Page 19 of Mountain Man Bad Boy

I should be appalled that I was having a sex dream about her, but instead, I was incredibly turned on. I looked down at my body to see a tent between my legs. Out in the hallway, the yelling subsided. I could only imagine what had happened in the early morning hours. Some new residents had been brought in, or someone had gone off their meds or gotten angry with a staff member. It wasn’t all that uncommon for people to cause a fuss, even in this low-risk area. I just wish it hadn’t happened at that particular moment. Another five minutes, and I could have finished the wet dream and gone about the rest of my night in peace.

Frustrated, I slid my hand into my pants, determined to finish what I had started. My roommate was possibly asleep in the next bed. I wasn’t entirely sure if he had slept through the commotion or not. But turning a blind eye while your roomie masturbated was one of the tenets of sharing a room with another guy, so I decided to kick propriety to the curb.

I turned my back to him and gripped my shaft in my right hand, trailing fingers up to the tip to find it already damp. I held a picture of Gina in my mind, looking as beautiful as she had on the day we met. I imagined that locked room, the one with the video cameras and the chair nailed to the floor. I imagined her coming to visit me in her scrubs and leading me to the chair.

She told me to sit down and stood in front of me to strip off her shirt. Her breasts swung free, as ripe and delicious as peaches. Behind the cameras, someone was watching and jerking off to our porno. I held my dick in one hand as she climbed onto my lap, spreading her legs. She sat down on me hard, swallowing my entire length with her pussy. And she bounced like a rodeo rider, up and down, her breasts swinging gloriously in my face.

I could see the exchange as real as if it were a memory. Every inch of her was already familiar, her expressions when I filled her canal as natural as her professional smile. I came all over my hand, my muscles bunching up and my spine contracting. I curled up on my side, feeling waves of relief crash over me. That climax had been a long time coming. This entire stay in the institution had been one long build to a vista I was never going to see. The best I could do was fantasize about her, and the only way I was ever going to touch her was in my dreams.

I wiped my hand off on the bedsheets. I knew the cleaning staff would find out what I had been up to, but I didn’t care. It was worth it. I felt better than I had in years. I was finally over the toxic withdrawal symptoms and felt like myself again after being absent for so long. And now, having dispensed with the pressure that Gina’s proximity aroused in me, I was reborn. I fell back asleep for the last few hours the program would allow me and woke refreshed.

10

GINA

“Come on, Evil.” I tried to coax my pesky feline out from under the bed. Somehow, she knew that we were going to the vet and was determined to thwart me. “You can’t take over the world if you’re a sick kitty.”

Evil darted out from under the bed, making a beeline for the window. I scooped her up and slipped her into the cat carrier, neatly missing all her claws and teeth. It wasn’t my favorite pastime either, but as a conscientious pet parent, I wanted to make sure she got her yearly checkups.

At the vet, there were two other people in the waiting room. One gentleman had a dog almost as large as me, who was seated patiently beside him, making no fuss. The other occupant had a parrot in a cage. I went up to the front desk to check in, then took my spot as far away from the massive hound as possible. I wasn’t afraid of dogs; I just preferred them to be cat-sized. And I didn’t know how Evil would react to such a creature, nor did I want to find out.

After the other customers were called back, it was my turn. I picked up Evil’s carrier and took her into the examination room. The doctor was a young woman about my age. She opened the metal grate and reached into the plastic cube to remove my beloved nemesis.

“Evil,” the vet said. “That’s a funny name.”

“Well, she’s planning world domination,” I explained.

“I see.” The vet stroked Evil, gently placing her on the examination table.

For once the cat was behaving herself, and I could see that she was frightened. The exam took less than five minutes, and Evil was all too eager to climb back into the carrier once it was done. I took her home and cuddled for an hour, reading a book on the sofa. She was purring by the time I was done.

Next up on my agenda was to visit my mother’s grave.

She had fallen down the steps outside her apartment building one morning—drunk, even so early in the day—and died. They tried to save her. Ambulances had been called, and emergency personnel attempted CPR, but it was a lost cause. I was in college at the time, learning all about addiction and what it could do to the body.

It didn’t help the pain, knowing that she had brought it upon herself. I still mourned for her. My brother, George, had just graduated from high school and was still living with her, though his reaction was completely opposite from mine. He wouldn’t talk to me or help in any way. The day of the funeral, I could tell he was high. I made one ill-fated attempt to talk him out of his stupor, but he would have none of it.

“Doesn’t it make you think?” I pulled him aside at the funeral home, within sight of Mom’s casket.

“What?” he slurred.

“Mom died because she was drunk. Aren’t you worried that the same thing might happen to you?”

“We can’t all be perfect,” he spat, ripping his arm away and stumbling off.

That was the last time I had seen him. I was the only competent adult relative, so I became executor of her “estate.” It was an estate in legal terms only; she had more debt than money. I also coordinated the funeral, picking out the casket, putting a notice in the paper. Lincoln had been too young to really be of much help. A few people sent flowers. My father and stepmother came to show support for us which meant a lot considering the relationship was strained at the time.

Mom was buried in a nondenominational cemetery about a thirty-minute drive away. I tried to visit at least twice a year, to make sure her plot was cared for. Today I was filling my hours with dreaded chores to avoid thinking about the relationship that I could not have. I resolved not even to think his name outside the confines of the treatment center. Not that it was working. Porter’s face still haunted me wherever I went.

I pulled my car out of storage and took a minute to adjust the mirrors. Since I drove so rarely, it always took me a little bit of time to get comfortable in the driver’s seat. I turned on the local country music station, maneuvering the city streets until I reached the highway. There was one love song after another, each singer pining for a partner they couldn’t have. I switched it off, but the silence was almost just as bad.

My thoughts kept returning to Porter, wondering what he was doing, who was looking in on him. Was he in the gym, down on the floor doing more of those crazy push-ups? The memory of his muscles bunching and relaxing, like ripples beneath the surface, plagued me. His smile came back to me, warm and inviting and just a little bit shy. He didn’t suffer from the same malady that most men I had met did. He wasn’t overconfident. Life had taught him some hard lessons about his own abilities, and he was struggling to recover.

If he could just see, as I did, how much progress he had made, how much further ahead he was in his treatment than others who had come in with him, then maybe he could develop some self-confidence. I had an overwhelming desire to help him see what I saw. Because, more than an addict who was making a new start or a broken man trying to repair himself, I saw strength and character. He told me how he had saved his friend from drug dealers, how he had gotten sober once before without any help. He went to work every day, not because he wanted to, but because he had made a commitment. Even in the stupor of daily highs, Porter’s word meant something.

In frustration, I turned the radio back on again. I flipped channels until I came to the news, learning more than I wanted to about the latest crisis abroad. When the graveyard came into view down a narrow lane, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I chose a parking spot and turned off the engine, climbing out into the sun. It was a beautiful day, not too hot, not too cold. I reached in to grab a bouquet of flowers and a trash bag off the seat. Mom’s grave was about twenty yards past the gate, twelfth stone on the left. The remnants of the last batch of flowers I had brought still lay untouched, shriveled and blackened. I scooped them into the trash bag and brushed the dust off Mother’s tombstone.

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