Chapter 3

Pacey

 

 

The game was streaming on each of the five flat-screen televisions mounted on the exposed brick walls of my favorite sports bar. If I had another choice in the matter, it might not have been, but since Rennie’s was also the only sports bar in town, it was my favorite by default.

The Atlanta Hawks were battling it out on the screens with their longtime nemesis, the Boston Celtics. The game had drawn a larger crowd to Rennie’s than usual.

But it was a big game, though: the biggest of the season so far. Despite that fact, I was only half watching it.

Most of the guys in the place had their eyes firmly stuck on the game, but mine had landed on a group of girls giggling at the other end of the bar as soon as I walked in, and kept roaming back to them every once in a while.

I leaned forward on the pockmarked wooden bar, spinning my beer between my fingers as my gaze alternated between the screen mounted above their heads and the girls themselves. Not girls, actually. One girl, in particular, had captured my attention the moment I saw her, and my eyes kept returning to her.

A quick scan of the bar early on told me there were a few attractive women in attendance tonight, but the only one who really stood out was the blonde across the bar. She was wearing a dress that was a little fancy for the old bar that smelled like stale tobacco and beer spilled sometime in the early 90s that had taken up permanent residence in the dark wood of the bar and floors.

But fuck. That dress.

It hugged every damn one of her curves, hitting mid-thigh and revealing just hint of cleavage between her perfectly round tits. She was built athletically, but not in that CrossFit way that made some women look like men and triggered the urge to arm wrestle instead of fuck. She was toned, yet still curvy and soft.

A cheer went up around me, and several guys punched the air in celebration of a basket that must have been scored, but I wasn’t watching the game so much as the girl. She was far more interesting than a bunch of sweaty guys tossing a ball through a hoop.

I loved sports as much as the next guy, but I wasn’t a fanatic about it. I’d choose a good fuck with a pretty girl over sports every damn day of the week, and twice, or maybe three times, on a Sunday.

And this girl was more than fucking pretty. She was gorgeous: beautiful, even. An image of her plump lips wrapped around my dick flashed into mind, and just like that, my jeans got a bit tighter over my cock.

I briefly considered going over to where she was talking to a brown-haired girl and making that mental image a reality, but I decided against it when I realized that my jeans weren’t the only thing that was tightening. My chest did too, especially when she threw her head back and laughed at something her friend was saying—and that wasn’t all that made it difficult to breathe; it was a hell of a lot worse than that.

The sound of feminine laughter hit my ears at exactly the same time, just barely rising above the din of the bar. My heartbeat sped up for a split second, the first taste of that old adrenaline that I’d not experienced in years spiking in my blood.

Fuck.

I wasn’t remotely interested in anything or anyone that had that kind of effect on me. Nothing had in years, and if I really thought about it, no person had, ever. Not even May.

The realization stunned me. I took a deep swig of my beer, then decided to drain the glass instead and ordered another one.

I must be more exhausted than I thought. My sleeping patterns were seriously fucked, and it was messing with my body. That’s all.

Even so, I wasn’t going anywhere near the blonde. I tore my eyes from her and that tempting little black dress she was wearing and fixed them firmly on the screen above her. Then I turned on my stool to face the screen on the other wall just in case.

I tried to immerse myself in the game, but I was having trouble concentrating. By the time the whistle blew to indicate halftime, I was feeling itchy again. I needed to move.

Lifting my empty glass to Adam, the dark-haired bartender that I’d gotten to know a little, I caught his attention. “One more. I’ll be right back.”

I went to the bathroom, more to alleviate the need to stretch my legs than to piss, but at least it would give me something to do. Other than to give in to the intense urge to hit on the only girl in the bar that had managed to stir something in me.

The blonde was still there, but she and her friend were slowly making their way to my side of the bar, causing more than a few heads to turn in their wake now that every man in the bar wasn’t glued to the television. I purposely chose to walk the other way around the bar to the bathroom. No need to tempt myself even further. If she smelled half as good as she looked, there would be no controlling which brain would take over.

I pushed through the saloon-style doors to the bathroom and was unzipping at the urinal when a loud snort sounded from the stall behind me. It was followed by a loud, racking cough and another snort. There was only the one stall in the bathroom, and there was no doubt in my mind what the loser inside was doing.

Real smart, bro. The idiocy of snorting whatever brain-cell-destroying substance he was snorting, notwithstanding, I wondered if he realized what the hell else he was getting off that fucking toilet. I shuddered a bit and tried not to think about it. It was fucking disgusting really.

