tended to avoid. In my teens and twenties, when I’d felt ferociously rebellious, there’d been drinking. A lot of drinking. Never drugs—my parents’ addictions had scared me off—but I’d get black-out drunk on the regular. At the time, it was because being wasted erased my self-consciousness about my stutter. It helped me pretend I could connect with people, flirt, and believe that they were actually interested in me.
But as I’d grown older, I also learned it made the stutter much worse. If I was any sheets to the wind, I was also fairly unintelligible, and any interest had been toward my body only. All the ease had only been in my mind.
So tonight, I nursed my beer and scanned the bar. Dane liked to work up close and personal, charming his targets before they (or he) even knew they were in his sights. I liked the stand-off approach. Watching people drink showed a lot of who they were. I’d gotten good at figuring out who tops and who bottoms, who’s into rough sex and sensual play, and the ones who wouldn’t pout too much when I never called them back after sleeping together, just from observing the way they moved through the club. It made things easier.
When I peered at a back corner, I saw a man who looked suspiciously like Gordo. Heat pricked at my cheeks, my responses already heightened by the beer. The frustration of his reaction to my stutter was a slow burn, eating away inside of me. The only thing worse than the itching irritation of him avoiding me was the steadily growing desire inside of me that still wanted to see him.
He intrigued me. He was so different around his daughter—his appearance and mannerisms, even when angered, were relaxed. At the youth center, though, he’d been all angles. Jutting chin and squared shoulders and a sharpness that gutted when I tried to understand him. It had been so long since someone’s reaction had wounded me deeply. It should have sent me running from Gordo, but for some reason, it just pulled me in even more.
I couldn’t stop looking at the doppelganger. The man had the same brown hair as Gordo, that fell in heavy chunks. Even in the crazed lighting, I could tell he had the same dark eyes, brown that bordered on black. And all I felt was interest. Want.
Fuck.
That’s when I saw him—Gordo himself—lean out of his booth as he laughed with the person next to him. My stomach lurched when I realized that he was there, actually there in the gay bar, and clearly related to the man I’d stared at before, who was probably not just a random doppelganger.
As soon as I’d spotted Gordo, everything else faded to black. When Gordo laughed, he became a work of art. Gone were the hard lines and rigid muscles. All that was left was a jawline that demanded to be kissed and rounded shoulders I wanted to cling to.
This didn’t look like the man at the youth center who’d been all business, or the bedraggled father I saw with his daughter. This Gordo seemed younger, carefree, and dangerously attractive. There was so much to him, so many sides that made up a mystery my heart was begging to solve.
Or my cock, at the least, which was now rigid in my jeans.
My beer became vile, a sour taste in my mouth. My mind spun as I began to process that I was seeing Gordo in a gay bar. He’d never mentioned a wife, and I hadn’t seen another person—man or woman—staying at his house. Not that I’d been looking closely, of course. Just every minute that I was home.
But a part of me had assumed that there must be someone else, especially with Giuliana’s young age. My mind raced, trying to think of a time when Gordo had mentioned a partner or wife, or a time I’d seen another car at his house. Anything. But there was… nothing. If he was at this club, did that mean he was gay? Bisexual at the least? And God, what did that mean for me?
As if he’d heard my thoughts, Gordo looked up and spotted me. Our eyes locked, and lust blazed in me, hot and fierce, my balls beginning to ache even while my mind screamed bad idea. My neighbor’s eyes went wide with surprise, but he didn’t look upset or awkward like I’d expected him to.
No, Gordo flashed me a smile, and I grabbed a hold