Page 20 of Glitter

Epilogue

Dusti

F riday night, one week before Benny met his angel…

Sweeping my eyes over the interior of Glitter, I decided I liked what I saw.

The name alone would’ve been enough for me to have put a pause in my self-imposed sabbatical from clubbing, but after the day from hell at work, I’d needed a healthy dose of some eye candy and a couple of sugary, fruity drinks with ridiculous names and absolutely loaded with alcohol. The club also had a pretty decent dance floor and the music didn’t suck, so that was an added bonus.

Speaking of eye candy… I turned to the prime specimen behind the bar, rippling, firm muscles lovingly packed into a club-branded, black t-shirt. “You deal with a lot of puke, right?” I asked. “I don’t suppose you know how to get puke stains out of a silk blouse?”

The bartender looked at me like I was one row short of a full package of Oreos and gruffly suggested, “With a washing machine?”

Ugh. He might be hot, but his laundering advice could use some work. Oh, well. I would just have to look up the answer online after I got home.

I’d tried rinsing my ruined shirt in a sink after a little terror had puked up something vile and green all over me and the reception desk, but the stain didn’t budge. I’d had to resort to putting on one of the sets of backup scrubs my parents kept stocked at the office and now I was stuck, smelling faintly of vomit, in a gross brown shirt and pants with little pictures of chibi dogs printed all over them.

Not my finest look.

“Never mind, honey,” I said. “But while you’re here, I’ll take another drink.”

He pointed at the teeny tiny puddle of orange slush in the bottom of my glass that was the remains of the last drink he’d served me. “Another one of those?”

The…whatever it had been called had been tasty, but… “Nah. Something else this time. Surprise me. As long as it’s silly with fruit and stupidly sweet, I’ll drink it.” A thought popped in my head, prompting me to add, “And pink. Could you make it pink?”

“You want me to throw a bunch of edible glitter in it while I’m at it?”

He was clearly trying to come across as sarcastic as he asked it, but all his question did was let me know there was actually such a thing as edible glitter. And that this club apparently stocked it.

“Yes! OMG, yes,” I replied.

While the hottie bartender went to work making my sweet, fruity, pink, glittery drink, I swiveled around on my barstool to make another visual pass of all the yummy eye candy on offer.

I accidentally made eye contact for a bit too long with a tall, muscle bear with closely cropped hair. Luckily, as he started to head in my direction, he was intercepted by a dark haired twink wearing the most adorable buttercup yellow romper. Seriously, I kind of wanted to know where he’d bought it so I could get one for myself. Probably not in yellow, but I’m sure the store had it in other colors. If I didn’t think it would lead to getting propositioned for a threeway with him and Mr. Bear, I would totally go over there and ask him.

It's not that I was against threesomes. And both the bear and the twink were attractive enough, although I wasn’t really into twinks. If I wanted to have sex with a twink, I’d just grab my favorite dildo and fuck myself.

But clubs weren’t the only thing I’d been taking a sabbatical from. Let’s just say that my favorite dildo, along with the other less favorite dildos, my butt plugs, and my prostate massager, have been getting quite the workout. My string of bad dates, relationships that lasted shorter than a box of cereal, and hookups that left me feeling empty and even more disposable than the failed relationship attempts, was so long that it could get snipped into pieces and used to outfit the instruments in a string quartet.

Sure, sex was nice. Fun. Great even, depending on who you were with. But, holy fuck, sex, relationships…none of it was worth the hassle. My toys were good enough, even if I liked it better when my partner did all the work and I could just lay there and let them do whatever I told them to.

There is nothing wrong with being a power pillow prince.

“Here you go.” At the gruff voice, I turned back around and took in the drink the hot bartender set on the bar in front of me. “Fruity, sweet enough to rot your teeth, horrendously pink, and loaded with enough glitter you’ll probably have trouble swallowing it.”

Oh my. It was…all of those things. And more. Except…

“I never have trouble swallowing,” I informed him, aiming a cheeky grin at him.

The bartender turned away to go help someone else, but I saw him roll his eyes.

Picking up my drink, I admired how pretty and pink and sparkly it was. I went to take a sip to see if it tasted as fab as it looked and—

A guy shoved his way up to the bar, calling to the bartender, “Can I get a whiskey sour?” The area around the bar was super crowded and as he created space for himself where there was no space, he bumped into me, jostling my elbow and causing me to spill about half of my pretty drink on my shirt.

Yes, this shirt’s ugliness would probably be improved by the addition of pink and sparkles, but that didn’t mean I should have to put up with somebody wrecking another shirt I had on. Rotating on my stool to blast this jerk with the full fury of my irritation, I…didn’t.

I was pretty. My drink was pretty. This man was…beautiful.

About average height, with a thick, round, beefy body. His build, paired with short, medium brown hair and thick scruff on his chin the same medium brown, made him the absolute most perfect bear cub. A chubby, cuddly cub. Sort of like Boo-Boo Bear in the old Yogi Bear cartoons that used to be on, in the middle of the night, on that old person’s cartoon channel.

I wondered if he would mind if I called him Boo-Boo?

He also had stunning blue eyes. They were the blue of deep, mountain lakes. The kind of lakes we could see if we took a ski vacation together in the Rockys. Not that I ski. But for this man, I’d be willing to sit in a ski chalet, drinking hot chocolate while he went skiing.

Screw my sex sabbatical. For this man, I’d chuck all my sex toys in a box and throw them—Well, no, I wouldn’t throw them away. But I would tuck them under my bed because I wouldn’t need them anymore. Not if I could be having sex with him.

Ugh. I wanted to sex up this guy so hard.

I aimed my best sultry but sassy smile at my Boo-Boo…only to discover he was no longer next to me. Fuck. At some point, while I was fantasizing about mountain ski vacations and sex toys so bored from disuse they wept lube tears, Boo-Boo had been replaced by… Weird Turtleneck Dude?

What the fuck. Who the fuck wears a turtleneck to a gay club?

I couldn’t believe my cuddly cub was gone. And he…he hadn’t even noticed me. Fine, so I wasn’t looking—or smelling—my best, but was I really that unremarkable when I wasn’t wearing my usual attire?

If that was the case, then the next time I ran into my Boo-Boo—and there would be a next time. I refused to believe anything else—I would be all glammed up to my usual standards. I would make him notice me.

It shouldn’t be too hard. With Glitter being the newest gay club in Milwaukee, he’d probably come back here soon. I would just have to also be here, looking all pretty and sparkly to catch his eye, and then… My Boo-Boo would be mine. And I would sex him up so much.

For as long as it lasted.

I would just have to make sure that among all the hot fucking, I didn’t do anything stupid. Like allowing any pesky feelings to sneak up on me. I could like fucking the cuddly cub; I can’t let myself like him.

Feelings ruin fucking everything. They always do.

I wasn’t delusional enough to think that just because he looked like my perfect type that we would actually be perfect for each other. There was no way we would end up hand-in-hand, like some sort of boyfriends, getting a perfect, lovey-dovey, happily-ever-after.

That sort of thing wasn’t for me. Experience has taught me that.