Page 73 of Emmett
“You taught me how to play, dumbass.”
His brow arches in challenge. “Who said I taught youwell?”
We throw back a couple of shooters at the bar before ordering another round of drinks, which we take with us to the pool table.
Davis lines up his cue to break the rack and he throws me a smirk. “So were you the big spoon or the little spoon?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I cackle, landing a smack to the back of his head. “I was both.”
“Ah, me too,” he admits as he takes his shot. “Wear Sophia like a fuckin’ backpack sometimes.” Butting the end of his pool cue against my hip, he adds, “His damn loss, alright?”
We dive into our game, only stopping occasionally to get fresh drinks or to loudly (and obnoxiously) belt out AC/DC’sBack In Blackand Heart’sBarracudawhen they pour out of the old speaker system next to us, clumsily using our cues to act as guitars and microphones. It doesn’t matter that everyone is staring at us or talking about us or even that a couple of people have their phones out to record us.
My relationship with Davis is a weird one and it doesn’t make sense to a lot of people; he’s somewhere between my big brother, my uncle, and my second dad, and he slips seamlessly into whichever role he needs to depending on whatwe’re doing or what the mood is. When I was a kid and I broke my arm on a jungle gym, he met Dad and I at the emergency room and paced around like a nervous mother hen, harassing the staff until I got a cast and some ibuprofen.
When I called him shortly after I turned seventeen and told him that I had gotten a ticket for underage drinking at a house party, he slipped into big brother mode and snuck me back into the house, telling me to‘keep that fuckin’ mouth shut about it’if I ever wanted to leave the house again.‘What your old man don’t know can’t hurt ya.’He made the whole thing disappear for me, and Dad never found out about any of it.
Tonight, he’s somewhere in between brother and uncle. I catch glimpses of ‘second dad’ when his eyes shift a little as I order another drink, but he sets that role aside and joins me instead, meeting me shot for shot.
After going to the bar for one final drink, I bring it back to the pool table and down it in one go. Slamming the emptied glass down onto the table, I pull my keys from my pocket and hand them over to Davis – as if he’s in any better shape than I am to be in charge of the car keys.
“Your place?”
He nods. “Come on.”
•
I don’t get much sleep, mostly thanks to the nonstop spinning of the room. The high that I was on last night is gone when I wake up, replaced instead with a hangover and a deep pit of...something.
Slipping my phone from the pocket of the slacks that I’ve been wearing since yesterday, I swipe the screen open and look at my call log. It’s been three days since the last time thatI called Nash. He hasn’t called back, hasn’t texted, probably hasn’t so much as thought about me since I walked out of his house. He’s probably moved on to someone new by now. I shove the phone back into my pocket with a groan and press my face into the cushions of the couch.
Something hard drops onto my back moments later. “Breakfast order,” Davis rasps as he walks past the couch, sounding just as hungover as I am.
“How much did we drink?” I ask with another groan.
“The entire fuckin’ bottom shelf, I think.”
I reach behind me to grab Davis’s phone from my back and I pretend to scroll through the menu on the screen before dropping it onto the coffee table in front of me. “I’m surprised your girlfriend isn’t here.”
“Video chat, my friend,” he tells me, dropping into the chair in front of me, dressed in a pair of boxers. “Video chat.” He reaches for his phone and brings it closer to himself, finishing up the food order before dropping the device back onto the table. “So how’s the bi thing work for ya? You got a preference, or is it all the same, just different equipment?”
“Oh Christ,” I groan, grabbing another throw pillow and pulling it over my head. “I didn’t mean to tell you about that.”
“I can forget you did if you want,” he tells me.
“No, it’s…” I heave a sigh, rolling over onto my back so that I can face him. “It’s different. I don’t have a preference other than preferring the one person over anyone else – not just the…”
“Sock-knockin’ sex,” he snorts, pounding his fist against the arm of his chair while he laughs.
“It wasreallygood sex,” I shrug. “Did you ever…?”
“Nah,” he tells me with a shake of his head. “Went to Paris once or twice and that was close enough for me.”
“Do you think I’m weird?”
He lets out a laugh so loud that it makes my head feel like it’s about to split in two. “You know who you’re talkin’ to, right? I fucked a woman with my toe in broad fuckin’ daylight on a Wednesday morning ‘cause she had a thing for feet,” he tells me, taking a sip of water. “Sorry to tell ya, but you liking dick is so normal it’s almost boring, Hoss.”
With a grateful laugh and a pinch to the bridge of my nose, I carefully slide off of the couch and head for his kitchen, pulling open his refrigerator door to grab a bottle of beer.