Loving Graham Read online

  Theo knows everybody because he’s an actor, and that means we get to skip lines, cover fees, and best of all, we don’t need reservations. All of those perks, and he’s not even officially famous yet.

  He grabs Abe’s hand and leads us to the giant double doors lined with blue neon lights where he whispers something into the ear of the man giving admittance. The man smiles, and even with a full beard, I can see him blush before he opens the door and allows us to pass.

  “Thanks, man,” I say to the blushing bodyguard when I pass, and he grunts out, “No problem.”

  Inside there are two paths to take—straight forward to the main level with three bars and a dance floor or upstairs to a mildly quieter area with tables and chairs. I don’t have to ask which way Theo will choose and when he leads us straight to the dance floor, I’m not surprised.

  Bianca jumps right in throwing her hands over her head and pumping her hips to the pounding beat of the music with gusto like she hasn’t already been dancing for hours at my apartment. Abe and Theo join her, and I make my way through the crowd to the bar for a drink.

  I’ll dance, but not until I’ve had a little liquid courage. My friends know this about me, and they don’t balk when I abandon them on the dance floor. I lean against the glowing glass bar and ask the bartender to get me a Rusty Nail and a Long Island Iced Tea—the Long Island is for Bianca.

  The bartender leans over the bar and slides the drinks in my direction saying, “That’ll be thirty dollars.” I roll my eyes and hand him my credit card instructing him to start a tab. He takes it and shrugs, “Sorry, New Years, ya know?” he says apologizing for the drink prices.

  He’s cute, all of the bartenders here are young, cute, and, most of the time, willing to serve you more than your drink. But since Ben and I have agreed to meet, I don’t seem to have eyes for anyone but him, and I’ve never seen him. I’ve asked for a picture several times, but he always finds a way to steer the conversation away from my request. I tried to tempt him with ‘I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,’ but to no avail.

  It doesn’t bother me as much as it does my friends. Bianca thinks Ben has some sort of physical deformity that he doesn’t want me to see until he has me trapped in Florida. Abe is sweet and believes Ben is shy. And then there’s Theo who is convinced that Ben is some psycho luring me to the marshes of Florida to behead me and feed me to the alligators. Drama.

  I figure I’ll find out what he looks like soon enough, and if I don’t like what I see, I’ll deal with that then. That’s not to say I won’t be bugging him for a picture until then.

  Drinks in hand, I skirt the packed dance floor and wait for one of them to tire out and join me. My bet is it’ll be Abe. He likes to dance, but he isn’t a fan of huge crowds, he’s our introvert. He’s mostly here for his husband—the social butterfly—and partially for Bianca and me.

  When I see him squeezing through the hot sweaty bodies with his arms down straight at his sides and a disgusted expression on his face, I can’t help but laugh.

  “Ugh, those people are soaking wet, don’t they ever take a break? Every one of them is going to dehydrate and die before the new year.” He takes Bianca’s drink from my hand. “She won’t miss a couple of sips,” he says sucking down half the drink.

  “A couple of sips, huh?” I say looking at the glass.

  “She has herself wrapped around some pretty piece of candy out there already. She won’t be back for a while. Her ice is melting. I’m doing her a favor.” He smiles and takes another drink.

  “Whatever, you owe me fifteen dollars.” His eyes pop open wide, and he glances down at the drink and back to me.

  “Is that what drinks cost these days?” he asks, not having a clue. Theo always buys his drinks for him, but nine times out of ten he gets them for free.

  “They jack it up for the holidays, but fifteen bucks isn’t far off from the normal. And I was kidding, that one’s on me.”

  “Great, in that case…” he puts his lips to the straw still looking at me and slurps down the rest of the drink. I shake my head.

  “You’re a lightweight, Abe. If you drink like that all night, you’re going to end up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning.”

  Right about then, he reaches out and presses his hand on a big white pillar for support. “Yeah, I think you’re right, I don’t feel so great.”

  “Let’s get you upstairs where you can sit down. Come on, I’ll help you,” I say sliding my hand around his waist and draping his arm across my shoulders.

