He had managed to isolate me from my family and friends, making me believe that they were all jealous of us and wanted us to break up. I'm not even sure how it happened or the exact moment that my brain decided that his word was gospel, but what started as a fairytale love for the ages, ended with me becoming a shell of the man I was before, a man my friends barely recognized, who I barely recognized.
I justified so much of Josh's lousy behavior to myself and others for so many years to avoid his vicious, callous tongue. Everything had to be Josh's way or Josh's preference. I never had a voice.
I fucking swore to myself I wouldn't allow a man to manipulate me like that again, to take away my voice. Although I know how different from him Drew is, I can't help feeling that I'm falling into the same pattern by accepting bullshit behavior and having the need to justify it to others. Why does history keep repeating itself? Blowing out a breath, I climb the stairs and head to bed alone again.
“I’m so fucking done with this!”
After a long night of tossing, turning, and waking up to check if Drew had come home, I crawl out of bed at ten A.M.
Walking downstairs, I look around for any sign that Drew was here, but nope, nothing. Everything is as I left it last night, including my boots still lying haphazardly on the entranceway floor. Heading into the kitchen,
I start up the coffee machine and wait for it to pour my much needed anti murder juice while trying to summon up the anger I know I should feel or the crippling pain that people feel when they realize the world they build for themselves is about to come crashing down around them like a house of cards, for the second time.
When will I learn that I can't rely on anybody else, no matter how pretty their words of love are? I should have learned from an early age that trust and love are as real as unicorns or Santa Claus, given that my asshole father had also decided that his career was far more important than his wife and kid.
Sighing again, I rest both hands on the side of the counter and lower my head. "I can't do this anymore. I need to leave before things get worse, right?" I whisper to myself, but in the house's emptiness, the words echo back at me. Maybe I could have done more and tried to explain how I was feeling, but Drew is so focused on his goals that it wouldn't matter what I say.
I still hear his words from every other time I have tried to tell him how about the alarm bells going off in my head.
“Just a few more months, Ryan. I know it’s shitty right now, but just a few more months.”
"This is important, Ryan. Can't you see how close I am to making Partner?"
That's really what it always comes down to, right? How important it is that he makes Partner…not that he has a partner.
So, really, is my world going to be much different? I've pretty much been alone for eight months now, and this isn't the first time I've had to start over after my heart has been ripped out of my chest and microwaved. It should be a walk in the park at this point, like muscle memory. I can't even remember the last time Drew and I did something as a couple.
So, I might as well be living alone and single. I'm used to the empty bed now and could probably get more action from Grindr hookups than I have from Drew lately. Fuck, how did we get here? How did we lose the spark we had from the very moment we met?
CHAPTER 2
2 years ago
RYAN
"Yo Ry, you're up!" I hear Matt calling out to me from behind the bar at JACKS Bar and Grill. I've been doing open mic night here once a week for the last few months. Matt Jack and Jack Bareal own the bar, hence the name JACKS. It's mainly an LGBTQ+ bar, but the place has the best wings around, so it's usually packed with everybody from moms' night out to guys in football jerseys screaming at the game on the big screen behind the stage, the stage that has become my happy place—a home away from home so to speak. I spend most of my time working at Savage Ink Tattoo studio with some of the best tattoo artists in the state, and I love it, but I also love being able to step up there and lose myself in the music and the crowd once a week.
Drawing was my first form of escape from my shitty reality. Music came after. My dad got up and left my mom, brother and I. Apparently, having a family was getting in the way of his relentless pursuit of stardom. My dad was a musician and lead singer of some unknown band that he was convinced was just one more gig away from making it big.
I was just three years old when he packed up his shit and jumped into the back of a tour bus, promising to come back when he found his fame, but he needed to put his time into touring, not the family he built. Jackass. Thankfully, my love for music only drives me to this small handmade stage and no further.
At least when he left, he had the decency to send my mom some money to help with the bills, but over time, that stopped, and my mom had no choice but to get a second job. My brother and I were left with the elderly neighbor in our shitty apartment block looking after me. June was a lovely lady, to be fair, and one of the first times she looked after us, she handed me a pen and some paper and asked me to draw her a nice picture for her wall, while Roman ran around the neighbourhood.
By the time I was old enough to look after myself, June's wall was covered in my drawings from over the years. I still remember the bright smile on her face every time I handed her a new one. I would sit for hours with my headphones on, drawing and listening. I guess that's what kickstarted my love of art and, evidently, my career choice.
Once I was fresh out of high school, after barely graduating, I looked for a job every day so I could help out my mom. I was not going to go down the same road my brother did. Roman was 5 years older than me and took my dad leaving harder than even my mom did. It really fucked with him. He was always getting into shit he shouldnt have, and hanging out with sketchy guys who landed his ass in prison at 19 looking at a 20 year stretch for home invasion. That wasn't going to be me.
So I would walk around town asking store after store if they had any job openings until I passed the Savage Ink studio window. I spent far too long staring into it, looking at the drawings on the walls, imagining how cool it would be to put permanent art on somebody's skin. That's where Gavin found me.
"You lost, Kid?" He said, voice booming over the music playing in my headphones and making me almost jump out of my skin as I turned to face this bear of a guy with his tattooed arms folded over his chest, rainbow bracelets on his wrists making an interesting contrast to the black and gray ink from his tattoos. His black hair was styled in a pushed-back mohawk, long at the top but shaved at the side, and a matching black beard long enough to touch his chest, which was also covered in dark fur peeking out the top of his Black Sabbath band T-shirt.
I knew I was gay by the time I was fourteen years old. I didn't have any kind of internal struggle like most kids. I just looked at Jason Dempsey, the cool kid, the bad boy at my school, with his unruly hair and shitty tattoos, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and got a boner for the first time.
Well, the first time, that didn't involve morning wood. So when faced with this guy, muscled arms covered in tattoos and wearing all black, I wasn't surprised I felt my dick twitch in my jeans.
"Do you think the owner needs an apprentice?"
The question burst from my lips when I realized I had been staring at him for longer than was acceptable.
