Bad Boy Dom (22 page)

“You smell like sugar,” I informed her, leaning over and slurring into her neck. She giggled and pushed me away with a delicate hand.

“Your friend is cute,” she said, giggling. “What’s his name?”

“Ryan,” I told her. “But I’m cuter. He has VD.”

“I don’t believe you,” she sassed me. “He looks nicer than you.”

“I’m nice,” I protested, holding a hand up. She grinned at me and I could see her big blue eyes were wide with excitement. She had some kind of pink lip gloss on and it made her mouth look really sexy and pouty.
Just one won’t hurt
, I thought to myself.
Michelle won’t ever find out
.

“I don’t think you are,” she said sweetly. “I know too much about you.”

I frowned. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. “I’m not sure how that’s possible, honey,” I told her. “I’m older than you, and I’ve been around a lot longer than you have.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Like we don’t talk about the things that you guys do? Bree and Stephanie both slept with you last year.” She pointed to two of the girls with her, a gorgeous brunette and a redhead. “Don’t you remember them?”

I frowned and squinted, trying to remember anything. Neither name rang a bell, and I shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t remember them,” I said, trying to keep my voice as level as possible. “They must have just wanted me and lied about it.”

The girl frowned. She crossed her arms over her bare midriff and narrowed her eyes at me. The pink t-shirt showed her ample breasts, and I could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra. In my pants, I felt my cock stiffen and twitch. “They didn’t lie,” she said finally. “You’re just a drunk asshole who doesn’t remember.”

“Baby, that’s not true,” I protested. “Come on, they’re jealous. You’re so much hotter than they are!”

The brunette that the girl had pointed to walked over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Is he giving you shit, Amber?”

Amber shook her head. “He’s just a lying asshole,” she said. “He said he doesn’t remember fucking you and Bree.”

Stephanie narrowed her eyes at me. “You dick,” she spat. “We had a threesome in our living room. We brought you home after we did body shots here. Don’t you remember that?”

“It sounds hot,” I joked, racking my brain for any memory of the girl in front of me. She was incredibly beautiful, but I didn’t remember her at all. I craned my neck to see Ryan slipping his hand on the ass of one of the other girls, and then I heard them all laughing.

“You really are a pig,” Amber said. “Anyway, we just wanted to tell you to fuck off, and don’t talk to us anymore. And if you try anything with anyone else, we’ll fucking tell them all about what you did.”

“That’s really not fair,” I said, holding up my hands. “I didn’t mean to hurt you! It was just fun, right?”

“You don’t talk two girls into doing that and then never talk to them again!” Stephanie yelled. She raised her hand and I cowered, thinking she was going to slap me. “It’s not a fucking nice thing to do to girls! You broke my heart!”

“Fuck off,” I spat. “You’re a dumb slut., Why would I talk to you again? You think I want to bring home someone who lets me fuck her in the ass on the first date?”

She frowned. “Fuck you!” she yelled back. Everyone in the bar shut up and stared at us. Normally I would have been embarrassed, but this was too much. I threw my beer at the floor, shattering the glass and spraying liquid everywhere before stalking out and angrily getting into my car.

As I drunkenly drove home, I hated myself. I couldn’t believe that I’d done what they were accusing me of, and yet it didn’t seem entirely outside the realm of possibility. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t done similar things to a couple hundred other girls. But to have a night like that, something that was like a porn, and not even remember it? That seemed completely ludicrous to me. I couldn’t believe it.

I was too drunk to be driving, and I pulled off into an abandoned shopping mall. The sky was an inky matte black, and the parking lot was deserted. I couldn’t go home. It didn’t even feel like I had a home anymore, and I couldn’t have dealt with Archie yelling at me and telling me how disappointed he was. Or worse, risk getting arrested and having to have him bail me out of jail. My mom never minded when I did shit like this, but I was starting to realize just how off-kilter and weird my background had actually been. I’d always known that Mom and I were different than most people, but I’d never actually sat down and thought about how much it had affected my life.

I started thinking about the other day, when she’d come in my room to tell me that she didn’t think I knew how to respect women. At the time, it had seemed absolutely ludicrous and unbelievable. Of course I knew how to respect women. Didn’t I respect my mom? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that she was probably right. I didn’t know how to treat women. Women were just there for my amusement and my pleasure. It had been so easy to get everyone I wanted in life, I’d never even had to try. And the trying, when I did have to do it, only lasted ten minutes. It was like going into the VFW with Ryan and having girls crawl all over us because we were the hot star athletes.

When my art career developed, I’d worried that I wouldn’t get laid as much as I did before. In actuality, the art world had been even more scandalous and promiscuous as playing baseball had been. Instead of sports groupies, there were art groupies like Desiree who wanted me to paint them. Getting laid had never been so easy, and all types of women wanted me.

I thought I respected Michelle. I’d always cared about her and protected her, and did everything I could to make sure she was safe and having a good time. That’s why it had bothered me so much when my mom accused me of “torturing” her when we were in school. At first, I thought my mom was jealous of the attention. But thinking about it now, I started remembering times when Ryan and I had teased Michelle and made her cry. I thought about the time we were 15 and I snuck into her bedroom and talked all night about wanting to go to the junior prom with someone I really loved. She’d watched me with shining eyes all night and I had known that she thought I was going to ask her. Watching her get so excited and hopeful had been such an ego trip to my 15-year-old self, and I’d relished the feeling when I’d gotten home. But the next day, when she saw me with my arm around some other girl, I saw the hurt and pain in her eyes.

