“There’s no fucking problem with the way I fuck.”
“Yeah, just the way you treat your woman,” Tacos grumbled.
“She’s not my woman,” I pointed out.
“Have you fucked her more than three times in the past two days?” Hunter asked.
“Yes.”
“Is she sleeping in your bed?” Cap asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”
“Have you guys laid in bed and talked?” Chance joined in.
“Why the fuck does that matter?”
Cap hissed in a breath and chuckled. “He doesn’t know.”
“Know what?”
Hunter chuckled, crossing his arms as he shook his head. He was fucking laughing at me and I didn’t know why. “Dude, how can you call yourself a man? There are rules that we all follow and you don’t fucking know about them.”
“What rules? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Hunter turned to the door and shouted to a passing Rocco. “Hey, Rocco, Thunders doesn’t know about the rules.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Rocco walked into the room and looked me up and down. “How can you call yourself a man?”
“How about one of you tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”
“There are rules,” Rocco reiterated.
“Yeah, I got that much. But what the fuck are they and what do they have to do with me?”
“Look, it’s a relationship manual of sorts. I actually started writing down shit for women, but now it looks like you’ll need one too.”
“What’s in it?”
“Everything you would ever need to know about the guidelines of a relationship. It’s the fucking holy grail to lead you through the darkness of relationship hell.”
“And you all use this?” I asked the lot of them.
They all nodded.
“We all have our own versions, tweaked to suit our needs, but yeah,” Chance nodded, “we all fucking use it. And it’s imperative that you use it too.”
“And what if I don’t?”
Rocco gripped me by the shirt collar and pulled me in close. “Then you fuck up the system for the rest of us. If you don’t follow the rules, pretty soon women are thinking that they have rights they don’t have yet. They’re taking long showers and putting tampons under the sink. Then they’re answering your phone and taking down messages. That shit doesn’t happen until you’re married, and even then it’s not really wanted or acceptable.”
“I don’t understand. What rule did I break?”
“You fucking snuggled in bed and talked,” Chance said.
“How the fuck do you know I snuggled her?”
“Because, when you lay in bed and talk, they always find a way to snuggle. Don’t fucking lie about it,” Chance shot back at me.
“Fine, let’s say we laid in bed and talked. I’m not admitting to anything more,” I threw in for good measure, “what does that have to do with where we are in our relationship?”
“You really don’t understand women, do you?” Cap asked.
“Fucking idiot,” Hunter grumbled. “You’re setting a bad example for the rest of us.”
“You’re already married,” I pointed out.
“Still,” Hunter grumbled, “that shit gets back to our wives and sets an even higher standard for the rest of our lives.”
“How?” I asked exasperatedly. None of this was making any sense to me. How could I have possibly thrown their lives out of whack when they already had women and had already gone through this whole process?
Cap stood, looking to the other men. “May I?”
“Go right ahead,” Hunter said, gesturing for him to take the floor. Cap came around his desk and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “I’m going to let you in on one of the secrets of marriage. Once you take the plunge and decide that you’re going to tie yourself to this woman for all eternity, there are some things that change irrevocably.”
He looked tired as he stood in front of me. He ran his hand over his face and sighed heavily. I was beginning to think that I had just fucked up his whole world.
“When you get married, at first, everything is wonderful. You have the woman you love and it’s the best feeling in the world to know you have a grip on her and you’ll never let her go.”
Chance snorted. “And then it all fucking changes.”
I looked back to Cap in wonderment. I felt like I was about to get a crash course on my future.
“See, at first, it’s about the dishes being left out or the towel you threw on the floor. And you obligingly follow her rules because you love her and you now live with another person. Makes sense, right?” I nodded because it sounded right. “Wrong. That’s just the beginning of the end. Don’t get me wrong, marriage can be a wonderful thing, but the day you say I do, your life is never the same. Suddenly, you’re being told what to do left and right, and what you want to do never matters. It’s like we didn’t exist before they graced us with their presence,” he said sarcastically.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you know that if you don’t fold the laundry as soon as it comes out of the dryer, those wrinkles will never come out?” Hunter asked. “That shirt is fucking ruined and throwing it back in the dryer isn’t an option.”
“Why isn’t it an option?” I asked in confusion.
