The music was loud, the strategically erratic lighting was a prelude to a migraine, and the men were all too young for him. Didn’t matter, he wasn’t hoping to talk any of them off the dance floor and into his car. This club, all the lithe swaying bodies, were his gift to himself.
Happy Birthday!
His eyes on the dance floor, David toasted himself and remembered when he had been one with the press of flesh in the middle of the club, when the music had beat through him…when he’d found himself, who he was and who he wanted, in the arms of strangers.
He didn’t regret those years, but he didn’t wish them back again either. He didn’t have the energy anymore, or the interest. He’d long ago learned that new didn’t mean better.
He wasn’t looking to hook up, he was just looking. Enjoying the view. Happy that he could enjoy the view. Happy that he was here at all, when for a while there he’d thought he might not be.
David nursed his drink, watched bodies merge and separate, heads thrown back and arms punching up into the storm of flashing lights above. He inhaled the life in the room, the laughter on the air, and smiled at the thought of next year, and the year after that.
He set his empty glass down and stood, dropped cash on the table.
“You leaving?” Blue eyes grinned up at David from under a mop of dark hair that was shaved on one side.
“Uh, yeah, I was just…”
“Looking?” The kid stepped into David’s space, brushed against him at thigh and hip. “Yeah, me too.”
If I were David, I think I would be totally thrown off balance by the kid’s attention.
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Yeah, he’s probably looking around, wondering where the candid camera is 🙂
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Perfectly written!!
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Thanks, Donna 🙂
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What a lovely way to relive memories of what once was. I hope he didn’t feel that he’d lost a part of his life. Then again, a new chapter sounds like it’s about to begin. One that I hope he’ll probably look back and relive in years to come.
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Let’s go with the starting a new chapter version 🙂
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It’s your story, but the reader can make up their own version of what’s going on. That’s excellent storytelling.
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Thanks. I’d like to say I planned it that way, but I’m not much of a planner 🙂
It’s a pleasure, isn’t it, when readers take an idea we put out there and run with it? Seeing aspects we hadn’t thought of 🙂
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Hey now!!! Birthday success!!! Love this. Buying/starting Your next book this week. It’s my joyful lunchtime read! Thank You and Cheers!!! 🙂
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LOL! I’ll be thinking of you at lunchtime this week 🙂
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😅
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