I hated to admit it, but I hadn’t felt bad. I’d felt powerful and strong, knowing that I had the ability to make someone intelligent upset. I couldn’t believe that she’d been so easy to manipulate. And when we were 17 and I invited her over, I could sense the hurt and wariness in her eyes. It had felt like such a victory, such a triumph when she’d finally come over in a different outfit, wearing perfume. I knew that she’d changed for me, and it really turned me on. I couldn’t believe that I had such an effect on someone who didn’t even care about the same things that most high schoolers did. It had been so satisfying to play with Michelle. She wasn’t like the dumb cheerleaders who only cared about themselves and shopping for makeup and clothes. She had actual goals, and a dream in life of becoming a doctor. And yet she was just as easy to manipulate as every other girl who I talked to.

I’d gotten such a thrill from that! Especially because she’d been a virgin, and she’d given it up so easily. And the weird thing was, I didn’t have to reel her in with lies. Once she was turned on, she just let me do it. I never claimed to have feelings for her to lead her on, and because of that, I’d somehow been convinced that what I’d done had been okay.

Before Michelle and I reconciled, I’d apologized to her for all of that. And it was mostly true. After the fact, I’d felt guilty. I’d felt guilty because she expected things to change between us, and I knew they never could. After all, I was going to college to play baseball. Did she really think she was going to keep me as a boyfriend when I could be getting laid with new pussy every night of the week? Sometimes women were so incredibly stupid that I couldn’t handle it.

Thinking about all of this now made me sick. I couldn’t believe that I’d acted like that for so long and gotten away with it without getting severely burned. I deserved everything that had happened to me tonight at that bar. I wondered why it hadn’t happened before, and why I’d been able to go so long without anyone actually having the balls to call me out for it.

Being surrounded with people like Ryan had been part of the problem, but it was no excuse. I couldn’t believe that I’d always been such a player and an asshole. If that sorority girl was so upset because a guy she’d just met didn’t call her after sex, how much had I damaged people who actually had feelings for me?

I thought of Michelle’s face when I’d first seen her again after six years. She’d looked pained and haunted, like she’d just seen a loved one die from cancer. It had been horrible. If I’d ever had any respect for her at all, I should have stayed away. I shouldn’t have viewed her as a challenge to be won, as someone to conquer again and again and again. It’s true that I’d developed feelings for Michelle over our childhood and into our teen years, but that still hadn’t stopped me from ruining her life.

And now I’d been acting like an insane moron because I still believed that I was good enough to win her back after breaking her heart for the second time. It was incredible. It struck me that if I really loved her, if I really respected her, I’d do as Archie said and let her go. Michelle wasn’t the kind of person who wanted someone to chase her. As little as I knew about her psyche, I could understand that from a mile away. As much as I loved her and wanted to keep chasing her, I had to respect and understand her boundaries. It was just like my mom said—I really didn’t know how to respect women. I thought that by chasing her, I’d be showing my love. But in reality, I’d just been freaking her out and scaring her and making her feel more anxiety and terror
. If she wants me, she’ll come back to me,
I realized.
And I can’t keep chasing her if she doesn’t want me.

I got out of the driver’s seat and crawled into the back, curling into a ball. It wasn’t cold outside anymore, but I felt frigid and miserable. And heartbroken, if I really admitted it to myself. It was like someone had finally turned on the lights inside my head and shown me what was really happening. I kept playing my mom’s words to me over and over. She’d been so right about everything. I knew that if I wanted to change, I had to treat people differently. I was so used to seeing women as objects. Every time I walked in a room, I felt like the women were only there for my viewing pleasure. It didn’t matter who they were; after all, I’d fucked Anya, the wife of my best friend in the art world. Women had been there to satisfy me, and that’s how I’d treated them.

In retrospect, it was incredibly depressing that so many women seemed to enjoy being treated like that. I hated how easy it was. You smile at a girl, buy her a drink, compliment her, ask her a couple of things about herself, and then she’d be so grateful that she’d fuck me. It was too easy, and it was no wonder I’d gotten so bored with it. Most of the women that I’d been with meant nothing to me, and I didn’t care about hurting them. But Michelle was different. She’d been everything to me, and I hated myself for hurting her the way I had. It made me want to die, or crawl in a hole and never speak to anyone again. I’d manipulated her and abused her trust the way I had with every other woman, and just because she’d fallen for it didn’t mean that she deserved it.

I resolved never to contact her or speak to her again. I wanted her to get over me and have a normal, happy life. I couldn’t stand to see her broken and sad any longer, and I knew that she’d only be able to be happy once I was completely gone. That meant moving out of Archie’s house as soon as possible, and trying to focus on my art and do my own thing. I vowed to never casually sleep with anyone else ever again, not unless I warned them ahead of time that it wouldn’t lead to anything. It was going to be a completely different life for me, but I looked forward to the resolution and change that it would bring.

I spent the whole night in the backseat of the car, determined to work through everything I could. By morning I was exhausted and my body ached from the cramped position of the car. I decided to go home, shower, try to sleep for a couple of hours, then pack and move out. I could start looking at apartments later in the afternoon, or I could think about moving anywhere. The idea was exciting; it wasn’t anything I’d ever considered before. I’d always thought that my identity was tied to my social life, and I’d built a name for myself around here in the art world. But I didn’t have to stay, and I thought that it would probably be better for Michelle if she could come home for holidays and not have to see me. I promised inwardly that I’d never come home when there was a chance she could be here, and that I could probably get Mom to keep me informed all the time.