“Jesus Christ, man. Are you serious? You married the woman you lost your virginity to?”
“Yeah, so? There was one blowjob before her.”
“That is just sad. You took pussy-whipped to the extreme!”
“I loved her before we slept together. Or at least I thought I did. Maybe it was just lust or some young infatuation. I don’t know, man – all I know for sure is that I was happy.”
“Because you were having sex for the first time in your life, on a regular basis.”
“No, because I thought we had something good. Something special,” I explain as I think back to those days that seem like they were a lifetime ago. “Is once a week what you would call a regular basis?”
Greer’s heavy dark brow furrows. “Once a week? Like on a schedule, penciled in somewhere? Why only once a week when you were what, eighteen or nineteen? The horniest years of your life?”
“I would’ve liked to do it more that summer before I left for basic training, but Laurel thought it was wrong to do it on the days she went to church, so Sundays and Wednesdays were out. Stupid, I know. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, she worked all day as a lifeguard, so that only left Fridays.”
“Wow…that’s…I don’t even know what that is. And you do realize that you left out Mondays?”
“Oh, right. During the summer, she hung out with her friends on Mondays before they all left for college. Then I left, so…”
“How many times on Fridays?”
“How many Fridays?”
“No, how many times did you do it on Fridays.”
“Just once.”
“Just once, as in no more than one orgasm for you and one for her?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you can most likely count on two hands the number of times you had sex with your ex-wife?”
“Probably. Why?”
He rubs his hands down his face before looking at me again. “Have you ever talked to your brothers about sex?”
“Not really. Remy explained how it worked when I was like thirteen or fourteen, told me to always use condoms. Then other than bragging about their conquests, we never got into specifics.”
“Oh boy. I actually feel sorry for you, man.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re a good guy, Bear. Decent-looking. You deserve to get some ass. Like consistently. Multiple times a week.”
Picking up a glass, Greer grabs a fork to bang against it, getting everyone’s attention.
“Most confirmed orgasms in a twenty-four-hour period wins a free pitcher of beer tonight – winner’s choice of brand.”
“Four – at least four, right, babe?” Colt asks Josie, who immediately buries her face in her hands while her son Jordan looks green.
“Five!” Avery – yes, Avery, my brother’s perfect, prissy blonde girlfriend – stands up with her arm waving proudly in the air. “Remy can confirm.”
“Hell yes, I can, pussycat,” my brother says as he pulls her down so she’s straddling his lap to plant a kiss on her lips.
“Seriously?” I mutter in disbelief.
Greer leans his forearms on the bar and says, “And that’s just with their current significant others. But I’m not finished enlightening you yet.” He straightens and asks, “Most times in a week?”
“Who can count that high?” Colt remarks.
“Same. No clue,” Hugo mutters before Everly slaps her palm over his mouth.
“With the same person?” RJ asks.
“Oral counts too, right? Do we win another pitcher?” Avery questions Greer, who nods his agreement.
“Definitely counting oral,” Remy says. “If so, ballparking it, put us down for twenty.”
“Twenty?” I repeat in disbelief.
Greer shrugs. “At an average of three times a day, it’s very possible.” He cracks his knuckles. “Even for an old man like me.”
“Not fair. You two work together and live together,” Colt says to Remy and Avery. “You have more opportunities.”
“Don’t be a sore loser, bro,” Remy taunts him. Picking up a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table, he throws them in his direction.
“I call bullshit,” I mutter, but only Greer hears me over my siblings arguing.
“Call it all you want. You’ve been missing out, man. It’s time to brush the dust off your dick and get back out there.”
Shaking my head, I tell him, “I wish it were that easy.”
“Are you really not over her? The ex-wife?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even seen her since way before I got the divorce papers.”
“You need to figure out how to close the book on that shitty chapter of your life so that you can move on.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep around, you know, one girl to the next.”
“You won’t know unless you try. And trust me, sleeping with someone else will help you get over her once and for all. You just need another female body to worship so you can forget the last one you were with. Erase her completely from your head and your dick’s memory.” Greer slaps the bar and says, “Either way, you owe me for two pitchers of beer.”
When he goes off to fill them, RJ comes over and takes the stool next to mine.
“This town is so fucking boring,” he remarks. “Tomorrow is Saturday, right?”
“Right. Are you working?”
“Nah. Jordan is. The kid is great. I tell him to do something, and he just does it. No questions asked.”
“Yeah, must be nice to have a prospect. Hopefully, I can find the rest of us one soon,” I reply.
“Hey, you want to do something tomorrow? Get out of town?” RJ asks.
“Possibly.”
I pick up my phone to look at the date. Tomorrow’s the fifteenth. Laurel’s wedding day.
I told Lyla I wouldn’t crash the reception or bust into the ceremony to object, and I don’t want to do either. I think I just want to see her happy with someone else. Maybe that will give me the closure I need to move on.
“So where should we go?”
“Ah, I don’t know yet,” I lie. “We could just ride around, see what sort of shit we can get into.”
“Like what?”
“Like, we’ll just see where the road takes us.”
RJ shrugs. “Okay. Sounds fun.”
I don’t tell him that the road is going to take us to Clay County, to the fairgrounds. If I did, he would probably still say he was in, but then he might tell Colt or Remy. They would bitch and say it’s a bad idea, which I already know.
But Greer is right. Now I’m curious about the man Laurel’s marrying. Is he better-looking than me? Stronger? Does he have a bigger dick? More money? I’m not sure why it matters, but it does.
I haven’t been able to move on and start a new relationship. How can I when I don’t know what went wrong in the last one?
I need closure, just like Lyla suggested.
I get that my wife fucking someone else was only the result of a bigger problem in the relationship; whether it was hers or ours is irrelevant now. I was gone, she was lonely. I think she even blamed me being away for her affair, but I was too pissed to hear it.