Melissa’s gone and I have a glass of rum and Coke in my hand. It’s like it never happened at all.

I kick back, trying to find a comfortable spot like I have for the last hour, fidgeting around like a moron. The music’s on full blast now and the club is full of grinding, twisting bodies. Scott tries to yell something at me from across the table and I don’t hear what he’s saying.

I briefly wonder if I care about what it is that he’s attempting to convey. Reluctantly, I lean forward and he blasts into my ear.

“You look like you shat the bed, man. You all right?”

“Peachy,” I scream back, punctuating the word with a sip of my drink. “Long day.”

We both nod and consider it settled. It was a long day. It’s been a long week, in fact. A whole week since I last saw Melissa. I’ve been in a constant state of attention, and I don’t mean the military kind. Every time my focus slips and I think of her, I’m at full fucking mast like a teenager. I’ve been trying to shift my attention, but it hasn’t really been working.

It doesn’t matter. I’ll find a hot piece of ass and get her out of my system. That was the plan all along. I just haven’t had time for it, though the screened calls on my answering machine might tell you otherwise. Scott and Blake, a neurologist and an insurance salesman, and grade-A sleazeballs to boot – incidentally my two closest friends -, were beginning to accuse me of purposefully dodging them.

Apparently when I failed to show up at the Six for a couple of weeks straight, the manager started asking around for ‘that dick of a doctor’, citing worried comments from waitresses and a couple of regulars. I’m touched, I really am. The manager was so glad to see us that he waived the fee for the VIP service tonight. I’m vaguely aware that I should be more excited for it than I am.

Blake’s lost for the evening, tonsil-deep in a blond who came around half an hour ago looking for trouble. He has the right idea, it’s what I should be doing as well. Yet for some reason, I find myself… well, not as excited as I should be.

I down the drink and stand up, resolving to get out of my slump, or whatever the fuck this is. Dr. Big is in the house and there are patients to deal with. I push past Scott and he claps me on the back as if I need encouragement. I dive into the throng of bodies and shut off that nauseous, uncertain buzz that’s been drumming around in my ears and let the beat in instead.

Now, I’ve found that you don’t have to be a dancing fool to get what you’re after at a club like this. I could probably stand in the middle of the floor, unmoving, and I’d have more pussy grinding up against me than I could shake a stick at. In half a song, I’m twisted up with a pretty, perky, hungry-eyed redhead, making the dance beat into something far more slow and grinding than it should be.

Her hands travel down my sides and slip under the hem of my shirt. I almost push her hand away, but instead I grab her plump, juicy ass and pull her against me. She giggles, and she smells a little of gin.

“Nice abs,” she yells in my ear as I bend down to brush her long hair back over her shoulder. She’s inches from climbing me like a tree and my cock twitches in my jeans.

That’s a good sign.

“Nice tits,” I tell her, and instead of smacking me like she ought to, she laughs and runs her palm over my growing hard-on.

She doesn’t need to delve into that fluttery-lashed glancing dance of seduction that all women seem to master by the age of twenty before I grip her by the wrist and nudge her along with me. Like a good girl, she follows me off the dance floor. The roaring approval of my two friends as I walk past the table with what’s-her-face in tow is louder than the music. I flash them my most winning smile.

I shoulder my way out of the side exit, bringing us into the brisk night air. The door falls shut and the music muffles and I’m face to face with the vixen of choice. I’ve been in this alleyway more often than I care to admit. Those nights when you need to get your rocks off but you don’t want to take the girl home for whatever reason – I’ve had enough of those. It’s not something that I’m ashamed of.

Just for some reason, tonight the fluorescent glow of the street light in the distance seems harsher, and the alleyway seems seedier, and I somehow feel… slimier. My lips are on hers before my brain gets any further with that line of thought.

She wraps her arms around my neck and I paw her tits, feeling their perfect roundness. I think I know her plastic surgeon, I’ve palmed his work before. I almost ask her as her tongue slips into my mouth and I taste more of that fucking gin. She’s short, up on her tiptoes even though she’s in teetering high heels. Melissa was short. I like short.

