L. A. Witt - Rules 1 - Rules of Engagement (31 page)

“T
HAT
was incredible,” Renee slurred.

I collapsed beside her on the bed, struggling to catch my breath. “Yeah, it was.” I closed my eyes, hoping she didn’t notice the shudder that rippled through me. Something cold tightened in my gut.
What the hell just happened?
I wasn’t lying to her—it
was
hot—but all the while, my mind had been in another time and place. With another person. Everything Renee did was right, but everything I felt was wrong.

She moved onto her side and laid against me. “You’re welcome to stay the night.” She let her nails drift along the grooves between my muscles, sending a shiver up my spine.

Fuck. No. No way. I can’t do this again.
I swallowed hard. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” She still sounded flirty and good-natured, not hurt or offended.
Because I never should have been here to begin with
. I turned and kissed her. “Four o’clock comes early.”

She wrinkled her nose, her fingers still trailing up and down my chest. “You have to be up at four?”

Nodding, I gently closed my hand over hers. It wasn’t meant to be an affectionate gesture. The way she touched me reminded me of the way Brandon often had, and I couldn’t handle any more of it.

“No rest for the wicked,” I said with a half-hearted laugh. “I should let you go, then,” she said.

“I hate to run out on you,” I said with a smile that I hoped looked sincere. “That’s what I get for going out on a work night.”

She smiled and kissed me. “I still had a great time.”
“As did I.”

We dressed and headed for the door. I keyed her number into my cell phone, made an empty promise to call her, and kissed her good night. Walking back to the club, alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling.

Renee was hot. Her body was incredible, and just the memory of her kiss made me shiver. Yet it had been the thought of Brandon—not Renee’s touch, not the way her body responded to mine, not even the sight of her on the verge of an orgasm—that ultimately made me come. Even with everything she’d done to me, it had been that single second, that fleeting image of Brandon’s lips parted in a breathless cry and his eyes screwed shut as his head fell back against the pool table, that put me over the edge.

Who the hell was I with tonight? Renee, or the ghost of Brandon?

I sighed, looking down at the pavement as I walked. Never in my life had I been more confused about myself. Obviously I was still attracted to women, but being with a woman now was… different.

In the Marines, I spent a few months overseas and had to learn to drive on the left side of the road. It took a little adjustment, but I adapted quickly. Coming back to the States and changing back to driving on the right, though, proved to be a hell of a lot harder. It was something I’d been so accustomed to before going overseas, yet it was suddenly alien to me. I expected driving on the left to be a switch, but I thought driving on the right would be as easy as it ever was. It was unfamiliar for it to
be
unfamiliar.

That was exactly how it felt to be in bed with a woman after being with a man: familiar, but foreign. The same, but different. And now I couldn’t, for the life of me, decide if I was meant to drive on the left or the right.

T
HE
next morning, I caught up with Kate as she came out of one of her group classes. Before I could even speak, she said, “Oh my God, if that’s not the look of someone who needs to talk.”

Nodding, I said, “Got any plans for lunch?”

 

“I do now.” She eyed me for a second. “Are you okay, Dustin? You look like hell.”

 

No, I’m not.
“Just haven’t had a lot of sleep.”

 

“Which I would usually chalk up to your significant other, but—” Her eyebrows jumped. “Oh.”

 

I sighed, avoiding her eyes.

“Forget lunch. I have twenty minutes before my next class. Let’s go chat.”
“I can’t, I’ve got a client coming in.”

She chewed her lip. “You sure you can work today?” I shrugged. “I’m awake and breathing, so there’s hope. Meet me at the diner across the street at eleven.”

 

“I’ll be there.”

 

B
Y THE
time I got to the diner, Kate already had a cup of coffee waiting for me.

 

“Alright, spill it,” she said. “What’s going on?”

I rubbed my eyes, then picked up the coffee. “Brandon and I split up. About a week ago.”
“I figured as much. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Running my fingers up and down the handle on my coffee cup, I shrugged and said, “Because telling you meant accepting it.” “Understandable.” She paused. “So what happened?”

Shaking my head and drumming my fingers on the side of the coffee cup, I said, “Fuck, I’m not even sure. I….” Exhaling heavily, I stared at the retina-searing red Formica table. “Everything went to shit right after my family found out.”

“I can imagine, but I didn’t think you guys would split over it.”

“I know,” I said. “The thing is, I had a long talk with my brother. The more I talked to him, the more I started thinking back to what we talked about in the beginning. You know, that this was just a way of getting as far from my ex as possible.”

Her shoulder slumped a little. “Dustin, you know it wasn’t….”

I nodded. “I know. But I started having some doubts, I started worrying about it, Brandon got upset about it, and then….” I chewed my thumbnail, avoiding her eyes.
“And then what?”

“And then someone called, they were giving me shit about the whole thing, and I told them the relationship was nothing. No big deal.” I rubbed my eyes again. “And Brandon heard me.”

“Didn’t he understand that you were just having a hard time breaking it to your family?”

“Yeah, he understood. But he didn’t understand why I was still pretending he didn’t exist when my family already knew about him. The cat was out of the bag. Why deny it?”

She shrugged. “He’s got a point.”
“I know.”
“So, have you tried talking to him?”

“Yeah. Didn’t go over well.” I gestured dismissively. “Look, he’s gone, it’s over. That’s not what I came to talk about.”

