Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“You happen to … y’know … meet their out-a’-town guests?”
His voice just went low, like the cheer got squeezed right out. If his exhausted drawl can in any way be interpreted as cheer.
Belatedly, the question pulls me out of this odd butt hypnosis I’m experiencing. Jeremiah was there last night, Anthony knows. He’s getting at something—and I know that something is me.
“Just curious,” he mumbles.
I shrug. “Yeah. You can say I met them.”
“What’d you think?”
Before I answer, he lets out a huff of frustration—I can’t see what he’s doing—then leans back slightly as he tugs at something.
His butt shoves into my face for a second. I frown against it as I try to lean back. “Well, I think they’re good people,” I answer in half a sneer, bearing it because I chose to stand here and help.
“That so?” Strangely, he sounds more curious than anything. “Guess everyone else gets to see the better side of ‘em. Especially that Bridger guy.”
He shifts his weight when he says my name. I lean back even more to avoid getting butt-faced again. “What about him?”
“The guy’s just …” He lets out a sigh. He’s growing more tired. I can hear it in his voice, and his legs keep fidgeting. “I can’t put it into words, what I’ve been feeling.”
I look up at him, up his back. “Try.”
“Like everyone in the world’s on one side, and then there’s me on the other, and … and I can’t seem to … to …” He stops.
“Can’t seem to what?”
“Fuck this. Whole light needs to get replaced, and I ain’t cut out for that, I’m no electrician. No veterinarian, either. No soldier. Can’t even be a decent bachelor guy. All my work’s for nothin’. I’m such a useless p-piece of shit.”
I don’t know how much luck I’ve got left to press before he realizes who he’s talking to. “No, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Doesn’t help anyone. And you shouldn’t be doing electrical work, anyway,” I add, getting more annoyed by the second. “You just said you’re not an electrician, so this isn’t safe. What are you trying to prove here anyway?”
“Prove …?” He twists around, struck by something, maybe the tone in my voice—and at last he sees me. “What the f—??”
His hand slips from the light on the ceiling.
Balance is lost.
As his body goes tumbling into me, I fling my arms out and grab hold of him—and down the both of us go to the floor.
I crash onto my back.
Anthony on top of me, in my arms, his fall broken.
We open our eyes together, and our faces are close.
Too close—way too close. Intimate-lovers close.
Yet neither of us move. Neither of us let go.
“Why you always gotta go ruinin’ my damned day?” he moans in my face, his sleepy blue eyes like wet crystals. “What did I do to you? Why do you hate me so fuckin’ much?”
“Why do you hate you so fuckin’ much?”
Anthony stares back at me, speechless.
Barely an inch from my face.
Those frustratingly blue, intensely sensitive eyes I don’t think anyone in this town’s gotten a proper looking into.
Not the way I’m looking into them right now.
“I don’t …” Anthony’s breaths come short. He’s having trouble speaking. “I don’t want … don’t wanna do this. Not again. I’m tired. I haven’t slept in days. And I’m so … I’m … I-I’m so …”
“You’re so … what?” I ask, annoyed.
“Goddamn you, Bridger.”
He grabs hold of my shirt, aggressive suddenly, and I have no chance to prepare for the fist I know he’s about to throw at me.
But it isn’t a fist that comes for my face.
It’s his lips.
Crashing into mine.
Fully and intentionally.
Even while he continues to kiss me deeply, his breath rushing desperately out of his mouth with his efforts, I have to process for a solid ten seconds that he isn’t, in fact, still trying to attack me.
I don’t even realize it’s happening. It was never a possibility.
Not truly.
And now I’m kissing him back. Gripping him by his shirt, too. Fingers tangling into his clothes.
One of his hands gropes me so suddenly, I grunt with surprise. Is he copping a feel? A genuine, committed, five-finger grappling of my junk through my pants?
He’s hard as fuck. I can feel him throbbing as he humps my leg while the kiss intensifies.
What the fuck is happening?
Where the hell did this come from?
I don’t know. I can’t answer. All I can do is scramble to keep up with his sudden, assaulting intensity. I don’t know what it is about the feverishness of this kiss, but it’s pulling out everything from inside of me.
My own needs. My own lonesomeness.
My own desire to get this beastly hunger out of me.
Is this the truth I’ve been refusing to see since first stepping foot in this town? That Anthony is just another lonely fool in need of affection—like me?