JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security)

by Glenna Sinclair

  "That was amazing," he said, still panting. "You came, right?"

  "No," I said simply, looking down to discover my black shirt was unbuttoned almost to my navel. I did them up swiftly in a practiced motion, careful not to miss any.

  "Well, most girls don't," he reasoned. "I could tell you felt good, though."

  "No," I said again. The dumpster's odor was almost unbearable. I was eager to leave the alley and get back inside the bar. The urge to wash my hands drove me to step around the man, whose dick still hung out of his jeans.

  "Frigid bitch," he spat, throwing a wad of bills at me that I managed to catch reflexively. "At least hookers lie to make their clients feel good."

  "I'm not a hooker," I reasoned, pocketing the cash all the same.

  "Just a whore," he shot back.

  It wasn't worth my time to retort, so I didn't. I left him behind in the alley, fuming in the cold, still exposed, and returned to the bar through the service entrance, which I'd propped open with a cinder block.

  I just really wanted to wash my hands.

  Ignoring the irritable gazes of bar patrons ready for refills, I ducked into the women's bathroom and lathered up my hands, hoping I could rid my palms of the acrid smell of the iron fire escape. I glanced at myself in the mirror, but I didn't like making eye contact there. Just a quick check to make sure I hadn't gotten too disheveled in the alley. I swung my auburn hair down and pulled the rubber band out of it, piling it back on top of my head in a fresh messy bun.

  It would've been better if the sex had been better.

  That's what I told my churning gut, the squirming horror that he hadn't even been cute or nice. He hadn't made me feel anything at all. It had been a waste of time, another notch on the belt that meant nothing. I was afraid I was going to be sick, but there just wasn't any time to do so. There were people out in the bar waiting for me to fill up their glasses again, sorrows of their own they'd like to drown.

  Maybe there was someone out there who'd be better.

  I slipped behind the bar outside and refilled everyone’s glasses, whether they asked for it or not. I simply glanced at their faces and topped off those belonging to the angriest patrons.

  “What took you so long?” an older man snarled. He might’ve been a regular, but I wouldn’t know. I made it my personal mission not to get to know these people, or anyone.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” I told him. “I’m here now.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried,” he said, using the condensation on his glass to make a series of wet rings on the bar counter that I’d have to wipe up later. “It’s coming out of your tip, Meagan.”

  Being called by my name gave me a small jolt, and I wondered if we’d interacted before—beyond me refilling his glass over and over again. Had I taken him into the alley? Maybe the storeroom? The restroom, perhaps? Or had he been one of the lucky multitudes I’d accompanied out of here, at the end of the night, to his home? I didn’t recognize his face, but that wasn’t significant. I often wondered, passing people on the sidewalks between the bar and the house, how many I’d been with. How many recognized me without me remembering them?

  It should’ve been disconcerting, but it wasn’t, somehow. That was how accustomed I’d become to sharing myself with people. Giving myself to people. I wasn’t sure who’d had the pleasure and who hadn’t. And I certainly wasn’t sure of myself.

  I looked down and had to smile even as I sighed with no small amount of relief. I was wearing my name on my chest, a name tag I donned every day because the owner of this bar thought it would make me more approachable. That’s how he knew my name. Not because we’d been together and I’d forgotten about it.

  The irritable old man seemed settled in, his winter wear draped over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up. I didn’t want to deal with an ornery customer for the remainder of my shift, which stretched into the wee hours of the morning. I also wanted a big tip, but that was only so I could pay the bills, come away from the bar with a little bit more than what I walked in with. Save some money. Get out of here. I wanted him to like me—if not for my dubious service, then for the way I looked, the way I treated him.

  “Look, let me make it up to you,” I said, drawing an abstract design in the rings of condensation on the bar surface.

  “A free drink isn’t going to make me tip you any better.” He swilled his drink as if it were the most important thing in the world.

  “I wasn’t offering a free drink.”

  He stopped, then, as something even more desirable than booze dangled in front of him.

  “What are you offering, then?”

  Got him. The realization that it was actually going to happen was almost as good as the release. My lips parted, tongue darting out to wet them, hyperaware that I commanded a good deal of attention right this moment.

  “Come with me.”

  I walked out from behind the bar without a glance, knowing that I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to see that he was following me.

  Pushing open the door to the women’s restroom, I smiled, hearing it being held open for another person to enter.

  “Is this what you want?” I asked him, turning and already knowing the answer to that question. “Lock the door. Let’s be friends.”

  I’d learned over the last year not to make snap judgments about age or appearance. What was important was the endgame. Appearances meant nothing without that sweet finish, the itch I hadn’t quite scratched earlier out in the alleyway. Here, in the bathroom, it didn’t have to be pretty or life-altering. It just had to make me feel something, anything, for just a handful of seconds.

  “Like this,” I said, guiding him against the sink, his front to my back. My black pants and panties came down easily enough, the slickness from the previous guy nothing but a crusty memory. He entered me in one moment, taking me by surprise, all my air leaving my lungs in a whoosh. Our skin smacked together, a sharp clap.

