Page 1 of Tagging Bases

Chapter 1

Payback’s a Bitch, Fucker

Charlie

“Move it, asshole!”

Closing my eyes, I breathe through my nose and count to ten. I’m not a violent person, but right now, my patience is wearing thin.

I’m in the same boat as everyone else—drunk as a skunk and clenching my ass cheeks in the hope that I don’t piss myself.

It sucks. It’s torture. But you don’t see me shoving people and swearing like a sailor because of it.

The bar I’m currently at exceeded its occupancy limit several hours ago, and now we’re all paying the price. Or at least the men are.

“How do they do it?”

Peering over my shoulder, a beefy man glowers at the women’s restroom, where the line is nonexistent. The door swings open and shut repeatedly, the women happy as clams that the shoe is finally on the other foot.

I shrug. “Beats me.”

The fifteen men standing in front of me finally decide they’ve had enough of waiting and walk out.

“Think they’re gonna pee in the alley?” Beefy Man asks.

I don’t stick around to answer him because there’s no longeranyone standing in the way of me and the door to heaven. I barrel into the restroom, excited as can be, only to come to a screeching halt when my eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

Every urinal is out of order, and all the stalls except the handicapped one are cordoned off with caution tape.

“Motherfucker!” I hiss.

No wonder I’ve been doing a jig in the hallway for the past fifteen minutes. One would’ve thought that there’d be a sign taped to the door. Even a heads-up from one of the bartenders would’ve been nice.

But then again, this is a dive bar. I shouldn’t expect anything less.

Heaving a heavy sigh, I step into the stall, lock the door, unzip my pants, and let my body do its work.

Thanks to the amount of beer I’ve consumed, it’s a never-ending stream. I pass the time whistling a pop song that’s been stuck in my head for the past week and checking out the litany of messy scrawls on the stall walls.

Stuff likeFor a good time, call JennyandNick + Norah 4ever. One even says,I fucked your mom, with a helpful arrow pointing down to an incredibly well-done drawing in black marker.

As I’m shaking it twice, something catches my eye. A hole in the partition, about waist-high. Bending over, I study the anomaly with fascination. It takes my brain more seconds than I care to admit due to my inebriated state to make sense of what I’m seeing. When I finally get there, I laugh out loud because, seriously, who’d want to put a glory hole here?

I stick my finger through the hole and wiggle it around. It appears to be freshly drilled, which means no one’s put it to good use…yet, at least.

Patting the hole goodbye, I stand up, tuck my dick back in my pants and wash my hands before heading back out into the madhouse of sweaty, drunken bodies.

Bartenders in tight black T-shirts frantically mix drinks. Bass-heavy music shakes the floor, reverberating throughmy boots and traveling up my six-foot-three frame until my head bops along to the beat. Multicolored lights flash and spin, turning the grimy dive bar into a fever dream.

My friends and I have been coming here every New Year’s Eve since we enrolled at Ashford University. I don’t remember how we found the place—it’s not on any of the tourist maps—but we did, and we instantly fell in love. The fact that they don’t care about our fake IDs doesn’t hurt matters.

My best friend, Daniel Hollingsworth, waves at me from the high-top table shoved against an exposed brick wall, coated with layers of band stickers and scrawled initials. He’s leaning casually in his seat, one muscular arm slung over the back of one of the other chairs.

I plop myself down across from him and match his shit-eating grin with one of my own.

“Dude, I thought you fell in,” he laughs, grabbing an unopened beer bottle from the cluster in the center of the table and holding it out to me.

I snatch it and pop it open with relative ease. “I almost did, from shock. You should see the state of that restroom. It’s a war zone in there.”

---