Page 65 of About Time

Before I fell for her I enjoyed hooking up with women, but I never stayed longer than it took to get off. My mother left my father when I was in first grade, which wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d taken me with her. I guess my abandonment issues made me averse to romantic attachments. My experience withHattie doesn’t help either. The only thing love has brought me is pain.

Mentally I’ve decided to hook up with Beth, but my body is completely uninterested in her. I have to try and force myself to pay even the smallest amount of attention to what she’s saying. The way her eyes keep sliding down my body lets me know she’s on board with going home with me. Not that I’ll take her to my home. I always go to theirs. Since I shared mine with Hattie I’ve never brought another woman back there. I can’t help but see it as cheating, even though we aren’t together and never will be again.

I turn up my smile a bit brighter. It’s fake as fuck, and I’ve missed everything she’s been saying, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I know she started telling me about a DIY project she started and then I tuned her out. She’s trying really hard to relate to me by showing me that she also knows how to use tools, but I can’t be bothered to give even a tiny fuck.

I try to have a conversation with her at first, but I keep zoning out. I realize part way through the conversation that she’s been telling me something I’m completely not listening to.

“—I bought a belt sander when I was refinishing the floors, but of course I needed to rent a much bigger one if I ever wanted to get it done in this lifetime.” Beth laughs at her own joke, and I start paying attention again just in time to chuckle along with her.

Not knowing what to add to the conversation I kiss her. Before I know it we’re making out like I’m trying to give her mouth to mouth while sitting here in the booth. On the outside it probably looks like we’re about to have sex right here, but in reality I’m just desperately trying to make my body respond to her. Nothing I do is working, but maybe if we get out of here I can get something going on downstairs.

I thought whiskey dick happened when you were drinking, not because of the absence of whiskey. It won’t count if I have to get drunk enough to get through this like all the other times. Maybe the problem is that I have no emotional connection to her. If that’s the case then I’m fucked, because I’m not going down that road ever again. It’s Hattie or no one for me.

“What do you think about the two of us getting out of here and you showing me those floors?” I suggest. I’m committed to this experiment now, although if I’m telling myself the truth I’d much rather go home and crawl into bed, alone.

That option gets sidelined when she lights up at my suggestion, like my pathetic attempt to get into her pants is the best offer she’s had in a long time. Beth looks back at her friend who gives her the universal silent signal for “go on, I’m going to take this man back home and ride him like a prize pony.”

I do the same non-verbal routine with Griffin. I know his answer is begging me to help him escape Brandi, but even if he leaves here alone, which I know he will, at least he won’t be focusing on Wren flirting with the college guys on her night off.

“I drove here with Brandi,” Beth giggles when we make it to the parking lot.

I jingle my keys in front of her and wink. “We can take my truck and you give me directions.”

Good thing I don’t take women home with me. There’d be no getting rid of her without driving her myself. That always makes for an awkward morning after. At least it used to before Hattie blew up my life.

She lives in an old Craftsman out on the edge of town toward what passes for a country club here. It looks like it was built inthe 1920’s, and she’s actually done some pretty great restoration work on it. I point out a few things to her that I can see she’s done well, and you’d think I said, “let me lay you out lick every inch of your pussy.”

She practically vibrates with pent up need. If she didn’t tell me she worked in HR at the hospital I’d start to think she worked in a library in a community of only women.

“Did you want a drink?” she asks while her fingers stroke back and forth on the neck of her top.

I shake my head, and go sit on her sofa. The entire point of this experiment is to hook up with someone without needing alcohol to get into it. Drunk me wouldn’t choose her anyway. When I’m that far in the bottle, I only look for blondes. My vision is blurry enough, and my inhibitions are low enough that I can pretend I’m not with some woman whose name I’ll forget when the buzz wears off, but that I am with Hattie for a brief reprieve from the despair I feel being away from her.

Beth joins me on the couch and slowly scoots toward me. I’m not sure if she thinks she’s being seductive, but if she does then she’s horribly out of practice.

I stretch my arm across the back of the couch, and with my fingers I play with a lock of her hair. I need to speed this along, because I’m actually getting less turned on the longer I’m with her. I’m not even sure why I thought it was important to push myself to hook up with someone.

“Why are you all the way over there?” I ask her. From practice I am able to put that slight rumble in my voice that seems to drive women crazy.

She crawls across the couch and straddles my lap. Without much warm up she starts grinding on my lap and nibbling up the side of my neck. I try to call up any image to make this happen, but the only thing that works is when I picture Hattie. She doesn’t belong inside my head right now. That would defeatthe purpose of being able to do this without thinking of her. The problem is, not thinking of her makes my cock softer than warm butter.

I let her keep trying while I make an effort to let myself feel something physical and cut my mind off. Beth is getting frustrated with my lack of response to her efforts, and increases the friction against my dick.

She takes her top off, and that helps a little. I’ve always been a breast man, but it still isn’t enough to make my cock rise to the occasion. I’m about to move her off my lap when her phone starts ringing in her bag.

Beth reaches across me and digs for her phone, shoving my face between her tits. I’ll admit, they’re nice, but I’m even more convinced that this isn’t going to happen. If an accidental motor boating doesn’t make the blood flow south then it’s never going to happen.

“Sorry, girl code,” she apologizes.

I wish she wouldn’t insist on having his conversation while sitting on my lap, but she answers and sits back on my knees.

“What do you mean he took another woman into the supply closet? Oh my god…he didn’t.”

She continues the conversation, and whatever Griffin did, has Beth moving off my lap and giving me a dirty look. I’m not upset that the mood is killed, but I’m pretty sure the reason behind it is because he fucked Wren in the supply room. That isn’t good.

Everything I feared is coming to pass, and I can’t help but think that this will impact more than the two of them.

Chapter Thirty

---