A cool breeze stirs the hair around my face as I walk, and I focus on nothing but the rhythm of my feet on the pavement, barely noticing the time pass before The Silent Hour’s blinking neon lights appear in front of me.
It’s a shitty as fuck bar, but it’s a haven for people like me—or maybe a better description is that it’s the waiting room we all hang out in before we become like Jared. Either way, they let me drink despite the fact that I’m more than three years too young, and most of the time I don’t even need to put out for it.
So I sit at my usual spot—left side of the bar, three stools deep. I order a whiskey from Milo, a new hire who nods when I tell him I don’t want too much ice watering down my drink. Milo is cute, but I don’t think he’ll last long here. Not because he’s cute, but because he’s soft, and softness in The Silent Hour is either destroyed or run off elsewhere. It’s why the men here are rough and the women are on par, and why this place is my favorite haunt.
It used to be Jared’s too.
Fuck.
With every sip, my whiskey takes me further and further from my thoughts of him, but not far enough. Jared wasn’t one for wallowing, even after all the shit that we ended up going through. He never liked dwelling too hard on his feelings, and he liked others dwelling on their feelings about him even less.
Yet I can’t help but dwell.
I can’t help but feel. I hate it, and I know he’d hate it even more.
So I drink more. I watch the people mill in and out of the bar. I stop feeling the whiskey’s burn, and soon I feel closer to that nothingness I’m craving. As I finish my second drink, I ask Milo for another. I need to push myself over the edge into proper, numb bliss, and I’ll keep downing booze until I get there.
The door opens, and my gaze flicks in that direction as a man enters.
He’s got a haunted look on his face too, just like the mother and her daughter. If I had a mirror to look into, I’m sure I’d see the same thing in my own face. There’s something about his dead-eyed look that keeps me staring, even when those dead eyes lock on mine. His gaze lingers, and something livens up that numb, lost look before he approaches the bar and takes the seat beside the empty one on my left.
“Macallan, neat.”
His voice is smooth and dark, like a good bourbon. I’m quiet as Milo makes his drink, although I watch the man from beneath my eyelashes as I rest my elbows on the bar, cradling my glass between my fingers.
Milo takes the cash the man tosses down then goes back to washing up the glassware, and I go back to my own drink. The man beside me isn’t the first to walk into The Silent Hour with that look in his eyes. He won’t be the last.
“Special occasion?”
His voice comes again in that deep burn, but this time it’s directed my way. I look over at him.
Deep shadows sit beneath a pair of gorgeous green-blue eyes. His chestnut hair is on the right side of disheveled, like it’s been messed up during sex or a good brawl. The cut of his jaw could make a Hollywood heartthrob cry, and a shadow of stubble contours the sharp lines.
“No. It’s not an occasion and it sure as shit isn’t special.” I let out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I’m just here to drink.”
A beat of silence. Then, “Same.”
I look back over, and his eyes are on his drink, the corners of his full lips turned down. There's something in the way he looks that gives me pause, something all too familiar. A pain like the kind I’m trying to tear free of.
I drag my gaze away from the man. A dizziness comes over me, and I can’t tell if it’s the thoughts of Jared that’ve forced their way back into my mind, seeing too much of Jared in this fucking stranger, or… or the other shit wrong with me that I don’t have the time to deal with right now.
My stomach twists as I chew my lip. I need a distraction.
So I do something stupid.
I finish off my whiskey in one swallow and move closer to the stranger, closing the space the empty bar stool between us created.
Pain… sorrow… the deep, wrenching anguish that keeps trying to bubble up my throat—I don’t want it, yet I see it in his face too. Sometimes it’s a suffering you can blow away on some booze or a decent blunt.
Sometimes, when that fails… sometimes you just need to fuck it out. Let someone else bury your feelings deep down where pleasure drowns and kills them. Those synapses that fire during a hot fuck are a thousand times better than any anti-depressant could ever be.
When you know what emptiness feels like, you’re able to spot it in others too. And I can spot it in this guy like I’m looking in a mirror. It makes it easy to approach him, to slide my fingers along his arm.
“Of course, we can make it a special occasion,” I say. “If you want.”
I don’t elaborate, because things like this don’t need elaboration, just an invitation and a good enough reason to accept it. I pull away from him, leaving that invitation open as I make my way to the bathroom, which is conveniently within the sight-line of where pretty boy sits.
When I look back just before I close the bathroom door behind me, I see him down the last of his whiskey and stand up.