“Hey! Dav.”
The sound of my name in some random quickie mart had me turning to face the man lumbering up the aisle in my direction. My annoyance spiked at the interruption to my thoughts but also at the sight of Darnell sauntering up to me like we were friends.
Eduardo had a lot of guys working for him. We each had our uses. Some of us had zero use, except a big mouth. He kept those, too. That was the case with Darnell. No one liked the guy. He was a snitch and only protected because he was good enough at it that Eduardo considered him useful. That was the only reason no one had taken him it yet.
“What do you want, Darnell?” I demanded, in no mood to be dealing with this idiot.
He bobbed a bony shoulder under the filthy fabric of his muscle top. The once white material bore signs of grease and dirt. It hung on his skeletal frame, making his arms appear even thinner dangling at his sides. He hiked up the soiled state of his jeans by the frayed belt and grinned at me with teeth practically rotting out of his mouth thanks to years of crack abuse. He was a pale, sickly looking fucker with acne scars and something orange always staining the corners of his mouth. Being near him always made me want to take a shower.
“I thought that was you,” he prattled on. “I was in the next aisle and I thought I heard you talking.” His watery blue eyes danced around me. “No Nero?”
I didn’t have time for this.
“Did you need something?”
He bobbed that shoulder again. “Just seeing what you were up to.”
“Same thing you are. See you around, Darnell.”
I turned and started in the opposite direction, hoping he wouldn’t follow. He didn’t. I dumped my basket on a nearby shelf and left the store, abandoning the idea of peace and quiet for the sweltering streets. Bodies moved around me, sticky and flushed with perspiration. Women wearing next to nothing flounced by. I felt their eyes moving over me, but I was too focused to notice. I found myself at the park on a shady bench overlooking a pond with no memory of ever being at the park as an adult. What did people even do there? The place was packed with kids feeding ducks and teenagers throwing a football around. A few adults sat under patches of shade with ice creams and books. Several were on bikes or jogging, two things that made no sense in that heat. I spotted a couple crossing the winding pathway and wondered if Mia ever went to the park. I wasn’t about to ask her to take a moonlit stroll around the pond, but she seemed like the kind who would like that sort of thing.
In my pocket, my phone chirped. I freed the device, expecting Nero. It was a text from Mia.
“I want to try this next time we’re together,” the message said under a loading gif.
Curiosity had me poking at the screen to make it play faster. But the moment it did, I snapped my phone off before anyone caught sight of the pornographic image I was watching in a park surrounded by kids.
I bolted off the bench, my boner a painful bump cutting into my zipper and hurried to where I’d left my car. I didn’t check the message again until I was slouched behind the wheel and not at risk of getting hauled off as some pervert.
The up close scene of two cocks pounding into a woman’s vagina and ass left no room for misunderstandings. Her request was unmistakable. The animation looped on repeat, a perfectly timed display.
Two more appeared underneath. Same concept, but in different angles. In all three, the woman was in the middle while her two male partners pounded her tight holes. The thought of doing that with Mia made my cock throb. It was a fantasy I could definitely get behind … or in front. It made no difference to me which position I had. Which hole.
“Fuck baby,” I wrote back. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
I got a grinning kissy face emoji as a response followed by, “It’s quiet. I got bored. I’m researching.”
I groaned under my breath. “Researching?”
Another gif appeared as if in response. This one had a woman on her back, legs open to one man’s cock while the other guy was at her head getting sucked.
“This looks fun, too,” she commented.
“Jesus Christ,” I moaned to myself.
“Is Nero with you? Is he busy?”
“No, he’s at home. Why?” It wasn’t until I’d hit send when I realized she’d added us to a group chat. She was probably hoping he would be answering, too. “He’s sleeping,” I lied, feeling the inexplicable urge to save her from the knowledge that Nero had planned to kill her, had come much too close. She didn’t need to know about that. “You wore him out.”
“Lol. Not my fault you guys are so hot.”
“You’re pretty damn hot yourself,” I wrote back with a lack of enthusiasm I normally wouldn’t have felt when talking about sex, or the prospect of sex.
Mentions of Nero had dampened the excitement I’d been feeling. Even the gifs weren’t enough to resurface the thrill. I closed my screen and dumped the phone into the cup holder.
I knew I had to talk to him eventually. Never mind that we lived together, he was my best friend, had been since we were in diapers. That kind of bond meant something. As pissed off as I was, and God knew how fucking pissed I was, he was my brother in all the ways that mattered. I couldn’t let this break us up.
Accepting what needed to be done, I pulled away from the curb and drove back to Mia’s diner. I parked out front and made my way inside for a cup of coffee and my own stool for the next seven hours.
The wait wasn’t nearly as unbearable as I’d imagined. I got to watch Mia in her element, watch her make people laugh and leave with a smile on their faces. She was quick, too. The kind of waitress every diner needed. I found I really enjoyed studying her every motion. I liked the swing of her hips, the sway of her hair, the way she laughed even though the joke was dumb as fuck. I liked that she shot me a grin every time she passed my stool. More than all that, I liked watching guys hit on her and her shut them down.
“Are you sure you want to stay?” she asked after the twentieth time.
“If I wanted to leave, I would,” I said, sipping at my third cup of coffee; at that rate, I would be up for the next twenty hours, but she made a mean brew. I probably could have lived off the stuff.
“Well, can you at least order something then?” she tapped her pencil on her pad. “You’ve been drinking coffee since you got here. It’s not good for you.” The bell behind her jingled under the large palm that slammed down on it. She turned away and gathered up the steaming plates. “How about a plate of fries?” she offered, already skirting around the counter in the direction of the food’s owners.
Fries did sound nice, but I didn’t want her waiting on me, as ridiculous as that sounded; waiting on people was literally her entire job, but if I wanted food, I would make my own, which was complicated when I wasn’t able.
She delivered the three plates of fully loaded burgers to the three jocks squished into a booth in the corner. One of them — the one who had been doing most of the talking, a pimply-faced blond with moron written all over him — said something to her that she laughed off with a wave of her hand. He seemed to persist before passing her a folded napkin. I didn’t need to see it to know he’d given her his number.
Mia peered down at it, then at him. Her smile never faltered, not even when she set the napkin back down and shook her head. Then, to my utter astonishment, she pointed to me and gave him a little shrug.