Those in the diner that were not already looking towards our table after Emmett's announcement were certainly looking after the sound of Debbie dropping the tray rang through the room.

Kiki and another server rushed over to help Debbie clean up the mess but Debbie remained standing, her eyes burning into Brian.

"Please, dear God, tell me that you used a condom!" she yelled at him.

"Of course I did. I always use a condom."

"And have you been tested since then?"

"Yes, I get tested every six months, without fail," Brian insisted. "Still negative."

Debbie made the sign of the cross on her chest.

I looked over at Emmett and Ted curiously.

"Ben's positive," Ted quietly informed me.

I mouthed oh and looked back over to my left at Brian, who was staring down at his hands in his lap. "Well, at least my trick told me beforehand and we didn't forget the condom, unlike some people I know."

I looked back at Ted, who was guiltily biting his bottom lip.

Before I could ask about what Brian was referring to, Debbie pulled her order pad out of her apron. "Okay... so, what will you boys be having?"

"I'm not hungry," Brian said before he motioned for me to get up so he could get out of the booth.

"Where are you going?" I asked him.

Instead of answering me he yelled to all the gawkers, "Show's over! Nothing left to see here," as he walked towards the door.

I was only about halfway finished with my dinner, but I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, and ran after him.

He was crossing the street as I stepped outside onto the curb.

"Brian!" I yelled.

He turned around to look at me once he made it onto the sidewalk. He waited for me to join him on the other side of the street.

"Where are you going?" I asked him again.

"Nowhere that seventeen year old boys should go," he answered in a bitter tone.

He began walking away, but I quickly caught up with him and grabbed onto his arm.

"Let me come with you," I said as I looked up into his eyes. "Please?"

Brian looked up to the dark sky for a moment, probably asking someone upstairs what he did to deserve a little blonde stalker like me before sighing. "Come on," he said.

We started walking again and, taking a chance, I linked my arm through his. He looked down at where our bodies were then joined but did not pull away or tell me to let him go.

We walked over to the next block before Brian pulled me over to a short set of concrete stairs going up. I looked up and saw a red awning over the stairs which had a profile of a white rhino and the word Woody's printed on it. I remembered passing by the place on my few trips to Liberty Avenue before but was unsure of what it was.

After walking up the stairs and into the building, I realized that Woody's was a bar. There were several men lingering around the bar area and the two pool tables as well as many sitting at the tables scattered around. I followed Brian over to the bar area where he quickly caught the attention of the bartender.

"Get me my usual and a Coke for Blondie here," he said to the man.

"Just a Coke?" I asked Brian.

He smirked at me. "Eh, what the hell? It's not a school night. Put a shot in there for him, Russ."

I watched as Russ poured a few shots of Jim Beam into a glass.

"So, is Jim Beam your drink of choice?" I asked Brian, remembering the bottle of it that he had on the evening of his father's viewing.

He shrugged. "My old man used to buy it because it's cheap but more drinkable than many other cheap whiskeys. There are a few different brands that I prefer - Jack Daniels, Jameson, Maker's Mark, Johnnie Walker..."

"Do you only drink whiskey?"

Russ sat our drinks on the bar and I pulled out my wallet.

Brian pushed my hand away. "Put it on my tab," he told Russ.

We took our drinks to one of the empty tables and put our coats on the back of the chairs we took. "I'll drink anything but champagne - that shit makes me puke."

I snickered. "Too sophisticated for your taste buds?"

"Must be, because I can usually hold my liquor no matter how much I drink. Lindsay brought me to her sister's wedding a few years back, where I spent half the night on a bathroom floor at the Edgewood Country Club reception hall after only two glasses," he said before tossing back his drink.

I stirred mine with the straw that Russ had throw in. "So... um, I guess that Michael doesn't know about you and Ben?"

Brian snorted a laugh as he reached into his coat pocket for his cigarettes. "He's probably gotten no less than ten phone calls by now letting him know. I've never told him and I'm guessing that Ben hasn't either, because Mikey would have asked me about it."

I took a sip of my drink. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" he asked as he lit up.

"Well, I was the one that asked you if you'd been the one to introduce Michael to Ben, and if I hadn't, your time with him would probably still be your dirty little secret."

