Ex-Daredevil by Zoe Lee

Chapter 9

Eliott

“You’re checking your phone every thirty seconds,” Camdon griped, swatting it out from under my fingertips and locking the screen. “Are you waiting for big news?”

“What are you doing?” I asked indignantly, far too late to save my phone from being stuffed into his breast pocket and bulging like a weird, futuristic shield over his pec. “Give it back,” I ordered him imperiously. He only shook his head, so I added, “It’s my thirty-fifth birthday. I’m basically the king today and you have to listen to me. It’s my party.”

I waved a hand like a young queen waving demurely at her subjects.

Except it wasn’t subjects around me, it was fellow clubbers at Local Beats, the only place I’d ever set foot on a dance floor since junior high. We’d found it in undergrad, my three best friends—Camdon, Asher, and Sam—and me. We’d wanted somewhere to dance and pick people up, but Camdon wasn’t comfortable yet in LGBT spaces. So, we came here, where it was definitely LGBT friendly, but it wasn’t exclusively the straights or the gays. The four of us still met up once a month here for drinks, complaining and bragging, whatever.

So these people had shared, witnessed, or caused nearly all of my best, worst, and mediocre personal moments right here in Local Beats, my national treasure. I had enjoyed my two years in Ann Arbor for law school, but Chicago, with this wonderful club, was home.

“It is your party,” Sam said like I was a toddler. “So why waste it on your phone?”

“Who else do you know?” Asher, the teddy bear who used to be a grumpy asshole, muttered, a little short-tempered since his finacé wasn’t here yet. “Your coworkers?”

“No,” I hissed at him, narrowing my eyes. “My coworkers are… coworkers.”

“Give the man his phone,” Sam sighed. “He fixates when he’s drunk.”

I nodded sagely, which made the club tilt. A little.

I should have been more invested in my best friends, who deserved my focus.

But—

But last week, five days after we’d met up the second time, Gavin had texted me a photo of him rock climbing. He was wearing sleek athletic shorts and a tank top beneath the harness. His hair was in a thick braid snapping out into the void behind him, a rainbow bandana covering his forehead and the top of his head. He was grinning, all sharp teeth.

If you have life insurance, I’d like to be the beneficiary. It’s sure to pay out shortly, I’d replied once I saw the text at the end of work, since I didn't check my phone during the day.

His next message had come in the middle of the night, when I, an adult who worked a daytime job, was sleeping. Thanks. So IS Sam’s ex back in town?

It had made me snort when I saw it in the morning, but I’d spilled the tea.

Since then, Gavin had sent sporadic photos of his dangerous adventures. The length of his hair had changed and his features had softened and sharpened, so I gauged they ranged from when he was maybe twenty years old to now. Every one made the risk-averse, practical side of me flinch, but every time, instead of sounding stuffy or condescending by telling him how unsafe and risky he was, I told him some more gossip about my friends. Then he’d tell me something random about his day or suggest an article to read he said he’d stumbled on, and I’d send him consumer ratings reports on climbing equipment.

I’d expected him to start trying to seduce me into another hookup, but he’d stayed friendly—teasing and taunting, but friendly. At first I’d been concerned that I was the only one who had a great time and felt let down that he wasn’t trying to get me into bed again. But the chats always made me smile and they were hooking me harder and faster than any dick pic or come-on ever would have, because I was learning how much I liked him.

“Hel-lo,” Sam laughed, snapping his fingers in front of my big nose.

With a long blink, I realized my phone was now right at my fingertips.

I said vaguely, “I just want to see who sends me birthday messages.”

Camdon gave me a judiciously unimpressed look, not at all ruined by his drunkenness, and declared, “Bullshit.”

Sam nearly tipped over as he chirped in his steamrolling, blithe way, “Yeah, bullshit. Only a guy you fucked—or a guy you want to fuck—could make you so… so normal.”

I was insulted coming and going. So I took a slow drink of water, knowing my patience drove Sam nuts. It would sound pathetic to say I was texting inane shit back and forth with a virtual stranger I had a dark hankering for, who I had not coincidentally made come twice.

“If I were being normal, then you would be leaving me alone,” I finally pointed out.

“That’s not going to distract us,” Asher huffed.

“All right,” I conceded. “I’ve been texting with this guy. Just… silly things.”

They all gawked at me, and then Camdon’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the guy from the bar who stopped by and hung out with us. I never did get his name, by the way. You like him.”

“I think so.”

“You think so?” Sam prodded.

I reflexively looked around the club, as if this were a high school cafeteria and someone was listening in and gave a shit, before I rushed out, “We slept together.”

Camdon declared, “Good. You need to kiss something other than your boss’s ass.”

“But… you’re not an I-slept-with-him guy,” Sam said.

