Chapter Seven
Trethan
I had just finished dinner when someone pounded on my door. I went to answer it, wondering who the hell it could be. When I pulled it open, Brent stood there, looking pale and frantic, his eyes darting nervously behind him. It was rare to see him looking so fucked up.
“Hey, man,” he said, his words practically tripping over one another. “Is it cool if I just hang out here for a little while?”
I frowned at him, wondering what was going on, but I stepped back to let him in. “Of course, but tell me what’s up,” I said as I closed the door behind him. “You look like you’re wigging out.”
“It’s nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Just, you know how it is in this line of work. Sometimes you meet people who aren’t the nicest or whatever. I just need a place to lay low for the night. Let things blow over.”
“What did you do?” I asked suspiciously as my chest tightened.
“I didn’t do anything,” he snapped. “Like I said, I met some fuckers who are kind of being douchebags, and I need a place to stay. I can go find someone else if you don’t want me here.”
“Hey, relax,” I said. He had to be seriously freaked out if he was this on edge, and I was more than a little concerned. Like he’d said, I knew the kind of people in his line of work — I used to deal drugs, too. There had been some rough characters out there, but I would have thought Brent had more sense than to get mixed up with them.
I wanted to say something more about it, but before I could, he sprawled out on the couch and changed the subject. “So, Vanessa’s back in town, huh?” he asked.
The last thing I wanted to talk to him about was Vanessa. If it was any other girl, it’d be fine, but Brent would see right through me if I lied and said I wasn’t still interested in her.
“Yeah, she’s back in town,” I said.
“Have you seen her yet?”
“I had dinner with her and her father last week,” I said.
“Really?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting toward his hairline. He threw a pillow at me. “The fuck, man. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re not chicks, dude,” I said. “What, you wanted me to call you up and describe everything in perfect detail, down to the dress she was wearing and the color of the napkins? It was just dinner. And, John was sitting right there the whole time, so it’s not like it was a date or anything like that.”
“Still,” he said. “You still want to fuck her, don’t you?”
I scowled at him, but he wasn’t wrong. “Yeah. She’s not a girl anymore.” I thought again of those luscious curves, of how much I wanted to trace them with my tongue, how much I wanted to grip those round hips as I thrust into her. She always had me rock hard within seconds if I let myself dwell on the idea of her too long.
“Oh yeah?” Brent asked as a smile lifted his lips. “She’s a babe now?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I said. “She’s hot, man. Still wearing those girly dresses that she always used to wear, but I can only imagine what it would look like to get her in a pair of jeans.”
“You’re supposed to be imagining her out of her clothes,” he said, smirking at me. Then, he frowned. “Hey, is she the reason you keep bailing on nights at the Bison?”
“I’ve been out with you since she came home,” I said defensively.
“Yeah, but you haven’t gone home with anyone in weeks. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’ve still got the hots for her.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have the hots for her,” I protested. “I just want to fuck her, that’s all.” When he continued to stare at me, I relented. “Okay, so maybe I’m not interested in anyone else right now. But it’s just about fucking. It’s not like I’m going to start dating her or anything like that.”
Brent snorted. “Bullshit. You know if you fuck her, you’re not going to be able to keep away from her.”
“Well, that’s never going to happen, anyway,” I said, exasperated. “She couldn’t even sit through dinner with me. I burned that bridge a long time ago.”
He burst out laughing. “She couldn’t even sit through dinner with you?” he asked. “What the hell did you even do to her, man? She’s the one who broke things off with you when she went to college.”
I frowned, not wanting to go into the details of it. I had never told Brent about the last night I’d seen Vanessa before she’d gone off to college. He would never let me live it down. And anyway, it wasn’t exactly something that I wanted to think about or remember.
Fortunately, Brent didn’t require an answer to his question. “Bitches, man,” he said, shrugging, as though that explained everything. In his world, it probably did. “Bet you could still get her to come around if you tried, though. Maybe you just need to show her how sexy you are when you ride the mechanical bull.”
“I doubt she’d be too impressed by that,” I said. “She grew up around here, and her dad’s a rancher. She’s seen a million guys come through here and pull great times on the mechanical bull. That’s nothing.” Not to mention the fact that the bull at the bar was a motherfucker. He’d put me in my place before, and I knew he’d do it again. Having that happen in front of Vanessa was out.
“Bet it’d be something if it was you up there doing it,” Brent said.
I shrugged. “Anyway, it wouldn’t feel right going after her now. Her dad’s helped me so much over the past few years. Banging his daughter is a shitty thing to do.”
Brent’s eyebrows furrowed, and he looked away from me. “You know I wanted to help you, too,” he said, his voice quiet and more serious than I’d ever heard him.
I could only stare at him for a long moment. “I know you did,” I said slowly.
He looked back at me. “Seriously, man, I didn’t think things were ever going to go as far as they did,” he said. “I didn’t think-”
I held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” I said. “I know you wanted to be there for me. But neither of us was in a good place back then. I wasn’t going to ask for help, and you weren’t able to give it. No hard feelings.”
Brent was silent for a long moment, just staring at me. It looked like there was something else that he wanted to say, but then he just laughed. “Yeah, cool man,” he said, turning away from me. “So what, you’re just going to ignore the whole Vanessa thing?”
“There is no Vanessa thing,” I said, wishing like hell that there was a Vanessa thing.
“Sure,” he said, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. “Hey, let’s smoke a joint and put on a movie or something. What do you say?”
“You know I don’t smoke anymore,” I said, even though it was surprisingly difficult to say. The thing was, being around Brent made it easy to want to fall back into my old ways. And one joint wasn’t going to hurt, was it?
But I’d spent a long time trying to clean up my act, and even though I knew one joint wasn’t a big deal by itself, I also knew that that one joint would make me want to get back into smoking. And if I got back into smoking, who knew where that might lead.
It was bad enough that I was drinking and fighting again. I could only imagine what John would have to say if he caught me getting baked again.
For all that Brent claimed he wanted to help me when I was at my worst, I couldn’t help wondering if hanging around with him was part of what had kept me in my downward spiral for so long. Maybe I hadn’t been able to recognize I needed help because everyone around me was just as self-destructive as I was.
“Man, you’re no fun anymore,” Brent said, rolling his eyes.
“Yep. I’m a regular old dud. Anyway… You want a beer?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to get drunk with him when he was in this state.
Over the course of the night, we got progressively drunker, though, with some stupid show on as background noise on TV.
“Dude, so you’re really not going to do anything about the Vanessa thing?” Brent asked a little while later.
“Can’t you let it go?” I asked as irritation stung my chest.
“If you’re not going to fuck her, maybe I want to,” he said, leering over at me. “I mean, if she’s as hot as you say she is.”
I scowled at him, feeling an irrational surge of anger. I doubted Vanessa would ever go home with him, even if he did make a pass at her, but I couldn’t push down the feelings of jealousy. “Don’t you fucking dare go near her,” I spat. “If you touch her at all, I’ll beat your ass. Hear me?”
Brent raised an eyebrow at me and then turned back to his beer, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. “And, you say you don’t have feelings for her. Fucking liar.”
I shoved his shoulder, realizing he’d only been trying to get me to admit that all along. “And you’re a dickhead,” I muttered.
“Sometimes.” He smiled like a tomcat.
“All the time.” I smiled back. Asshat.