Brian's Thoughts

Fine, I know. It’s three in the morning and I’m sitting here on the Goddamned couch

Everyone asks me the same damn question. Why did I agree to take Justin back after what he did?

I keep asking myself that.

I know, we’re good in bed together but that’s no big shit. I mean, I can get lots of guys in bed. That’s easy.

Why the fuck do I want him here? I fucking wish I knew at this point.

I overheard him talking this morning. I guess that he didn’t know I was finished in the bathroom or he wouldn’t have been saying what he was. I’m pretty sure that it was Daphne was on the other end of the line.

Fuck me.

He was going on to her how he’d known he could get me back, it hadn’t been hard, he knew just what buttons to push, what strings to pull and I wasn’t that hard to figure out once he put his mind to it. He’d gotten the job at Vanguard, showed up at Babylon, the diner—wherever he knew I’d be. He even started to tell her what we had done in bed—or rather what he had done to me when I think she cut him off.

Shit.

OK, I knew I’d been set up. I mean him showing up at work as an intern and then him blowing all that smoke up my ass about how it’s the best around and how competence and attitude filters down from the top.

Please.

I knew it, alright? I just didn’t think, I guess I didn’t realize that he’d been so fucking cold-blooded about it.

I know, look who’s calling the fucking kettle black.

And I was so Goddamned happy about this.

So fucking happy until I realized that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me. It’s just another notch on his belt, like scoring 1500 on his SAT’s or his entrance to PIFA. I’m just something else that he can throw in his father’s face. Just something he set his mind to and succeeded at, like cooking dinner or regaining the use of his hand.

Fuck.

“Brian?”

I didn’t bother to answer him. I heard him come down to where I was sitting in the fucking dark like a moody teenager. Shit.

“Are you alright?” He sat next to me. “Can’t you sleep?” His hand was rubbing my neck, up to my cheek and around my jaw to my ear. You know something? A week or two ago I would have given an arm to have him sitting beside me doing that. Now it was almost like I could see him checking things off on a list: show concern, offer support, have sex.

I know that in some way he learned this from me, the detachment, the premeditation, the calculation and I suppose that, in a way I should be—proud? I’m a good teacher.

“I’m fine, just a little restless.”

“Come back to bed?” I let him take my hand and lead me up the stairs.

I watch him under me as I penetrate him, as I move on him, in him. I watch his face, the expressions as they move across his face. He likes sex. He likes sex with me, I think. I know that he likes thinking that he controls this, that he controls me.

I don’t care—no I do, and that’s the problem.

I want him to love me.

Me.

Not as his meal ticket or someone to pay his tuition. Not as an assumed partner at a movie or dancing or for dinner or as a sugar daddy.

Not as fucking arm candy for him.

I want him to love me.

My mind and whatever the fuck it is that makes me unique. The way that I love him.

I’ve taken to watching him the last few weeks when he doesn’t notice. I watch his face, his body language. I hear the tone of his voice and chart his moods. I know that he’s planning something, that he wants to try to maneuver me into some kind of commitment. He wants a ring or a contract or a trip to Vermont or something. I know that and I won’t, not now, anyway.

How the fuck could I agree to that? What makes him think that he could get me to do that?

Just because he can get me to do almost anything?

No. I won’t.

I won’t fucking do this. Not unless I want to.

Unless I want to. Me.

I expect that will be a turning point of some kind, when he realizes that I’m on to him and the fact that he’s using me.

That I’m letting him use me.

I’ve known for a long time now, since before the Chinrat appeared. I knew it.

Spoiled fucking Princess, always expecting that someone would pull his nuts out of whatever fire they happened to land in this week—his father, or the tuition or some shit with the breeders, and I was the designated pitcher.

I am, I know that. I’m letting him get away with it because I hope to God that there’s some part of him that actually gives a flying fuck about me beyond my net income and that one day I’ll be able to believe it.

I try to tick off the reasons I let him stay here and get away with the shit I know he’s pulling.

I used to know the reasons.

 I liked having him around, he stoked my ego, he was funny and entertaining and a good—make that a great—lay. He can cook, he puts up with my shit, and he made me a superhero. He made me feel like I was important to someone, that I mattered beyond what I could produce at work or what I was capable of in bed. He made me believe that he cared more about me than that I would pick up the fucking tab.

Now?—now I think I’m a challenge he’s decided to best, an adversary, an opponent who he won’t allow to win.

I think he wants to prove that he could get me back, that he can call the shots, that he can make me want him.

I think I’m the backup plan if the thing with the fucking fiddler didn’t work out, as I knew it wouldn’t.

The pisser is that I want him here. I want to reach over and feel him in my bed. I want to be in him and listen to the sounds he makes and the look on his face when he comes. I want to feel his hand on my back or in mine. I want him to ask me about my day like he gives a fuck and I want him to—care about me.

I want him to love me and I know that I’m letting him use me.

I wish the rest of the family would leave me the fuck alone about it. I pretend that I don’t give a fuck what they say, but I just wish that even one of them—maybe Linds—would see what I really think and feel for just Goddamn once.

I’m lonely.

I want him here to help fill up the hole. I think—thought—that he would be the one who could do that. He’s my match in brains and balls and he’s a fucking bulldog when he decides...just like me. He can go one on one with me in bed.

A year or so ago Deb reamed me for not telling him how I feel, for leaving him hanging. She nailed me. She knew I’d fallen in love with the twat and she made some comment about how he had slipped in under the wire.

She was right and now part of me wants him to slip the fuck out and part of me thinks he already has and the biggest part of me knows that someday he will and I just wish—that he loved me enough to stay.

And you know what sucks the most?

I believe Deb. I believe that he did love me.

And I know I stomped him too many times and I killed it. I see the expression on his face when he thinks I’m not looking and it’s hard now. He used to look like a fucking angel and now his face looks hard like—me.

And I don’t know what to do.

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