The guys all knew the sordid story of my father, who had been an unfaithful husband, to put it mildly. So before I slept with someone—except for Gavin Sycamore—I needed to know him well first or have met him through someone trustworthy. If I were to meet a man at a bar or on an app, I couldn’t be sure that he was available like he presented. And I would rather be celibate forever than help a cheater, even if it were an honest mistake on my part.

“You haven’t been dating much either,” Asher called me out, but kind of gently.

“I prefer dates like going to see old movies or a classical concert, or staying in for cooking and conversation,” I replied with a shrug, unashamed of my tastes. “But the men I meet who like to do those things aren’t my type otherwise, so they never last very long.”

“So, who is this guy then?” Sam persisted.

“Hey, guys!” Asher’s fiancé Lucas sang as he popped up behind Asher, then dropped onto his lap and threw an arm around Asher’s neck while they kissed. We all pretended not to look, giving the lovebirds a moment, and once they came up for air, Lucas looked around and scrunched up his face. “Seems like I interrupted something. What’s up?”

“Eliott was just about to tell us about a guy he’s hooking up with,” Asher told him.

“His name's Gavin.” My eyes slid contemplatively across the loud club, but I was seeing the few moments we’d shared strung out. “We met when he almost crashed into my car and messed around that day. Then we met up so he could get back some stuff he left in my car—the night you and Quincy met him, Camdon—and we messed around again. We’ve been texting sometimes since then, just sending selfies and exchanging little facts.” I shrugged again, unable to come up with a more elegant explanation than, “It’s different.”

“The texting is different, or sex was different?” Camdon asked. He wasn’t the subtlest, but he was a good man and he would help me work through my shit even if it made him uncomfortable. “Different as in, the sex was mind-blowing?”

That got me flustered and my eyes flickered around the club again. “I don’t know, he’s wild. It wasn’t the way I usually like to do things. And I messed up the second time, I guess.”

“What’d you do, come too fast?” Sam asked sympathetically.

Running my tongue over my teeth, I answered, “Yeah, probably.”

“Holy shit,” Asher laughed. “Did this guy make you lose your cool?”

While we were tight-knit, we didn’t typically speak about our sex lives, even Sam who overshared in many ways. But we’d been friends long enough to gauge how we probably behaved in the bedroom, and we knew each other’s issues and weak spots and baggage.

That didn’t make it any easier or more comfortable. But I settled on, “For a little bit.”

“You’re allowed to let go sometimes,” Sam reminded me sharply.

That only made me screw up my face in distaste. “In the moment, it was… nice. But it threw me off. I tried to make sure I hadn’t crossed any boundaries, which offended Gavin.”

Camdon mumbled into his beer, “He seemed like the kind of guy who knows what he likes and is in control of himself too. He wouldn’t text you back if he hated what you did.”

Nodding slowly, my muscles relaxed a fraction as I remembered Gavin’s indignant outrage and his pitiless dismissal of my concerns. “Yeah, he made his agency very clear.” I relaxed enough for my breathing to level off again. “It was an overreaction on my part. I might have had a shorter fuse than I usually do, but that’s not… hurtful in any way.”

“If you mean he got you off fast, then that’s a point of pride for him,” Asher said.

“Hell yes it is,” Lucas shouted happily.

“You smug bastards,” Sam laughed, shoving Asher’s shoulder.

“Coming too quick is… sexy?” Camdon snorted like a bull. “Come on, man.”

“It is sexy,” Sam agreed with a sage nod. When Camdon and I stared at him incredulously, he persisted, “Not always, obviously. But Eliott’s controlled and smart and the master of his domain, and here is some wild man who comes along and turns Eliott into an animal in the sack.” He fanned himself then elbowed Camdon, who still looked confused.

I muttered a little petulantly, refusing to completely concede he might have a point, “I never would have been anything less than gentlemanly except that Gavin kept taunting me.”

“You never can ignore a challenge,” Camdon said.

Being a lawyer was like participating in a bloodless fight, using laws, precedents, fancy words and good instincts just as recklessly and powerfully as athletes used their bodies on the field. So yeah, Gavin’s taunts amounted to challenging me and had sparked my attraction to him. But Camdon’s conclusion made me squirm because it made me sound like I was only thinking about him and texting him because of that, which just wasn’t true.

Then again, while I liked him and was getting a good feel for him through our texts so far, I still didn’t know too many facts about him. I frowned, deciding that I should remedy that because what if… what if we could connect on an emotional level too, not just physical and mental? What if I could see this going somewhere, and what if I should show him so?

The ground dipped before it settled again while I processed the tantalizing idea, and it gave me the confidence to retort to Ccamdon, “Takes one to know one.”

Asher snorted and I grinned unabashedly.

“Anyway, I told him he should stop by and say hi,” I mumbled. “But he hasn’t replied.”