He blew the smoke out of his nose, which always made me sneeze when I did that. "Fuck it. It happened before Ben and Mikey met. What's in the past is in the past."

"Yeah, but he might get mad that you didn't tell him about it," I pointed out. "I mean, I know that I don't know Michael, but-"

Brian picked up his empty glass, got up, and walked back over to the bar without a word. I followed him a few seconds later but stopped a few feet away, unsure of how to approach him. Michael was obviously a touchy subject for him for some reason.

I took a few breaths before calling out to him. "Brian?"

He didn't turn around, so I walked over to stand next to him.

"Brian... I'm sorry."

He looked over at me with a little smile. "You said that already."

"I know, but-"

He interrupted me by putting the filter end of his cigarette in front of my lips. I took a pull off of it.

"You talk too much sometimes - do you know that?" Brian asked me.

I laughed/coughed out the smoke from my lungs. "Yeah... I've been told that once or twice. It gets worse when I'm nervous."

He nodded as Russ the bartender handed a replenished drink to him. "I've noticed."

One of the pool tables opened up as we returned to our table.

"Do you play?" Brian asked me, pointing to the table.

I shook my head.

"What?" he asked in disbelief.

"I'm not an athlete," I said with a shrug.

"You don't have to be an athlete to play pool," he said as he walked over to the table and sat his drink on the edge. He began racking up the balls. "With that 740 in math I'm sure you'd be great at it."

I smiled, touched that he remembered my math score on the SAT. "What does math have to do with it?"

"You use geometry to calculate which angles you need to bank the shots into the pockets," he explained.

"I don't even know how to hold the stick right," I said.

"Cue," he said.

"Huh?" 

He grabbed one of the sticks off of a rack on the wall, rubbed a small cube of blue chalk on the tip, and handed it over to me. "It's called a ‘cue,' like in ‘cue ball.'"

"Oh... I thought you meant ‘queue,' like a line," I said as I took the cue from him, feeling like an idiot.

He tossed back his second drink and put his cigarette in his mouth. "Come here."

I walked over to him and he grabbed onto my shoulders to turn me around so that my back was to his front.

"Alright. Hold the cue in your right hand," he mumbled around the cigarette as he bent me forward over the table. "Put your left hand on the felt."

I was very aware of the position he had me in and that my mouth was wide open in shock. I did as he told me and placed my left hand onto the green felt, and he positioned it so that my index finger wasn't touching the felt. He then directed me to place the end of the cue under my index finger and over the knuckle of my middle finger.

"Okay," he said, shifting behind me and, as a result, rubbing his now-obvious erection at the top of the crack of my ass.

"Now, pull your right hand back," he whispered into my left ear as he pulled my hand back, "and..."

He forced my hand to smack the tip of the cue into the cue ball, which broke the triangle of balls on the table and scattered them around. None of the balls went into any of the pockets.

"Just like that, but since you didn't pocket any balls, it's my turn," he said as snubbed the cigarette into an ash tray on the edge of the table.

Brian then grabbed a cue for himself and chalked it. "I'm going to go for the stripes, so yours will be the solids." He pocketed the yellow-and-white striped ball. "If you sink a ball, you get to take another shot."

I nodded in understanding as I watched him set up his next shot, which gave me a great view of his ass in the snug blue jeans he was wearing that evening. He tried to pocket the blue-and-white ball, but missed.

"Your turn," he said as he leaned his cue against the wall and pulled me over to the other side of the table. He helped me get into the correct position again, where he once again bent over my back and rubbed his hard dick on my ass. "See how you need to angle the shot so that the cue ball will bank off the side and hit the red solid?"

"Yeah," I croaked out, unable to move for several seconds.

"How about you hit it this time?" he whispered into my ear, although his right hand was firmly wrapped around mine.

"Okay," I whispered back before striking the cue ball, which banked at just the correct angle and knocked the red solid ball into the corner pocket.

Brian ran both of his hands down my sides as he stood up straight. "Perfect. Do you think you can set up your next shot?"

I looked around the table, where I noticed that we had accumulated a little audience. I then looked back at him. "Can you show me again?"

He smiled. "Sure."