedHead: Nope. Just one left. It’s in my profile. So what do you do? You mentioned working from home.
LilLonelyGurl: I’m a model. A performer. Like, an online personality.
Sure you are, sweet cakes. Which is why you’re desperate enough to hit up men on this site at twelve o’clock in the afternoon. On a Monday, no less. I've met enough of these girls to know online personality/model performer is code for homemade porn. She’s not looking for a date, she’s looking for a co-star.
Fucking chicks whose names end with the letter A. I should have known!
RedBedHead: What’s the link to your account?
She hits me back immediately with the link. Sure enough, I can get to know Breanna better for $9.99 a month. No fucking thanks. Porn is free. Paying for it is for suckers and losers.
LilLonelyGurl: Well, it’s been real nice getting to know you. I don’t think this is going to work out. I’ve never dated someone with one leg.
Jesus Christ, really? She’s just gonna lay it all out there like that? No fucking shame whatsoever. Doesn’t she know there’s a niche for amputee porn? Not that I want to appear on film or anything. Hell, every one of my former Army buddies and current ALR brothers probably watch that shit. Who knows how many of them subscribe to Breanna. Ain’t no way I’m putting my pale red ass on camera.
RedBedHead: Agreed. Good luck with your career.
For the rest of the day, I’m in a shit mood. Fuck Breanna. Fuck all these chicks who give me nasty looks because I’ve got one leg. I’m a catch! Not just because Stiles tells me that, but because I know I am. I'm a nice guy, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for someone I care about. My bills are paid, I like to have fun, and I’ve got a big cock. What else are they looking for?
By the time I roll up in front of the garage to pick up Stiles from work, my resentment had left a bitter taste in my mouth. He climbs into my cab, looking sweaty and greasy, smelling like gasoline, and I breathe in a deep whiff. I love that smell. I throw the truck in reverse and back out of the lot, turning up the radio as I head back onto the highway.
Stiles turns it down. “What?”
I glance sideways and frown. “What?”
“Don’t give me what. You know what. What’s bothering you?”
This is the downside to having someone who knows you so well. “Nothing. How do you know something’s bothering me?”
“I can just tell,” Stiles says confidently.
“What are you, fucking clairvoyant?”
Stiles snorts. “I think they call it empath, or empathic?”
“Whatever. I’m fine.”
“I’m going home with you, remember? So you might as well spill it or it’s gonna be a long night.”
Shit. He had a point. “Breanna.”
“Who’s Breanna?”
“Some chick I was talking to today. She don’t wanna date a one-legged bastard like me. Story of my life.” I huff and run a hand through my hair. “She’s also a porn star.”
Stiles looks pissed because I broke his rule. “Shit, what did I tell you about girls whose names end with A?”
“I know, I know! I should have listened.”
“You know what, fuck her. Fuck all of them. Let’s go out tonight. I’m tired of sitting at home watching TV.”
“Yeah?” I glance at him and he smiles. “Alright. Should I invite the guys?”
“No, just me and you. Heading out on the town and scoping out the ladies. They’re all fucking gay, they don’t want to come with us.”
“They’re not all gay,” I laugh.
“We won’t stand a chance against Pharo, and Jax is a moody bitch.”
“Good point.” I'm glad he’s off work. I waited all day to pick him up just so he could make me feel better. Stiles always makes everything better. He reminds me what’s most important.
Bros before hoes. Dicks before chicks. Bitches before witches.