by Aiden Bates
It just wasn’t what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was fly back to New York, show up at Damon’s apartment with a boombox over my head and the song from Flashdance blaring from its speakers. Shout at him, “Why won’t you talk to me, you asshole? What the fuck did I do wrong?” until he finally got tired of hearing “She’s a Maniac” played on repeat and came down and forgave me for whatever dumbshit thing I did to piss him off in the first place. Six months down the road, maybe, I’d take him to dinner and pull out a ring. We’d make babies together. Move out to my parents’ country estate and turn it into a shelter for aging corgis and ugly stray cats.
That sounded crazy too, sure. But I was spitballing at this point. I’d never given a shit about anyone before—not anyone I’d slept with. Never this much.
I settled for another text—the long kind. The kind that, no matter how hard I tried to end it, it just seemed to keep stretching on and on into infinity.
The kind that maybe, just maybe, might make him want to text me back.
Damon, it read, if I pissed you off, I’m sorry. If I did something to hurt you, I’m even sorrier. I should’ve gone with you to pick up the morning-after pill, and I’m sorry I made you do it alone. I should’ve bought condoms. And coffee. And this ice cream I’ve been meaning to make you try. It’s cilantro lime flavored, which is weird, I know, but I think you’d like it. I think you’d look cute eating it, trying to lap it all up before it melted down onto your fingertips, and you’d look even cuter sucking them clean.
I’m an asshole, okay? I don’t know how I’ve been an asshole, but I’m totally willing to own it. And maybe you’re just busy. Maybe you left your phone on the subway or it got stolen by some guy trying to steal your tip money after your shift. If it’s about the business trip, then I’m sorry about that too. I know it sounds made-up, but it’s real. I swear. I’ll bring something good from Los Angeles back for you. Your cat, maybe. Do you want me to steal your cat, Damon? Because dammit, if you want me to, I’ll steal your cat.
Talk to me, okay? Just a hey. A hi. A “what’s up” or a “how you doin’?” Just, y’know. To let me know you’re still alive and stuff. I miss the way you look when you fall asleep, like there’s not a single thing wrong with the world for just a little while, and I miss the way you look when you wake up—like the whole planet’s caught fire while you were lost in your dreams. I wish you were here by my side right now.
I paused, rolling my thumbs around in their sockets. I’d typed so fucking much, they were starting to ache. And it gave me time to think up one final line—the message would already have to send over ten or eleven texts, I had no doubt, but it was this line that scared me to my fucking bones when I tried to put it into words.
I think I’m in love with you, Mr. Bishop. If I tell you so, will you say it back?
I sent it before I could think better of it. In the time it’d taken to write, the sun had sunk so low on the horizon, it had turned the palm trees outside my window into black outlines on a backdrop of tropical orange and pink.
I snapped a picture of it with my phone, considering sending it along with the text. But I’d already blown up Damon’s phone enough for one day, I decided. I posted it to my own Instagram instead. A sudden pop of color to the boring black and white gala pictures and cups of coffee next to paperwork on my desk.
I added a caption before I uploaded: Wish you were here. The only person I meant to read it didn’t even follow me. Hell, he wasn’t even responding to my texts.
But it felt good to say it anyway. To put it out into the world like that.
For once, I felt something for someone, and for once, I fucking meant it.
However things ended between Damon and I, I was grateful for him. There weren’t many men like me who could admit to something so real as that.
16
Damon
I rang up to the penthouse from the door of Nathan’s building a dozen times before the doorman finally took pity on me and came out to see what I wanted.
“Nathan Garnet? Hard to say.” He scratched the stiff bristles of slate gray hair on his wizened jawline and shrugged.
“Did he leave…I don’t know. A message for me or anything? For Damon Bishop?”
There was a sympathetic look in the doorman’s eyes as he peered up at my face from behind his desk. Like he’d had to do this to plenty of other Omegas just like me plenty of times before. “Son, you know how these Wall Street men are. They come and go as they please. Cleaning lady hasn’t been here in the last day or so. Maybe he’s out of the city?”
