30. Lance
Lance
By nine-fifteen, I’ve seen six patients, handled a pharmacy callback, assisted in a foreign body removal, and walked approximately forty-seven miles inside this department.
My gait is perfectly normal. Extremely casual.
I’m walking exactly the way a person walks when nothing unusual has happened to them recently.
Charlie falls into step beside me near the supply room.
“You’re walking funny,” she notices, flat as an EKG reading.
“I pulled something,” I lie immediately.
“Where?”
I blank for half a second. “Lower back. Reached for something on a high shelf. Overextended.”
Charlie tilts her head, eyes doing a full forensic sweep of my body. “What were you reaching for?”
“A jar…of olives.”
“Olives.”
“Yeah. I had this intense olive craving last night—it was life-altering. I stretched too far, felt a pop. Classic olive jar injury.”
She studies me for a long, terrifying second, then nods solemnly. “Lower back strains are no joke. You should ice it.”
I actually need a cold pack for my asshole, but sure. “Will do.”
We keep walking. I think I’m in the clear until her eyes drop to my collar.
I’d yanked it up like a nun this morning, but apparently not high enough.
Charlie’s gaze locks onto the very obvious hickey George left on the side of my neck.
Her eyes slide to my forearm where my scrub sleeve has betrayed me, revealing another mark.
“Lance,” she sings, delighted. “Those are hickeys.”
“Ant bites,” I say without missing a beat.
“Uh-huh.” She’s fighting a smile so hard. “Ant bites.”
“Yes,” I say, firmly. “Very, very aggressive.”
“Multiple ants?”
“One ant. Very committed. Dedicated, even.”
Charlie stops dead in the hallway, her hazel eyes glinting with mischief. “She sounds intense.”
I open my mouth, but I think about what George’s hands feel like on my hips and the situation I’m currently in that she has just accidentally identified.
“The ant,” finally deciding to say it out loud, “is not a she.”
Charlie stops walking, jaw now dropping to the floor.
Silence.
Then her face does something unholy. She clamps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my fucking god. You crafty little bastard. I’m so proud of you I could cry.”
I keep walking like my life depends on it. “Whatever questions you’re cooking up, the answer is yes. It was great, I saw stars—possibly God—but I’m not discussing it. Please respect my privacy in this very trying, very thoroughly railed time.” I wink.
Charlie bursts out laughing.
God, I really can’t shut up.
“Alright. Dropping it,” she says through a chuckle, in the exact tone that means she absolutely wouldn’t.
I can’t even blame her. I’d do the same thing.
We round the corner toward the nurses’ station. She bumps my shoulder. “So…have you seen George lately?”
I nearly trip over absolutely nothing. “Define lately. Like, in the general sense of time?”
I fucking see all of him, all right.
“Yesterday? Last week? Whatever time. Anyway, was that his girlfriend?”
I snatch a chart from the rack like it’s a shield. “No, they didn’t see each other again. He’s been busy at the shop. Working on stuff. He’s fine, full of vitality and vigor.” Shit, I need to shut up.
She pats my arm with way too much sympathy. “Let me grab you a cold pack.”
“I don’t need—”
“For your back,” she says sweetly, already walking away. “Obviously.”
I stand there holding the chart like an idiot, face burning.
The neon sign of The Velvet Annex glows emerald and gold against the brick building.
The lettering hums softly above the entrance, expensive-looking even in neon, sleek lines giving it old-Hollywood drama.
There’s a line outside long enough to spill halfway down the block.
Men in fitted shirts and silver jewelry chat easily, leather jackets slung over shoulders, crisp button-downs open at the collar.
Someone laughs loudly and brightly while his boyfriend tries, and fails, to shush him with an affectionate hand on his waist.
George kills the engine.
I stare up at the sign for another second before slowly turning toward him.
“You brought me to a gay bar.”
George unclips his seatbelt without looking at me. “Observant.”
“No, because I need time to process you voluntarily taking me somewhere fun.” I gesture dramatically through the windshield.
He grunts, his mouth twitching.
I narrow my eyes at him immediately. “Wait.”
He reaches for the door handle and pauses.
“George Torres-Macklin,” I gasp. “Is this a date?”
He finally meets my eyes properly. There’s the faintest flicker of color high on his cheekbones before his expression settles back into its usual grumpy mechanic default.
“No.”
I put a hand to my chest and pout. “Damn. You didn’t even hesitate before rejecting me.”
“Out of the truck, Lance.” George gets out before I can continue ruining his evening.
