I’ve got my headphones on, and I’m trying to concentrate on moving this song along. That’s where I am tonight. Definitely not thinking about Teague and how he’s still been weird since the photoshoot, even though I have been trying to give him some space. Which is definitely not the reason I’ve been spending even more time on the phone and on Skype with Dylan. At least we’re really getting somewhere on this project. It’s exciting, and I’m listening to some of the stuff we’ve come up with so far. Not thinking about my notably absent BFF. Not even a little bit.

I wish I could make everyone listen to this music with headphones on. Force them to leave everything else behind. Maybe I could be one of those eccentric performance artists who insists on controlling everything about the environment in which people are experiencing their art. Then I could have it near-to-black, comfortably cool, let them sink into those not-quite-beanbag chairs that make you feel like you’re being hugged and floating at the same time. I could have a vaguely pleasant scent pumped in, and people would be immersed. This thing that I’d planned for them would take them over. They could stay for as long or as short as they liked, and I hope some people would fall asleep. A gallery owner’s nightmare, but maybe I could find someone as crazy as me to buy it. Maybe they would if I could nail this cycle down. I told Dylan I’d try to get it sorted tonight so we can move on to something else.

What my headphones can’t keep out is that my phone is ringing. Well, not actually ringing because it’s on silent, but someone’s calling.

Teague.

It’s not morning, so he’s not in need of a taxi away from his latest hook-up. He doesn’t usually call me at night. Like, yeah, he’ll occasionally drunk-dial me and tell me he wishes I were there, but he hasn’t done that for a while. I don’t miss it per se, because he didn’t want me for what I wanted him for, and so even if I believed him that he wanted me there, it ended up hurting more if I went. If I don’t go, then I can’t be disappointed, right?

Regardless, I’m not going to ignore my phone when my friend calls. Who knows, maybe he is drunk-dialing me, but maybe he needs help. Only one way to find out, and my heart gives this one big beat as I slip my headphones off to let in the outside world. It’s half-hope and half-dread, and it’s not helped by feeling the sudden invasion of sounds I didn’t create. The basic noises of the world are a cacophonous assault after having been in my own little world for so long, and it gets worse when I pick up the phone.

Teague is clearly at one of those clubs he likes. One of those places where you can easily blow thousands of dollars on bottle service and also get blown in the bathroom.

“Christian?”

Oh, yeah, he’s had some to drink. There’s barely a T in my name. At least he’s not one of those fuckers who gets plastered and forgets about me not liking to be called Chris. It’s not my fucking name.

“Teague?” I know, I know, I shouldn’t tease a drunk guy, but it’s one of the few times I feel easy enough with him that I allow myself to be a little flirty. I get to indulge a little but would never take it further because he’s not capable of consent. He won’t remember my tone, so it’s safe. Or, at least, it feels that way.

“Hey.”

I wait a beat for him to go on, let me in on why he’s calling, but there’s silence. “Hi…”

“Are…are you busy?”

I roll my lips between my teeth because I’m still avoiding his well-meaning interrogations about my post-LtG plans. I think we’ve all got side projects we’re trying to get a solid start on before the rug of our career gets yanked out from under us, but I’m not ready to share this with him yet. I’m not sure what he’ll say. And it’s one thing to be going out on your own like the rest of the guys are, but a different thing altogether to be collaborating with someone else. It’s stupid, but I almost feel like I’m cheating on LtG and especially Teague. Even though I’m not.

“Not really, no. Why? What’s up?”

Another few seconds of what passes for silence, and I can picture him with his too-big feet propped up on a table, one arm like a small tree resting across his crazy-washboard abs while he holds the phone in his other hand. He looks melancholy in the way that a specific kind of woman is certain she, and she alone, can fix.

It’s his eyes, those stupid soulful, enormous blue eyes, and his ridiculously perfect hair doesn’t help any. I don’t even think that bastard needs to use any product. It’s maddening. I work to look the way I do, and I think he wakes up like that.

“I, uh… I wanted to talk to you.”

My heart skips a stupid beat. Don’t be pathetic. Not like that. “’Bout what?”

There’s a little huff, and my imagination plays a clip of him putting his feet on the ground, folding his long body over to rest his elbows on his knees and run a hand through his hair. “Can you come here? I don’t want to talk over the phone. I want to do this in person.”

Before I can ask him “do what?” there’s an indecipherable mutter, and then he volunteers in a small, reluctant voice, “I miss you.”

There goes my heart again, like it’s on a roller coaster. Now it’s at a great height, and I resent, a lot, that it’s probably going to bottom out in a pit of disappointment and yearning and having to watch from the sidelines as he flits off with yet another person he doesn’t seem to give a shit about but will fuck.

