“It’s warm.  Bring me another,” Ivan ordered, reaching into
his back pocket for his wallet, slipping out a crisp $20 and laying it down.

            The bartender made a
disgusted noise, took the warm beer and emptied it with a pained expression,
and fetched another from the cooler, took Ivan’s money, slapped the change down,
and ambled back to his station at the end of the bar, keeping close watch on
the stranger who’d been sitting at his bar for more than an hour and had yet to
take the first sip.  That was the third
beer gone warm he’d dumped and replaced. 
“What the fuck?” he wondered aloud. 
“Fuckin’ freak, is what he is.”

            He’d been weighing it
for days, taking that first drink, letting it wash away the pain and 11 years
of sobriety with it. He told himself she wasn’t worth it, and still wound up
pounding the pillow and crying like a baby, night after night.  No woman had ever wrapped him up the way Kit
had, and no woman had ever broken him the way she did. 

Sure, he’d been turned down, turned away by women who
couldn’t deal with what he was.  But he’d
always been able to preserve something of himself, his pride, his dignity, his
acceptance of himself, hard fought and hard won.  Not this time.  This time he’d been stripped raw, down to the
bone, and he didn’t feel much like fighting for whatever was left. 

            Kit had seen him for
what he really was, an imitation man—it was the only explanation for her
affair, the only explanation for what he’d overheard her telling Lara—and that
feeling had slowly hollowed out his soul over the last few days.  Leaving him wanting something that just
wasn’t real anymore.

For the dozenth time, he wrapped his hand around the
generous shot glass as the jukebox played a warning from Mick Jagger:

“So don’t play with me ‘cause you’re playin’ with
fire”

*~*~*~*~*

            It hadn’t taken long
for the word to spread.  If anyone knew
where Ivan was, they weren’t going to tell her. 
She’d tried the garage first, where Dax had been barely civil.  Hell, he hadn’t been civil, he’d been
dismissive.

            “I don’t know where he
is.  And if I did, you’d be the last
person I’d tell.” Dax spat at her with a smirk and had grabbed the creeper to
roll back under the vintage mustang he was working on.