Single Player (4 page)

“The good kind of unexpected, or the bad kind?” The sex had been incredible, but maybe it had been too much for Silas. He did look a bit overwhelmed.

“The good kind, I think. Thanks. That was . . . enjoyable.” Silas was already putting himself back together, his composed exterior slipping into place as easily as he slipped into his jacket. Something had changed in him, though, and he didn't look quite the same as before. Less uptight, maybe. That could just be Matthew's wishful thinking, but he liked to think that this had been good for Silas more than just physically. Once composed, Silas looked around the room as if not sure what to do. “I'll . . . see myself out, I guess?”

Matthew opened the door of the coatroom, peered around to make sure the hallway was empty, and then gestured for Silas to come out. The back door was right there. “You can head out here and go around front. It's almost closing time, so there'll be cabs waiting. And, uh, I had fun tonight. This was really good.” He paused, almost ready to ask if he could see the guy again. Now
that
was surprising. Silas intrigued him, though, in a way he hadn't been intrigued in a long time. An uptight engineer who responded like
that
to sex? He wanted to follow that trail and see where it led.

But Silas made no move to ask for his number, so Matthew just stepped aside and let the other man pass. Silas paused in the hallway, as if he were going to say something, but turned and slipped out the back door without another word.

Once he was gone, Matthew leaned against the wall to try and restore his own sense of equilibrium. He seldom had impulsive one-night-stand sex that left him wanting to see the guy again. He enjoyed sex, but mostly he took a lover to get a sense of what they were like in bed, and once he knew, the curiosity was gone, along with the desire to sleep with them again. With Silas, it was different. He felt like instead of answering his questions, he'd gained a dozen more. He wanted to see how Silas responded to sex in every possible way. If taking him apart once was this fun, making the conservative engineer lose control, then taking him apart again would be even better.

He had to stop thinking like that, though. Silas was a one-night stand, the kind that didn't even stay the night. That was his preference, too: short hookups without emotional entanglements, not relationships that came with commitments and expectations. He didn't need that kind of baggage, and even if he wanted a little more from Silas, it wasn't like he was looking for a boyfriend. You didn't meet a boyfriend by fucking him in the coatroom. He and Silas had had their fun, and now it was over.

As he stepped forward to open the door, he felt his foot knock something and send it skittering across the floor. He flipped on the lights, searingly bright after the darkness, and spotted the item. Silas's phone. Oh shit. He bent to pick it up. It was an iPhone in a plain black case, and when he tried to turn the screen on, it was dead. So much for being able to call an emergency contact. He tucked it into his suit pocket. Hopefully Silas would realize he'd lost it and get in touch with him, somehow. Maybe he could tell the front desk that he'd found a phone. Of course, if he appeared right now, it would raise eyebrows, since he was supposed to have left awhile ago. He'd charge it and hopefully find an emergency contact on it. For now, he would just have to go home and probably collapse for the next ten hours. He'd had enough excitement tonight to last him a whole weekend.

Silas wasn't hungover, but
he felt like hell. Lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, it took him a few minutes to analyze why he didn't feel his normal tip-top awake self this morning. Okay, so he never felt particularly good in the morning, but he'd trained himself to associate that groggy feeling with the satisfaction of using his self-discipline to get his butt out of bed. This morning, though, that self-discipline was nowhere to be found.

He rolled over and blinked at the clock on his nightstand saying it was eleven fifteen. What? He'd slept until nearly midday? That couldn't be right. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. When the cab had dropped him off at home last night, he'd stripped off his clothes and collapsed into bed, still dazed after his encounter with Matthew and shocked at his own behavior, not wanting to confront the reality and choosing to sleep off his confusion. Now that he was awake, he wasn't sure he was any less confused.

His eyes felt dry and crusty, and his stomach was filled with a nagging sense of unease and more than a little nausea, probably thanks to last night's drinking and debauchery. A shower would help. In the bathroom, his reflection caught his eye before he stepped into the shower. Oh god, look at his neck. His collarbone was mottled with bruises, most of which could be hidden by a collared shirt, but his normal T-shirt attire was going to make him look like he'd been the victim of an attempted strangulation instead of a wild sex romp. As he ran his fingers across each bruise, he was surprised how much he liked the discomfort the pressure caused. People enjoyed this sort of thing, he knew, but he hadn't expected to be one of them.

Once he was under the steaming spray of water, he felt the various stinging spots on his skin, and even that was nice and different. He so seldom paid attention to his body except in filling its basic needs—food and water, warmth and occasionally sex—and anything beyond that was an unnecessary indulgence.

