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And here’s the thing I need on the record: It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even really about me. A steady parade of gorgeous young men found their way over. Every single one led with hands, chest, arms, my stomach again, always my stomach, like there was a prize buried deep inside it. Every single one had come out shopping for only one thing, and the thing was a big, gray daddy with a big daddy cock.

I happened to be the biggest, grayest guy in the room.

I was, on paper, the special of the night, and I got handled like produce for an hour by beautiful strangers who wanted me enormously and wanted to know me not at all. I’m fairly certain they would’ve been equally satisfied by any other man of my dimensions, and possibly by a very sturdy coatrack if the rack had, well, a nice rack.

One of the children, a sweet one, patted my chest at the end of his flirtatious attempt and said, “You’re gonna make somebody a great daddy.” He said it the way you tell a shy dog he’s a good boy.

I had the funny, sick realization that I’d hit the exact same wall I’d slammed into online.

Different room, same wall.

The app led with the asshole. The bar led with hands. Underneath, it was the identical transaction, and I was the odd man out, the one who kept turning up wanting the whole story and finding out nobody else had come for a story at all.

They’d come for the photograph.

The bartender, a compact guy about my age with a towel draped over his shoulder, had watched the whole evening happen from behind the taps. When I came back for my last tumbler of bourbon, he set it down and asked, not unkindly, “Rough crowd for you tonight, big man?”

“Is it always like this?”

“For a guy who looks like you in a room full of twinks? Brother, you’re chum.” He nodded at the writhing purple. “They’re not gonna talk to you. They’re gonna climb you. You want somebody who wants more than that? You’re in the wrong zip code.” He slid me a water I hadn’t asked for. “No offense.”

“None taken. It’s the most useful thing anyone’s said to me all night.”

“You want my professional read?” He leaned in. “You’re big, solid, and full grown. You’re not the guy you chase at twenty-four. You’re the guy you finally figure out you needed at thirty-eight. You’re in the wrong room, that’s all. Right man, wrong room.”

That was the single most depressing sentence a stranger had ever handed me over a bourbon. I tipped him for it like he’d pulled me out of a river.

I had two more bourbons than I’d meant to. I wasn’t drunk, just soft enough at the edges that a third had seemed reasonable and a fourth became a necessity. Around midnight, I gave up and went out to the sidewalk where I could hear myself think. The thick, warm night was a thousand times better than the stifling bar.

I pulled out my phone to call a car service. The nearest driver was thirty-one minutes away.

Thirty-one minutes.

On the curb outside Fuse, while the young and the beautiful streamed toward the door I’d just escaped, a couple of them gave me the up-down, the big, gray gorilla drawing eyes it was too tired to want.

I wasn’t waiting thirty-one minutes while the sharks circled.

So I called Finn.

His phone rang once and dumped me into voicemail. When I pulled the phone back, I saw the little moon by his name. He’d turned on Silent Mode, transmuting his phone to stone at eleven like he did every night. Nothing short of the building burning down would get through. It was a boundary he held with the discipline of a monk. Normally, I’d admire it. I was certain Chase enjoyed their dedicated time. But right then, I could have cheerfully strangled him with his own charging cable for ignoring my call.

So I stood on the curb and ran the list, out loud, to myself, like a lunatic.

Benji would come, gleefully, likely with a siren on. He’d demand a full report with follow-up questions. After tonight, he’d have a second story for my funeral, and I didn’t have another report in me.

Jacks was asleep, probably snuggled in Skyler’s big arms, a whole geography unto themselves.

Rod was an hour the other way and would want to discuss Reina’s first full day of production. That was a non-starter on every level.

Somewhere past everyone I’d normally call, I landed on a name and stopped. Dante lived over here, one of the few facts about the man I’d managed to collect. He was ten minutes away, maybe less, and he’d be up. He’d be up late with a book and a greyhound and that low, flat quiet I could use, standing on this loud, bright sidewalk feeling like the oldest photograph in Tampa.

I didn’t think.

It was late, my feet hurt, and my reasons were practical. That was as far as I let it go.

My thumb punched his face on my screen.

One ring.