“What’s your name?” she whispers, her hands going to my belt buckle and then zipper.

“You can call me Big,” I tell her, no humor in my voice.

She bites her lower lip, getting the implication easily enough.

“Cherry,” she lets me know, and we both know that she’s lying and it’s okay.

“That’s okay, baby. You don’t need to ask me to pop it twice,” I growl, kissing her neck and making her whimper in pleasure.

Her hand slips down the front of my pants and instead of the rigid, tight pulsing I’m used to feeling, there’s… almost nothing. I scowl, propping a palm on the wall and glancing down, as if I need to check to know that I’m at half-mast and the kind of eager dick grabbing that Cherry is exercising isn’t going to change it.

This has never happened to me.

No, seriously, this has never happened to me.

If there’s one thing I can rely on, it’s that my closest friend and confidant, my cock, is always ready to go. I’ve been so fucking hard for the last week that I was beginning to expect I’d die of overexertion from all the masturbating I’ve been doing. Now, faced with a woman who is plastic perfection in the best kind of way, I can’t get it up?

My stomach twists.

I grab Cherry by the shoulder and push down. Bless her heart, she knows exactly what’s expected of her, yanking my jeans slightly lower as she goes.

“Grower, not a shower, huh?” she asks me compassionately, batting her long, fake lashes at me.

I just about put my fist through the wall.

“The best surprises are the ones you get to wait for,” I tell her with a wink.

She passes me a dazzling smile and then her lips curl around my cock eagerly. It should feel warm and cozy and like home. I should love watching her gag on my cock, teasing cum out of me until I can’t hold it any longer and I give her a hot, sticky load of what she’s asking for right in her mouth and on her tits.

But it feels clammy and cold and fucking revolting.

I fist my hand in her hair and grind into her mouth, but instead of ramming her throat, it’s like I’m trying to squish a limp, lifeless thing past her lips.

“Shit,” I growl, letting go of her hair.

She’s a trooper, she keeps trying, but every time she looks up at me, trying to look sexy, I get limper. My throat’s dry, my palms are sweaty and I feel like I need a dozen showers. Eventually, she gives me a peck on my abs and I tuck my uncooperative better half back in my boxers, mortified and speechless.

Cherry gets up and pats me on the cheek, looking like she just had to put down her favorite horse.

“So pretty. What a shame.”

She slips back into the club and I gather what’s left of my self-respect and walk home, leaving my jacket with the guys. I can’t go back in there.

“The fuck’s wrong with you?” I ask my dick as I stride down the street.

Unsurprisingly, the prick doesn’t answer.

In the back of my head, I get this creeping, nagging feeling that I know why this happened. In a brilliant show of ignoring my problems, I break into a run and jog home, grabbing an extra key from the doorman to get into my apartment. I discard my clothes practically at the front door and disappear into my huge shower, turning the steam and the heat up.

And then I scrub.

I wash away any trace of tonight, starting from the gel in my hair and finishing with Cherry’s lipstick stains around my cock. I’m thorough, as if this would make the evening disappear. My hand lingers on my balls and I feel bad that Melissa never took a shower with me here. It’d be perfect for the two of us. Her tight, gorgeous, natural body pushed up against the glass, the water trickling down her curves…

“Oh, fuck me,” I growl, my cock hard as a fucking steel pole now. “Where the fuck were you before?!”

I can pretend like I don’t know, but I do and that’s even worse. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t the one leaving. I wasn’t the one ushering the girl out the door, telling her that I’d call her and fully intending never to do so. I wasn’t the one scratching a proverbial notch in my bedpost and getting on with my life.

Instead, I’m the one left pining, left waiting for a phone call I know won’t come, hoping against hope that I read things wrong. I don’t know what the fuck I was expecting – though I probably wasn’t expecting anything at all. Melissa was an interesting case, a fascinating, tightly wound woman with an impenetrable pussy that I, well, penetrated. I fixed her.

And now she’s fixed and she’s not coming back.

I guess this is what rejection feels like.

I guess this is what falling in love feels like.

It fucking blows worse than Cherry did.