Incredible. Nathan had managed to get me into bed with him, then he’d managed to flee the city undetected. I’d been ghosted before, sure, but this was a whole new level, even for my unlucky ass.
“Thanks,” I told the doorman, slumping away back into the chilly breeze.
Wind funneled down the streets of New York like the sidewalks and alleyways were just one huge network of ventilation shafts. If you listened close, you could practically hear the city breathing. The winds carried lost society sections of newspapers, plastic bags and the scent of garbage trucks on its wings—the latter of which was turning my stomach something fierce that day. Nerves, probably, I decided.
Leave it to Nathan Garnet to make me feel so bad about myself, I had to duck into an alleyway to puke up my breakfast.
It wasn’t just that he’d disappeared without word, or that I had no way to contact him. It was that he’d fucked me, then he’d fallen off the face of the earth. He’d led me to believe that he was completely different from the kind of Alpha I’d assumed he was from the beginning—then, as soon as he had me hook, line, and sinker, he left me flopping on the grass like a fish out of water, gasping and drowning in the cool morning air.
The rest of the week went by in vomit and glitter. I threw up in the bathroom backstage at the Ballroom just before my Flashdance set, rinsed my mouth out with Listerine and ran out to give my performance for all the hungry Alphas out in the crowd. I threw up on Carlos’ shoes when he came back to let me know that one of my regulars wanted a lap dance, resulting in Noah taking me off the private dance roster and me buying Carlos a new pair of dress shoes.
Anders was having an equally bad time of things, though he was better at not showing it. The police hadn’t been interested in tracking down the man who’d been at our apartment all night, beating down the door. As blasé as Anders was playing things, I could still tell he was shaken by the prospect of it happening again. At work, I caught him constantly looking over his shoulder like he was worried he was being watched. At night, we started sleeping in the living room together, him on the couch, me with my feet kicked up on the coffee table as I reclined in the armchair, my baseball bat resting across my lap.
“Not to be weird or anything, Damon…but maybe you should pee on this,” Anders said one morning, shouldering into the bathroom as I prayed to the porcelain throne and tossing me a foil-wrapped object. “I don’t want to scare you or anything…but you and Nathan at least used protection, right?”
I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and looked up at him, eyes watering. “He said he was fresh out of condoms,” I croaked.
Anders cringed. “Of course he did. Don’t freak out but…you do know what puking every morning is a symptom of, right?”
“It’s not just every morning,” I pointed out. “It’s every time I eat…every time I smell something a little bit too strong…”
“Heightened sense of smell, sensitivity to food…” Anders shook his head. “Pee on the stick, man. Then get the hell out of the bathroom—I need a shower before my shift.”
I came out of the bathroom five minutes later with a racing pulse and two thin blue lines.
“It’s positive,” I said, suddenly feeling smaller than dirt. “I…I think I’m pregnant.”
“No shit, sweetie.” Anders patted the couch next to him and I slumped over to sit down. My head was spinning—not just with nausea anymore, but with the reali
zation of my predicament throwing my brain for a loop as well. “Still nothing from Nathan?”
“My phone’s still out for repairs.” I rested my elbows on my knees, slouching forward. “But even if I could tell him—I don’t know that I should.”
“Why not?”
I laughed, even though none of this was funny. Gallows humor, I guess. “He’s disappeared without warning, Anders. Fucked me, knocked me up and left the city. Do you really think he’s going to care that I’ve got his baby in my womb?”
“He might. You said he’s old money, right? Families like that tend to take progeny pretty seriously. Line of inheritance and all.”
“Unless the baby is an unwanted bastard from some classless stripper,” I pointed out.
“You’re not a stripper.” Anders swatted me gently on the shoulder. “You’re a dancer—and you’re not classless, idiot. Come on—you go to class all the time.”
