Page 43 of Tell Me Lies: Manlove Edition

I obediently go to bed. The towel slipped off long ago and I don’t bother to put anything else. There’s something so strange in being stark naked with your lover in the room doing dishes.

I zone out, thinking about this level of connection … is it real? Or just polite? I only realize I’ve posed when he finishes the dish, sees me, and his mouth falls open.

Well, you’re a hot mess, but at least you’re hot.

The sight of me radiates through him and I know he’s not going anywhere. And maybe that’s exactly what I need. A little bout of wildly passionate, totally protected sex.

“You sure you have to go?”

“I…” Then something twists in him. “Yes. I have to go. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Laur smiles on his way out. “Good night, Jeremy.”

****

I wake again from a light doze when I hear the trash cans banging in the alley. It feels like mere seconds have passed, and the sky is still dark. But it’s too late for a drunken fight in the alley. When someone shouts, I yawn and drag myself to the window to decide if the police need to get involved.

All I see is Jude, holding her head with frustration, getting behind the wheel of a little sedan to drive one of her drunks home.

Nothing unusual.

****

“How you doing, big guy?” Jude greets me nervously at the beginning of my shift as bartender.

I got to my classes, went for a run, ate, drank, and medicated at the proper times with only the mildest sense of the yawning darkness crippling my every movement.

“Better today.” And I’m going to make Laur his whiskey sour today. Won’t he be surprised? “Gonna be better tomorrow.”

Jude nods solemnly and sits on the other side of the bar as if she were a patron. There’s a tension in her shoulders that I don’t love.

She’s gonna fire you.

I smile, obviously false. “What’ll it be, Boss?”

“My friend isn’t going to bother you anymore.” She can’t lift her eyes.

“Huh?” Who?

“Paul mentioned…” She shakes her head and I realize her cheek is bruised. Someone had hit her. “I saw him leaving last night and we had words. He should not have taken advantage of you in that state.”

“Advantage?” Did she mean Laur? Laur wasn’t going to bother me? Laur had taken advantage? What did she think? Had Laur hit her? “No, no. It’s not like that. He comes up every Tuesday.”

“Yeah. He told me. It’s not healthy, Chard. I told him last night you were out of town and he went up there to break in.”

“Well, yeah, he does that.”

That doesn’t placate her.

“If I’d seen his car earlier, I would have gone up there myself and … listen.” Jude puts her hands on the bar and can’t raise her eyes. “Most of us who went over there made things better. Dig wells and pave roads and shit, but his unit—”

“I don’t want to hear this from you.”

“Well, you won’t hear it from him,” Jude says. “His people did some real fucked-up shit over there. Especially the good commanders like Larry. It’s hard for the best of us to adjust to civilian—”

She stops herself and shakes her head. “That doesn’t excuse or justify anything. He has no right playing mind games with you.”

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