Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
There’s nothing more to give.
She’s still braced on the wall when I step back. Hair wrecked. Lipstick smeared. Breathing like she ran a mile. She looks up at me like I’m supposed to have something tender to say. I don’t.
“Bathroom is through that door.” I explain turning that direction. “I’m gonna get rid of the condom. Towels on the shelf. Don’t take the black ones. Those are mine. Clean up and get gone.”
Her mouth opens, then shuts. She pushes her hair behind her ear and wobbles, panties now tangled at her ankles. I’ve already turned to grab my cut. Leather feels right in my hands, familiar weight pulling me back into myself. I slide it on, shrug my shoulders, and the man I am clicks back into place.
She clears her throat. “Do you—uh—do you have a second?”
“Used it,” I remark.
Color floods her cheeks. She bends and yanks her panties up, scoops her skirt, shimmies it into place, all the fiddling buying her time. She’s not the first to stall. They think if they hang around long enough, I’ll soften. They mistake sweat for intimacy, noise for promises, orgasms for companionship.
She straightens, gathers herself. She’s pretty when she’s put together. Still pretty all ruined up, too. “It’s just… what’s your name, really?”
I meet her eyes. Hold. Let the silence stretch until it thins. “Kellum.”
She blinks like she expected a fake. “Okay. Kellum.” The way she says it is careful, testing out how it fits. “I’m—” I throw up a hand silencing her.
“Don’t need it.” I pass her moving to the bathroom. I dispose of the condom, wipe off my dick with a black towel, tuck it away, zipping my jeans, and going back to the bedroom. From there, she doesn’t speak so I move to the exit, twist the lock, open the door. I can hear the party still going not far away. “Bathroom’s what you got left.”
She doesn’t move. “Right. I just…” She bites her lip, breathes out. “Do you ever think about, I don’t know, something else?”
I look at her over my shoulder. “Something else what?”
“Something else like… not this.” She gestures to the room, the noise, me. “Like settling down. Having something that lasts.”
The word hits like a gnat. Annoying. Buzzing. Something I swat and kill. “No.”
She shifts. “You didn’t even think about it.”
“I don’t have to.” I lean my shoulder against the door frame, motion toward the door with my chin. “You lost? I gave you directions.”
Her mouth firms. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”
“Sure I do,” I reply bored with the entire situation. “It saves time.”
I can hear my family just outside the front door. My brothers are out there. My life is out there. I turn my back on the open bedroom door. Reaching in my back pocket, I grab what I need. Cigarettes. Zippo lighter. Moving to the front door of the duplex I open it, I light up, drag deep, fill my lungs, then blow it toward the cracked ceiling. The smoke hangs, then thins.
She’s still there. Most would have run by now. She plants her hands on her hips, chin high like she thinks she’s about to teach me something new. “You act like I’m asking for a ring. I’m not. I just, I don’t know, a phone number? Coffee tomorrow?”
“No.”
Her lips part, shock giving way to irritation. “Why not?”
“Because we’re done.” I state firmly. Final. I tap ash onto the floor knowing I’m an ass because someone else has to clean this up. “You got what you came for. So did I.”
“That’s really how you see it?” Her voice tightens. “Just bodies and cum?”
“It was never going to be brains.”
She flinches. I don’t apologize. I don’t dress it up. Truth is a blade; you put it dull-side up and you’ve wasted everybody’s time. She peers past me toward the outside like she might stay anyway, or go back to the party try for another brother. Maybe she thinks it will make me jealous. Won’t work.
“You’re cold,” she states.
“Accurate.”
Her eyes search my face. “What happened to you?”
I drag again. Smoke scratches my throat, settles my pulse. “Not your concern.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Wasn’t trying to give you one.”
She takes a step toward me, stubborn. “You think you’re safer like this, don’t you? You think if you don’t care, you can’t be hurt.”
I huff a laugh. “You giving me therapy, sweetheart?”
“I’m giving you honesty,” she fires back. There’s a tremor there, though, the kind people get when they’re in over their heads but refuse to back down. “Some of us don’t want to be just a story you tell your friends.”
“Brothers,” I correct. “And don’t worry, sweetheart, I don’t tell them anything.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s not supposed to make you feel anything.” I glance at the clock nailed above the door. The minute hand stutters and jumps forward, always a split-second behind the world. “You’re burning daylight.”