Page 2 of Night By Night
Then again, that’d been over five years ago, the last time he dated a guy. And he hadn’t dated anyone since his breakup with Kelly over a year ago. Now, he was finally ready to date again.
Maybe.
He hoped.
I’m thirty-four, not sixty-four. I’m not a fricking dinosaur, for crying out loud.
Although, times like this, he sure as hellfeltlike one.
Marcia and Derrick had sat him at their table, but they were currently making the rounds, apparently knowing most of the people in attendance. That was fine with Maddox. He preferred not being the center of attention. He’d planned to sit in the back of the room and do more observing than talking tonight, to get a feel for the group, but he hadn’t felt right refusing Marcia and Derrick’s warm welcome and friendly insistence that he sit with them.
There were more people arriving now. Instead of trying to remember everyone’s names, Maddox chose to take his seat and put in his beverage order with the waitress. While he waited, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through Facebook, pausing when one story on his feed caught his attention and punched him right in the memories.
Not so much the story itself, but thewho.
And the location listed on it.
Less than an hour ago, Hank Webster had posted a picture, a selfie with part of a house visible in the background.
A selfie of him and a little girl who looked a lot like him, the same blue eyes, both of them smiling into the camera.
All moved in! Let our new adventures begin. Great to be back in Sarasota!
Privacy set to friends-only.
It shocked Maddox how much his heart—and cock—stillthrobbed when he stared at his old friend. He also wondered when Hank had gotten married and had a…baby. She looked to be at least four or five, with long, curly blonde hair lighter than Hank’s.
He felt a little ashamed to admit he hadn’t visited Hank’s profile in a while, but it’d felt like the bad kind of emotional masochism to keep doing it.
Unable to help himself now that the ancient wound had reopened, he thumbed through Hank’s pictures and realized that there wasn’t…a lot.
As in, there wasn’t much ofanythingof note in Hank’s profile. No pictures of a woman, no pics of a wedding, no pics beyond a couple of older profile shots that Maddox remembered seeing a few years ago.
When he scrolled through Hank’s timeline, there were very few posts, most of them little more than scatteredfuck my lifekinds of grousing, or reposted memes.
Weird.
And his relationship status was listed as single.
Before Maddox could do too much pondering on all of that, Derrick clinked his fork against his water glass. “Good evening, everyone. Thanks for coming out tonight. If you’re looking for the computer group, I havenoidea where they are.” Laughter rippled through the room. “Let’s go ahead and get this started so the servers can take our orders.”
Maddox knew he had to put a pin in that for now, so he forced himself to lay his phone facedown in front of him on the table.
Oh, Hank. If only you knew some of the fantasies I had about you, buddy.
* * * *
What a long fucking day.
Hank Webster collapsed on the sofa with a cold bottle of water while Jaylene happilyzoomedaround the house. To her, he knew, the place felt like a mansion compared to the shitty one-bedroom walk-up apartment they’d had in Pittsburgh. Now, they had a backyard, they had privacy.
They also had over one thousand miles of distance between them and Cameron’s family. Unless he’d wanted to move them across the fricking country to California, he had to hope that’d be far enough.
I never thought I’d be thankful Mom and Dad aren’t alive, but I kinda am.
Which was a completely selfish thought, he knew, but it beat the alternative. Besides their hearts breaking over everything that happened, they would have absolutely still wanted to try to keep Jaylene in Pennsylvania, to not “cut off” Cameron’s family.
Fuck those assholes.