  The restroom was perhaps preferable to the alley. I couldn’t control the smell or cleanliness of the alley, but I did keep the restroom as clean as the old building and cheap supplies allowed. And the sink came in handy for leverage. The old man had already struck up a rhythm I could more than live with. The only bad thing was the damn mirror. I didn’t want to look him in the face, and I certainly didn’t want to stare into my own eyes. I ducked my face down and pushed my forehead against the cool glass, watching the floor instead, taking note of how some of the tiles didn’t quite align with the wall, as if the person who had laid them all those years ago hadn’t cared enough to do a good job of it.

  But then—oh, magical then—was the build I craved, the promise of everything being worth it.

  “There,” I gasped. “Please. Right there.”

  The old man grunted in response and quickened his pace. I arched my back and stood on the tips of my toes, anything to continue that wicked friction until I lost myself for the briefest of blissful nothings. If I could bottle that utter nothing, it’d be a drink I’d never surface from. It was a blackness that sleep couldn’t even duplicate.

  I emerged from the other side of orgasm reluctantly, only vaguely aware of a warmth on my rear that told me the old man had found his climax, too.

  “Go,” I murmured at him. “You go first, and I’ll come out in a bit.”

  He only shrugged in response, yanking his pants up and shouldering the door open, his chest still heaving. I locked the door after him, wondering if he’d tell all the other patrons just how easy I was or if he’d keep the tryst as his own little secret.

  I didn’t care, either way.

  I cleaned myself up as best I could with clumpy wet toilet paper and hand soap, sadder with each passing moment. It was always like this after I came. It never failed, no matter how good I felt in the moment. I always had to come back down to earth, painfully self-aware.

  That man had probably been old enough to be a grandfather—my grandfather’s age, if he’d still been alive.

&nb
sp; I didn’t judge on age or appearance, but that didn’t stop that nasty little voice inside of me from judging me for my proclivities. It didn’t stop me from having sex, but I did experience wretched, wrenching guilt and disgust afterward.

  At least I’d come. There was that. At least it hadn’t been another wasted affair, like the debacle in the alley earlier.

  At least I’d come.

  And yet it never really helped, in the end. That was a fact I had to admit to myself, glancing at my disheveled hair in the mirror, pulling it back out of my face again. The orgasm only helped for a moment, and then my inexplicable ache returned.

  I needed sex. I needed it. I felt as if my life were just lots of waiting until the next sexual act, and the waiting was miserable. I was preoccupied with examining each and every customer who bellied up to that bar and wondering if I could cajole them into having sex with me.

  It didn’t matter what I wore, if I painted my face with makeup. I’d found that men were eager to stick it in anything willing, and that made my desires even easier to feed. Some men were often suspicious about the fact that I was all too willing to have sex with them, demanding to know my age, whether I was a prostitute, how much I charged, and, most frequently, if I were a cop trying to catch predators.

  I never had any qualms about accepting cash, but it was that nothing I was after. The gaping maw of whatever howled inside of me silenced for just a few precious seconds by that release.

  I’d heard heroin could get me to that same place, but it was an expensive habit to pick up.

  I felt the familiar gnaw of anxiety coupled with the surge of shame. Why had I done that? What was wrong with me? Couldn’t I make it through the shift without boning everyone with a tab open?

  The truer thought was I wouldn’t have been able to stomach a shift without sex.

  Patrons were thirsty, and I had to get back out there, trying to ignore my own thirst, building already, my body looking for its next climax.

  I encouraged customers to keep drinking past the official cutoff time. I’d do anything to stay there at the bar for as long as possible, to keep pouring drink after drink, immersing myself in other people’s lives, just to stay away from my own. I wish I didn’t have to sleep or be alone, that those two things could be magically removed from my understanding of existence. I was just fine as long as I had something to do, people to learn about and be around.

  The tips were better the longer I pushed for the customers to drink, but they eventually all drifted out, having to pass out for a couple of hours before they woke up to start their days anew, stumbling over the crumbling sidewalk just outside the door. I did whatever I could to make them stay, to distract myself, volunteering to help them get home, call them a cab, anything just stay with me.

  When the door jingled shut for the last time, the last broad back vanishing into the inky night, I never even bothered locking it, hoping that someone—anyone—would walk in, for whatever purpose.

  At that time of night, there were only a few more things I could do before I had to leave the bar. I took my time sweeping and mopping and wiping down every surface, whether it looked dingy or not. I counted the money and added it to the safe for the owner to collect at the end of the week. I turned off all the lights and locked the door.

  I’d tried, during the beginning of my tenure behind the chipped wooden bar, to spend the night on the premises instead of leaving, certain that being here would be better than trying to go home, but I was surprised in the morning by the owner, pushing at me with a broom, trying to sweep me out the door, and thinking I was a squatter or a patron who’d somehow escaped attention during the night before.

  “It’s me, Mr. Trenton,” I’d cried, shielding my light-sensitive eyes from the sharp ends of the straw on the broom.

  “Meagan?” He was dumbfounded, still clutching the broom across his chest as if it were a weapon and I was someone he needed protection against. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “I…I just fell asleep,” I said, pushing myself up from the little pallet I’d made myself of tablecloths we only brought out during the holidays and a package of napkins for a pillow.