The silence in the bathroom was unusual. Normally, he brought his phone into the bathroom with him and played his favorite podcasts while he showered, but he hadn't even plugged in his phone when he got home last night. He'd left his fancy clothes in a pile on the floor, and his phone was probably still in his jacket pocket where he'd put it when the battery had finally died, right before he'd gone to find Matthew. Silas felt his heart rate speed up as he remembered that dark little coatroom, Matthew's roving hands, his own shameless moans urging Matthew on . . . Jesus. Silas shook his head in a physical effort to clear it of those lurid, vivid images, and focused on getting his body clean even as his mind remained stubbornly dirty.

After he showered and dressed, he went to look for his phone. He searched the pile twice with a steadily increasing sense of panic, shaking out each piece of clothing and checking all the pockets. Damn it. His phone wasn't there. It wasn't on his nightstand, either, nor on his kitchen table where he might have tossed it after getting home. Could he have left it in the cab? No, he didn't take it out of his pocket, and it was his breast pocket, so it wasn't like it could have slipped out of his pants or something. And he'd kept his jacket on, except for . . .

Oh.

Except for when he'd had sex with Matthew in the back of the club. The phone must have bounced out of his coat pocket as it was tossed onto the floor.

He felt a dropping sensation in his stomach at the thought. He was all set never to see the guy again. Would Matthew have noticed his phone on the ground and picked it up? If he had to ask at the club, he'd have to explain that he'd lost it in the back room, and that would raise a bunch of questions he didn't want to answer, like what the heck he was doing in the back room of a club where he didn't work. He also didn't want to get Matthew in trouble for their little tryst. No, he'd have to get in touch with Matthew directly. That was an uncomfortable thought. If only he could remember where the guy worked. Some game company. He normally had a good memory, but he'd been a little drunk at the time. And more than a little distracted by Matthew himself.

No, it was better to contact the club first. Maybe someone would have turned it in, and he wouldn't have to explain where he'd lost it. He couldn't tell if this was legitimately something to be concerned about, or if he was doing that thing where he overcomplicated upcoming social interactions by thinking of all the ways they could go wrong. It was hard to tell. Of course, as soon as he went to call the club, he remembered that he didn't have a phone. The decision to give up a landline and go entirely cell phone only was feeling foolish now. He'd need to delegate the call. Fortunately, Dee was always on Facebook, and he knew he could get in touch with her by Messenger.

Silas flipped open his laptop, and once it booted up and connected to his Wi-Fi, logged onto Facebook.
Hi,
he typed when he saw Dee's telltale green dot.

Her reply came back quickly.
Hey, you. Have a good night?

Yes. You?

Fantastic. Birthday sex is fucking awesome.

Glad to hear it.
His fingers paused above the keys as he considered how to ask her this.
I lost my phone last night. I think it's at the club. Will you call them and see if they found it?

Why can't you call?
He could almost see her raised eyebrow and pursed lips, the “don't try and pull something over on me, Silas” face.

I don't have a phone.

A pause on her end, and then more typing.
Good reason. Okay, fine. Gimme a few minutes.

He waited impatiently, scrolling through his news feed absentmindedly and drumming his fingers on the desk. He was intending to go to work that morning, and had planned to spend the weekend making progress on his project, but searching for his phone was going to put a serious damper on those plans.

Dee's message popped up.
Nobody's found it. Sorry.

He knew where he'd lost it, so either nobody had noticed it back there, or Matthew had picked it up. Silas breathed a heavy sigh. Maybe Matthew had taken it home and charged it. It was a long shot, but that's probably what he would do in a similar circumstance.
Can you call it, just to make sure I didn't lose it here in the house? Or to see if someone else found it somewhere?

Sure.

Another wait. This one stretched on longer than the other wait. Stomach growling, he got up to get breakfast out of the fridge. Lunch. Whatever meal it was now, when it was after noon but it was the first meal of the day. He also set a kettle of water on to boil for the French press, because he needed coffee and he needed it now. When he returned to his desk with a plate of cold cuts and an apple, Dee's message was on the screen.

Some guy named Matthew answered and said he found your phone. Wasn't he the bartender?

Well, damn. Silas exhaled, not sure whether to be relieved or anxious, his stomach flipping irritatingly between the two.
Yes.

I told him you'd meet him at the coffee shop on Bay Road at one.

I was going to go into work today.

Go after you meet with him. And you're welcome.

Silas could almost see her annoyed face.
Thank you, Dee. I appreciate it.

Care to explain why the bartender took your phone home with him instead of bringing it to the club lost and found?
He imagined her smirking in front of her screen.
Or maybe he didn't have to bring it home with him, because you left it at his house?

I definitely did not leave it at the bartender's house.
He didn't even have to lie.
Have a good day.