 

She looked at me over her coffee cup. “Okay. So….”

Resting my elbows on the table, I lowered my voice. “I went out with a woman last night.” Steepling my fingers, I added, “Well, went
home
with a woman last night.”

She put her hands in her lap and leaned forward. “And? How did that go?”

“Well, she didn’t complain,” I said with a humorless laugh. “But I just didn’t….” Chewing my lip, I trailed off. After a moment, I managed, “It didn’t feel right. At all.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “You’re worried that this time, you really
are
batting for a different team to get as far away from someone else as possible?”

“Basically.”

 

She sipped her coffee, then nodded. “Have you considered that you might actually be gay?”

 

“Sure. And I don’t have a fucking clue. All I know is that after last night, I feel even worse about….” I shrugged. “Everything.”

“Maybe,” she said, “it’s too soon. I mean, you just split up with Brandon. And correct me if I’m wrong, but you were feeling pretty strongly for him.”

I nodded, rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger again as I let out a sigh. “You could say that.”

 

“Maybe you just need some time alone.”

“You might be right,” I said. “I just, hell, after I went home with her last night, all I could think about was Brandon. And now I’m even more confused than before about what I am.”

“I know,” she said. “But it took you this long to even give a guy a second look. Don’t expect everything to fall into place overnight. And don’t go looking to a one-night stand to make you feel better. They’ll just make you feel worse.”

“I don’t. But it would be nice to at least have some clue. And really, last night, it wasn’t the fact that it was a one-night stand that bothered me. I’ve had a few before, some fairly soon after Stephanie and I split.” I looked into my coffee cup, pursing my lips for a moment before I finally met Kate’s eyes again. “It was like….”

She sipped her coffee. “Like what?”

 

Taking a breath, I said, “It was as unfamiliar and weird as I always thought being with a man would be.”

 

“Was being with Brandon ever that weird and unfamiliar?” I shook my head. “Not once. A few times I thought it should have been, but it never was. It just always felt…
right
.”

“Then I think you just answered your own question.” “So I’m gay?”

She nodded. “I think it’s a pretty safe bet. But whatever you are, I would seriously take it easy for a while. You’re still not totally over your ex, and now you have this bullshit with Brandon on top of it.”

“You’re probably right.”

 

“Of course I’m right.” She glanced at her watch. “And my lunch break is almost over, so I should go.”

“Yeah, me too. Thanks, Kate.”
“No problem. Now give me a hug.”

We both stood, but I hesitated. “I don’t know, you might catch the gay from me.”

 

She shrugged and held her arms out. “Oh good, maybe I’ll have better luck with women than men.”

I laughed and hugged her. We both held on a moment longer than we usually did. “Thanks, Kate,” I whispered. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Teach aerobics and make an ass out of yourself,” she said as she released me. She giggled. “Really, it’s no problem. You know I’m always here.”

She hugged me again, and we left.

O
N
F
RIDAY
night, I completely ignored Kate’s sage advice. Though I probably would have been wise to spend some time on my own, there were a few things I needed to know about myself.

The club was on the other side of town, but it wasn’t much different than the one where I had met Brandon: mostly lit by neon. A lot of beer and not a lot of top-shelf. Pool tables, dartboards, and pulltab machines.

I sat between two empty barstools near the back, giving me a panoramic view of most of the club. Hunched over my beer bottle, I cast surreptitious glances around the room, trying to see if anyone caught my eye.
Once and for all, am I straight or not?

I checked everyone and everything out: Shoulders. Arms. The broad chest that stretched a Steelers T-shirt to the limits. Tattoos. Faces. The narrow waist and perfect ass in a pair of well-worn jeans. Packages. Smiles. The sculpted biceps that attracted my attention from a professional standpoint rather than a sexual one.

Nothing.

 

Not even a flutter of curiosity, least of all a twitch or an ache below my belt.

Of course, it didn’t help that I had no way of knowing if any of these guys were gay or straight. I didn’t know if I had the guts to approach a man I knew was gay, but I was fairly sure I didn’t have the balls to take a chance on one who
might
be straight.

A Mets fan in the corner met my eyes and didn’t look away. I knew that look. He was sizing me up in a way that only one other man had done, and I doubted he had a game of eight ball in mind. He sipped his beer, looking away for a second, then surreptitiously glancing back.

I looked into my beer, drumming my fingers on the bottle. The Mets fan wasn’t bad-looking, but he didn’t do anything for me. I sighed. Took a drink, tapped my fingers on the bottle again.

Maybe I was straight after all. Maybe Brandon had been a onetime thing. A fluke. Like a man who usually liked blondes and suddenly went for a brunette just to switch things up, but then went right back to blondes as if the brunette never happened. But that still didn’t explain how alien it had felt to have sex with a woman.

I rubbed my eyes, blowing out a frustrated breath. Straight, gay, or whatever, I was not finding what I needed here.

 

“Rough week?”

 

I turned my head in the direction of the question. The instant I looked at him, I discovered two things.

One, the bar stool next to me was no longer vacant.
Two, I was, without a doubt, sexually attracted to men.

His broad shoulders were set back, relaxed against the back of his barstool, his long fingers wrapped around a pint glass. A meticulously trimmed goatee framed a devilish grin, and a stunning pair of blue eyes—not as incredible as Brandon’s, but
shut up shut up forget about Brandon
—looked back at me. His eyebrows lifted as he waited for a response to his question.