Page 11 of Suck This

He loved being the center of attention.

On any given Friday night, he was always out doing something, meeting new people, and genuinely having a grand old time.

Me, I was on my couch, a Coke in one hand, and the remote in the other, watching Netflix and wondering what my next binge-watch would be.

When I came to a party such as the one I was currently at, I made it a point to stay out of the limelight and keep my face from being seen.

Why? Because I sucked at speaking. I sucked at putting together coherent sentences, and even more, I hated people.

That’s right, you heard me.

I hated people.

I hated the way everyone acted. I hated how the world had turned into a bunch of angry shitheads who felt entitled to stuff they didn’t work for, and most of all, I hated what people became.

Killers. Beggars. Law and rule breakers.

Anything and everything that people could cut corners on, they did, and I saw the worst of the worst as a crime scene tech, and really that only hammered the point home.

People sucked.

And I hated sucky people.

“’Scuse me,” I murmured to a couple that were in a tight clinch.

I caught a familiar set of eyes as I passed and realized the man in the clinch was the same man that’d sat across from me at the vampire bar that Keisha had dragged me to. The same one who I’d heard never left Constantine Worth’s side.

Nervously I looked around in the shadows, happy when I didn’t see that familiar pair of blue wolf-like eyes and continued to walk the room.

I ended up by the bar, and snagged a water that was still capped, and continued walking.

Really, I was trying to get my steps in.

I was a Fitbit fanatic and had been a lazy bum for half the day.

This week had been exceptionally slow at work, which equaled a lot of ass-meet-seat time for me.

Which inevitably meant not getting the steps that I usually did, and since I was currently in competition with Keisha and a few other ladies from high school for the Workweek Hustle, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to sit on my ass and let them pass me by. Even if it meant I had to walk laps around a damn ballroom in high heels and a ball gown.

It was on my third pass when the host, a small, older man in his late seventies, called everyone’s attention to the front of the room.

“I would like to thank everyone personally for attending tonight,” the man’s voice trembled.

So, this had to be Mr. Cool, the man whose son was dying of testicular cancer.

The man who’d put on this benefit to aid a man that would likely not be on this earth long enough to see the good his father had done specially for him.

“As you know, my son, Jameson, was diagnosed with cancer six months ago…”

And the story went, breaking my heart all over again for the fourth time in as many days.

The son, Jameson, had two kids and one on the way, a wife that had MS, and was a teacher for about fifty third-grade students at the local middle school.

He…

I froze when I saw the man I thought I wouldn’t ever see again.

The same one that I’d seen throw a man across a freakin’ bar room with barely any effort.