Chapter 7
7
GAVIN
Twenty-Four Years Old
“ R ico! Two more!”
I side-eyed my new best friend, who was holding up two fingers to the bartender as if just saying the number wasn’t enough. It wasn’t that loud in here—it was barely even six o’clock—so it felt excessive. Everything about the slim, well-dressed man sitting on the stool next to mine was excessive, from the dirty blond hair glistening with product to the bedazzled boots on his feet. His frilly, billowy white linen shirt had buttons that were the size of hockey pucks and glittered like mini disco balls in the light.
He was so shiny it was giving me a fucking headache.
When he turned and looked back at me, his eyes trailing the length of my body, when he brought those eyes back to mine and licked his lips, I took a deep breath through the nausea that roiled in me and forced myself to smile at him. I wasn’t sure if it was the pint of whiskey I’d downed before stumbling through the doors or the thin mustache over thin lips painted an unnatural pink that were making me feel sick, but I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter. As long as he kept buying me drinks, I’d keep smiling at him. All I needed was for him to think I’d slip away with him later, and as soon as his back was turned, as soon as I was drunk enough to forget my own name, I’d get the fuck out of here.
I hadn’t planned on coming here today. But then again, I never really planned things anymore, did I? My life had become an endless carousel of days that all looked the same. Days filled with absolutely nothing. Days where I honestly wasn’t sure if I was actually still alive or not.
On this particular day, I’d ventured into town because I was out of toothpaste and the shelter didn’t have any either. But instead of finding toothpaste, I’d gotten lucky and found a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk. Gotten even luckier since there was a liquor store right across the street. After downing a pint of whiskey in a gas station bathroom, I decided to come down to one of Gardiner’s four bars, Shelby’s , to test my luck some more. And what do you know, I found myself someone willing enough to buy my bullshit and then buy me drinks. Wasn’t hard to accept free things when you didn’t have the means to pay for them—especially if it was alcohol.
I’d do anything to get away from myself.
Rico set two shots of something pink in front of us, and my companion thanked him, then slid both my way.
Fuck yes.
“Thanks, man,” I said, my tongue feeling a little too thick. I downed one shot, then the next, then wished I’d had something to eat today since the booze was taking hold too fast. I wanted my oblivion to last.
“Of course, anything for a big sexy man like you.” He smiled and curled his fingers over my bicep. “Love these tattoos. And the muscles. Where’d you get all these muscles, anyway?”
What fucking muscles? I’d lost probably forty pounds of muscle in the last two years. I hadn’t done a single thing to stay in shape because there was no fucking reason to. But instead of barking at the sparkly asshole to fuck off, I forced myself to say, “Used to wrestle.”
His eyes lit up and his hand slid over my deltoid. “Oh, wrestling?” He leaned closer and hummed. “Isn’t there a lot of…close contact in that sport? Is that why you did it?”
I resisted the urge to shove him away and walk out. I let him invade my space and said, “No, that’s not why I did it.” I tried to keep the bite out of my voice, but it had made itself a home there.
Disco Man trailed his fingers over my collarbone until his index finger dipped into the hollow at the base of my throat. All the fine hairs on my body began to rise and I stopped breathing. Then he chucked me under the chin and smiled brightly at me before turning back to the bartender and ordering two old-fashioneds.
I exhaled harshly and chose to watch Rico as he lifted a brow my way then got to making the drinks.
Rico knew me well. I came here often, trying to find anyone willing to buy me booze I couldn’t afford. Sometimes people recognized me, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes there were hushed whispers and judgy stares from across the room, sometimes they’d be bold enough to ask me outright if I was that guy from the video that’d gone viral over two years ago.
Yeah. I was that fucking guy.
When the man buying my drinks turned back to me, he gave me an assessing look, complete with a head tilt.
“There’s something about you that’s so familiar,” he said, making every muscle in my body tense up. “Wait, aren’t you that guy that tried to beat up?—”
“That was my twin.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Ooh, a twin? Would he be down for some bonding time with his brother? A little…two-on-one action?” His needle-thin mustache twitched, and I resisted the urge to reach out and rip it off his face. Instead, I cocked my eyebrow at him—or at least, I thought I did. Who knew what was actually happening with my face. It felt like it was melting off me, like one of those Dalí paintings.
Also, I didn’t have a fucking twin, I just didn’t want him bringing up shit that didn’t matter right now. Shit that might make him change his mind and stop buying me drinks. Shit that might make me change my mind and run the fuck away.
