Page 20 of Flagrant Foul
Then
Iwasoldenoughto know I didn’t enjoy going to clubs, especially not sober, but that night I did it anyway. As soon as I walked in, it hit me. The wall of music, the pulse of the bodies heaving around me. I was newly single, having been dumped by Lacey I-Forget-Her-Last-Name earlier in the week, and not particularly happy about it. I wasn’t too bummed either, just unsettled. Uncomfortable. Scratchy under my skin.
In need of something to soothe me.
I had a pernicious heat running through me, an itch I needed to scratch, that made it impossible for me to stay tucked in my hotel room while the rest of my team slept.
In short, I was jonesing to fuck, and that night, I wanted a man in my bed.
That’s not always how it is for me. Usually, it’s more of a case of being into whoever I’m into, but sometimes, I have a hankering for someone of a particular gender. That night was one of those times.
I hated the song that was playing, and I hated the way the beat got into my veins and flowed to my heart. My heart, lungs, ribs, and even my lips absorbed the exaggerated bass and began beating in time with it.
The dancefloor was down a level from the one I entered on. Curved metal railings formed a barrier that led to the stairs, glittering silver and black depending on where the strobes hit them, offering a perfect vantage from which to check out the talent below. The railings were cool to the touch, so I held on to them with both hands, trying to focus on something that wasn’t the song or the lights. Below me, a sea of bodies throbbed as one. Hot torsos gleamed with sweat as they moved. My itch grew.
I was on the fence about whether being at the club was the right decision, but I hated the apps. When I want to fuck, I need to find the right person, or the itch won’t go away. And for me, the right person isn’t a picture of a face, a body, or even the genitals that match what I’m craving. For me, there’s something about a person that makes them right or wrong. Not just something you can feel but can’t capture with a camera. Not an aura. Not a space. More like a smell, but not like a smell exactly. More like something in the air that you taste on the tip of your tongue or feel on the palms of your hands.
I’d be tempted to use the wordpheromonesto describe it, if not for the fact I’ve always found people who casually use words like that to be completely insufferable.
So, let’s go witha smell you can taste. That’s what I was looking for. A man who smelled like he’d taste right.
The song finally ended, and on the dancefloor, the throng of bodies threw their hands in the air and began moving to a different beat.
The lights changed, their vibrancy dialed down from stained glass to cotton candy. Pale pink, then pale blue. A wrist caught my eye. A wrist of all things. A wrist with a hand attached to it. The hand was an average size for a man, but the fingers were long and graceful. The way they moved called out to me, as if they were waving at me. Beckoning to me.
The man the hand belonged to had his back turned to me. My gaze traveled down his fingers. Down his arm. Over the swell of his shoulder. His body was defined. He was in shape. Mouth-wateringly in shape. He was wearing a mesh top that left nothing to the imagination, and I really do mean nothing. Even calling it a top was probably questionable. There was way, way more skin than garment. It was made of delicate silver thread that had been knotted together to form a net pattern. Luminous skin shone through it. When the lights alternatedfrom pink to blue again, I felt like my head had been dunked under water.
I was breathless as I made my way down the stairs, grateful for my height, as it meant I didn’t lose sight of the man or his hand as I closed in on him. I pushed through bodies, swiping grasping hands off me as I moved until there was nothing between me and him.
I was about to reach out and touch his arm to get his attention when I noticed the slant of his head. It gave me pause. It was eerily familiar. That head. That neck. I knew it. I knew it well, but my senses were jammed. A circuit was broken. Something was off. Something didn’t make sense. That head and neck didn’t belong here. They belonged miles and miles away in a very small town. They belonged at home in Alabaster, not in a grimy nightclub in New York.
I tapped his shoulder accusingly when I got to him. “What are you doing here?”
He spun around to face me, and as he did, something in me spun too. It wasn’t just his head and neck that were out of place. His face was too. It was the same face I’d grown up with, but it was different. Familiar features had sharpened. Bone matter had hardened. Nothing but distant echoes of the boy I’d known for almost half my life reverberated in the face of a man.
His jaw dropped and his eyes lit up like a mirror ball taking a direct hit from a bright light.
“Sev!” he cried, throwing his arms around my neck. “Sev. Sev. Sev.” His arms were a vise, almost cutting off my air. He turned to his friend, words tripping over each other with excitement. “This is my Sev.”
His friend was a little guy with dark hair and thick black-rimmed glasses. He seemed almost as overjoyed to see me as Teddy was.
“You’re Sev?” he asked. “You’re Sev the Werewolf?”
I looked at Teddy in confusion, still reeling from seeing him so unexpectedly.
“No, no,” Teddy replied, patiently swatting his friend’s back as though he was talking complete nonsense, which made sense because he was talking complete nonsense. “He’s not Sev the Werewolf. He’s just Sev the Wolf.”
“Ah,” said his friend, bobbing his head as though that made a lot of sense.
“Told you he was hot, didn’t I?” Teddy said to the little guy. He sounded strangely dreamy, and there was something in his pattern of speech that concerned me. “God, he’s so hot.”
What the hell?
One of his arms was still around my neck from when we embraced, and he added the other back again. His movements were sluggish and his lips were inches from mine. “You’resohot, Sev,” he slurred, smiling too wide. “You’re the hottest thing I’ve seen in my life. You’re perfect. So perfect.” He turned his head to his friend. “I was right, wasn’t I? There’s no way he could be hotter, is there?”
Glasses squinted at me quizzically. “I mean, he could try growing out his hair,” he suggested. “You know, he could do that whole shoulder-length man-bun vibe. I think then he might be even hotter.”
Teddy was quiet for a second, eyes darting from my eyes to my hairline and then down to my mouth. He clamped his hand to his lips and giggled. “Oh my God! You’re right. Jesus. That’d be too much for me. I’d die.”