“Because she’d rather be pissed about the wrinkled laundry than see the obvious solution.” Hunter shook his head in frustration. “The expectations just keep getting higher and higher. Shit that you got away with as a single man no longer applies.”
“Yeah,” Chance nodded, “I was driving with my wife to a friend’s cabin. She had the directions in her hand, but I already knew the general direction we were headed. So, we pull up to this stop sign and she tells me that I have to go left, which would take us south. But we were supposed to head north. She bitched at me for five fucking minutes because I headed north, in the direction of the fucking cabin.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “The road was a dead end and the sign was missing. I ended up turning around and following the directions. But that’s besides the fucking point. Women always have to be right. They always have to pick at you until you feel like yanking your own eyeballs of your sockets and grinding them up into little pieces.”
“I can see why you got divorced,” I said, responding to his sarcasm.
“Just you wait. It’ll happen to you too.”
“This is all great, but again, how does me talking with Jessica in bed have anything to do with your lives?”
“Because women like to point out our flaws. And as soon as our wives talk to Jessica, they’ll be wondering why we don’t snuggle in bed. And pretty soon, that Saturday morning of lounging in bed is now her snuggling up to you and wanting to talk about her feelings or how you can improve your relationship.” Cap shook his head in disgust. “If there are any more improvements in our relationship, I’m going to be a woman.”
“Fine,” I said, throwing up my hands in defeat. “I won’t fucking talk to her in bed anymore. Sheesh, I didn’t realize this was such a big deal.”
“It’s too late,” Hunter chuckled. “You’re already fucked. You already broke the rules and you can’t hold onto her if you try and renege on the boundaries you’ve already set.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Tacos said. “He let her get hauled off to an insane asylum this morning.”
“And you didn’t try to stop it?” Chance asked in surprise.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to!”
“Dude, you fucked her multiple times and you snuggled her in bed,” Hunter shook his head. “Of course you have to save her. You’re such a fucking prick.”
“Why is he a prick?” Sinner asked as he walked into the office. “What’s going on here? Are we having a party?”
“We’re debating the sanity of our good friend, Thunders.
” Tacos glared at me again. “He inadvertently got himself into a relationship with Jessica and then he threw her to the wolves.”
“I didn’t know about the rules!”
“How did you not know about the rules?” Sinner asked.
“Christ, is there anyone else that wants to throw in an opinion on my life?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Cap said as he picked up his phone.
“Everyone report to my office,” Cap said over the PA system.
“You know, I didn’t come here to have you spew shit in my face. This is why I didn’t want to join this fucking place in the first place. All of you are pushing me to be in this…relationship with a woman that I never planned on getting attached to. Now, because I fucking talked to her-”
“And snuggled,” Chance interrupted.
“Now, I have to be responsible for her? She practically committed herself!”
Rocco walked forward and punched me. I was so caught off guard that I didn’t steady myself and ended up on the floor.
“Since the day you came here, it’s all been about you. You don’t want to join because you don’t want to have to face the shit of your past. Guess what? We’ve all got a past. We’ve all got shit that we don’t want to deal with. But you’re a fucking coward. Your woman needs you and because you’re too fucking afraid, you’re letting her get hauled off. She’s probably fucking terrified right now.” He shook his head in disgust. “If you really don’t want her, if she’s just a good fuck, then let us know and we’ll take care of her. God knows she needs someone on her side right now.”
They all filed out of the room, leaving me laying on the floor. I dropped my head down with a thunk and stared at the ceiling. He was so fucking right. I was a coward. I was fucking hiding from my life because I didn’t want to lose anyone. But I was losing everyone, even my teammates, because I was such a fucking idiot. But it didn’t have to be this way. I could start living again and accept the friendship of these guys for what it was. And as for Jessica, hell, I didn’t know if it was love. I knew I liked her and I loved spending time with her. What I hadn’t told the guys was that when I laid in bed and snuggled her, I was more at peace than I had been in years.
Getting up off my ass, I decided right then that I would be the man that Jessica deserved. Wherever this went with us, I wouldn’t leave her to rot in that clinic all alone and scared. I would get her out and when I did, I would actually fucking date her and see where the fuck this could go. Hell, I would open up to her about my past like she asked, because she deserved that much from me. And if I was being honest with myself, I deserved it too. It was time to start living again.
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