Shit that had wrapped itself around my ankles and grown heavier and heavier with every step until I was barely able to move. Shit that was slowly killing me.
I wished it fucking would already.
“Maybe some other time,” I tried to say lightly, except it came across as more than a little dismissive. It was almost impossible to make my dickishness take a back seat, but this guy didn’t seem to mind my abrasive tone too much. Thankfully, he dropped the subject and started chatting about things I tuned out, constantly touching me.
I let him.
Over the next hour, Rico gave me lingering looks every time my companion ordered more drinks. I didn’t give a single shit because the room was finally starting to tilt around me, and my shiny friend had even made me laugh a few times. He wasn’t so bad. He was kind of funny, and his mustache was growing on me. Not literally, because…no. But I was starting to like how his pink lips looked under the facial hair, and I thought maybe he’d noticed that.
But I wasn’t sober enough to care. I was well on my way to the oblivion I’d desperately been wanting to reach all fucking day. Those awful whispers in my head had started drowning in all the alcohol I’d consumed, shutting the fuck up and giving me some peace. It wouldn’t kill them, though, no matter how much I drank.
After however many drinks, I told my new friend I needed to use the bathroom. He jumped up and said, “Me too!” then slipped his arm through mine and began guiding me toward the back hall. I didn’t mind because the floor kept rolling under my feet.
When we got to the men’s room, he peeked inside for two seconds and said, “Mm, bathroom’s all full, no luck. Come here, I’ve got a better idea.” He grabbed my wrist and I let him pull me past the bathrooms, down the dimly lit narrow hall with warped wooden floors to the back of the building. We turned right, and then he was pushing open a door that said Emergency Exit Only .
No alarm sounded as it opened up into a dark alley between the bar and the retail shop behind it, and the overwhelming stench of garbage hit me almost immediately.
“Come on, down here,” he said, slipping his hand into mine.
It felt kinda nice.
I let him lead me down to the darker end, where the smell of rot was stronger. It was still a little light out, but the last of the daylight would fade fast. I wanted to pull my hand from his and stop moving toward the shadowy end, but his grip was surprisingly strong. When we were down by the dumpster, where the nasty odor was coming from, he pressed me up against the brick exterior of the bar.
“What—”
“Shh,” he said, pressing his fingers against my lips. “I know what you want. Don’t worry.” He trailed his hands across my shoulders, then flattened his palms against my chest.
I grabbed his hands and squeezed. “What are you doing?” The lack of light was making it harder to feel stable. The entire world felt like it was tilting left, then right, and a strong wave of nausea rolled over me.
“It’s okay,” he said, pulling his hands from mine. “I know what you need. It’s okay.”
What? I tried to say What do you mean? but could only grunt when he started moving his hands lower. I grabbed at his hands again and said, “But…”
“It’s okay. I’ll take good care of you. You want this,” he purred, slowly stroking up and down my sides.
“Y-yeah,” I whispered, watching as he sank to his knees.
Did I want this? What was this ? My mind was completely fragmented, and I was unable to string any of these moments together. They were little vignettes of someone else’s reality, it felt like. I was whirling in the dark, spinning, and when my head fell back, I saw the stars beginning to appear in the blue twilight. I stared up at them, something tugging at my memory, something sharp and visceral.
You’re the sky and I’m the stars.
A voice was whispering in my head again, but it was different from the other voices. It was my voice, but the love in it didn’t fit anymore. It couldn’t be my voice.
And then something was tugging at my pants, and when I rolled my head down and saw the perfectly coiffed head of dirty blond hair, confusion spread. I reached my hand out, wanting to mess up all that perfection, but just then a tall figure peeled out of the shadows, making me jump.
“Are you sure that’s him?” the shadow man said.
The man in front of me jumped up and backed away from me. “Yeah, it’s fucking him. Do it, Jack?—”
The hit came out of nowhere, cracking against the right side of my face like a sledgehammer. I went down hard, the back of my head hitting the pavement and completely stunning me. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I tried to keep them open, but they wouldn’t listen to me. I heard someone say, “Get his fucking legs, I got his arms. Hurry the fuck up!” before the abrupt and unstoppable urge to vomit came out of nowhere, and all I tasted was bile and whiskey as my mind shut down and the voices around me faded into nothing.
The last thing that passed through my head was thank god .