“So, tell me something about yourself, man,” Penn says conversationally as he sips on his glass of Scotch. “Aiden’s constantly going on and on about you and I was beginning to think you were a figment of her imagination since I haven’t met you before tonight.”

“I’m an artist,” I mumble with a shrug.

“You should really see his pieces one day—his work is fucking fantastic,” Aiden chimes in. I know what she’s doing, but if she only knew how uncomfortable I felt right now, she’d stop and let me go home.

“Oh, that’s cool. So, like, what kind of art do you do?” Penn asks, setting his glass down and giving me his undivided attention.

“Um, I work with textures, I guess,” I reply, glancing down at the drink in my hand.

Penn nods and steals a glance at Aiden who shrugs and turns her eyes up toward me. “Think you’d be interested in showing him your work sometime?”

My eyes turn cold and I give her a dangerous stare. She’s halfway to drunk and that means she’ll be willing to talk about anything and everything—including my line of work.

“Maybe,” I reply evenly. “What do you do? For a living, I mean?” I ask him before I take a swig of my Vodka. With as much as I don’t want to, I’m going to have to keep talking to keep her from flapping her goddamn gums about things she shouldn’t.

“Trust fund kid,” he replies with an eye roll. “I get paid just to exist.”

I believe it, I think letting my eyes linger on him for a moment. It’s only now that I’m seeing Penn clearly for the first time. His wild, light brown hair sits messily on the top of his head, and his eyes are so damn big and beautiful that I can almost swear they can see the entire fucking universe. He’s tall and thin—not as tall as I am, but tall enough to be able to look me almost directly in the eyes.

But his lips are my favorite thing about him. They’re so big and look so fucking soft that I think I would die if I ever felt them against any part of my body.

A smirk starts to crease his mouth and I tear my eyes away from him, turning head to toe red in shame. It’s obvious he knows I’ve mentally fucked him into oblivion by this point, and I think he’s being kind by pretending not to let it bother him.

“What do you do, anyway? I don’t think you ever told me,” he says, mercifully turning his attention back toward Aiden.

“Fight.”

“Really?” he asks with a laugh as he crosses his arms loosely over his chest, “and that pays the bills?”

She nods as she takes a swig from her beer bottle. “The bigger the guys are the more money I get, so I usually try to go after the biggest fuckers when I’m hurting for cash. Other than that, Gray is always good for a loan when I can’t get a fight.”

“So, the two of you are really close?” he asks, using his forefinger and middle finger to point between us. I reach up and rub the back of my neck, content on letting Aiden take the reigns on this part of the conversation.

“Didn’t I tell you he’s my best friend?” she asks, shaking her head at him. “You weren’t listening, were you? It’s okay. I get it. Gray’s fucking hot so it’s hard to concentrate when he’s around.”

My eyes widen as I look down at my drink again. I can hear the blood rushing into my ears and am barely able to make out the sound of Penn’s good-natured laughter.

“Alright, it was good to meet you,” I say to him, as I start to get to my feet. “Can you get her home safely? I really have to get back to my place now.”

“She’s just teasing you man,” he says, waving off my second attempt to escape for the evening. “Hang out for a while—get drunk! Seems like you need it more than she does.”

I take a deep breath and shoot back the rest of my Vodka, pull out my wallet, and drop a hundred-dollar bill on the bar top.

“That should cover me and Little Ms. Beer Slinger here. I’ll see you guys around.”

I stand all the way up, turn, and begin to push my way toward the door, completely ignoring Penn and Aiden calling out to me. I don’t want to be here anymore and that’s something neither of them can understand, so I’ll leave them to get drunk and more than likely end up in bed together.

At least she’ll be able to tell me what that feels like, I think glumly as I push the door open and turn left. I’ve been this way before plenty of times, but I figure that if I take an extra three blocks down, it’ll be kind of new and give me more time to shake away the sudden cobwebs that are threatening to strangle the humanity out of me from my mind.