A tall, dark-haired man stumbled out of the stall when I was done and zipping up again. His hair was tousled, though not in an artfully styled kind of way, and his blue eyes were glassy and rimmed in red. He tripped over his feet as he headed to the double sinks that hung on exposed copper piping.

High as a fucking kite.

I was no choir boy and generally didn’t judge people because I honestly didn’t give a fuck, but I prided myself on the fact that I’d never touched drugs. Outside of alcohol of course, but that didn’t really count in my mind.  

The very thought of the stuff rubbed me the wrong way in fact, and after what happened to May, it actually pissed me the hell off. The drug trade ruined lives, ended lives…it ended hers, in a way.  The people responsible for this shit did.

Shaking my head, I clenched my hands into fists to keep from slapping the idiot upside his head and went to take my place at the sink next to him.

Only, his hand slipped when he reached for the tap, causing it to send a rush of water spraying out all over both of us and soaking the counter around the sinks.

“Fuck,” I muttered, jumping back to avoid getting the front of my jeans completely drenched. The druggie asshole started laughing like it was the funniest damn thing he’d ever seen. I didn’t think he even noticed that the front of his pants looked like he’d pissed himself.

“That was awesome. Like a fucking fountain.” He grinned at me in the reflection of the grimy mirror. A lopsided, sneer of a grin that made the urge to punch him that much stronger. I gritted my teeth.

“A fucking fountain that soaked the counter and the floor.” I pointed out, waiting to see if he was going to apologize or clean up the mess he’d made.

He did neither of those things. Instead, he shrugged and muttered. “Some bitch will clean it up later. It’s only water. It’ll dry by itself anyway.”

Some bitch? Wow. “Listen to me, jackass. Clean up your own goddamn mess.”

The asshole smirked and flipped me off. “Mind your business, dickhead.”

His tongue was slurring his words, and I knew that it was a lost cause. Guys like him weren’t worth the fucking time of day it would take to school him.

But my obsessive-compulsive tendencies borne from years of religious organization didn’t allow me to just leave the bathroom in that state, so I grabbed a couple of towels from the roll and wiped off the counter. It was probably cleaner by the time I was done that it had been before the water explosion, but that didn’t matter.

There wasn’t much I could do about the floor, but my hand still gave an involuntary little twitch when I turned to leave the bathroom knowing that it was still a mess. But those were the breaks.

The game had already resumed by the time I got back into the bar. My eyes narrowed when I saw that the same asshole from the bathroom had taken up my spot, his eyes glued to the TV screen like he couldn’t see anything else in the room.

Fuck me.

He’d even helped himself to my beer. I shoved my hands through my hair. This wasn’t going to end well for him.

I walked right up to him, not that he noticed at first, and tapped him on the shoulder. He didn’t look away from the screen as he grunted, “What?”

“You’re in my spot.” My shoulders were tight, my body bracing and begging for a fight. The asshole still didn’t look at me, he just rolled his eyes and took a long sip of my fucking beer. “And you owe me a beer, dickwad.”

At that, he raised his eyebrows, laughed, and turned to look me right in the eyes as he lifted the glass to his thin lips to take another sip. And that was it. The end of my saint-like patience with this guy. I felt like I’d already been a saint for not just punching him right off the fucking bat.

I hated causing a scene, but rage and irritation were buzzing like electricity over my skin, and my breathing had already slowed, the way it always did when I focused and readied my body for a fight. I was forming a fist to punch the piss out him when out of nowhere, the hot blonde from before jogged up to him and threw her arms around his neck from behind.

What the…?

She smacked a big kiss onto his lips, but he barely even seemed to notice.

That was the lucky bastard who was taking her home? Oh, hell no.

I unclenched my fist when I was hit with a dose of inspiration. Instead of beating the shit out him, I was going to fuck his girlfriend instead. Screw the fact that I’d sworn her off earlier.

I had wanted her as soon as I saw her and now I was determined to have her. A good old revenge fuck.

Was I proud of it?

No.

But a girl like her deserved better than a dick like that anyway. Sure, I would only be around to show her that for one night, but it might be enough to open her eyes to the great big beyond where not all men were drug-addicted losers.

It was a much better idea that beating the jerk up. That would hurt for a couple of days. A month, tops, if I really let loose the way that I wanted to and got those hits in before someone played hero and pulled me off of him. Stealing his girlfriend away from him? That would sting for the rest of his miserable life. And would be doing her a favor in the process.

Bingo.