Page 21 of Center of Gravity
“You bag Mr. Macomb yet?” Tom asked, eyeing me across the table. This was a classic topic between us—the people we’d slept with, the ones we wanted to sleep with. On a hot summer night, it was easier territory than Tom’s stunted career path, my collegiate insecurity, and really my…everything.
“Nope, and it might not happen. I keep throwing out little hooks and he tosses them aside.”
“It’s funny,” Tom said, “I still think of hard-to-get as female territory.”
“No way. And it works exactly the same. I can’t get him out of my head.” I didn’t think Rob was playing hard to get, though. He was just either truly uninterested or playing it safe. And the only reason I didn’t think it was the first thing was because I’d seen a glimmer of something dark and heated when I’d been talking about the tattoo artist. Like curiosity with a possessive edge.
“Why do you think I’m still trying to get you?” I waggled my brows and Tom laughed.
“I’m an impossible case.”
“Would it help if I told you I was really good in bed?” Teasing Tom was always one of the highlights of my day, because it was so effortless to go back and forth when there wasn’t anything at stake. That wasn’t to say I wouldn’t have bagged him in a heartbeat. He was liquid gold with a body like granite.
“Not at all. You’d still be lacking two of my favorite parts.” Tom lifted his hands to chest height and grabbed the air like a goon before picking up his beer again. “You think if you bagged him, you’d be done?”
I tipped my head, considering. My track record wasn’t great. I’d always been down for a night or two, but I’d only had a couple of longer relationships, and not for any emo reasons tied into insecurity or daddy issues or anything. I just hadn’t found anyone I wanted to be around on a consistent basis.
Confession time. “I sucked his dick in a bathroom stall at a club. Like, a few months ago, though.”
Tom almost spit out his beer. “What? And you didn’t tell me when we showed up at his house to move? God, that’s fucking cruel.”
“No,” I countered. “It was smart. Because you would have been on me about it the whole time, thinking you were being subtle and making everything five times more awkward.”
“Why would it have been awkward? It was just a hookup, so what?”
“Well. He couldn’t remember my name. He’d given me a fake name, and he also ditched me after he got off.”
Tom winced through his laughter. “God, talk about a burn. How’d you even get with him in the first place?”
I told him about the night at Liberation, a popular gay club just outside of Savannah, how I’d been hunting a hookup on the dance floor, but it was the same old crowd I was used to. When the app on my phone had pinged with a message, I’d stood at the end of the bar and stared at the screen display of a well-put-together older dude. I was intrigued. Not because older guys didn’t hit on me, but it was his picture, I think. No smile, just a straightforward gaze into the camera. No additional ab or dick pics or oil-slicked torsos. His headshot and the line,The app says you’re here. I am, too. Care for a dance?The no-games forwardness of that text had me responding and directing him to meet me near the DJ booth. He’d been direct once I was standing in front of him, too. We’d exchanged names and he led me onto the dance floor, his hands on my hips. Minutes later, we were kissing, and minutes after that, clambering toward the bathroom.
“I pinged him through the app after, and the next day, too, but he never responded which was fine, because who really cares, right?” I shrugged.
Tom was still snickering.
“And technically, I don’t think he’s playing hard to get. I think he’s got a lot on his mind. I mean, his dad died recently and he’s trying to sell that house and it sounds like there’s something going on with his job, too.”
“That’s, like, red flag kind of stuff.” Tom’s brows drew together.
I shook my head around a swallow of beer. “Nah. It’s just…actually, it doesn’t matter. He’s a decent guy and I’ll finish helping him fix up his house and we’ll both move on. No loss.”
“He is a dude, though.”
I waited to see where he was going to go with that.
“Every guy gets horny, no matter what the fuck he’s going through. My grandma could have a two-by-four crushing her leg and if a hot chick walked by, my head would turn and I’d instantly imagine her naked. You’d do the same. Don’t lie.”
“That doesn’t make you a guy, that makes you a dick.” I laughed.
“Well, I guess if my grandma’s going to get hurt, she’d better do it when no one’s around to distract me.” Tom stuck his tongue out like a child, but he got away with shit like that because he was cute.
An hourlater we were down to the dregs of our bucket of beers. I was pleasantly swimmy. Not drunk, but cottony around the edges, my arms and legs heavy. There was a baseball game on one of the seven TVs on the patio that we paid intermittent attention to, but most of Tom’s focus was on the girls who’d joined our table. That was his doing, of course.
They were cute. Juniors at UVA on summer vacation for a week. Tom had his game face on and was telling them some of the highlights and funnier stories we’d picked up during our moves and junk hauling. I had to give it to him, he was charming, all white smiles and sparkling eyes and easy-going disposition. One of the girls, Jill, was an art history major, so we found some common ground talking about different art movements. She was into classics and, per usual, I was all over the map and couldn’t pick a favorite.
“Hey, speak of the devil,” Tom said when his attention slid back to one of the screens above the bar.
I had to crane my head over my shoulder to see what he was talking about. The crowd thinned for a second and then swelled as people filled a vacancy at the bar left by a departing couple, but I only needed a second to recognize the profile. Rob had somehow scored some prime real estate at the bar. I got a glimpse of his elbow, one hand loosely wrapped around a beer, a few shreds of label on the bar top next to him. Between shoulders, elbows, and heads, I could see his attention fixed to the baseball game on the TV. I’d told him about this bar and a handful of others nearby a few days earlier, but this one was closest to his parents’ house.