Which pisses me off. Control. It’s my favorite word because I always keep it at the top of my mind, striving to maintain it in all aspects of life. But she’s taken that from me.
Not with a word or an action. Just from the sight of her.
And I don’t like it, but I need to explore this, to find out more, to regain the upper hand in a game she doesn’t even know she’s participating in.
Yet.
“How’s your night going?” I lead with.
The guy pulls out his phone, trying to ignore me, blowing smoke in my direction in lieu of a response. Yeah, this guy’s going to get what he deserves.
“If the bitches inside this place would stop fucking around every time I come here it’d be a whole helluva lot better.”
Bitches, huh? You call the spitting image of my mother a bitch? Buddy…the only bitch I see right now is you.
“Yeah, it’s tough out there for guys these days,” I say, mirroring his emotion, offering the sympathy he wants even though he might not even know it. Baiting the trap for what comes next.
I take a drag of my cigarette, trying not to cough from the foreign substance entering my mouth.
“You ever try the bar just around the corner here?” I ask, motioning with my head to the side of him opposite me. “Girls are way easier there, especially if you can make it snow a little bit.”
“You got some nose candy?” he perks up, his mood turning on a dime in a way only degenerates Angelenos can.
“You wanna bump?”
He nods.
“Let’s roll over to that other club. I could use a wingman. We can hit the toilet then start working some sets,” I entice him, using a slang word, sets, for groups of girls that these wannabe pickup artists that litter the city can’t seem to stop saying everywhere you turn.
“I got some bitch in here already,” he says, taking a drag. “Got the hoe on ice. She’s gonna get it real good.” His eyes look away, facing forward as his hands become fists in front of him, his elbows bent as he thrusts his hips forward and pulls his arms back in a sexual motion.
Not funny. At all.
Especially when it’s directed at the girl that belongs to me, not him.
“All right then,” I say casually, despite the tick in my cheek that he doesn’t see, the sound of my molars grinding as my jaw stiffens like marble, the tendons in the front of my neck pulled so tight they become visible, sinewy, and about to snap…just like my temper.
Stay in control. Don’t make a mistake.
Breathing out slowly so it’s unheard I uncork the fist my cigarette isn’t in and try to allow the muscles in my body to relax. I’m only slightly successful, but it’s enough to get the job done…so I can get a much more important job done.
“There’s a camera up there,” I say. Like an idiot, his head whips around and he starts searching for it. “Please don’t look,” I say as calmly as possible. “We can tuck ourselves in behind the dumpster, do a bump and I’ll be on my way and you can be on yours. The bar won’t see you so they won’t call the cops.”
I’m not sure if he doesn’t ask me why I’d share my coke with a complete stranger because he feels entitled to it or because he gave me a smoke. Regardless, no deed goes unpunished, as he’s about to find out.
Moving past him I step behind the set of dumpsters, trying not to smile. Yeah, there’s a camera up there, but anyone with a set of functioning eyes can see that the damn thing is as fake as this poser I’m luring to a not so swift ending.
I duck down behind the dumpsters and a second later he appears.
He’s a big guy, well over six feet as am I. It doesn’t concern me, it only excites me more.
“Where we gonna do these bumps?”
Pulling the small plastic baggy of crushed up Halcion from the last prescription which I already filled, I hand it to him.
Sizing the guy up I can see the cracks in his armor. He thinks he’s an alpha male, whatever the fuck that means. But what I’ve learned about most guys is that when it comes to women they’ll settle for a hole and a heartbeat, the latter being optional.
The thought itself is enough to make me sick, but I know average guys enough to know how desperate for even a whiff of pussy they are.