Page 17 of Saving Ren

“Is she crying?” Cooper asks as the three of us stand at the bar watching the scene unfolding on the other side of the room.

“Yeah,” Zac chimes in again. “Apparently, the round of shots Gabe sent over tasted shit.”

“Get fucked,” I mumble, still watching as the group of women surround her, shielding her from everyone in the place, including me.

After a few minutes, still surrounded by her friends, I watch as she moves through the bar and out to the smoking terrace.

Taking a sip of my drink, I become aware of my brothers watching me.

“What?” I ask.

“What are you doing?” Cooper asks. “You’ve not taken your eyes off her and your jaw’s ticking.”

“No it’s not,” I argue.

“Kids got it bad,” Zac adds.

I shake my head at the pair of them; my response is interrupted when I hear, “Hey, Gabe,” from beside me.

“Oh, shit,” Zac says, none too quietly.

I turn to see Kristy, a little blonde I’d hooked up with last summer.

“Hey, Kris,” I respond, but quickly turn away and back towards my brothers. My gaze catches Coopers, who gives me an eye roll and a head shake. Zac points his finger at me, wagging it, and fake laughs while I mouth the word ‘wankers,’ at the pair of them.

I’m not a dick, and I don’t want to act like one now, but I make it clear to the women I sleep with that if we go there, it’ll likely be a one-time thing. Kristy knew this when she took me home with her six months ago, but that hasn’t stopped her from trying to hook up again every time we bump into each other.

I haveno aversion to sleeping with the same woman more than once; it’s just that every time it happens, they tend to start making assumptions. No matter how many times I attempt to explain that it’s only sex that I’m interested in, they play the victim when I leave after the deed is done without making any promises or plans.

Not all womenare like it. There are a few out there just looking to fuck with no expectations, and they’re the ones I’m happy to hook up with more than once.

I’m not a man whore, just a thirty-five-year-old single bloke with a healthy sex life. My daughter stays with me every other weekend and a couple of nights during the week. During those times, she gets my undivided attention, so it’s not like opportunities present themselves every minute of every day. Despite this, living in a small town does mean that I do quite often bump into someone I’ve slept with, which, like right now, can be awkward.

The band starts back upwith a cover of ‘Jack and Diane’, and just as the opening guitar starts, Jo and her mates come back into the bar. With my eyes trained on the little redhead in the middle of the procession making its way towards the toilets, my knuckles again rub at my chest as the indigestion from earlier kicks back in. The burning gets worse when again I hear, “Hey, Gabe?” from beside me a few minutes later.

“Busted.”Cooper laughs before turning his back to me, pretending to be deep in conversation with Zac.

Turning to face Kristy, I give her a small smile.

“How’ve you been?”she asks, stepping in for a cuddle. I pat her back awkwardly as she stands with her arms around my neck. Pulling away, I spot the redhead making her waybackfrom the bathroom conference she’s just had with her girls. With the table they congregated around earlier now taken, they find another closer to where I’m standing.

“I’ve been good, Kris. Busy with work, you know how it is, lots going on.”

I’ve no idea if she knows how it is because I don’t really know the first thing about her.

“Too busy to return my calls?”

My head jerks back at this question because I rarely give out my number, and I definitely don’t remember giving it out to Kristy.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I called you at work, left a message with your secretary for you to call me back.”

“I. . . No. I mean I didn’t get your message. Why’d you call?”

I don’t want to be a dick, I really don’t, but for fuck’s sake, how else is this conversation going to go?

“Well, it wasn’t to talk about the weather,” she snaps.