Page 24 of Better Late Than Never

Now my glass was empty, Alex was nowhere in sight, and this table felt like a buoy in the middle of a choppy sea—the only thing I could use to orient myself, and I was afraid to get too far away from it.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of being in a club, idiot.

Yeah, it did. I knew it did. But I hadn’t had high hopes tonight. I was going to venture into a club and see what it was like. That was it. Mission accomplished. Actually meeting someone and hooking up with them? Not likely.

It was especially not likely now when every face in the room blurred together in a single colorful mass ofnot Alex. When a face did come into focus, they were…

God, so many of the guys in here were way too young. There were plenty who were my age and older—I’d definitely seen some gray and some lines in this crowd—but most of the men in here were in their twenties.Maybeearly thirties. Some were probably close to my sons’ ages, which… no. Just, no.

Was it too early to call it a night? I’d done what I came here to do, and I was pretty sure that was as good as it was going to get this time. That was fine. As eager as I was to land in bed with a man, it didn’t have to be tonight. I’d known I was bi for almost fifteen years; waiting a little longer to actually experience a man wouldn’t kill me.

Especially since there weren’t a lot of men here who spoke English, and so many of them were so young, and only one of them was Alex Barlow, and…

I closed my eyes and pushed out a breath. The bass thumped alongside my pounding heart, vibrating up through the floor and along my bones.

Coming here with Alex probably hadn’t been a good idea. How the hell was I supposed to pay any attention to other men when the one I’d spent last night fantasizing about was right there and out of my reach? Couldn’t I have just brought my own ass to a club and fumbled my way through without asking him to guide me into?—

“Oh my God.” Alex’s voice broke through all the noise in the club and in my head, and when I opened my eyes, he’d appeared beside the table. “Sorry about that.” He gestured over his shoulder as he placed two bottles of water between us. “Line was a mile long.”

I’m so glad you’re back.

“It’s okay.” I picked up one of the bottles. “Thanks.”

He flashed a smile that almost broke my brain, and I concentrated on downing a good half the water in one go. Air conditioning or not, this place was hot as hell now that it was full of people.

I realized a second too late that Alex had asked me something. My own distraction had kept me from hearing part of it, and the noise of the club swallowed the rest. “Sorry, what?”

He leaned closer and shouted over the noise, “I asked if you were going to hit the dancefloor.”

Heat surged through me, and I held the cold bottle tighter. “I, uh… I haven’t…” With a self-conscious laugh, I gestured at the floor. “I haven’t danced in a club inyears.”

Oh, fuck me—that smile.

“Well. What are you waiting for?” He gestured in the same direction I had. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

I gulped. “I don’t want to make an ass of myself.”

Alex shrugged. “Most people in here will be too drunk to notice. The rest will either be checking someone else out, or checking you out and not giving a damn how you dance.”

“Yeah, right.” I sipped my water again. “I doubt too many people in here”—I circled my finger in the air—“are paying much attention to the forty-year-old guy.”

“Ooh, I wouldn’t bet money on that.”

I shot him a skeptical look.

Alex studied me. Then he laughed, shook his head, and clapped my arm. “My friend. You really are new to the queer scene, aren’t you?”

“Um. Yes?”

He sighed with exasperation, though there was still humor in his eyes. “Do you think I—a guy looking down the barrel of forty myself—would come to a place like this if no one paid attention to older men?”

Okay. That was a fair question.

Before I could respond, he leaned over the table, and though he still had to shout over the noise and through my earplugs, his voice came across like a conspiratorial whisper. I could hear him just fine, but the words took a second to actually register, mostly because he was suddenly close enough to me that I caught a hint of a subtle and intriguing cologne.

Then my brain caught up to what he’d said:

“Trust me—get out on the dancefloor, and you won’t have any trouble finding someone to dance with.”

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