“Now you sit your lil’ tush down there and don’t move, got it?”

Koby looked woefully up at Kris as he sashayed back to the bar at Phoenix, presumably to fetch more alcohol. Several of their friends crammed into the booth around him, all looking suitably distressed.

“This is all my fault,” Chase said, looking horrified at Koby.

Koby sighed and looked at Chase, taking his hand to squeeze. Ariana Grande played throughout the club around them as people – mostly gay guys – danced, chatted and snuggled in corners together.

Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. But Koby was trapped in the middle of the booth now with Chase, Gabe and Cas around him. He was stuck here. To be fair, he’d rather be stuck here rather than the art studio where the guys had dragged him away from sitting, staring at his trashed sculpture, crying over Vince.

Kris arrived back with a tray of many shots in one hand and young Harrison’s hand gripped in the other. They had both taken a night off from working the bar tonight.

“Harrison’s part of the gang now, isn’t he?” Kris pulled the apprehensive-looking nineteen-year-old into a seat. The both of them had lemonades instead of shots or beers.

“Of course,” Koby said without hesitation. Harrison worked in the kitchen behind the bar and was still finding his place in the gay community after his parents kicked him out. Even though there was almost a decade between them, Koby felt Harrison was something of a kindred spirit.

He had been having a tough week, too. Koby knew he was friends with that queer couple at the high school that the teachers were trying to stop from attending the Winder Formal together on Friday. The article that had run in the Hidden Creek Horn that morning was getting some serious backlash. Harrison needed some friends around him right now.

The others were nodding in agreement. But they were also looking warily at the shots. Kris raised his eyebrow, unsure. “What? People do shots when they’re mad or sad or…it’s a Tuesday, right?”

Kris may not drink himself, but working at a bar gave him good intuition. Koby reached forward and grabbed the tequila, lime and salt. “Hell fucking yeah,” he croaked, holding up his glass until everyone who wanted to join him did. Koby gave the nod then licked the salt from his hand and knocked the sucker back, grimacing at the burn as he sucked the lime to finish, as if that would make it better.

“So, um?” Gabe prompted.

Koby slumped and did another shot by himself.

“Oh-kay.” Kris dragged the shot tray a little out of Koby’s reach.

“Everything’s shot to shit.” Koby rolled his head and looked at his friends. It was sweet of them to insist on trying to cheer him up, but there was nothing that could be fixed. “My work is destroyed and that is not your fault, Chase Williamson,” he added, challenging Chase on his previous statement.

Chase huffed and whacked back another shot himself, not bothering with the salt or lime. “I told you to go for it with Vince.”

Just hearing his name made Koby’s throat thicken and his eyes burn. “No,” he said softly. “I’m glad I got a chance with Vince.”

“But?” Cas raised his eyebrows. “He’s going to Oklahoma, not Timbuktu.”

“Seriously,” Kris agreed. “Why are you cutting that sweet potato loose?”

Koby rolled his eyes and slumped against the red leather couch. “Uh, one, he’s leaving.” Koby ticked off his fingers. “Two, I was his first guy, he’s just having fun, he’s not in love. Three, he’s an NF fucking L player, so he’d never come out in a million squillion years. Four…”

I’m scared how much I already miss him.

“That all sounds highly logical and sane,” Harrison deadpanned.

“Shh, baby gay,” Kris said, elbowing him with a grin. “Let him drama his lil’ self out. It’s more fun that way.”

“Are you in love?”

Koby blinked and looked at Chase. “Huh?”

Chase shifted in his seat and toyed with the bottle of beer he’d brought over for himself. “You said he’s not in love. So…are you in love?”

Koby stared at him, then looked around the table. “I-” he spluttered. “I only just met the guy. I mean, no. Not true. I knew him for, like, years at school, but that doesn’t count. I didn’t know him know him. It’s been, what? A couple of weeks. No, I don’t…I can’t…”

He trailed off.

“Can’t you?” Gabe asked.

Koby remembered that he and Ryan had gone to school together. There had been that whole thing where Gabe had asked Ryan out to prom and been turned down and everyone had made such a huge fucking deal out of it. Good thing, as they probably wouldn’t have been allowed to go together anyway. As it transpired, Ryan had just needed a few years to realize what his answer should have been.

“This is different,” Koby mumbled.

Cas reached over and squeezed Koby’s knee. “I think having someone destroy your work and then Vince telling you his team is making him leave is a little too much to deal with at once,” he said with utmost sympathy. Being a craftsman himself, Koby felt the pain behind his words. “I think you’re in a bad place. But I also think you’re going to be in a much worse place if you let this man go without a fight.”

Gabe shook his head. “Don’t do it, man. You’ll regret it.”

Koby looked around them, incredulously. “He can’t stay,” he said as if spelling it out to preschoolers. “You guys shouldn’t even know about us. I’m jeopardizing his career by even telling you what happened!”

“But how do you know there isn’t still more to come?” Kris toyed with his paper straw. He could be surprisingly sincere when he wanted to. He looked over at Koby with his silvery-blue eyes. “If you just tell him to leave, he might not think you want him to fight for you.”

Koby shook his head and blinked a few times. “But he should go.” He was confused by his friends’ insistence on torturing him. “He has to go back to playing football – he wants to go back to playing football – so…that’s it.”

Chase picked at his bottle label. “We’re just saying,” he told him gently, “that it doesn’t sound like you’ve been a hundred percent honest with him.”