  “What about Theo?” he asks squinting into the crowd to see that Theo is still dancing.

  “Who was he with when you left him?” I ask.

  “Some guy from the theater, Frank, I think.”

  “I’ll text him when we get upstairs and let him know where we are.”

  “Okay, that’s a good idea,” he’s slurring already, such a lightweight.

  Upstairs is a little quieter. I let Abe fall into a white leather chair and text Theo our location. I nab the corner of a couch next to Abe’s chair perching on the edge as it’s already seating three people.

  “Theo knows where we are. Do you want some water or something?”

  “No, I’m good, better since I sat down, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Liam, so that you know, there’s a fantastic looking brunette on her way over here to hit on you. Don’t turn around.”

  And at that, I turn around. The brunette he’s talking about is, indeed, beautiful and confident in her stride. I hope she takes rejection well.

  “Hi, I’m Jenna, my friends dared me to ask you to dance, and I don’t say no to a dare. Don’t take offense, but I don’t think we are each other’s type, but I’d love to win this dare so, dance?” Jenna wrinkles up her nose like dancing with me is the last thing on earth she wants to be doing.

  “Hi, Jenna, I’m Liam, and this is my friend, Abe, who is not feeling the best after he just chugged a Long Island. I really should stay with…”

  “Oh nonsense, go, dance, I’ll be fine. Don’t let the girl down,” Abe says shooing me away with his hand.

  “You sure?” I ask.

  “Yes, I needed to sit down, that’s all.”

  “Well, Jenna, I guess you’re on.”

  “Oh my gosh, thank you so much.” She turns and waves at a group of women across the room and gives them the thumbs up sign. I smile at them and take Jenna’s arm.

  “Was it truth or dare or just a dare?” I ask.

  “Truth or dare, I’m terrible with the truth, I always choose a dare.”

  “I see. That sounded honest.”

  “No, I mean I’m terrible at telling them the truth about anything. They’re a pack of wolves always looking for some juicy gossip to spread around the office.”

  “Work friends, I get it.”

  I put my hand on the small of her back and guide her down the stairs to the main floor where chit chat is impossible.

  “Is your friend a work friend?” she yells.

  “No, just a friend, friend,” I yell back.

  Once we hit the dance floor, I see Theo off to my right jumping up and down like a loon—he can act, but he can’t dance for shit. Directly in the center of the floor is Bianca grinding on a model handsome man/boy that will no doubt be her midnight kiss and her one-night stand later on.

  Dancing with a woman is always odd for me. I’m never sure what body parts should be thrust where, since nothing about the female body turns me on and this kind of dancing is all about sex.

  Jenna cups her hand around the side of her mouth and yells, “You look uncomfortable.” At the same time, she starts to move her hips to the beat of the music.

  I shrug and point at my ears indicating that it’s too loud to talk. She nods and spins in a circle on her five-inch heels wobbling slightly. I take her elbow, and she looks up into my eyes. “I think that fulfills my dare. We don’t have to keep doing this, but can I ask another favor?�
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  “What’s that?”

  “Will you put me in an Uber so I can escape?”

  “You want to go home?”

  She nods, and I take her hand and lead her toward the entrance. When we are where we can speak without yelling, I ask for her phone and order her an Uber.

  “Why are you going home before midnight?”

  “I’m drunk and tired, and my boyfriend dumped me this morning for some stupid whore he met on a business trip.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, it was shitty timing, but it’s probably for the best. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “How do you know I’m gay?” I ask.

  “Just a guess at first, but then you didn’t put your hands on me on the dance floor. All guys ever want to do is touch my ass. So, do you?”

  “I, uh, well, not exactly. I’m talking to someone online, and we’re going to meet in a couple of weeks.”

  Her face clouds with concern, and she reaches up to touch my shoulder. “I don’t know you, but you seem like a really sweet guy. Please, be careful. My friend met someone she’d been talking to for a long time online, and he, well let’s just say he wasn’t what she expected, and she got hurt.”

