Dirty money for a dirty deed. Counted twice.
Part I
Two hellish years have skidded past since the cosmos threw a spitball straight into my life, yanking my better half out of this fever dream we’re all shambling through. Two godforsaken years and the sting is as vicious as the initial shockwave that tore through my existence. A cadre of high-priced grief whisperers assured me the agony would start to fade by now. Bullshit. It clings like a bad reputation. So here I stand at thirty-two, a widower cast adrift, staring down my own reflection, waiting for my partner in this upcoming nefarious escapade. But let’s get one thing painfully clear — I’m devilishly handsome, a goddamn Adonis in the flesh. At a modest 5’10”, my physique hints at a storied, athletic past, now slightly obscured by a decade of neglect. With short, auburn hair and steely blue-grey eyes that somehow, complimented the suit like a fashion accessory. My late wife, bless her brutally honest soul, used to say I was an insufferable bastard, “But, fuck, you can wear a suit.” That kind of praise could inflate a man’s ego to dangerous proportions.
Indeed. I’m a colossal prick. But, Goddamnit, I can wear a suit.
So here I am, decked out in that very suit, lurking in the limbo of my bedroom, clutching my wedding ring as if it’s the only escape pod left on this disintegrating starship.
“It’ll be good for you,” they proclaimed, with the confidence of prophets. “They” — a consortium of armchair therapists and well-meaning meddlers: my shrink, draped in the aura of clinical wisdom; my best friend, the eternal optimist; the guys at work, those “Bastards of Bastogne,” warriors in the corporate trenches with not a single fuck left to give. Two years had skulked by, two years of them watching me shuffle through the motions of living like some ghost haunting his own life. They’d had their fill and reached their limit of patience with my morose shadow-dwelling.
So, in a spectacle of brazenly misallocated company resources, the Bastards convened behind closed doors, a cabal of co-conspirators plotting to thrust me back into the land of the living. With the solemnity of a jury delivering a verdict, they reached a unanimous decision — it was high time I got laid.
Extracting this concession from me was akin to a dental extraction sans anesthesia — a laborious, painstaking endeavor. Yet, to their collective astonishment, I capitulated to this debauched scheme, albeit with stipulations firmly in place. First, the prerogative to select the lady in question rested solely in my hands, and second, my tragic backstory was to remain under wraps, shrouded in the same mystery as my reluctant agreement. No heartstrings tugged, no dramatic overtures — just a straightforward, no-strings-attached escapade. A hit it and quit it, if you will. Who was I kidding?
As the cacophony of my thoughts thundered on, dissecting the fabric and fit of my suit in a futile attempt to distract myself, the shrill of the doorbell cut through the heavy air like a scalpel through silence. And then, in a gesture as symbolic as it was spontaneous, off came the tie, swiftly followed by the shedding of my jacket. It was as if these layers weren’t just pieces of cloth but veils of my apprehension, discarded in the face of the impending reality.
With the doorbell’s echo still hanging in the air, a transformation unfurled within me. The nerves and hesitation that had been my shadowy companions up until moments ago vanished into thin air. I was about to embark on a date, yes, but it was more than that. I was gripped by a primal determination to extract every ounce of value from the evening ahead. She, oblivious to the storm she was stepping into, had no inkling of the intensity I was about to bring to the table.
With a heavy heart and a cynical eye, I gave the rose gold band — a relic of battles fought and lost in the arena of love — one last, lingering stare. This was no mere piece of jewelry; it was a medal of honor from a war long past, now being voluntarily stripped away for the first time in a cold, soul-sucking half-decade. It hit the nightstand with a traitor’s clink, lying next to a stack of bills amounting to nearly $2,500. Dirty money for a deed dirtier still. Turning on my heel with a sense of doom-laden destiny, I made my way toward the front door, each step thumping like the heart of a beast in the dark. And there it was — beneath the surface, a primal beat began to thrum – a steady, growing throb. This wasn’t just the stirrings of a physical desire; it was the resurrection of my very essence, a part of me I thought had been dead and buried in the depths of my soul, now clawing its way back to the surface with a vengeance. I was about to embark on a journey not just of the flesh but of the spirit, diving headfirst into the abyss with nothing but a snarl and a smirk.