Love Lies Dying by Steve Gerlach

again, no news meant she’d have to stay with them longer, and John began to think he’d enjoy that.
    She’s going to be a handful, he thought again.
    He walked into the bathroom, turned on the light and stared at himself in the mirror.
    It had been a long day and he was exhausted. He really couldn’t be bothered doing anything other than standing there staring at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes looked tired and his short brown hair was all ruffled from his nap on the sofa.
    But what a way to wake up! John thought as he smiled to himself. Her mouth, hot and wet around him, had felt so good.
    “You’ve still got the pulling power,” he whispered to himself as he looked at his reflection.
    He smirked, Yeah, right! Who am I fooling?
    He had always thought of himself as quite attractive to the opposite sex, he’d certainly had no trouble in his college days, but he’d never had women just throw themselves at him. He was good looking with sharp defined features, and college football had kept him in good shape. He looked in the mirror now, stared at the few strands of grey hair that had begun to appear on his head and at the slowly forming wrinkles around his eyes. Still, not bad for a guy in his early thirties.
    And Zoe proved that he was still attractive to at least some of the female population.
    He remembered then the first time he had seen Helen. It was part way through his senior year of college. He’d never seen her before then, because she was a freshman.
    He’d spent so much time trying to impress the cheerleaders that any girl not on the squad just wasn’t worth his time. And that had been his big mistake.
    Sure, he was good looking, but he wasn’t the best looking on the team. The cheerleaders were more interested in Donny DuBois and Marty Klavan.
    Some guys had it easy.
    Meanwhile, guys like John and his best pal Richard Dunbar had to work for their conquests.
    And, for John, Helen had been the sweetest of them all. So sweet, because it had been so easy.
    John folded his arms on his chest and watched as his reflection did the same.
    “Yeah, you’ve still got it,” he said.
    Part way through his final year everything was going great, except for his love life. It was a black hole of loneliness and depression. But then out of nowhere Helen appeared.
    He’d been dragged into a post-game party that Donny DuBois had thrown at the house he and a few friends were renting just off campus. He really didn’t want to be there, but with nothing much to do and the adrenaline still pumping, he had decided to go along.
    Richard had told him to blow the guys off and tell them to jam their party where the sun don’t shine. But Richard was like that. He was the one who was always going to be the writer and would return to his dorm and type out page after page of one novel or another on an old rickety typewriter.
    John had told him he was going to the party and that Richard should come along.
    “It’ll be fun,” John had said to him.
    “Jam it,” Richard had replied as he fed another blank page into his typewriter.
    But when he got there he wished he had listened to Richard in the first place.
    It was a boring party full of boring people who were only interested in getting on Donny’s good side, or naked side, depending on whether they were male or female.
    Most of the guys were from the team and John had nothing too much to say to them – he saw them every day of the week anyhow. And most of the female flesh was better left on the rack.
    Girls like Patricia “Pattie the Fattie” Bourke and Maureen O’Reilly were there hoping to get lucky. But the rolls of fat around their stomachs and their truly sad make-up made them only good for teasing and laughing at.
    Some girls just didn’t get it. Or, more likely, they were hoping someone would get drunk enough to help them get it. But you’d have to be mighty drunk to want to pop their stale and tasteless cherries.
    Sad, sad girls, John shook his head as he