Fortunately, she didn't push the matter.
You too, babe. Xoxo.

Well, so much for never seeing the guy again. Silas grumbled as he ate his meal, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach from his mixed feelings. He was looking forward to seeing Matthew as much as he was nervous about it. It didn't have to be weird, though. People had one-night stands all the time. He was going to pick up his phone, thank Matthew for charging it, and then say goodbye. He could be at work by two.

---

Matthew waited at the
coffee shop for Silas, feeling unexpectedly nervous, which didn't thrill him. He wasn't the type of guy who got nervous about meeting up, especially when he wasn't trying to impress the other person. They'd already had sex. What was there to be nervous about? He didn't care what Silas thought of him, really. Silas was an uptight engineer who needed a good fucking to loosen up, and Matthew had done the best he could, but their encounter had ended when Silas slipped out of the room with barely another word. This phone delivery was an awkward coda on what would otherwise be a nicely concluded encounter.

Matthew looked up from his phone as soon as Silas entered the coffee shop. He hadn't even had to look to know it was Silas, like he could feel the other man enter the room. How strange. That was some weird woo-woo shit right there. Silas was wearing a plain T-shirt and a pair of old jeans, and with his freshly shaved face, he looked totally different from the hipster-chic image he'd projected last night. Not bad different, though. Younger, more innocent-looking without the stubble, but completely debauched with a clear trail of hickeys visible above his collar. Matthew felt himself go hot at the memory of leaving those hickeys. Silas flashed him a tentative smile, which Matthew returned, holding up the phone.

Silas walked over to the table, but didn't sit. “Thanks. I'm sorry to inconvenience you like this.” Matthew handed over the phone, and Silas put it in his pocket.

Was he just going to stand there? “Want to join me?” Matthew asked, gesturing to the empty seat opposite him. Sure, he wasn't planning on making this a long visit, but it seemed a shame to let the guy walk away without even a conversation.

Silas hesitated. Either he didn't want to see Matthew again and was just being polite, or this was keeping him from something important.

Matthew held up a hand, not wanting to force the guy. “Unless you've got something important to get to, I mean. Don't let me hold you up.”

“No, it's all right. I can stay a little while.” Silas jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the counter. “I'll just go get something to drink.”

A few minutes later, he joined Matthew at the table with a cup of coffee. “I've never been here before. Is the coffee good?” He looked into his cup.

Matthew gestured at his own half-empty mug. “I like it. This is my first time here, too.”

Silas took a sip and nodded. “It's good. Not too bitter.” He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips.

Matthew should absolutely not be thinking of all the things he'd like to do with that tongue, its sliver of pink a reminder of their time together last night. He took a moment to remember what they were just saying. “Oh. Yeah. I usually go to the Brass Buckle. It's right around the corner from where I work, and I tend to stop by there when I need to get some coding done after hours and I don't want to work at home.”

“I've never been there before.” Silas took another sip. “Do they sell beans?”

“Yeah. They don't roast 'em themselves, but I like 'em.” Matthew looked down at his own mostly finished coffee, then back up at Silas. Silas had an intense stare that he found disconcerting, with eyes that didn't seem to be able to decide whether they were brown, green, or gray. Hazel, he supposed the name was, but right now, they were studying him with a laser focus that made him feel prickly all over.

“That's good to know. Maybe I'll stop by there sometime.” Silas ran the thumb of his free hand along the edge of the saucer.

“I've gotta say, I wasn't sure you were the type of guy who drank coffee. Herbal tea, maybe. I could see you as one of those guys who juices and doesn't take in any toxins.” Matthew waved his hand to try to encompass Silas's image. The other man's lips turned up in an amused smile.

“I'm not an ascetic. I think last night proved that.” As soon as he said it, Silas's face colored red, and he averted his eyes and began to talk faster, his words almost tripping over each other as they exited his mouth. “I mean, I drink coffee. A lot of coffee. And alcohol sometimes, as you saw. And I don't eat very well at all. I keep strange hours at my job, so I'm often picking up food wherever I am. I don't have much time to cook.” He took another glug of coffee. “I'm actually on my way to my office now. Going to try and get a few hours in today.”

“They make you work every weekend?” Matthew couldn't imagine having a schedule that forced him to come in on the weekends or work late at night. He loved the work he did at PI Games, but his off time was precious to him. He picked up shifts at Gigi's
,
sure, but those were at his discretion, and Gigi's was fun enough to hardly feel like work. He was the type of person who needed a work-life balance, believing it was the key to feeling happy and healthy in all respects. If that led to what Isabel might call underachieving, well, at least he wasn't a workaholic.