  “Were you drunk on the job?” he demanded.

  “No.” I drank on the job often enough, sure, but I was never drunk. If I weren’t in control at all times, things could get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

  “Are you homeless?”

  It was a yes-or-no question that should’ve been easy to answer, but I found it difficult to define homeless. Was I homeless? Yes, in a way. I’d lost a sense of what home was supposed to mean ages ago. The home that was supposed to be mine just wasn’t anymore. The structure itself still stood, and everything inside of it continued to function as long as I paid all of the bills on time, but it wasn’t home.

  “I’m not homeless,” I’d sighed eventually, for the benefit of the man who could fire me if things got too weird—and they were well on their way there. “I really did just fall asleep. It won’t happen again.”

  That appeased Mr. Trenton, but it also cemented the fact that I had to leave the building once everyone had stumbled out and I’d completed the last tasks. There were a few lucky nights in which I made it to someone else’s home. The price I paid to do that was well worth it, in my opinion. If something I gave away to anyone so eagerly could win me a night away from the four walls of that old nightmarish house, I’d jump on it—literally.

  Tonight wasn’t one of those lucky nights.

  I spent an extra-long time polishing the surface of the wooden bar, even though no amount of cleaning solution could ever make it gleam again, and turned off each and every light, fingers lingering over the faceplates, dragging the heels of my sneakers, until I reached the front door.

  I tried to convince myself it was going to be fine. I wouldn’t spend very much time at that house. Just a quick sleep and I could be gone again. If I couldn’t sleep, which was often the case, I could go for a walk. I’d be alone, of course, but at least I wouldn’t be at the house.

  For not the first time in my life, I wished I lived in a big city. Big cities never slept. I could find someone who was awake and probably wouldn’t even have to give my body to ensure their company. I could lean against the counter of an all-night convenience store or bodega and chat with the person behind the register.

  Not even the Walmart in my tiny, rural town stayed open all night.

  Ever reluctant, I locked the door and yanked it shut behind me. After he’d found me asleep behind the bar, the owner hadn’t trusted me with my own set of keys, convinced I’d commit some nefarious act like spending the night again or something. It had been so innocent, but he had been so sure of my guilt.

  The bar was located in the old downtown part of town, but the idea of “downtown” was more like a pathetic joke. A few dilapidated brick storefronts populated the block, each end demarcated with a blinking red light that was really more of a formality than a necessity. The occasional car that approached the twin lights gave a cursory tap on the brakes before continuing on its journey. There wasn’t much of a reason for them except for maybe pride, some sad desire to slow a traveler from their own lives to make them gaze upon this dump.

  Most of the buildings stood vacant, lacking a tenant for years. The bar only existed because some people in the town decided they needed a distraction from all of the depression. They’d made a special ordinance in the city commission to allow the establishment to open. Maybe that was the reason for the red blinking lights demarcating the borders of downtown. Stop here. Stay a while. Have a drink. Remember better times.

  The home I headed toward—the house, rather—was a bit too far to walk to in the cold night, but walking gave me something to do. Counting my steps and concentrating on the vapor clouds that my breath formed in the clear air distracted me from my purpose. I had to go to that house, had to close my eyes for a bit and try to sleep. I hated going to that house. Hated what it represented, what had happened there.
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br />   Hated that I was still there.

  I couldn’t blame my brother. He was trying to save the money to get me to New York City, but I knew it was hard for him. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. He was probably busy at his job.

  A nastiness inside of me insisted that perhaps he was tired of his needy kid sister, but I ignored it. That voice was easy to ignore. I wasn’t needy. He had no idea what I really needed, what I did in the out-of-the-way corners of my job, this town.

  If he did, he’d probably try a lot harder to get me out of here.

  I turned a corner and my discomfort became a lot more acute. It would’ve been better, I’d often thought, if the house had been at the end of a long, winding dirt road. People expected terrible things to happen to people who lived in those remote places, away from the protection offered by houses clustered together in neighborhoods. There was safety in numbers, or so people claimed.

  The house I was dragging myself toward, my steps growing slower and slower, was in one of those neighborhoods, one of those white-picket-fence places where it was hard to imagine that things could go wrong. The bright lights illuminating each porch of the homes I passed belied the fact that things could go wrong wherever someone existed who wanted to do bad things. It didn’t have to be at the end of a road, behind darkened glass, out of reach of any possible help. It could happen right beyond those chintz curtains, right past the moths doing lazy loops around the fixture lighting the wintry wreath that someone had put out, even if it wasn’t yet Thanksgiving.

  I reached my destination and stood in the street, looking at it, steeling myself for going inside. I’d stay out all night, if I could, and I had before, but I’d likely freeze to death if I tried it tonight. It was too cold, and I needed to go inside, needed to charge my batteries in someplace safe.

  This house had never been safe. In spite of its present state of vacancy, I still didn’t feel at ease.

  It looked just the same as any of the houses on the same street, but it wasn’t the same. Things…bad things…had happened here. I’d seen them happen. I’d experienced them. Some of them had happened to me.