Chapter Two
Chris
You are invited to the 30th birthday bash for: Tak
Come early, stay late. We’ll be partying all weekend!
RSVP to Will at 555…
The invitation caught up to me on my return from a cross-country trip, and a glance at the date told me it might be too late to RSVP. Even if my phone wasn’t missing again, probably trapped between the truck door and the seat, if it hadn’t fallen onto the ground. I needed to start keeping it somewhere besides my back pocket. Replacing damaged and lost devices was starting to get expensive.
Anyway, the party was tomorrow. I could probably just show up, though, without calling. The theme of the event, according to a sheet of folded paper inside the invite indicated general rowdiness and inebriation, a last hurrah to youth.
It wasn’t as if Tak had ever been rowdy. A little overweight, with problem skin, braces, and a bad case of social awkwardness, Tak had been on the fringes of our social group in high school. The guy who helped everyone with their homework but tended to get forgotten when really fun things were planned.
He’d been my friend, though. A good friend I could talk to any time of day or night if I had a problem. He listened to me complain about dates, and I listened to him complain about loneliness. I tried to be there for him, and I think I usually was, but I was awfully busy with sports and the dates I complained about. After graduation, we both moved away from Mapleville.
I wondered what he was up to after all these years. A brain wave like him was probably a professor or rocket scientist or something. And me? Turned out those who voted me most likely to succeed had erred.
With a week before my next contract, I would have no trouble attending the party, but should I? I’d lost touch with the old gang years back, and although I did have a vague Facebook connection with most of them, I didn’t spend a lot of time online. I tried to picture them all in my mind, both back then and in their online pictures. Most of them posted images by the hundreds, ready to share any and every aspect of their lives no matter how dull.
Many of the guys were married, quite a few had children, good careers, homes they constantly remodeled, and pets. They posted every detail of children’s and pets’ lives. I didn’t do that. Besides work, I had only a beagle named Harry in my life, and Harry had no more desire to be on Facebook than me.
Or Tak, apparently. While my old friend and the current birthday boy did have a small presence, he mostly “liked” their other friends’ posts and rarely added anything of his own. And now he was thirty. My birthday had passed without fanfare the month before. I’d spent it driving through Texas. Still, I didn’t begrudge my old buddy his event. The only question was whether I should show up. I lived a couple of hours away and had planned to lie low by the apartment pool that weekend with a few beers. Maybe hit a bar in the evening.
The problem was, most of the guys who hung out at the local bars were in their early twenties. Just like the people from high school, those I’d played pool and darts with a few years before had married and settled down. I had nothing against the idea, just never met anyone I wanted that with. No other alphas seemed to have that problem.
Maybe I never would meet anyone.
Going to the party would probably just remind me that other people had lived up to their potential. Mates and kids and pets from their Facebook pages would be all over the place; they’d be wearing designer duds and talking about their stock market investments and summer homes.
I had a truck. And my bike. Period. End of story. And lived in a second-story apartment filled with furniture bought all at once at a cut-rate store going out of business.
They probably cooked from those grocery box delivery services, dishes with kale and quinoa, and duck breast properly seared to perfection. Okay, so I watched a cooking show from time to time...but living alone, only home for a few days between trips, I rarely cooked anything besides a microwave dinner.
Dropping my duffel inside the front door, I headed directly for the shower. While on the road, I slept in the cab, which was fairly comfortable, and showered at the big travel plazas that offered services like that to people like me. Knights of the road. Long-haul truckers. No matter how they tried to keep the facilities nice, I never felt totally clean until I showered at home. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a space nobody but me got into naked.
And didn’t that sound pathetic.
Maybe I should hit a bar tonight, bring one of those young, single omegas home, and get my rocks off. What could it hurt? Stripping off my clothes as I walked from the bedroom into the bath, I tried to picture it. How long since I’d had anyone over? Friend or lover. Or one-night stand. Most of those—flirt and squirts as one of the waitresses I joked with called them—took place on the road and were satisfying for a day or so.
My bathroom was as utilitarian as the rest of the place. The shelves over the tub were piled with decent, fluffy white towels, but otherwise, the place had no personality. I didn’t spend a lot of downtime here. I didn’t have a lot if business went well. The payment for the truck took a lot of work to keep up, but at least the semi was mine. Or would be in five more years.
Standing under the spray, I lathered up, relishing the onset of cleanliness. I rubbed the bar of soap all over my chest, working it into the crisp curls and down my belly. Washing my junk, I paused then closed my foamy hand around my shaft and gave a squeeze. I’d be as much satisfaction from a quick jerk off as from some stranger, and less chance of weirdness. Last time I brought a guy home, he ripped off some of my clothes.
The slippery lather made it easy to glide up and down my cock, tightening and releasing the pressure in the way I knew worked best. No frills here, just a happy ending. Coming soon. I chuckled at my pun, tipping my head back to let the warm water run over my body. The shower reminded me of the big room in high school where we’d all had to get naked and rinse off after gym.
We’d pretended not to be interested in each other’s assets, but of course we looked. Catalogued. Judged. Rumor had it some of the guys decided who to ask out based on what they observed.
Working my cock, I rocked my hips in time with my strokes, my other hand braced on the wall as my knees wobbled and the cum boiled in my balls. I painted the shower walls with the creamy white stream, staying upright by main will. As the last of the fluid poured down my dick, I rubbed it in then took down the handheld showerhead and cleaned it off me and the tile. I found the soap where it had somehow fallen from my hand and rubbed it all over me then rinsed. One thing I didn’t want to think too much about. More often than not in these sessions, a particular face appeared in my mind.
The owner of the biggest dick in the locker room, although it wasn’t enough to make him popular in itself.
I would go to the party. Visit with my old friends and maybe even take one of them up on an offer from long ago.
Loneliness sucked. My grammy had an arranged marriage with Granddad, and they got along fine. Lived together for over fifty years before he died. They grew to love one another. Maybe they had it right all along.
Either way, party it was. I had a week to kill and nothing better to do. I’d do all my laundry tonight and head out in the morning. Trudging out to the truck to look for my phone, I felt a little excited to see everyone. And by everyone I meant Tak. My old buddy.
What was the worst that could happen?