His Rules by Jack Gunthridge

Chapter One
                  There are some men you meet who will instantly change your life.  And then there are those that slip into your life and become important to you without you even realizing it. 
    We were both completely different people when we first met.  I hated him back then.  I thought he was arrogant and rude.  Even though he was cute, well-educated, and had a great sense of humor, there was something about him that turned me off.  I think it was that he was constantly watching me as if he could see through me.  He was a writer, fresh out of college, with a promising career.  Having gotten hired at one of the better magazines in New York, he was introduced to some of the better people in the city, like the crowd I had always run with.  His education and manner couldn’t disguise the fact he wasn’t born rich.  I think I hated him more for that reason than anything else.
    When I first met him, he was way off limits.  And I didn’t think of him in that way, since he was dating one of my friends, Kristin.  She was a good ten years older than I was, but we had grown up together.  Our families were friends, and she used to babysit for me. 
    She had met him at a wedding.  I think they got together because he was younger than she was, and she needed that.  He seemed to be more style than substance, which pleased her.  She would date men like this in an attempt to deceive herself that she wasn’t aging.  I never knew if the men were dating her for her money, for her advanced sexual techniques she flaunted about in her conversations, or for the fact that she put out.
                  I don’t mean for that to sound bad.  Men have a habit of knowing which women are easy to bed.  Even he has said, “Men are like electricity.  We take the path of least resistance.”  Of course, he said it with a twinkle in his blue-grey eyes and with a smile playing on his lips.  I have always found him to be the most handsome, the most charming, and the most aggravating at these times.  I’m torn between wanting to kiss him and wanting to smack him as hard as I can.  I don’t think it would bother me so much, but I get the feeling he knows I find him attractive and is playing with my head and emotions.  It’s like he’s trying to get me to admit something, so he can then deny he feels the same way.
                  I don’t think he would affect me this way, but… Since I first met, my opinion of him has changed.  He is my best friend, and yet, in a lot of ways, I don’t really know him.  The more he lets me in, the more he seems to be a mystery to me.  I get the feeling he enjoys being a mystery.  He seems to have rules and will deny himself certain pleasures because of these rules.
                    I have often wondered how different my life would be right now if he didn’t have these rules.  I have heard Kristin’s story of how they first met.  It was at a wedding.  He was sitting all alone while the rest of the people his age were dancing.  She came up to him and said, “Single or gay?”
                  “Excuse me?”
                  “Single or gay?  Those are the two types of men that sit alone at wedding”, she said. 
                  When she tells the story, she always talks about how a smile came to his lips and a twinkle entered his eyes as he said, “I’m straight and single.  I’ve just grown tired of the game.  This is the sixth wedding I’ve been to this year.  The bride and bridesmaids might change, but it’s always the same group of women my age trying to find a man to prove to the world they are successful.  They don’t care what the man is like as long as they can somewhat get along with him enough to get married and pop out at least one kid before she hits thirty and thinks she’s going to suddenly become barren.”
                  “And what about women who