A towel snaps, followed by laughter. The sound of bare feet on wet tile. Someone’s cologne mixes with sweat and steam.
Pressure rises in my chest like a tide, threatening to burst. I slam my locker door shut, the metal crash silencing the room momentarily.
“Forgot something in the office,” I mutter, grabbing my gym bag and pushing past them all, ignoring their confused looks.
I leave everything in my locker and storm out of the gym. Fuck changing. I need space. Need to get away from all these men and their bodies and the way I’m suddenly seeing them.
The parking lot’s nearly empty when I reach my ‘69 Dodge Charger. The black paint gleams under the streetlights, the chrome detailing catching the glow. I run my hand along the hood—something real, something that makes sense. Machinery. Power. Control.
The engine roars to life, vibrating through the seat and up my spine. This car’s more honest than most people—all raw power and no pretense. I peel out of the lot, the tires protesting against the asphalt, and hit the main road hard.
The streets blur as I push the engine, taking corners too fast, the route home becoming a test of reflexes and nerve. The exhilaration of speed temporarily drowns out everything else—the confusion, the anger, the fucking arousal that won’t leave my body.
My apartment building looms ahead. I park haphazardly and take the stairs two at a time, slamming my door behind me. The silence inside is deafening.
I head straight for the kitchen, bypassing the refrigerator for the cabinet above. The bottle of Jameson gleams amber in the dim light. I don’t bother with ice, just pour three fingers into a tumbler and knock back half in one burning swallow.
My phone’s in my hand before I realize what I’m doing. Thumb swiping, opening Instagram. I’ve never followed Theo, never even looked him up before, but my fingers type his name like they’ve done it a thousand times.
His profile loads. @TheoWinters_Eclipse.
I scroll past artful shots of hands on turntables, close-ups of vinyl records, abstract light patterns. Then stop. Eclipse Nightclub. The photos show a cavernous space bathed in blue and purple light. Beautiful people with their heads thrown back in ecstasy, hands raised to the ceiling. The crowd parts in the images to reveal a DJ booth where Theo stands, headphones half-on, one hand hovering above equipment.
He looks... transcendent. Head tilted back slightly, eyes half-closed, lips parted. Like he’s making love to the music, to the crowd, to the entire fucking room. Like he owns the entire world and knows it.
So beautiful.
The thought forms before I can stop it. I switch off the app with a violent thumb-jab and growl deep in my throat.
I toss the phone onto the coffee table, but it’s only seconds before I’m reaching for it again.
My thumb hovers over the message icon. I shouldn’t. But I do.
I open my messages and there it is. Theo’s text. For the fourteenth fucking time today, I read those words:
Miss something this morning? Besides me, I mean. Your watch was on the nightstand. Come find it tonight at Eclipse. I’ll be behind the decks from midnight.
The steel Rolex. My father’s watch. The one thing I never take off except...
I close my eyes, but that only makes it worse. Behind my eyelids I see his hands sliding it off my wrist. See him setting it carefully on the nightstand before guiding my hand back to his body.
“Fuck.”
I shouldn’t have left my fucking watch. I knew it was missing this morning, but I couldn’t remember where I’d left it in my rush to get away. Sloppy. Careless. Now my carelessness has created a chain—a link between us that forces a choice.
If I want it back—and I do, I need that watch—I’ll have to see him again. See those eyes that somehow saw through me. That mouth that...
I grip the phone tighter, my knuckles whitening.
I could demand he leave it somewhere. At the front desk of Eclipse, maybe. Or mail it to the gym.
But even as I think it, I know I won’t ask. Won’t text back at all. Because texting means acknowledging... this. Whatever the hell this is.
My thumb hovers over the delete button. One press and the message disappears. Like it never happened.
I don’t press it.
Instead, I click the screen dark and toss the phone away again, but the message remains, waiting in digital purgatory—neither answered nor erased.