And for the first time since I got off the plane, I think maybe being here—maybe New York itself—will be okay.
“Come on,” Ophelia says, and she grabs my hand, pulling me deeper into the club.
She and Diego get shots at the bar. I make an excuse to go to the bathroom, and when I come back, they’re already dancing. It’s easy to slip into the crowd alongside them, to let our bodies become fluid and anonymous. I end up with Ophelia, my hands on her plush waist and her hips grinding against mine. It’s not even sexual, not really; it’s the kind of hyperphysical flirtation queer girls get into sometimes, where movement becomes its own language. It’s special. It’s something I worried I wouldn’t find when I left LA and its queer-lit bookshops, as if people like us only exist in the spaces I’m familiar with. I knew I was wrong, of course, that this was just me being self-absorbed and navel-gazey about my own experience, but still.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to make friends anywhere else. That if I left the people who’d been putting up with me for the past eight years, I’d find I was in fact an intolerable person to be around.
We dance until the heat gets to be too much and I have to excuse myself to catch my breath and find something cold to drink. I end up at the bar, leaning in past the crowd of brightly colored gays, trying to get the bartender’s attention. Which is kind of difficult when you’re the only one present who isn’t plastered in glitter and glow stick goo. I’m starting to get low-key irritated about it, which probably shows on my face, because when I accidentally make eye contact with the guy standing next to me, he laughs and says, “Yeah, around here you need to be wearing about seventy percent less clothing to get service. Sorry.”
I feel my cheeks flush. The comment would have landed a lot differently if it had come from a different sort of guy—or at a straight club, where douches outnumber reasonable people four to one. But this man isn’t looking at me like I’m a piece of disappointingly overdressed meat. He’s smiling, has the kind of face that aggressively reads himbo despite his scruffy jawline and strong features. The thick Carolina accent certainly helps. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt, James Dean style, and I can’t avoid noticing the way his black jeans cling to his muscular thighs a little too well.
Statistically speaking, I remind myself, he is almost definitely gay, so there’s no point in fantasizing.
But holy shit. He looks like he could crush my head between those thighs, and to be honest, I would probably let him.
“I suppose I could always take my shirt off,” I say, and his grin widens slightly, revealing—fuck me—dimples.
“You could,” he says. “Or you could let me give it a go. I’m kind of a regular around these parts.” He rises up on the balls of his feet, which is necessary considering he’s around my height or maybe even a little shorter, and extends a heavily tattooed arm over the bar. “Greg!”
The bartender, presumably Greg, who has somehow heard hot guy’s voice over the throbbing bass line, glances over his shoulder at us and shoots my new friend a thumbs-up.
“There you go,” says my friend, dropping back onto his heels again. “All sorted out. Maybe I could buy your drink for you?” He pairs that question with an arch of a brow. I wish my arched brow looked that sexy.
My blush deepens, which is humiliating because I’ve never been an attractive blusher. My whole face tends to turn red, not just my cheeks, making me look more like I’m doing a lobster cosplay than flirting with a sexy stranger.
“Sure,” I say. “I mean…yeah. Okay. If you want. But you don’t have to actually…. That is, it won’t cost much. I’m just ordering seltzer with lemon.”
Something shifts in the guy’s expression. The way he looks at me isn’t teasing anymore; it’s more…considering. “You’re sober?”
I nod. I’m not sure where he’s headed with this. Some people—men, mostly—are really turned off by the realization that they can’t simply ply me with liquor and have me fall drunkenly into their beds. But this guy isn’t like other guys, apparently, because if anything, my answer makes him lean in closer, bracing one elbow against the bar and facing me more fully, as if I just became the most interesting person in this place. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a gay club, meaning he’s probably gay, meaning I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself.
He’s hot, but he needs to be hot in the way that fictional characters are hot. He’s unattainable.
“Me too,” he says. “A little over ten years now.”
“Four,” I say, a little shyly, which surprises me. But then again, I don’t get many opportunities to talk about my sobriety with people who actually give a shit. “A little more.”
“Four’s great,” the guy says. “Four’s awesome. Congratulations.”
A couple comes up to the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention; they sidle their way in behind my new friend, who has to shift closer to me to make room. I’m near enough to him now that I can smell the smoky, salty scent of his deodorant—or whatever that smell is, because I’m pretty sure this guy isn’t the type to wear cologne.
The bartender chooses this moment to finally show up, and the guy—whose name I still don’t know, but he looks kind of like Jamie Dornan, so I’ll call him Jamie—orders us both seltzers in martini glasses with lemon garnish.
“Cheers,” he says, and clinks our glasses together.
We each take a sip, and I can’t stop watching him over the rim of my glass—which he notices, apparently, because his grin when he lowers his drink is a little sharper than before.
“Here’s the thing, though,” I say. “These places always use well seltzer. When really, Sanpellegrino is the only sparkling water option worth considering.”
He rolls his eyes, slapping one hand down against the bar. “Oh, come on. I can’t believe you would shit on my boy LaCroix like this.”
“LaCroix? Are you a thirty-five-year-old mommy blogger?”
“Don’t knock Pamplemousse.”
“I will knock Pamplemousse. You know the ‘natural flavoring’ all these brands crow about comes from like…beaver anal gland expression or whatever.” Which is actually true. I didn’t think it was when Chaya told me, but then I looked it up—much to my regret.
His smirk tugs a little tighter, a crooked smile I want to kiss right off his face. “I personally consider myself a connoisseur of beaver butt juice. A delicacy in some parts of Brooklyn.”
“Sorry, my Sanpellegrino-trained palate must not be discerning enough.”
“Cultural differences,” he says with a sage nod. “They must not have a wide enough variety of anal flavorings where you come from. Where is this fabled land of milk and overpriced seltzer, by the way?”