He shook his head, smirking at me. “She’s got you pussy-whipped, man.”
“Not even a little bit,” I replied.
I didn’t know if he knew the extent of my relationship with Chloe. But I was never going there again with a woman. Deep, committed monogamy. No way. I’d changed who I was once before and nearly lost a lifelong friend, and look what happened. My entire world got knocked on its ass. My philosophy now was that pussy was easy to come by and best when regularly rotated.
Then why haven’t I seen anyone but Chloe? a little voice inside asked.
Ever since Samantha’s death, I’d been fucked up in the head. Messing around with something you don’t mess with. Something sacred. My one-time best friend. Only now I had no idea what she was anymore. I only knew she made me feel good. I knew she let me fuck her raw six ways from Sunday. Let me mark her skin, and moaned when she tasted herself on my tongue, then asked for more.
The scary part was that I had no idea where this was heading and how it could possibly end well, but I knew one thing for certain—I had no plans to end our arrangement.
“Just fuel me up and keep the questions to a minimum,” I barked back.
“Yes, boss.”
I checked my cooler for this morning’s haul. The grouper was still sitting pretty on ice. I grabbed the fish and made my way inside, knowing I had my work cut out for me before I could get Chloe’s guests out on the boat later.
• • •
“Abe? You here?” I called, opening the flimsy screen door to his rundown one-bedroom house.
Stony silence punctuated the still air for several seconds, and my gut twisted. The eerie realization that one of these days I was going to get here and find him dead washed through me.
“I’m out back,” he called in his gruff voice.
Taking a deep breath, I headed through the house, stopping in the kitchen to set the fish fillets I brought him every Sunday in the refrigerator. Its uneven hum told me the appliance, much like everything around here, was on its last leg. I’d replaced his air-conditioning unit last summer and had a feeling more repairs were on the horizon.
I found him out on the back porch with its no-frills concrete floor and screened walls, doing the Sunday crossword from the newspaper. I needed to remember to bring him another crossword book; the man probably didn’t have any other hobbies.
I sank down into the folding chair beside him, the rickety thing creaking under my weight.
“You catch anything good for me today?” he asked.
“Fresh grouper. There’re two fillets for you in the fridge.”
“You sure you don’t want to stay for one? I can fry them up in some butter.”
He was a modern marvel. A full-fat diet, yet skinny as a rail and healthy as a horse.
I shook my head. “Can’t today. I promised I’d take a couple of Chloe’s guests out on a charter.”
“It’s nice how you’re there for her.”
I grunted. “Trust me, she does much more for me than I do for her.”
Abe nodded. “She’s kept you together after Samantha, I know.”
“She has.” Licks of guilt tongued through me. If he only knew.
“I can’t imagine, son,” he continued. “Lost my Sarah after fifty years of marriage, and I still reach out for her in the night, still call her name like she’s in the other room. The brain knows she’s gone, but the heart won’t accept it.”
I didn’t say anything because I had nothing to say. His situation and mine were very different. I had celebrated only one anniversary with Samantha and had yet to adjust fully to life as someone’s husband. It was a role I didn’t think I was very good at, which only added to my guilt.
We were quiet for several minutes, the soft lap of waves in the distance our only company.
I had to stop thinking about this. I’d found myself slipping into a dark place that I was quickly realizing I didn’t like visiting lately. My gaze dropped to the pile of mail that I’d brought in from his front porch.
“More offers?” I asked, leafing through the pile I’d set on the dusty glass table between us.
He nodded. “Throw them out.”
“Maybe you should open these first?”
The return addresses were real estate companies, investors, and even a lawyer in South Carolina. Real estate developers wanted to bulldoze the place down and had offered him outrageous sums of money for his beachfront property, but Abe held fast.
“What am I going to do with a pile of money?” he asked.
The man had a point. He was eighty-seven. No sense in trying to pretend he’d be around long enough to cash their checks, let alone enjoy the money. He didn’t have any kids or much in the way of relatives, as far as I could tell. I was the closest thing he had to family, and I certainly wasn’t interested in the money, or in seeing a line of condos go up on the plot of beach that had once been his home.