Most of the seats were taken upstairs, but the hookah-type lounge wasn’t their destination. An old-fashioned phone booth in the back seemed to be the portal to another room, because a pair of girls in tight shorts and skimpy tops exited from it.
“They use this place during Prohibition or something?” Joshua asked.
“Apparently that’s the vibe Beatrice was going for when she opened it,” Lincoln replied. He went directly into the phone booth and descended narrow cement steps, into the heart of Off Beat.
The same music from upstairs was ten times louder downstairs. A funky bar was to the right, decorated in Tiki items and made of old surfboards. Not a single one of the various tables and chairs matched. Some low, some high, all very kitschy. Nothing about the bar should have worked, but it did.
And the place was pretty packed for almost eight o’clock on a weekday.
Some of his surprise must have shown on his face, because Lincoln laughed. “It’s popular with the locals, so they do good business all year long.”
He nearly asked how Lincoln knew that, then stopped himself. Lincoln was dating the owner’s nephew Emmett. They’d been together since early summer and were pretty serious. And committed wholly to each other.
The thought dinged his guilt bell hard, and he suddenly missed Benji so much his chest ached.
Their current off-again status was Joshua’s fault. He and Benji had been together for almost three years, and from the beginning, once things got serious, Joshua had told Benji he wanted an open relationship. They were committed to each other, loved each other, but they both traveled so much—first for Joshua’s IT job, and then Benji with his former band XYZ, andnow with Fading Daze—that finding time together was tricky. The arrangement had left them both free to fuck other people and scratch that loneliness itch, as long as it was once and done.
And for the first two years, it had worked perfectly. Until that goddamn car accident last summer.
All four members of the dismantled band XYZ—Lincoln, Benji, Dominic Bounds and Tyson Reed, plus Joshua—had been driving north to Philadelphia after a late gig in Fenwick Island. They’d been sideswiped in a hit-and-run that sent their car careening into a telephone pole. Benji and Dominic got out with surface injuries, and Tyson broke his arm. Lincoln was in a coma for two days with a traumatic brain injury that he was still recovering from.
Joshua had ended up in surgery to remove a big piece of the car from his abdomen, and he’d come pretty close to cashing in his chips. The scars on his face and belly had faded, but were constant reminders to him and to Benji of what had nearly happened. As Joshua recovered, though, Benji started getting clingy. At first, Joshua chalked it all up to some sort of post-traumatic reaction.
Eventually, though, Joshua was well and working again, and this past June Benji had asked to close their relationship. Only them, no more outsiders. Joshua refused. He had very good reasons for refusing, and Benji knew those goddamn reasons, but he still insisted.
The fight hadn’t been pretty. Mean things were said by each of them, things Joshua regretted every day. They’d parted on speaking terms, but they’d also both agreed on a break. A break that, so far, had lasted two months and counting, and Joshua missed him. Texting and video chat weren’t enough.
He wanted his boyfriend back, but so far, Benji had given no indication that he wanted Joshua back. Benji was living his dream, traveling with Fading Daze and making new fans withevery gig in every new city. Maybe his rock star life simply didn’t have room in it for Joshua anymore.
Confused and no longer enjoying his IT job, Joshua had sublet the apartment he’d only recently rented, taken a leave of absence from work, and moved to the shore to share the three-bedroom apartment Lincoln lived in. The only minor drawback was how grossly in love Lincoln and Emmett were. Joshua saw it in every look, move, and gesture the couple made. It didn’t help that Emmett had practically moved in, too.
Joshua had been there a week, and he still felt no less unsettled about his life than when he’d been in Philadelphia.
Lincoln nudged him with an elbow. “You want to get a table or sit at the bar?”
The bar looked jammed, so he said, “Table. I’ll get one if you want to order our drinks.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Cap and Coke.”
“On its way.”
Joshua wandered to the far side where a counter-height table and two stools were standing empty. Lincoln had mentioned his friend Melody might join them later, but Joshua didn’t want to tie up a stool on a maybe, so he sat at the two-top. The stage was directly ahead, and someone was setting up equipment, preparing for the start of the open mike, which was advertised for eight o’clock.
The crowd skewed toward mid-twenties, but it was definitely eclectic in terms of height, weight, ethnicity, and personal style. Considering the owner’s nephew was gay, Joshua imagined the place was also very open-minded. Probably the type of place he and Benji would have enjoyed together.
Will enjoy together.
He needed to fix things, but he wasn’t sure how. He didn’t know how to explain to Benji that he was terrified that closingthe relationship was the first step toward the death of it. In his experience, good things didn’t last. Once you committed wholly, that’s when the cheating began.
Lincoln approached the table with two rocks glasses, one dark, and the other yellow. As he sat, he slid the dark one toward Joshua. With his sunglasses, blond hair, and chiseled cheekbones, Lincoln looked like a movie star in disguise. But the lenses weren’t for appearance’s sake. Because of the car accident, Lincoln had serious issues with photophobia. The flashing lights of the club would have given him a migraine in two minutes flat without them.
Even though Joshua had nearly died too, and he still occasionally had screaming nightmares, he felt like he’d gotten off lucky. All of his physical wounds had healed, but Lincoln would deal with his problems for the rest of his life.
Or until some brilliant brain surgeon figured out how to fix him.
The house lights dimmed a bit, and the stage lights rose. Some of the noise hushed as a middle-aged woman stood behind the microphone. Joshua didn’t have to ask to know that was the owner, Beatrice Westmore.
