Deep within a dark bar Cromwell sits solitary.

After emptying his glass down his throat, he slams it on the counter and asks for another. Reluctantly, the bartender mixes another up and places it in front of him.

“Yeah, yeah, you do your job and I’ll do mine,” Cromwell mutters at the bartender.

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Near the end of the bar, several women are drinking and laughing together. The closest one looks nice, and not too young.

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At best, Cromwell figures he has five years on her. Though he usually only displays animosity and contempt towards members of the opposite sex, his inebriation, combined with his loneliness, prompts him to break character.

He motions to the bartender and throws a few more bills on top of the bar. The bartender is apparently much less reluctant to give someone else another drink. As he places it in front of the woman at the end of the bar, the bartender motions back towards Cromwell. After only a split-second glance in his direction, she turns quickly to her friends and says a few short words.

The others look in his direction as well, and burst out into laughter. The woman blushes and heads towards the door. It only takes a few seconds for the others to finish their drinks and follow suit. As the last one places her empty glass on the bar, she glares at Cromwell, sticks out her tongue, and knocks over the drink that he had offered her friend. She lets out a most mischievous cackle as she rushes towards the exit.

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The bartender is kind enough to pretend that he has noticed none of this.

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It’s a wise move on is part, for inside, Cromwell is raging like a volcano moments before the eruption. A flood of memories have overtaken him. He remembers how he finally let his guard down when he was introduced to his wife. He had never let any woman get that close, but somehow he stood powerless before her. The feelings, the joy, the love, the passion. Timothy had been overtaken with an exuberant life of ecstasy from the moment he had met her. A life he had never fathomed could ever exist was exactly what he found himself in when they got married, and he loved every minute of it.

A continuous joy and deep-felt happiness consumed his entire life, and a man who had spent most of his childhood and young adult life as a reserved recluse finally bloomed. But all that had ended. So abruptly, so unannounced; it ended. The life which he had never known could exist, and that he never thought he would have to give up, was torn out of his desperate hands, leaving him empty and broken.

After a while he’d tried again, but they were all such maggots. The hair, the dress, and the makeup were simply the outer shell. On the inside, nothing but cruelty and bitterness. One after another, they all proved to be the same.

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All he wanted was a chance, but all they were willing to offer him was rejection.

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He needed love, gentleness, tenderness, and understanding; like a sick man reaching out for a helping hand. Time and time again, it seemed that they just wanted to wound the already wounded, and kick him when he was down. Truthfully, he’d never even gotten close to getting up again. The pain inside him was just as real and present now as it was when it first happened. His bleeding heart had never healed, and the closest thing to a solution that Cromwell was able to find was a bottle.

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A liquid bandage.

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But liquid and bandages never work.

No matter how many times he tried to patch up his wound in this manner, it never healed; it only festered. Now, it was festering even more.

The animosity that he had momentarily suppressed was back with a vengeance, accelerated by further rejection and alcohol. While lost in a frenzied flood of emotions and memories, he knocks his own drink over as well.

He instantly snaps out of it, and his eyes lock with the bartenders’.

The bartender freezes, like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-truck.

For a moment, the pair just stare.

Cromwell breaks the stare by growling at him, and turns to exit.

Effectively, the truck has swerved, and the deer lives another day.

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THE END OF CHAPTER 9

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TO READ THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS, CLICK BELOW:

• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

• CHAPTER 2: THE FUNERAL

• CHAPTER 3: MONDAY, & FREEDOM

• CHAPTER 4: TUESDAY

• CHAPTER 5: INTERROGATION

• CHAPTER 6: PROBATION

• CHAPTER 7: RAY’S TURN

• CHAPTER 8: ICE CREAM

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Thank you, and stay tuned for LOVE LIKE HIS : Chapter 10 - Coming soon to a steemit near you

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