I wasn’t so sure, like I wasn’t so sure about anything anymore.
Trust me.
I closed my eyes and let myself rest. Because what else could I do?
Chapter 4
Oliver
Iwoke up in a stranger’s bed, my skin prickling with chills and my throat spasming in anxious terror, matched by my heart bouncing around in my chest and my hands scrambling around in half blindness, the light from the open door not quite enough to see where I was or where on earth my clothes were.
Clothes. The shirt I found on the floor wasn’t mine, and I put my boxers on back to front in the panicked frenzy of trying to get dressed.
“You’re not staying for round two?” a gravelly voice came from behind me.
“No,” I huffed, too chicken to turn around and see what monster had dragged me home.
Monster was perhaps the wrong word because the dude sounded like…a normal guy. His too long hair covering his eyes, a small smirk forming on his lips as I did a quick glance around. I remembered him, thank God. I couldn’t have been too far gone last night then, and round two? He was perhaps up for it, his thick cock already at half-mast, poking up from under the thin covers. Still, the familiar shame of the situation I had once again put myself in? All I felt was…disgust. I was absolutely and truly exactly that. A disgusting piece of shit. What had I been thinking? Fucking around, with no sense or regard for my fragile sanity, my health or the absolute truth that I should know better. Especially today.
No. Absolutely not. I already questioned the state of my head, even allowing myself to look at him. Look. I was still in one piece, my arse suitably sticky and a little sore, so yeah. A good time had no doubt been had by all, my nose all dry and itchy as I finally located my sock in a corner. Then I fixated on getting my clothes on, almost falling off the side of the bed in my haste to get out of here. I needed to leave. Like yesterday.
“I could make you a brew,” the dude said, now getting out of bed, forcing me to come eye to eye with him. Too close, too much stale morning breath on my face. His fingers grabbed my chin as I quickly turned away. No, thank you and no, not happening. I preferred to sneak out and not be faced with my bad life choices and even worse…my mistakes. Because I’d never been fucked by a man who wasn’t exactly that. None of them made me feel any better about myself, nor did they ever ask me to… Well. Stay. That wasn’t part of this highly scripted roleplay everyone tended to partake in.
“Thanks, yeah. No thanks, need to go,” I spat out, hoping I had everything. I patted myself down. Jacket, phone, wallet, watch still on my wrist. My dignity hopefully still intact. Shoes. Hopefully by the front door, wherever that was. Door. Leave. Now.
“See ya.” The dude matched my nonchalance to a T. Good.
The breath of relief wasn’t even something I tried to hide, as I turned around and did just that. I fled, my heartbeat still in my throat.
I found myself gazing into the early pink sun rising outside his front door, my shoelaces still undone, an unlit cigarette dangling from my lips.Another one of my disgusting habits that would have to go. I thought this would be the week I made changes and when I started anew. Apparently my brain hadn’t got that memo, and here I was again, the inevitable crash soon to follow, where I would wallow in my stupidity and misery until I partied myself into another black hole and it all started all over again. This wasn’t the first time this week. Not the second either. To be honest? I’d lost count. Was I trying to kill myself here? Nah. But I was doing a damn good job of destroying absolutely everything around me. I threw the unlit cigarette in a dustbin. Let the whole packet follow.
I’d taken six months off work and hadn’t set foot in my office since last Wednesday, when I’d popped in to sort out some last-minute issue, only to find the name plate on my office door had been replaced and some woman was sat at my desk, her jacket flung over my visitor’s chair.
Already replaced, the ink not even dry on my paperwork.
I thought I was changing things. I thought I would feel better about all this.
Lies. All lies. This was me, and I had no idea how I would ever manage to change that. I had wanted to, for quite some time. A juvenile idea that something like that was even possible for a man like myself. That I could just step out of my entire persona and…change.
Into what? I didn’t know.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted a life that was so different from the one I led. I wanted it all to stop. The meaningless, mundane existence. The partying. The random hookups. The feeling of being so utterly un…important.
Like it didn’t even matter if I still existed. I could step in front of a bus, right this minute, and nobody would even know I was gone.
Perhaps whoever got to scrape me off the tarmac would find my mangled phone and try to find anyone to contact. Try to deliver the news of my passing to someone who cared.
Truthfully, and this wasn’t me being a pathetic waste of space. I wasn’t trying to make myself out as some attention-seeking idiot here, but there was nobody. I had no friends. I worked. I worked and I worked and I worked, and money went in the bank, and then occasionally I’d blow big chunks of it on white powder to shove up my nose so I could forget what a terrible human being I was. What a waste of a life I’d lived. And once again, wake up like this. Walking down the street knowing that none of it had even mattered. Not in the end. And it never would.
Family, I hear you ask. Bah. I had a family, of course I had. A father who’d walked out on my mother when I was still too young to understand. A stepfather who’d slid into his place and created some more children, who had pushed me right out the door. I had no contact with either of them. Nor had I any contact with my mother, the woman who had perhaps not so gently shoved me out of the house at sixteen, when the walls had started to cave in on us all. The same woman who, in hushed tones, had been telling me that perhaps it was better if I let go. Gave my stepfather a chance to calm down. Perhaps my choice of lifestyle would be detrimental to my impressionable siblings. And perhaps… Perhaps the look in my mother’s eyes had been more telling than any words that had spilled out of her perfectly made-up lips.
Disappointment. Shame. What on earth would the neighbours think? Was I about to cause another scene? Shout down the neighbourhood? Dressed like that?
Had I been a smarter kid? Maybe I would have handled things differently. Kept my head down and not been the mouthy brat I had been and, I realised, perhaps still was. Instead I’d got myself on a bus to the city, wherethis story could easily have gone off track but didn’t. Because I already had a place at sixth form college and a decent amount of money in the bank from working endless shifts at a local supermarket, and having already decided the money was better in the bank than in my pocket? I blagged myself a room for minimal rent, another job, and went to school. A scholarship later, a few nice teachers and university was in the bag. And then I ended up here. I let the keys to my flat flip around my fingers as I let myself in.
A penthouse studio in the city, a balcony large enough to house a family-sized table and a hot tub. Not that I had any of those items, but the neighbour had both. My balcony was empty; my apartment was bare apart from an unmade double bed in the corner.
When you worked like I did, these things became secondary. I didn’t entertain. I absolutely didn’t host hookups. And if anyone ever had the misfortune of glancing into my humble abode, they would probably think I was auditioning for a part in an episode of some murderous serial killer biopic, the plastic sheeting still on the floor in the hallway where I had once had the bright idea of redecorating. The paint pot in the corner was a sore point in my arguments with myself.