“Oh my God, it’s a date.” I grin to myself and climb out after him.
The warm San Diego night wraps around us immediately, carrying music that bleeds softly through the walls.
There are no pounding club beats, but something smoother with a heavy, rolling bass underneath vocals.
The closer we get to the entrance, the more aware I become of everything.
The energy feels brighter. Louder. More alive.
I notice things I normally wouldn’t. A guy with subtle green eyeliner laughing into his drink near the door.
Two men touching casually at the small of each other’s backs like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Someone in polished boots and pearl earrings smoking while his date gently fixes his collar.
And almost at once, I realize that I don’t feel out of place.
Overstimulated? Absolutely. Heart racing a little too fast? Definitely, but it’s so welcome.
George glances sideways at me while we wait near the door.
“You good?”
I scan the sign again, then the people spilling in and out beneath it.
“Good?” I say, proudly. “I think I’m about to thrive here.”
A real laugh slips out at that. Brief, low, and gone almost immediately.
Inside, the whole place is gorgeous. It looks like somebody took a luxury cocktail lounge and handed it over to gay men with exceptional taste.
Dark green velvet booths curve along the walls beneath warm brass lamps. Smoked mirrors catch fragments of movement everywhere. The long bar stretches nearly the entire length of the room, black marble gleaming under amber lighting with rows of liquor bottles glowing like jewels behind it.
There’s a dance floor further in, crowded but not packed shoulder-to-shoulder.
Men dancing together openly, casually, like breathing.
Some are dressed sharp enough for magazine covers.
Others look like they came straight from the gym or the beach.
Nobody seems particularly interested in pretending to be cooler than they are.
And Christ, everybody here is attractive. They’re not even intimidatingly attractive either—they’re just…alive-looking, confident, and comfortable.
I’m still processing all of this when somebody brushes past me and says, “Nice shirt, blondie.”
I blink.
The guy’s broad-shouldered, probably around my age, dark curls shaved short at the sides. He’s wearing a sheer black mesh shirt under an open satin button-up in deep red.
“Oh.” I glance down at my own black T-shirt with the words “If lost, return to the hot bearded man.”
The lettering stretches across my chest in obnoxiously confident white font.
I bought it as a joke in an Arizona souvenir shop halfway through a road trip with George, purely to annoy him. Now, standing here, it doesn’t feel like a joke so much as accurate advertising. Especially the hot part, which feels aggressively relevant in hindsight.
“Thank you. It was on sale.”
The guy giggles immediately before disappearing into the crowd.
George gives me a look.
“What?”
“You flirt differently with men.”
I turn to him so fast I nearly pull a neck muscle. “I do?”
“With women, you act like you’re hosting a gameshow.”
I fix him with a look of pure offense. “That’s fucking untrue.”
“With men, you look confused, as though somebody handed you a present out of nowhere.”
“You’re being weirdly observant tonight.”
We make it to the bar.
The bartender is a tall, gorgeous redhead, wearing enough rings to seriously injure somebody in a fistfight.
“What are we drinking?” The bartender leans in with an easy, knowing smile.
We both order whiskey neat.
“First time here?” he observes, sliding our drinks over. There’s some playful sparkle in his eye.
“Is it that obvious?” I ask.
He glances between me and George once.
“You both keep looking around like two straight dudes who just realized the rainbow wasn’t only a weather thing.”
I lose it completely, laughter bursting out of me so hard I have to set my drink down.
“That,” I tell the bartender through tears of laughter, “is the funniest thing I’ve heard all night so far.”
A burly guy already drinking beside me chimes in, his deep voice almost startling me. “You’ve both got this expression that looks like you’re trying not to imprint on the environment.”
“Oh, I’ve already imprinted,” I admit. “Mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I’m two cocktails away from becoming part of the decor.”
George settles beside me against the bar. And God help me, he looks good here.
Dangerously good.
He’s in a faded gray flannel over a black T-shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows, worn-out jeans on his legs. Pure Dean Winchester energy with tired eyes, hard muscle, and blue-collar sex appeal.
The low lighting sharpens everything about him. The heavy line of his shoulders. The dark, steady stare. The permanent mildly-annoyed expression that apparently translates extremely well in this place, because people keep openly checking him out every thirty seconds.
One guy walks straight over. Tiny waist, pretty brown eyes, a subtle silver nose ring.
He leans against the bar beside George, cautious but trying to act confident, like someone approaching a large, unpredictable dog.
“You look mean,” he says conversationally.