It was just a simple bet, which is something I can never resist.
"You'll never last an entire night with Jason, so stop looking down there. No girl ever ever has."
Sam and I sat at the bar, him with a cold draft and me with my usual Jack on the rocks. The Rocket was a local place, half a block from my condo and usually filled with good-hearted neighborhood folks, most of whom knew each other. A typical bar. Dark wood, pool table, sports channels on the TVs. A mixed crowd, some married and just chilling, some looking for an evening's hook-up, some who were both. Friendly stuff.
I'd grown up in the neighborhood, and many of the guys had been in the same high school. I'd hooked up with a couple on occasion, including Sam. Nice in the sack, sweet, but not exactly what you'd call a thrill ride.
"What? Is he a perv?" I looked again at the man at the end of the bar. Tall, muscular in a "works with his hands" kind of way, Jason wasn't the stand-offish loner I associated with the guys I'd met who were into kink. Outgoing, Jason had a lot of friends in the area. Male friends. Girls had come on to him many times, but I never saw him with the same woman twice.
I'd never really thought about it until now. I'd come tonight looking for a new hook-up; it had been a long time. When I'd contemplated Jason, Sam had turned sullen.
Sam shrugged and looked away. "Probably not. Maybe he's just bad in bed."
"Yeah, you wish every guy was."
Sam hmphed, and turned to lean his back against the bar. "You wanna catch a movie Saturday?"
"Does it involve a lot of guns and sweaty men?"
Sam grinned. "Probably."
"Count me in."
A pleasant evening. Sam left about 10:30, and most of the others cleared out around 11:00. A few sports buddies, including Jason, clustered around the pool table in the back of the room, cheering on a basketball game from the west coast and occasionally shooting a round of billiards.
Around midnight, I signaled for a fifth Jack. Carter, the bartender, set it down with a concerned look. "You're walkin', tonight, Lyn?"
Carter and I had once spent two glorious weeks in Cancun, diving and exploring reefs and each other. I'd almost wept when he got married. "Of course, hon. I'm just down the street."
He didn't relent. "Sam's right about Jason."
"You got married."
"Just be careful."
"Aren't I always?"
"No." He wandered away to start the closing routine.
Jason's last sports buddies left 15 minutes later, and Jason brought several of the empties to the end of the bar. I grinned at him. "Helping out Carter?"
He smiled, and set the bottles in a neat row on the dark wood. "I used to tend bar. Habits die hard."
"Can I help?"
He shrugged. "Sure."
We made one trip back and forth, then he went to the pool table to get his jacket. I followed, waiting until we were out of Carter's hearing before asking, "Do you mind if I ask you something personal?"
He slipped the leather onto his arms and pulled down the bottom of the jacket. "You want to know why no girl hangs around me for very long." He crossed his arms and looked down at me, his dark eyes almost pinning me in place.
I finally found my spine and stiffened it. "Yes. How did you know?"
His stillness was almost unnerving. "Because I can tell when a girl is watching. When she's interested."
"You think I'm interested?"
"I think if you don't make an effort to find out, it'll make you nuts."
"So are you willing for me to find out?"
"Are you paid up or are you running a tab?"
"A tab."
"Get your coat."
The autumn night's brisk air rushed around us as we left The Rocket, swirling leaves and bits of street debris around our legs as we headed down the street. "I live at 1540."
I knew the building, a fairly new condo renovation. Not cheap. "Nice building. I take it you don't work blue collar anymore. Either you've gone white collar or your secret is a cougar-aged sugar mama."