I sat on a barstool at an upscale Mexican bar and grill, in a grungy yet rapidly gentrifying East Austin neighborhood. The place was almost empty because it was pre-Happy Hour on a Friday. My blue silk tie was loosened - off early from work. Which I could do, because I owned a tech startup, and had gotten the usual chaotic clusterfuck back to a manageable level for the weekend.
I glanced in the mirror above the bar. A stranger who looked remarkably like me - dark brown hair, light brown eyes, moderately handsome, light olive complexion from a blend of my Italian and Irish ancestors - stared back. The unfamiliar part was the look on my normally serene face, a shellshocked bleakness that I had done my best to hide from my employees, though I had gotten the occasional concerned glance.
I stared back down into my fancy drink, a Mezcal Mule, trying, not particularly successfully, to put on an expression more fit for public consumption, and tamp down the almost unbearable pain from the recent breakup with my girlfriend.
OK. EX-girlfriend. Amazing how much pain those two extra letters could cause.
Every night for the last two weeks or so, I'd woken up at 1 or 2 am, and the memories would flood back...
How I'd cheated on her. While drunk. At a bachelor party in San Antonio, where the stripper the best man had hired had ended up giving blowjobs to all of us who ponied up $60. How I'd held out until it was just me and an ex-Mormon guy, while my mates drunkenly extolled how good the stripper was at giving head. Not that they ever used fiddy dollar words like "extol", least not while drunk.
How I'd succumbed to peer pressure, then received an amazing blowjob, way better than my girlfriend ever gave me. Gave her a mouthful of cum, watched her swallow, then felt the guilt slowly creeping in and ruining the post-orgasm sleepiness.
How I felt the guilt dogpiling in for a week, harder and harder, trying to hide it from my girlfriend. My friends from the party telling me to not be a "gotdamn fool", just pretend it never happened and she'd never suspect.
How I realized I couldn't bear the guilt any more.
Did... the Confession. Said I was so sorry. How it wouldn't ever happen again.
Honesty. Such a * terrible * idea in that specific context, with that specific hot tempered girlfriend.
I sipped at my drink, grimacing at the memory of how she'd stormed out of my house and blocked and ghosted me. Making me feel like she'd casually ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it and then, just to make sure, repeatedly run over it with her car.
How, when I'd almost managed to convince myself she might finally come back... she did.
Unannounced. While I was at work.
Using the key I'd given her, like a fool having never changed the locks, hoping against hope she'd show up and take me back.
And then she'd proceeded to trash the living fuck out of my house...
I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of someone taking the seat next to me in the uncrowded bar, then a whiff of delicate floral perfume. Beautifully manicured fingers, nails painted a warm red that complemented her dark skin, with unusually short nails for a woman, lightly traced the knuckles on my right index hand. I felt an electric thrill from her touch, like tiny lightning bolts sizzling from the momentary gaps between our skin as she skipped from knuckle to knuckle.
I turned and saw an incredibly beautiful woman: a slim thicc body, small A cup breasts but a magnificently large firm-looking booty. She was wearing an understated but elegant looking crimson red top over what appeared to be a Shabby Chic pair of well worn jeans, threadbare holes in the knees, and artful tiny dashes of paint, like someone had lovingly faked a proletarian past for the denim. The sort of jeans visually teetering on the ragged edge between extremely expensive versus Straight Outta Goodwill.
She had deep brown eyes with a hint of epicanthic folds, black curly hair, lovely smooth skin the color of dark chocolate. If I had to guess, a gorgeous mixture of Black and Eurasian ancestors.
"Are you OK, sweetie?" Her finger slowly slid an inch closer to my wrist, sending more electric jolts into my brain. "You look sad."
I kept staring into her eyes. Ohmygod she's beautiful...
I realized she was waiting for a response, and my continued silence was possibly making it a tad awkward. "Uh, it shows that much?"
She barely rolled her eyes, amused, a gorgeous smile crinkling the corners of her mouth. "You think?" Her full lips were painted a dark blackish-red, about the color I imagined her pussy lips might look like... I had a brief vision of those lips wrapped around my...
Her eyes flashed at me, like she was reading my mind, or at least my expression, and I hurriedly stowed those untoward thoughts and dragged myself back into Gentleman Mode TM. "Been a rough couple weeks."
"Wanna talk about it?" she said, her smoky, silky voice purring, sounding like liquid sex. Like she could read the phone book to me, assuming one could find a phone book in a museum or whatever, and I'd listen to that voice, enthralled for hours, not minding the paucity of plot or character development.
"The short story, or all the tawdry details?"
"Yes. And then yes." Her finger had finished its slow descent up my hand and was now caressing the dark charcoal wool of my suit jacket with an almost proprietorial air. "Nice suit. Hmm... Hugo Boss?"
I stared at her, impressed. "Yeah."
She lifted her finger and then lightly touched my dress shirt, giving me the beginning of a hard-on. Her beautiful eyes flashed at my bulge, so quick I almost missed it, then narrowed. "Aaaand... Brooks Brothers shirt, of course, to look suitably conservative, but with those thin violet stripes to show, hey, I've got some mojo. Not afraid to think a teeny bit outside the box."
"Holy fuck," I said. "Do I even need to tell you what happened? You've probably got it all figured out."
"Yes," she purred in that irresistibly sexy voice. "You'll want to tell me everything." She glanced at my drink. "Hmm, looks like a Moscow Mule... buut... given that yuppie look you're rocking..." Her eyes narrowed. "Mezcal Mule." It was not a question. Then, I realized, it was. As in, 'Are you ever going to act like a gentlemen and offer me a drink?' But too well mannered to actually ask the question.
"Where are my manners?" I said. "What can I get you to drink?"
Her lips quirked, and she gave me an amused look that seemed to say, 'He can be a bit dim and socially awkward, but he's reasonably smart. For a guy.'
She caught the eye of the bartender, who had discreetly slid nearby and was clearly enjoying the witty repartee. She gave a slight nod in the direction of my drink.
"One Mezcal Mule?" he asked, looking me in the eye, daring me to be a damn fool and deny her anything.
I nodded, then turned to her. She was still waiting.
"Oh. I'm Hunter."
She offered her hand. "Cheri." She rolled her "r" with a pitch perfect French accent. Finally, a tiny payoff from all those years I took French. I suck at foreign languages.
Phrasing?
I realized I was, in a corner of my mind, multi-tasking by imagining those lovely lips wrapped around my shaft...
I realized my response was lingering awkwardly long. I took her warm, soft hand.
She gently squeezed back. Kept on holding my hand. Like she had no intention of breaking off contact any time soon. "I'm listening."
"Hmm. Short version -- I was dating a beautiful woman, and being very much a guy, it took way too long for it to sink in that, despite her attractive exterior, I had been in a relationship with a minor demon straight outta hell..."
Her drink arrived, and she gave me back custody of my hand to take a sip. "Had," she said, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes. Here's the part where I don't come off entirely angelically... assuming you can handle the really gritty parts of reality."
She took another sip. "I've got just three relationship rules: Don't lie to me. Don't cheat on me. Don't steal from me. And the corollary to the first part is, I'm too smart to miss a lie."
I admired how smoothly she'd slipped in the R-word... relationship.