Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
I don’t want him like Keith did. Fuck no. I could never imagine being with him as more than what we’re doing, but I still like him a hell of a lot more than when all this started.
“Which episode is this?” he asks as he walks into the living room.
“William Belli’s exit,” I say.
“Ooh. I like it.”
He plops down beside me and takes a bite of his cereal.
“It was this or Roxxxy Andrews vs Alyssa Edwards.”
He chews and swallows before saying, “Eh, we’ve watched that one enough.”
“Oh, I meant to ask before the whole you-fucking-the-hell-out-of-me thing. Did Nanna’s appointment go well yesterday?”
It’s funny asking about her after what we just did, but since we started hooking up regularly, I’ve spent more time at his place. Hanging with him and his nanna Kitty. I may only know her a little bit from our brief interactions, but I really want to know how she’s doing.
They weren’t getting any results back this time. Just testing, but still, I want him to know he can chat with me about any of it if he needs to.
“It went well,” he replies, making himself comfy on the sofa beside me, his dick drooping low to the cushion. It’s hard not to look at that massive thing when it hangs like that. “We’ll hear back next week. I’m not too concerned.”
But I can tell by the way he says it that he really is, and I understand why.
I’ve learned Kitty was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago and that Tim was the one who had to be there for her and take her to her appointments for radiation and chemo. And not only that, since she couldn’t work, he had to pay the bills.
“They did do her bloodwork, and her red blood cell count is still kind of low, but not so much that he thinks we have anything to worry about. They think her body’s still trying to recover from the shock of all the rounds they had to do.”
He takes another bite of cereal, and in the silence, he glances around, as though he just realized how effortlessly that exchange happened. The way I just did.
It almost felt like the way I would catch up with Greg about shit before we broke up. How we’d hang. How comfortable and at ease we felt together.
I want to ask if this is how he used to talk to Keith, but I already know the answer. This is what he meant would happen.
And I can see how Keith got the wrong idea.
We’ve stuck to Tim’s rules, but that hasn’t kept things from changing—us from changing. And while I can say with confidence I can’t imagine being in a relationship with Tim, there are times where I wonder if I’m already in one.
He hasn’t done anything to lead me on, though. It’s like he said. He doesn’t have friends, so if he’s excited about a good payday or frustrated about an asshole client, I’m the one he talks to. And on the other hand, if I get a good grade or some asshole customers at the restaurant barks at me, I talk to him. Other than that, we hook up and go our separate ways.
He doesn’t stay the night or anything.
He’s a cool guy. And a hot guy, so I can see why they fall head over heels, especially as I gaze at that beautiful body I’ve been lucky enough to get to fuck so frequently. A body I’m proud to have come on so many times.
We’ve both been each other’s sticky, messy buddies, and I love it. I love letting loose with him.
I think that’s what Keith’s issue was. There’s something intense about the fucking. Something that’s so wild and reckless, and it feels like if Tim cut me off, I’d have withdrawal, but it doesn’t change that I know what this is and that I’m not stupid enough to think there could ever be anything more.
“Anyway,” Tim says, like he has to combat the silence. “Just gonna be expensive. Everything’s a fucking bill. Insurance doesn’t cover shit, that’s for sure. And the business…eh, just not going real good. Everyone is jumping ship for scripts right now. And the frat parties aren’t as frequent, so that means less money for me.”
It raises a question I’ve been wanting to ask for some time, but I never felt like we were close enough for me to pry.
“So the bills…is that how you got into…?”
I don’t want to call him a drug dealer anymore. I don’t like it. He’s more than that to me.
“How did I end up a drug dealer? Is that what you want to know? Yeah, I guess I could ask you: How does a guy end up the son of a governor? The same sort of luck only a shittier direction,” he says. “I had a crap job a few years ago that I was using to try and help Nanna pay off some debt she was in because of her dickhead ex-husband. Thought it was the least I could do because of all she’d done for me. While she was working as an English teacher at a school in Buckhead, I bartended at a nightclub—a gay club in Midtown. I was good at it too, but I became friends with a guy who was dealing. We hooked up occasionally, and he asked me if I’d be interested in a little money-making opportunity. He wanted to get in on the Emory campus scene because he knew there was a high demand, but he knew he was too old to walk around campus without people being on to him. He thought I could infiltrate because I looked young and like I belonged in school. I agreed to help him out, and we’d crash frat parties together. When things were getting pretty good, he got a better offer to help a friend out in California. So I took on our clients here. Since then, though, Nanna had all the shit with cancer, which made things even worse. She had to quit her job to start her treatment, and on top of that, the industry hasn’t been as good. Market’s slimming down with online competition and shit. That said, the money’s a hell of a lot better than what I made bartending. I can cover the bills. I don’t have crazy expendable income afterward, but I get by.”