Page 9 of Grave Misgivings
I watch as Dare drags him to the dance floor, watch as my notoriously secluded friend navigates his way through a crowd, and I feel a pang of jealousy.
I watch all of them on the dance floor. Richie and Hailee, Celina and Hans, and Dare and Mateo.
I wish I hadthat.
Confidence, zest. A peacock of my own to pull through the crowd.
I pull out my phone, feeling melancholy alone in the booth with the champagne and an overabundance of fruit.
I fill my glass, noting that I’m starting to feel a little more than buzzed.
Maybe getting drunk is the answer to all my problems.
Likely, not, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never reallyletmyself have more than one or two drinks before, if only because it has been drilled into me from a young age that I need to be agood boyand good boys don’t stay out past curfew, have sex, or drink in excess.
I know I’m not a kid anymore. I’m fucking thirty-nine. But some things aren’t that easy to let go of.
I scroll through my phone, browsing my contact list, or lack thereof.
Seriously, how sad is it that I barely have thirty people in my phone?
I reach for a strawberry, hoping the fruit quells my brooding.
But it doesn’t.
I’m just about to drain the last of my drink and call it a night, when my thumb accidentally hits the call button.
I fumble with my phone, realizing my error, but because of the alcohol, my fingers don’t work as fast as they normally do, and the unfortunate soul answers me before I can hang up.
“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the phone makes my heart stop.
It’s familiar, in a sense, but it’s also foreign.
Deeper, older.
Gravelly.
Like I woke him up or something.
I sit there for a moment, frozen in Saint & Sinner as angels surround me in various states of skimpy outfits, the haze of the blue lights reflecting on my phone.
“Hello?” he says again. “Geo, is that you?”
My breath catches in my throat, and I can barely process his voice.
There are a thousand things I want to say. A thousand stories, a thousand apologies.
But all I manage to say is, “I miss you.”
Silence fills the air, and I think I’ve lost him.
Again.
CHAPTER 3
Zeb
It’snear two-thirty in the morning when my phone rings. I answer it without thinking, because I immediately jump to the worst case scenario. Nothing good ever comes from a call at two-thirty am. It’s either a booty call or an emergency, and I haven’t even fucked anyone in over a year, so I’m pretty sure I’ve been erased as a booty call from anyone’s contacts.