I could hang up, and the smart part of me wants to. It’s been weeks since he called me. I should be working on my music some more, instead of driving to god-knows-where to be with drunk Teague. I love the guy, but… No, that’s the problem. I love him, in the kind of way that I want to worship his achingly perfect body with my mouth and hands and anything else he wants, wake up next to him, and share the secrets I know he has. I want to know his plans for the future, and I want to be a part of them.

And I…goddammit, I want to kiss him. To cup his square jaw in my hands while I run my tongue along the seam of his lips until he lets me in, and then lick inside him and gather up his essence. Learn him. Discover all the ways to drive him crazy with want and need and lust and longing. I want to hear my name drop from his lips in ecstasy, in surprise and delight and tenderness. I want…I want him to love me back.

Teague, on the other hand, loves me like those middle-aged guys in beer commercials love each other. It’s enough to make a lump gather in my throat, but I don’t quite choke on it. And because I’m a masochist with a romantic streak and zero sense of self-preservation, I say, “Yeah, okay. Text me the address.”

I can’t tell if it’s a long time or a little time until Christian shows up. Probably somewhere in between, but I lost track after that last glass of champagne. Christian likes champagne. I should save him some. Or order another bottle when he gets here, but he won’t want to stay.

He likes to dance, but not in a place like this. He’d want fewer lights, even louder music, the kind of place where people decorate themselves with glow sticks and body paint passes for an outfit. A place where he could sink into anonymity. He’d probably do his eyes real dark with black eyeliner smudged around them and maybe some black lipstick and fingernail polish, too. He’d strip his shirt off when he got hot, and as long as no one bothered him, he’d let them stare while he moved like liquid silver. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even notice people were staring because he’d be so lost to his own world.

Here, though… His lithe figure parts the velvet drapes that cordon off this section of the club, and he scans the dozen or so half-moon sectionals that make up the VIP space, and finally his gaze lands on me. He’s not really dressed to be here, but he looks good to me.

T-shirt under his black leather jacket, one I know for a fact he’s had since he was seventeen because we all gave him such shit when he bought it, but he’s grown into it, slowly broken and sculpted it to his body until now it looks like it was invented for him. Like it was meant to be worn by him and only him.

Christian is a fire that starts with the barest amount of heat, so subtle you don’t even notice you’re getting warm at first. He’s a drink of a really good Scotch that you can’t totally appreciate until you’ve swallowed and given all your senses a while to process everything you experienced. He’s…he’s standing right in front of me is what he’s doing, hand on his hip and one leg bent out just so.

I want to get on my knees for him right here, figure out what his skin tastes like, explore his mouth and his rangy muscles, and I want, desperately, to look him in the eyes while he helps me figure out what this is supposed to feel like, what I actually like, because I can’t imagine this feeling is fleeting. No, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be carved into me forever, and if he doesn’t want me back, then I won’t do anything about it. But on the off-chance that he might be willing, I can’t resist.

And it’s not like he’s a gateway, some wardrobe you skip through to get to some fantasy world or some portal you drop through to make it to another planet light-years away. No, I’m pretty sure he’s just…it.

Which would totally explain why I can’t even look him in the face. This whole actually wanting to sleep with someone thing is seriously fucking with my mojo. I mean, before, it didn’t really matter if someone said no. It’s not like I wanted to bang them anyway; it’s just a thing I thought I should be doing, and I liked something about them. Their aesthetic or the way they laughed or they seemed cool or whatever, but it didn’t really matter. This is so much scarier.

How does anyone hit on someone whose pants they would actually like to get into? How do people live like this? Maybe you get used to the sickening blorgleschnatz that’s taken up residency in my stomach, but I don’t know that I ever will. It’s too crazy. No wonder people act so nuts when they’re in love. Or lust, rather. Or I don’t even know quite what this is.

When I manage to lift my gaze to his face after I’ve been so carefully looking everywhere else, the one eyebrow I can see goes up. “You rang?”

“I wasn’t, like, summoning you.” Did I make him feel that way? “I wanted to see you. Talk to you.”

Christian folds his arms across his lower chest like he’s readying for a body blow. “You called me, I’m here. What did you want? And for the record, it’s not like I went anywhere. You could’ve asked me anytime to hang out. I’m not sure what to think when you do it drunk instead of during one of the dozens of hours we’ve spent together this week.”

That is entirely fair. But maybe he’ll understand when I work up the nerve to tell him. Maybe.

“Can we get out of here?”