Chapter Nineteen • Gaslamp • Damien #2
He looks like he belongs in this dorky speakeasy.
He’s wearing a sharp navy suit with a black dress shirt that matches his belt and patent leather shoes.
I give him a once over; he’s the polar opposite of me.
Maybe this is the kind of guy Lillith would have accepted as a boyfriend.
Maybe he wouldn’t have sent the proposal via text like an idiot.
The thought is enough that I down the rest of my whiskey-coke and gesture for another one.
The bartender gives me a look of disapproval.
I can tell he’s going to cut me off soon as he delivers the new drink.
I wonder idly if they have those classy business cards here or if he’s going to say it out loud.
I bet they have the classy little business cards that tell you you’re cut off and to settle your tab and see your way out respectfully.
It has suddenly become my goal to find out. I’m totally going to drink until they cut me off. It’s perfect.
Through the haze of my inebriation, I hear the interloper speak again. “Tell me about her—the inspiration for this bender.”
“Fuck yourself,” I say while I chew on an ice cube.
“Give me a vivid enough description and I just might.”
The rage that enters my body is Instantaneous.
Some mix of protective and possessive that has me grasping onto the fucker’s satiny black shirt.
The veins on my arms distend as I twist my fist and pull him so close that I can smell him—he’s rank.
Like smoke and sulfur but poorly covered with some too-expensive cologne that doesn’t do the trick.
The fuck has the gall to smile—like he’s enjoying some private joke.
“Incredible—is this the same kind of energy you bring to a relationship? Maybe she’s dodging a bullet,” he says.
“I don’t hit women. I only hit smarmy pricks who don’t know when to shut the fuck up,” I counter.
“Let me start over here, alright?” He says. “My name is Aemon. I’m a life coach of sorts.”
Aemon? What the fuck kind of name is that?
“I’m not looking for a pickup artist,” I say.
“And I am not a pickup artist,” he says. “Look. This is what I do. I see people down on their luck and I try to offer them an out—a little assistance.”
“So, you just canvas bars for sad sacks?”
“Essentially,” he says.
“That’s Faustian of you,” I say, releasing his shirt. “But I’m still not interested. Can you just leave me alone? I’m busy. I’m trying to figure out the methods they use to cut people off here.”
Another look of disapproval from the bartender. Nice. I’m on track.
I look down at my phone and frown at the blue word bubble hovering at the end of the text conversation. Maybe I should call her. Or grovel. Maybe if I grovel I can make her love me.
“Is this someone you’re sleeping with?” he asks.
“Fuck. Off.”
He puts a hand across the back of my neck and I’m about to snarl at him when the contempt I feel for him just...
ebbs. I can’t tell what causes it. I can’t tell if it’s despair or exhaustion or just the desire to have someone to speak to about this who isn’t going to fucking bust my ass for being hopeless.
But I feel my shoulders drop and my anger dissipate into sadness.
“Not yet,” I say. “She’s been dealing with some medical issues. Not that—not that I’m owed her body or anything. But she seems about as eager as I am.”
“So, she’s obviously given you a handy or something. Used her mouth on you?”
It feels like that should piss me off, but it doesn’t. Still, it feels like a violation to share that information with a complete stranger. Lillith doesn’t deserve that sort of treatment. I’m not going to talk with some rando at a bar about what she has or hasn’t done to my body.
Regardless, the guy tuts his tongue, giving me a bit of a jostle with the hand on the back of my neck. It’s meant to be a gesture of camaraderie, I think. But the ease with which he manages it is a bit unnerving. I’m not a small guy, and even though I’m thin, I’m strong.
“Poor lad,” he says. “You’ve become a teddy bear, sounds like.”
Some distant part of my mind sounds an alarm—tells me not to listen to him.
But a much larger part of me—my insecurity—latches onto those words like a damned life raft.
The part that tells me I’m nothing but a pretty face.
That I’m just some fantasy she’s getting to live out.
That I’m not relationship material. That I don’t compare to Bastion Bastard-face and that I’m a little escape into deviance before she returns to what she likes better.
I drop my head. The despair is so thorough that I think I might implode.
God. She’s never going to feel about me the way I feel about her.
I don’t know if anyone is going to ever love me.
Maybe the tattoo on my knuckles is a fucking curse.
Maybe I will always be vacillating between states of love sickness and devastation and I’ll die alone with my liver pickled in a brine of coke and whiskey.
The stranger leans in and whispers in my ear.
Somehow, even in the noisy bar, it’s all I can hear.
“You need to take your power back, kid,” he says.
“Leave her before she can leave you. Find some other conquest. You deserve it. You deserve to be cherished and loved. Can she really be that good for you if she won’t even worship your body? If she won’t leave the house with you?”
How does he know about that? Is it just obvious?
My phone buzzes and I look down, seeing Lillith’s name come up on the screen.
“Don’t read it,” Aemon says. “Don’t let her keep you at her beck and call.”
I glare over at him and when our eyes meet, his widen. His hand falls from the back of my neck before he holds them both up in a gesture of surrender.
“I see this is a lost cause,” he says with an unbothered shrug. He reaches into his inner pocket and produces a business card, handing it to me. “If you change your mind about following this woman around like a little puppy, feel free to give me a call.”
“Fuck you,” I say, my rage suddenly returning full force.
I don’t notice him slip away. I’m too busy looking down at the phone.
I’m really sorry for ghosting you all day. Can we talk on the phone? Or are you too busy?
Generally speaking, I am never too busy for you. Specifically speaking, I am sort of shitfaced at the moment. And I don’t want to slur out something humiliating I’ll regret later. Raincheck?
The dots appear, then vanish, then appear again. Like she’s typing messages out and deleting them before trying again.
Is that my fault?
I want to send back a resounding ‘yes’. The desire to win her heart through acting pitiful and pathetic is strong. But my therapist has informed me that this is manipulation. I don’t want to do that to Lillith. So I say something that’s true and doesn’t fault her for my unhealthy coping strategies.
I was really scared I fucked up royally. I don’t do well with that, so I decided to try and numb my anxiety with alcohol. It’s not your fault that I respond to emotional triggers like this.
But I did trigger the emotion. :(
A sad face emoticon has never felt so validating or comforting. She cares. She does.
But is it enough? Maybe she’s just indulging me.
With the way I’m falling for her, I don’t know if I can keep this lukewarm, mixed signals thing we have going on.
I don’t ever do things by half measures, and there’s no way I can be measured with Lillith.
The more time I spend with her, the more I want to go all in—and I don’t even mean sex.
We could wait years to fuck for all I care.
But I do want to show her to everyone. I want her to be enmeshed in my world. I want the guys to know her and I want people to see her with me. I want to tell the world that she’s mine. And if she’s too embarrassed to be seen with me in public... Well. That obviously isn’t going to fucking work.
I’m feeling a lot better now that I’m hearing from you. I’m in no state to talk tonight, but I do want to call you. Can I call you when I get a moment in the next few days?
Of course you can.
I set the phone down and sigh. It buzzes a few seconds later.
Damien, I just want you to know. If this is a concern over thinking I feel at all unsure of you. I’m not. I promise. There are some complications, that’s all.
I stare at that text dozens of times over the next few days as our schedules refuse to line up. I try to believe them.
I really fucking do.
But I just... can’t.