The longer I wander the streets, the further down I go. Into the unknown, into the darkness of my mind, into a spiral of unwarranted jealousy.

Aiden wasn’t hitting on Penn and he wasn’t hitting on her that I can tell. They seem to be just friends, but I’m sure if either of them get enough drinks in them, then the “kitchen” will more than likely be open for him too.

“Fuck.”

I run a hand irritably back through my hair as I keep walking, ending up somewhere between Hell and Skid Row. My eyes wander down the dark alleyways, smiling each time I hear a moan, and shaking my head when I see a pimp roll a John for his money and kick him back under the exposing eyes of the moonlight.

Each sin—each need that wasn’t fulfilled is written shamefully in his eyes as he struggles to shove his little pecker back into his pants and hobble down the street, blood dripping from a small wound on the side of his forehead.

“You got a problem, motherfucker?”

I turn my eyes back toward the alley and raise an eyebrow at the pimp who’s walking toward me with ill intent in his eyes and I grin.

“Not unless you do,” I reply evenly, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it. I inhale deeply as I hold his eyes, and something in the way my stare meets his, makes him slightly uneasy on his feet.

“Keep moving unless you’ve got money,” he barks at me, his voice cracking slightly.

I’m tempted to crush his neck under my boot but decide against it when his hooker comes a little closer. She’s pretty, or at least she used to be, and she looks so damn young and scared of him, that it gives me an idea.

“How much for that one?” I ask, nodding in her direction.

“That one?” he asks, rubbing his chin. “That’s some prime pussy right there, so the question is, how much you got on you?”

I roll my eyes and sigh, the smoke leaving my mouth like a cloud from a chimney and reach for my wallet.

“I’ll give you fifty bucks and that’s it,” I say, holding out the money to him and securing my wallet back in my pocket.

“I didn’t ask how much you would give me, I asked how much you have,” he says evenly, taking a step closer to me.

“Can I tell you a story?” I say suddenly, using my thumb to rub the middle of my forehead. “I never cared for people that tried to take more than they deserve—bastards like you, give working guys like me a bad name, you know what I mean? So, the last time I came across someone who thought so highly of himself, he ended up pretty much a blood stain on the bottom of my heel. He ended up in the ICU and you know what? I still took what the fuck I wanted from him just to teach him a goddamn lesson in humility. So, is that where you want to go? Underneath the heel of my boot? Because believe it or not, I’m itching to take some of my pent-up aggression out on someone right now and you seem easy enough to take down. If not, then just take the fifty and let me have the girl.”

By the end of my little rhetoric, I’m so close to him that he can more than likely smell the liquor on my breath and taste the nicotine staining my lips.

It’s enough to back him the fuck off and nod in agreement, waving her toward me. I toss the money onto the ground as I wrap an arm around her shoulders and continue my little stroll down streets unknown to me.

“What’s your name?” she asks me timidly when we’re out of earshot.

“Gray,” I reply curtly.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with her yet. I have no intention on fucking her because I have no desire to be in bed with someone who’s being paid to be there with me.

She tries to chat with me all the way back to my loft, and I allow it. It takes my mind off of Aiden and Penn, which is why I’m so welcoming of this hourly companion.

I clear my throat as I reach for my keys and unlock the first set of doors, holding one open and letting her in first. She smiles at me, the freckles on her face seemingly glowing in the moonlight, as her flash of wild, strawberry blonde hair disappears into the stairwell.

I turn and glance down the street before I secure the door behind us. I may not have any want to sleep with her, but I do have a small desire to save her from her life of spreading her legs for random strangers at the behest of a man that forces her to do so.

And the only way to do that is to make her into something beautiful. Sometimes, pre-constructed pieces sell for much higher amounts than anything commissioned, and I think she’ll be happier as a pet than she would be leaving my home to go back to that evil man.

So I’ll do my best to make something wonderful out of her and she’ll understand. They always do in the end.