I forced a smile at Anders’ joke. “That would be funnier if I wasn’t about to lose my scholarship.”
“Maybe you won’t. It’s been a week, right? Still no word from the evil redhead on your board?”
“Still no word from anyone, feels like.” I sighed. “At least your stalker is gone.”
“Ugh. Hardly.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He’s reared his ugly head again? You should’ve told me.”
“No, no. It’s more like…he doesn’t have to be here to be here anymore, you know? Like, he’s always on my mind. Like a black cloud hanging over my head, raining on every damn parade I try to march in. But let’s not talk about that right now—do you want to talk about your…y’know, instead?”
I felt Anders’ gaze fall on my stomach, still so flat and smooth despite the life that was apparently stirring within it.
“Go take your shower,” I suggested. “I might need some…I don’t know. Some time alone. To think and stuff.”
“Have your time alone—just remember that you don’t have to deal with this alone. Whether Nathan’s around or not, you’ve still got me and the other guys at the Ballroom, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly, nodding. “Thanks.”
When I went into my room to lay down this time, at least it was clean. My books, I’d piled up on my desk like a monument to the education I was still so sure I was about to lose. My clothes and costumes, I’d either hung up or put into the hamper by the door. In a way, it was the only control I had over anything right now. I’d thought maybe if my room was in order, maybe the rest of my life would follow suit—but as it turned out, all it meant was I could see the ugly shag carpet on my floor.
Anders didn’t know it, but I knew exactly what he meant when he was talking about his stalker. He doesn’t have to be here to be here—that was Nathan in a nutshell for me in that moment. Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, he was on my mind.
Whether I was thinking of him fondly or hating his guts…I still hadn’t entirely decided.
I cuddled deeper into my pillows, holding one against my chest like it was Nathan there in my bed instead of a lumpy ball of fluff stuffed into a white pillowcase. At some point, I must have drifted off. When I opened my eyes again, Anders was in the doorway, knocking gently on the frame.
“I know you wanted time alone,” he started, holding his phone in his hand like it was a knife. “But I…well, I was worrying about you, and I did some snooping. Do you want to see?”
I glanced at the miniscule towel around Anders’ waist—didn’t he know we had full-sized ones in the closet?—and grimaced. “Yeah—show me. But if this is some kind of fucked-up prank where you flash me your balls, I’m going to go get the baseball bat.”
He chuckled at the threat and tossed his phone at me. It was warm in my hands, dotted with steam from Anders’ shower.
On the screen, there was a sunset—all pink and orange like cat puke, the shadows of palm trees swaying on the horizon.
“Pretty,” I said grimly. “But I don’t think a sunset’s going to cheer me up right now, man.”
“It’s Instagram, Damon. Look at who posted it.”
I checked and felt my heart screech to a stop in my chest.
Nathan Garnet. Wish you were here, the caption read, but he hadn’t tagged anyone in it.
My heart restarted with a roaring pang. It hurt like hell—not the possibility that he was wishing for some other Omega, but the reality of how bad I wanted that person he was wishing for to be me.
“Looks like he’s in California. Posted it last week. You sure he hasn’t…I don’t know, called or emailed or anything?”
“Doesn’t have my email. If he’d called at the Ballroom, someone would’ve told me.”
“You should message him,” Anders offered.
“From your account?”
“Why not? DM him or something. Sign your name. ‘Hey, Nate. What the fuck, man? Love, Damon.’”
“I…can I think on it?” Messaging Nathan was a tempting prospect. It had the chance of clearing all of this up completely if he answered. But on the other hand, there was just as good of a chance that he’d ignore me completely. Which, I supposed, would clear all of this up too, in its own way. I just didn’t know if I could handle the outcome of something like that.
“Sure. Just think fast, yeah? I gotta head out soon.”
“Of course.”
Anders disappeared again, belting that Police song about every breath you take as he gelled his hair in the bathroom. My breath, I held in my chest as I checked out the rest of Nathan’s Instagram pictures.
