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Chapter Twenty-Six - ChadCold beer and red hot chili, the last real salve for lost souls. What better way to heal a broken heart than burning it out? At that point, I wouldn’t have minded the oblivion. Things had gotten to the point that a busty, sexy skeleton couldn’t even make me lift my head anymore. Time was, not only would I have looked down her top without shame, chances were I would have had her in my bed by the end of the night. I had been so thoroughly demolished, however, that I couldn’t even muster an impure thought — much to the relief of my Sunday school teacher, no doubt.
All my thoughts and lust, as well as my heart and cock, were dedicated to Nina and her alone. Even if I was no longer sure if I loved her. Or, more accurately, I wasn’t sure what good it did anymore when I wasn’t sure I could trust her not to go running back to her family at the first sign of trouble. The fact that she was still young and lacked the perspective of someone on the saner side of 30 played a role in my assessment.
“What’s the good word?” John asked, sitting at the table.
“You’re not trying to bring me back to the church, are you? Because honestly, I’d consider it.”
“Shit, that bad, hey?” John asked.
“Hard to say.”
The lid hissed off of the cap of the thirteenth bottle of Guinness that night. My lucky number combined with the luck of the Irish. I was getting really desperate. It was only a short jump to nailing horseshoes over every door and carrying around a disembodied rabbit’s foot, which honestly seemed gross even to me. I’d always eaten meat and had no real problem with animals being killed for my benefit but keeping souvenirs seemed a bit serial killer-like.
“You really need to stop pretending,” John said, cutting right through my pretense like none else I’d ever known.
“Pretending what?” I asked, still playing dumb.
“That you don’t love Nina with all your heart. In addition to being bullshit, it is already getting old, and you are hurting yourself way more than her. You want revenge. I get that. It reminds you of your mom, and I must admit, I can see the similarities, but I got news for ya, good buddy. Nina ain’t your momma.”
“She already left me once. Her asshole oil baron of a dad came bashing on my door, generally being a jerk, and made it clear he would shoot me if I tried to stop him from taking Nina away. As it turned out, he didn’t need to bother, because Nina went with him willingly. She probably wants to be back in their palace, taking horsey rides and going to balls and all that shit. She already left me once to go back to her cake-eater life and I can’t trust her not to do it again.”
“Odd, I didn’t know you had telepathy. Okay, I’m thinking of a number between one and a hundred,” John snarked in his own, very special way.
“Fuck you?” I guessed.
“Close, but no. You want to fuck her, and it is clearly driving you nuts. Thing is, the only way for that to happen, or for you to ever be happy again, is for you to get the fuck over yourself and give love a chance. She did come back after all. She’s not in San Antonio. She’s with you.”
“The fuck she is.”
“I meant in terms of proximity, dumbass. She is with you, not her dad. In El Paso, not San Antonio, and she’s helping you make a success of your business. Word is going around that you’re seriously getting into the black. There’s one only thing that’s changed that I can see.”
“That’s true,” I conceded, “and she did ditch her family for me.”
“What?”
“I don’t quite remember it all. I was pretty pissed at the time. Nina was talking really fast, but I seem to remember her saying about her basically being disowned. No inheritance, no trust fund, no money at all. She actually seems really happy to keep on working at the shop.”
“You do realize how that sounds, right?” John asked, arching his eyebrow in a way that always made me want to slug him, but mostly because he was usually right.
“I’m starting to,” I said.
“Good, because you’re being a complete asshole. A girl who is perfect for you and who is helping you make money has sacrificed everything to be with you, and you are in a bar trying to drink yourself to death. I hardly need to point out the significance of that.”
“No, you don’t, but you probably will anyway,” I said, heaving a mournful sign in memory of my dignity.
“Ditch her at this point, and you’re the worst kind of scum, particularly when it is so laughably clear that you still love her,” John said, giving me a chummy pat on the back.
