“Or to go into private practice,” Tyler said.
“That is a huge dream. It would be incredible,” I said.
We spent a good portion of the rest of the afternoon there in the study room. Only I didn’t finish my research, and he didn’t so much as crack the book he had been planning on reading. We were too busy talking. I found it so easy to talk to him, so comfortable and natural.
And I had to admit it felt pretty damn nice.
9
Tyler
I realized when I got home that my mood was, again, better than usual, and I knew exactly what the cause was. My time hanging out with Becca in the library was absolutely the reason for it, and I was enjoying replaying portions of the conversation over in my head as I got my things together for a shower before work. Then I made the mistake of opening my phone, seeing a notification of a picture Becca liked on my wall.
That led to me clicking her profile.
Which led to me perusing her pictures again.
Which led to me spending entirely too much time while the water was already running and steaming up the room staring at pictures of her.
By the time I got in the shower, there was no use. My mind was already swirling with fantasies of her body, of the way she felt pressed against me in a hug but removing the barriers of the clothing. Of her ample ass pressed against my hips, my cock sliding between the cheeks and searching for her opening. Of entering her tight, wet pussy and filling her, of grasping her breasts in my hands while I pounded her.
My hand slid down to grasp the base of my cock and stroked. I didn’t waste time going slowly, letting the tension that had been building since I saw her in the grocery store explode as I stood in the shower, the orgasm making my knees weak so that I nearly sank to them under the running water. I held myself up with one hand on the wall, so I didn’t end up on the tub floor and stroked the last drops out.
I felt a fair amount of guilt and shame over what I had done, but at the same time, I tried to pass it off as a harmless one-time thing. Now that I had gotten that out of my system, I wouldn’t be so distracted and enamored by her. It felt so wrong because of who she was, but it also felt so right. It was stupid to continue denying that I liked her, or that I absolutely was crushing on her, but there was no chance of it going anywhere. The best I could do for myself was to occasionally give myself the release of fantasy as I needed it.
And boy, did I need it.
My drive to work was overcast with the thoughts of how impossible a relationship would be. My logical self argued with the rest of me about how pointless all these thoughts were. How pointless being obsessed with her was. How pointless even thinking about the thoughts I was having about her was. She was, and always would be, relegated to a fantasy that I could jerk off to in the shower. The end. Nothing else could happen, and I needed to get that through my head.
I pulled into the parking lot of the bar with a pall over me. Not only was I starting to feel upset about how I felt about Becca, but also, I frankly didn’t want to go into the bar. I sat there, staring at the front door through the front windshield, realizing that I didn’t want to go in.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t proud of the bar, or what my brothers and I had accomplished, or how much it had grown. And it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy all the time I was getting to spend with my brothers, or the benefit we were all having in making money to support each other and our mother. I just didn’t have the passion I once had to cross through those doors and go through another day of slinging drinks and feeding people.
But I couldn’t just up and leave. I couldn’t leave my brothers in a lurch like that, and I couldn’t waste the hard work and effort I had put into the bar by just leaving. Maybe ever.
I sighed heavily and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Walking across the parking lot slowly, I tried to take in the bar in its entirety, both outside and in. What was it about that place that bugged me so much recently? What was it I wasn’t getting from the business?
Ava was behind the bar when I got in, setting things up for the evening and doing level checks of what liquor we had and might need soon so she could place the order. She smiled when she saw me, and I walked up to her and sat down on one of the stools. I still had a half-hour before I needed to be ready to go, and an hour before the bar opened for the evening.