The Rebel - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,20
looked at the screen. Yet again, Colin was pretending to miss me, when really all he wanted was a hookup for more drugs.
“What’s so fascinating on that little screen?” Mrs. Bates said. “Young people are always staring down at the damn screens.”
“Trust me, it’s nothing fascinating,” I said. “Fucking frustrating is more like it. Pardon my potty mouth.”
“Well, what’s so frustrating?” Mrs. Bates said.
I sighed. “A guy I used to do bad things with back in Los Angeles won’t leave me alone,” I said.
She squinted at me. “You know you can block phone numbers on those things, don’t you? My granddaughter taught me how to do it, and now I block every telemarketer I get. It’s a lovely feeling.”
I smiled. “I really should block Colin. You’re right.”
“I can tell you right now, the older I get, the less I give a shit about people who waste my time,” Mrs. Bates said as she slowly turned her walker back in the other direction. “You should focus on your garden and forget about this frustrating LA boy.”
“I know I should,” I said. “I wish it were that easy.”
“It’s as easy as you want it to be!” she called back toward me as she slowly strolled off back down the hill toward her house. “Thank you for the milk, dear!”
“You’re welcome,” I called over.
I headed inside and got Bandit, attaching his extra long leash to his collar. I tied it around one of the big trees out back so that he could have free roam, and I set to work on taking out all of the flowers from the back of my car.
After a couple hours of planting and deciding the best locations for certain plants, my phone buzzed again in my pocket. My blood pressure skyrocketed immediately. I didn’t want to deal with Colin. I started to think that Mrs. Bates might have been right about blocking him.
But when I checked the screen, I saw that it wasn’t Colin.
>>Red: What do you prefer, strawberry or raspberry?
I smiled like an idiot at the simple message. I didn’t know why Red was asking me this, but I was so happy that it wasn’t Colin, and so happy that it was him.
>>Liam: Strawberry all the way. You deciding which fruit you’re going to bring for me to eat while I film your solo video?
>>Red: Not a chance. You’re going to lose the bet.
>>Liam: We’ll see about that, Mysterious Cowboy.
A picture popped up in our chat. It was a selfie where he’d donned a big, beautiful cowboy hat, like a fancier version of the one he’d worn in our blowjob video. He had it pulled down over his eyes. A second one came through where he’d lifted it up and was winking at me.
He looked stupidly fucking hot in both pictures.
>>Red: I’ll see you in two hours.
I bit the inside of my cheek. My cock had perked up at seeing the photos of him. Red and I had a complicated history, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a hot-blooded human like anyone else. He was attractive as all hell, and having two sexy pictures of him in his cowboy hat only made me think of our video.
A video that might have a sequel very soon, so long as I didn’t lose my cool during a kids’ movie.
The wind blew the panels of my leather jacket to the side as I walked up to Red’s Tavern. The skies had been darkening with clouds for the last hour, and I was glad to be heading inside.
I walked in the front door, looking around to see if Red was there, but the place was empty up front. The bar had a different vibe in the middle of the day. I’d only been in the tavern briefly when I’d come to talk to Red a couple weeks ago, but I let myself take everything in now.
It looked like a simple, sort of western-themed bar, with nice wood features and furniture, and plenty of comfy booths to sit and eat. There were pool tables, a jukebox, and a pinball table on one end of the place, and then the big, U-shaped bar with plenty of liquor shelves behind it on the other side of the room. Rainbow-colored tinsel lined the wall behind the shelves, and hanging on all the walls were photos of Tavern customers, smiling and often wearing rainbow feather boas.
It was definitely worn-in, but in a charming way. You could tell that many, many fun nights had occurred in