He hadn’t posted anything since meeting me. I didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a bad one. And before me…Christ. Playboy didn’t even begin to cover it. There was Nathan Garnet with two Omega supermodels in banana hammocks in the Bahamas, double-fisting twin coconuts with little umbrellas poking out of the tops of the shells. Nathan Garnet at a gala, a pouty-lipped Omega draped all over him like they were at The Backdoor and Nathan was the stripper’s pole.
Surprisingly, a candid. Someone else must’ve taken it—Nathan Garnet in black and white, sitting at his desk at work and staring at his computer screen with the utmost concentration. He was handsome when he was deep in thought like that. Elegant and intelligent-looking.
He was even handsomer when he wasn’t ghosting me, though. Wasn’t posting sunsets from the other side of the country with cryptic captions beneath them that I didn’t dare dream he’d meant for me to read.
Finally, I let my breath out in one giant huff and typed in a comment to the sunset picture. I didn’t want to DM him—it would feel too much like a knife to the back if he didn’t reply—and I didn’t want to write anything too dramatic. Starting shit on social media wasn’t really my style.
Looks like you’re having fun out there, I typed, agonizing over every single letter. Hope you find what you’re looking for. Damon.
My breath hitched in my throat as I signed my name.
17
Nathan
“Answer your goddamn phone!” I yelled at my screen in frustration.
That earned me some major side-eye from the couple sitting two tables over. They stared at me with performative shock, glancing around at the other diners in the restaurant to see if they, too, were appalled at my behavior.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t the first person in Los Angeles to lose their shit at their phone while sitting alone at dinner, and I doubted I’d be the last.
I glared at Damon’s caption to my sunset picture with renewed annoyance, reading it over and over again like somehow the letters were going to rearrange themselves into something nicer. I miss you, Nathan, maybe, or Come back to me, Mr. Garnet.
They didn’t, of course. That almost pissed me off more. Hope you find what you’re looking for, he’d written. What was that even supposed to mean? If he’d just pick up his damn phone and listen to me for five seconds, he’d know that I was pretty sure I’d already found what I was looking for.
An angel back in New York,
who my dog approved of and who called me by “mister” plus my last name.
“Fuck,” I swore at the bread bowl, willing it to catch fire just so I’d have an excuse to stomp on something.
“Does that mean it’s good or bad?” a hoity-toity male voice said across the table from me. The waiter pulled out the man’s chair as he slipped his white-suited self into his seat and smoothed his white-gloved fingertips over his snow-white hair.
“Mr. Mornington,” I said abruptly, blinking as I rose from my own chair.
“No, no. Sit down, you silly thing. I appreciate the gesture, but believe me—I’m very much done with gentlemanly behavior for the evening, I can assure you.”
I lowered myself back into my chair as Chester Mornington pulled off his gloves, one finger at a time. He was the Omega of the couple, and despite normal social conventions, the more powerful of the two. The last heir of the Mornington fortune and family name alike, his Alpha had broken with tradition and taken Chester’s last name.
“It’s a pleasure to see you, Chester,” I said, lowering my lips to his knuckles as he daintily offered me his hand. “Is the valet giving Alphonse trouble?”
Chester scoffed. “Only in the carnal sense, I’m afraid. Thought you’d heard already, Nathan darling.”
“I…haven’t,” I said slowly, careful with my words. Chester Mornington was West Coast wealthy, unlike my eastern parents. Slower to make judgments, but harder to read. The product of a different time. “I’m not much for gossip, Chester. You know that.”
“Oh, you’re a peach, dear.” Chester’s voice was dry and thin. “Yes, I’m afraid that I caught Alphonse giving the old one-two to the valet over at Takahashi’s shortly after you arrived here in our beautiful city.”
“Ah. Explains the change of venue, then.” I’d thought it strange when Chester suggested we eat here at Nakamura’s instead. He’d always called the place tacky—all three of the chefs’ Michelin stars notwithstanding.
