Page 17 of Brett and Rowdy
He was. He wanted to get this over and done with so he could go take a damn nap. He was tired of this whole being social, and dealing with former lovers was for the birds.
Rowdy needed to be able to breathe, and the air here was damn pea soup.
Chapter Five
“How are you doing, man? You look like you’ve been whacked in the head with a rock.” Crystal was watching him like a hawk, and Brett just didn’t even know what to say.
“I mean honestly, what the fuck?” Rowdy was fucking beautiful. Seriously, honestly fucking beautiful. This tiny little tight-assed cowboy, so confident even though he couldn’t see.
It hurt.
He wanted Rowdy to be heartbroken, damn it. To think that he’d lost the best thing he ever had. He wasn’t. The man was wealthy and had a kid and a housekeeper. Brett couldn’t even say anything like that out loud because it made him sound like an asshole. He kind of felt like an asshole.
He didn’t want to be one, dammit.
The thing he did want was for Rowdy to hurt a little bit, to think of him—not fondly, but to think of him desperately.
“You okay, man?” Crystal’s voice was careful, like he was gonna shatter or something.
“I’m fine. Frustrated. Fine.”
“Okay, I trust you. Are you sure you wanna do this? You seem?—”
“Nope, we’re going to do this. We’re going to walk into that bar that’s full of folks, and we’re going to be cool.” He wasn’t a dick. Much.
He wasn’t one hundred percent sure how that was going to work, that whole being cool thing, but he was going to do it. If for no other reason than if Rowdy could fucking do it, he could too. Of all of them, Ashley was the one who had the most to lose here. If it was important enough for her to show up and do it, then damn it, they were going to do it too.
“I can’t believe how freaking hot he is.”
Had those words just come out of his mouth?
“Right? He’s like this little stud. I can’t even.” Crystal chuckled. “I mean, Jesus Christ. It’s not fair. Don’t forget you need to drop me off at the high school so I can get my car. Then I’ll follow you to the bar. You know, I gotta tell you, Ashley and Rowdy? They just don’t read like lovers to me.”
“Well, they haven’t been apparently, for a long time. He left here before graduation even happened. That baby was what? Three or four months old? She was just little, wasn’t even walking or crawling or anything yet.”
“It’s still weird. I mean, would you be friends with him if he’d done that to you? Just walked out and left you with a baby?”
“Shit. I don’t know. I mean, I just don’t know.” He didn’t know what to think about the whole damn situation, and he didn’t want to think about it anymore. Rowdy was past tense. A has-been. They had been into each other. They had been sharing some orgasms. They were no longer that.
In fact, the amount of time that they had no longer done it well surpassed the amount of time that they had.
He dropped Crystal off at the high school parking lot. “I’m going to meet you at Timbers and Tall Boys. We’re going togo. We’re going to nod. We are going to have a beer and let everybody see the four of us hanging out, and then I’m leaving.”
“Understood.” Crystal saluted him. “I think you’re being very brave.”
“Oh, shut up.” He wasn’t being very brave. He was being a fucking chickenshit. He would have been very brave if he had just said, “No, I’m not interested.”
He was pretty freaking interested though. In fact, he was real goddamn interested, and that pissed him off even worse. He had no interest in being interested.
He waited to make sure Crystal’s minivan started, and then they headed to the bar. He tended not to go to places that had mixologists, especially when he just wanted a fucking beer. Although the idea of Rowdy having to order beer there was kind of amusing.
They did have beer in New Mexico, right?
Cerveza?
Man, he was being a giant dick. Okay, he should have smoked a joint before he ever started this project.
Ashley and Rowdy were already there when he got there, Rowdy carefully walking the dog on the patch of grass. He guessed that was a thing, huh? Even seeing eye dogs had to poop. He kind of thought of them as like robots, fuzzy little things that just kept anybody from walking out into traffic, but this was totally a dog.