“If he doesn’t know your heart is breaking, how can he know how much he means to you?” Harrison’s words were heavy with the kind of sincerity only romance-struck teenagers could master.

Koby pointed at Kris. “You need to take his copy of Pride and Prejudice away for a little while. Okay?”

Kris shook his head, looking smug. “Baby gay has a point,” he said in a singsong voice over the Pussycat Dolls. The lights swirled over their heads as people danced and drank and enjoyed their night. “You’re not being fair in letting him leave if he doesn’t know how you actually feel about him.”

Koby rubbed his head and reached for another shot. “I like him, okay? It’s not earth-shattering. I’ll…just get over it.” Even though the idea of letting Vince go and moving on with his life like he did most of his other hookups…hurt. That was the only word that truly fit. It was a pain, lodged in his chest.

He tried to kill it with booze.

He was behaving like a child. The devastation over his ruined art was understandable. In fact, no one was disputing that. But they were all acting like Vince wasn’t a done deal.

“It was fun while it lasted,” he said in clipped tones, placing the empty shot glass back down. “But it’s over. I have to let it go.”

“What did I miss?” a chirpy voice asked, capturing everyone’s attention. Koby groaned as his sister pulled up a seat and sat on it backward.

“Ginger.”

She just smirked though and took some peanuts from the bowl she’d placed on the table, offering them around to the guys. “I’m your designated driver. You’re staying at Mom’s tonight.”

Koby huffed and glowered at her. Why was she so chirpy? It had been her damn idea to tell Vince how he felt, and look where that had got him.

He never should have gotten this emotionally invested when he knew there was no chance it would last. “I’m going home to my apartment,” Koby insisted.

“That drafty, dark place without a single Christmas decoration?” Ginger said cheerily. “He’s funny, my brother, isn’t he?”

The guys alternated between rolling their eyes and nodding.

“Ginger, just let me be miserable, okay?” Koby said. “Months of work got trashed by some douchebag – I don’t even know why. And Vince is gone.”

He bit his lip, deciding against another shot. He did lean over and took a swig of Chase’s beer, though.

“Yeah, sorry.” Ginger didn’t sound sorry at all. “I told Mom about your little armageddon-apocalypse day, and she decided you needed telling what your Christmas present was.” She threw up her hands and chucked another couple of peanuts into her mouth. “I told her to wait until Christmas Day, like a normal person, but noooo, you’re the favorite, as usual.” She winked at Koby.

He shook his head and tried not to ball his fists. “I don’t want a Christmas present,” he said, feeling dejected.

He wanted Vince and he couldn’t fucking have him.

Ginger brushed her hands and tilted her head at him. “Your present is a puppy,” she said patiently. “That little Pac-Man dude. Mom didn’t sell him because he’s yours. Puppies will make you feel better. Puppies are better than men. Full offense intended, gentlemen.”

“No argument here,” said Chase as Kris threw up his hands and Harrison nodded.

Ginger sighed and looked at Koby, making him feel like the baby brother he was. “That boy was special. Is special. Now you come home to your momma, let that puppy bite your nose, and when you wake up in the morning, you can think of how you’re gonna beg that hunk o’ handsome to stay. Okay?”

Koby opened his mouth. Vince didn’t want to stay. He wanted to go back to his hotshot football star life. Except…

I don’t want to leave you.

Vince had been almost tearful telling Koby that.

Christ, Koby wanted it to be true so bad. Yeah, sure, the liquor was hitting him hard now and he was maybe thinking with his cock and not his brain…but no, that wasn’t fair.

He was thinking with his heart.

He’d never met anyone like Vince. Vince surprised him and delighted him and turned him on and chilled him out. Koby hated that he’d flinched away from Vince that evening because he knew with absolute certainty Vince would never hurt him.

He just wished he saw a solution to the situation they were in.

He wasn’t going to find it at the bottom of a tequila bottle, though. So he made Chase move out for him to escape the booth, then let his big sister hug him. Everybody hugged him, the bastards. Koby hiccuped back a sob.

“Can you stop being so nice to me, please?”

Chase shook his head, rubbing his face into Koby’s T-shirt. “Nope, sorry. You’re going to let us look after you for once.” His words were greeted with a general murmur of approval.

“I hate y’all,” Koby grumbled, rubbing tears from his eyes.

“See you at karaoke night,” Ginger called to Kris and Harrison as they left. “Take care, boys. Love you! Mwah!” She led Koby by his hand past the bar and the phoenix mural he’d painted on the wall that summer, out into the cool parking lot to her Chevy Spark.

They didn’t really talk much on the ride home. Ginger just turned up Duran Duran for Koby’s benefit. When they got to their mom’s, there was no ceremony. Pac-Man just ran into Koby’s arms like he knew he belonged there while his mom followed him up to his room with a cup of hot chocolate.

Pac-Man gnawed on a hide chew as he snuggled up to Koby and let him stroke his soft puppy fur. Koby lay awake as long as his eyes would let him, mulling over what his friends had said.

Was there still a chance with Vince? Was Koby a fool to hope there was?

Was he even more of a fool to wonder what he could do about it?

Eventually, Koby slipped into unconsciousness. He imagined that, unlike before, Vince had stayed the night and wrapped him in his arms. In the meantime, Pac-Man did a good job of keeping him company. Koby realized that for the first time in a long time, this little fella was going to help him not feel so desperately alone in that apartment he’d made into a fortress for himself.

Now, if only he had a really big fella to help him not feel alone, too, he’d be all set.