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Chapter Twenty-Six
A Happy Number Nineteen to Me.
The next night, friends didn’t feel like such a good idea anymore. Knowing I couldn’t just go to her whenever I needed, the anger built to boiling point in far less time than even I was expecting.
So, I was done playing the part. I needed an outlet. Preferably all of them.
Booze.
Smokes.
Some chick I wouldn’t even remember in the morning.
The first two were easy. The third one was not forthcoming. Oh, there were plenty of offers. I just couldn’t bring myself to take any of them up on it.
That left one choice.
Get myself punched.
I looked around Jimbo’s and tried to find a likely candidate. It wasn’t just chicks who waltzed in and out of his place from all over, there were plenty of guys looking to score shady shit from Jimbo or just pretend they weren’t drinking alone because they were in a house full of people they barely knew.
“I wouldn’t,” Rio warned.
“Wouldn’t what?” I asked, more pissed off at the thought that he knew where my head was at.
“Come on, man. The po-po are just waiting for any excuse to bust this place. You give them one and you’re just helping them.”
While the argument would often work on me, not this time. I was too fucking angry to care. I was fucking angry I did care. Care about Barlow and Mason and their fucking old happy couples act. She was his now. When she should have been mine.
Except she couldn’t be mine. She should be his.
And I just pissed myself off more at such fucking possessive thinking.
I didn’t want to be possessive of her. That was a shit way to think about a woman. She wasn’t fucking property, and it’s not what I felt when I said she was mine. What I really meant was I was hers.
She had my heart and every time I saw them together, she crushed it all over again. She didn’t even know she was doing it, but that didn’t stop it fucking killing me inside. It was probably for the best. She could kill off the remnants of these fucking shitty emotions in me and I’d be free from their torment.
In the meantime, I felt the need to bleed.
I stood up, swaying slightly as I did. “That fucker looks good enough.”
“Roman…” Rio said, his voice low.
“Not now, man,” I begged. “Just let me do me, yeah.”
Rio didn’t argue further, but I knew he wasn’t happy about it. Lucky for me, I didn’t give a shit what he thought. I crossed the room and shoved the guy.
He looked at me in surprise, but I’d picked well. He threw his bottle away and his fist crashed into my face.
I was one punch closer to forgetting my troubles for a while.
Let’s see how many it takes, I thought with a bloody smirk.
I lunged at the guy and smashed him into the wall. Everyone else got out of our way. Fast. I got a knee to the stomach and repaid him with an elbow to the ear.
“Fucking!” I heard Jimbo yell. “Fucking take it outside, Lombardi!”
“Yeah, all right,” I said as I grabbed the guy and hauled him outside.