  “That’s terrible, I’m sorry. Thanks for the warning.”

  Her phone dings notifying her that her ride is waiting outside. “Gotta go, thanks for the short dance, and for helping me get outta here. Have a Happy New Year’s Eve and be safe when you meet your friend.” I walk her to the door, and I watch her teeter out wobbling once or twice on her way toward the car leaving me with a head full of doubt and an active imagination.

  “Hey, where’s your girlfriend?” Abe asks coming down the stairs.

  “She wanted to escape. I put her in an Uber.”

  “Wow, that bad?”

  “It wasn’t because of me. I’m an excellent dancer. She broke up with her boyfriend recently and wasn’t in the mood to party. Her friends dragged her out, and she needed an excuse to bolt.”

  “She gonna tell her friends she went home with you?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know, it’s no big deal if she does. I’ll probably never see her again. She did say something else that kind of bothers me, though.”

  “Oh man, here it comes, she wants you to be her gay best friend?”

  “No, nothing like that. She asked me if I had a boyfriend, and when I told her about Ben, she warned me to be careful meeting someone I don’t know.”

  “And?”

  “And, I’ve never worried once about something going wrong, other than the fact he hasn’t shown me a picture of himself yet.”

  Abe leans into me. “You’ve never seen him?”

  “No.”

  “Um, don’t you think that’s pretty important? I mean, I know you like him, but physical attraction is a huge factor just to ignore.”

  “I’m not ignoring it. I’ve asked him several times for a pic, and he finds a way to change the subject.”

  Abe shakes his head and whacks me on the back. “Good luck, man.”

  I roll my eyes and re-enter the deafening club with Abe on my heels.

  “There you are!” Bianca and Theo yell. “We were just coming to look for you,” Theo says taking Abe’s hand in his and kissing him on the cheek.

  “Chugged a Long Island and got woozy, and Liam helped a damsel in distress.”

  “You?” Bianca asks.

  “No, well yes, but no. He helped me, and then he helped a woman trying to get away from her friends.”

  “You do-gooder, you,” Bianca yells and elbows me in the ribs. “Where’s my drink?” I hitch my thumb toward Abe, and he gives her a guilty grin.

  “So that was my Long Island you chugged? Serves you right it made you sick.” The bartender slides another Long Island and a frilly fruity drink across the bar to Bianca and Theo. “Thanks, put it on my tab,” Bianca calls out.

  “You started a tab? Is that a New Year’s resolution to pay for your own drinks? Because if it is, you still have a couple of hours to use me,” I say. She’s had problems with drinking in the past, and this was our way of me holding her accountable for how much she drinks when we go out.

  “I’m a big girl. You don’t have to keep buying my drinks. I love you for offering, though.” She raises her glass to cheer with Theo. “You two need refills. It’s on me. What do you want?”

  Honestly, I want to go home, but that would ruin her New Year’s Eve, so I accept another Rusty Nail. Abe takes a beer, and we head back toward the dance floor to swap sweat with a hundred people we don’t know.

  Three drinks later, I’m glad I didn’t go home. We’re having fun flirting with any and everybody on the dance floor. Inhibitions went out the window with the whiskey in my drinks, and if not for Ben, I would be leaving with an adorable Irish man I was dancing with earlier.

  The moment I think his name, my phone vibrates in my breast pocket. I slip it out and squint trying to focus on who is calling me right before midnight. It’s Ben, shit. I want to talk to him, but there’s no way I’ll be able to hear him in this place.

  I let the call go to voicemail and text that I’ll call him right back.

  “I’ll be right back, I have to take this call,” I say to the group.

  “Everybody who’s important is right here, who’s calling you?” Bianca asks in her super sassy drunk tone.

  “Ben. I’ll be back.” I slide off the bar stool and squeeze through the incredibly packed bar toward the doors. It’s busier now that it’s close to midnight. People are all vying for the perfect place to kiss when the countdown is over.

  “I’m stepping outside to take a call,” I tell the bouncer and he nods.

