“It feels like home.”
I smile at him and move closer because the music is loud and it’s hard for me to hear what he’s saying. My ear touches his lips and I feel his hot breath on my neck and it gives me goosebumps. I smile in embarrassment and lift my eyes.
And they remain locked there. Held hostage by his.
Aaron is at the counter with his hands on the bar top. He’s wearing a fitted shirt that leaves his arms completely exposed and I can make out the rigid muscles and the raised veins.
He seems tense. Agitated.
Angry?
Are you shitting me?
I pull away from Mark instinctively. He doesn’t seem to notice the change in me and continues talking and making conversation and I can’t follow a single word he’s saying.
Aaron keeps shooting arrows at me but I will not be the first one to look away. I will not give him the pleasure.
What the hell does he want? Didn’t he just tell me to push off only twelve hours ago?
I continue to challenge him with my eyes because I am stubborn and, let’s just be honest, I enjoy hurting myself. Because even after everything he said, there’s a masochist in me that still hopes to find a little spark in his eyes, a flame,anythingto make me think there’s a chance.
And tonight, I would swear that I see a lot more than just a simple hope.
—
AARON
“So, where are we going tonight?” I ask Jay who is near me behind the bar counter.
“Ah, don’t ask me, Patrick’s planned everything.”
“Aren’t the friends supposed to organize these things?”
“You know how he is.”
I shrug my shoulders and take some empty glasses off the shelf. I set them on the counter waiting for someone to take them out to the back. I give the wood a polish with a wet rag before looking up and suddenly feel all of my muscles tense up.
Look who just walked in the pub. Some asshole, probably from a rich family, wearing a nice pair of designer jeans, a shirt and a leather jacket, and he’s holding the door open forher.
I shut my eyes hard, hoping that’ll do the trick to make that image go away, that it’s all just a mind game and caused by the two beers I’ve already thrown back tonight.
I count to ten and open them again just in time to see the two of them sitting at a table close to the counter.
That guy irks me. No, that’s not the word. He makes the bile rise up from my stomach, so much so that I have to take another slug of my beer, hoping that it’ll stay down where it’s supposed to be.
I don’t like him. At all.
I put both my hands on the surface in front of me, grabbing the edges of the counter, and I can feel the tension in my arms.
“Calm the fuck down,” Jay says through clenched teeth before going over to the couple I’m looking at.
In front of such a scene a normal balanced right-thinking man should remain indifferent. Especially when he’s just told the woman sitting there with that spineless, silly puppet, that he feels nothing for her, that she’s just a friend. He should behave like a normal person, be calm and balanced. His words should align with his actions.
But I am anything but mentally stable and not at all in possession of my faculties, whether they be physical, mental, psychiatric or whatever the hell else you wanna throw in there. I am not in control of anything right now but have been taken over by an irrational and very inopportune rage that is threatening to choke me or lead me to choke someone else with my bare hands, right here tonight.
“Pour me two Harps,” Jay says, coming back to the bar counter but keeping an eye on the scene. But I don’t listen to him, I just stand there, staring at them.
He huffs and comes around the bar to prepare the beers himself before returning to their table. As he’s heading back my way I see Ciara move towards the man she’s with, as if she’s about to kiss him.
