Johnny Two-Guns by Mark Wildyr

Author:Mark Wildyr [Wildyr, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-63477-060-6
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2016-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

AS GOOD as his word, Stan intruded on my privacy the next morning. We almost got into a fistfight, but I backed down and started trying to get ready. I moved like someone swimming in a vat of olive oil. It was nine thirty before he got me out of the house.

Edna looked shocked when she saw me but held her tongue and merely put my messages on my desk. She mumbled she was glad I was back before fleeing the office. Stan took the messages and sorted them into some kind of priority, then stood resolutely by until I returned the first call. The man on the other end asked if I was feeling okay. I told him I was and managed to blunder my way through the conversation.

The real pain came that night when I returned to an empty house and saw the Two-Guns plaque lying on the coffee table with the photos. I thought—hoped—for a moment I was having a heart attack. Anything to end this. Stan came over later and stayed the night in my guest bedroom. We didn’t talk, but somehow his being there eased my sense of isolation.

Each night when I came home, the pain was a little less intense. But as the pain subsided, a great emptiness took over me. It started in my guts, moved to my chest, and threatened to engulf my brain. Those belly butterflies were gone… probably forever. Work was the only thing that prevented me from simply lying down and dying.

Two weeks later I could stand it no longer. I drove to the airport and flew to Las Vegas. In two days I lost two thousand dollars, spent another thousand on hotels, meals, and shows. I paid a strawberry blonde to stay with me for part of the time, and that cost another couple of thousand. She was glad when I told her to go because she said I fucked like I wanted to hurt her. I might have stayed longer, except I went to the park where Johnny and I had run one night, and that sent me fleeing back to Denver.

Eventually I found the bottle and discovered that it could make my day easier to get through. That didn’t last long, because after a week of showing up at the office with a glow on, Stan came to my house and broke every bottle in the place. He even poured out my aftershave, something I completely failed to understand. I could have gone out and bought more, but I made the mistake of going to bed that night without any alcoholic fortification, and by the next morning, I was sick with the kind of nausea that made me more miserable than ever. This wasn’t like a heart attack that would kill you off and get it over with, this was just being sick hour after hour after hour. I missed work that day.

The next day was probably when I started healing. And it came about in a way that you often look back on and say what a wonderful coincidence.

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