  Outside, I lean against the brick wall of the building and press redial on Ben’s name. He answers right away. “Hey, I’m glad you called back. I wanted to wish you a Happy New Year at midnight,” he says as if we chat on the phone all the time when, in fact, we have only spoken twice for brief moments.

  “Of course, sorry. I’m at a club with friends, and it’s impossible to hear anything in there. I had to come outside. How are you?”

  “I’m good, are you having fun?” he asks, but I know what the question means, are you with someone.

  “Yeah, I’m with Abe and Theo, I told you about them, didn’t I? They’re married, and my lifelong friend, Bianca.”

  “Yeah, you’ve mentioned them.”

  “Are you doing anything special?”

  “No, I’m home. I’ll probably watch the ball drop pretty soon and go to bed.”

  “Ben, I want to see what you look like,” I blurt out. He is quiet, but I’m drunk and brave. “Ben?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Liam, can I ask you a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Can we wait until you get here to see each other? I’ve been working out, and I want to get a little sun. I would feel a lot better if we waited.”

  “I don’t care if you’re tan or in good shape, but I’ll wait if that’s what you need.”

  “I do, thank you, Liam.”

  I’ve been absently kicking at a crack in the sidewalk trying to get a loose piece of concrete free when I feel a wave of déjà vu hit me like a Mack truck. I stop and stare at the sidewalk. I swear I’ve heard that exact voice say those exact words before.

  “Liam? You still there?”

  “Yeah,” I whisper.

  “Are you okay? It felt like I lost you there for a second.”

  I try to shake the feeling free and push off the wall sliding my free hand into my pocket. I shiver and raise my shoulders hunching in around myself to keep warm. It’s a cold night, not a night to be standing outside without a coat in D.C.

  “I’m fine, it’s just freezing here, and I came outside to hear you.” That’s the truth, but it’s not why I drifted away for a moment. I can’t shake the familiar feeling that I’ve heard him say those words before—it’s the longest bout of déjà vu I’ve ever experienced.

>   “Oh man, I’m sorry. I totally forgot it’s so cold there. I won’t keep you, go inside. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “No, no, stay until the new year. It’s only a couple minutes away.”

  “Okay, but go inside. It’s all right if it’s noisy. We can count down together on the phone. It’ll make me feel like I’m actually at a New Year’s Eve party.”

  “Okay, hold on,” I say opening the door to the club. The bouncer recognizes me and waves me in. People are gathering on the dance floor to watch the ball drop on an enormous big-screen television.

  I see my friends and make my way to them with the phone still to my ear.

  “What are you doing?” Bianca yells.

  “Ben,” I yell holding the phone up.

  “Happy New Year, Ben!” she says into the phone.

  “Happy New Year to you, too,” he says back.

  “He says same to you,” I tell Bianca, and she smiles and grabs ahold of her man/boy’s arm.

  Abe looks at me with raised brows, and Theo gives me two thumbs up. Abe hasn’t had much to drink, and his skepticism about Ben not wanting to reveal himself in a photo is still apparent.

  The crowd starts to count down together. “The ball is dropping,” I say to Ben.

  “I have it on TV here.”

  “Count down with me,” I say.

  “Okay… eight, seven.”

  “Six, five, four, three,” we say together along with the other five hundred plus people in the club.

  “Two, one, Happy New Year!” everyone yells. Then it’s all horns, whistles, noisemakers, and confetti until the kissing begins. I forgot about that part when I got wrapped up in my phone call with Ben.

  “Happy New Year, Liam,” I barely hear him say with all the noise going on around me.

  “Happy New Year, Ben.”

  “I’d kiss you if I were there,” he says, and I close my eyes and try to imagine my six-foot tall, sandy blond haired, green-eyed stranger kissing me, but the only person I see is Noah. It’s always Noah in my fantasies, in my dreams—whenever I imagine my perfect man—it’s him.

  “And I’d kiss you back,” I say, but I don’t know if he heard me over the noise. The call disconnects, and my phone vibrates with a text. It’s from Ben, and there is a picture attached.