Chapter 2: Dinner
Dinner was a minefield laid with white linen and heavy silver.
Joey ordered a double bourbon the moment they sat down. He drained half of it in one go, the heat a blunt weapon against the thoughts swarming his skull. The restaurant was all soft light and lower murmurs, but to him it felt like a hive, buzzing with a secret he was about to give away.
“Someone’s celebrating,” Sarah said, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. She played with the stem of her wine glass.
“Long day in the sun,” he grunted, signaling the waiter for another before the first was empty. He couldn’t look at the menu. The words blurred. All he could see was the phantom imprint of a black speedo against olive skin, the exact curve of a deltoid in the late light.
The new drink arrived. He focused on the condensation on the glass, the precise geometry of the ice cubes. Anything solid. Anything real.
“So,” Sarah began, her tone artificially bright. “What do you want to do tomorrow? There’s that snorkeling excursion. Or we could just lounge again.”
“Lounging’s good.” The word felt vile in his mouth. It made him think of plastic webbing and helpless staring.
“Okay.” A pause. The silence between them was new, a thin, awkward thing. It had never been there before. “You were pretty quiet after the pool.”
“I told you. The sun.” He took another punishing swallow. The bourbon wasn’t working. It was just fueling the fire, making the memories more vivid. The scent of coconut oil seemed to have permeated his sinuses.
Sarah leaned forward, her voice dropping. “Was it that guy? Did he say something to you?”
Joey’s head snapped up. “What? No. Why would you—?” He forced a laugh, a hollow, barking sound. “He’s nobody. A clown in a tiny bathing suit. Forget about him.”
But she was studying his face, and he knew he was a terrible liar. His jaw was clenched tight enough to ache. He felt exposed, skin peeled back. He’d spent his entire life building this version of himself—unshakeable, straightforward, a rock—and one indifferent glance from a stranger had turned him to silt.
“I just… I don’t like how he looked at us,” Sarah said quietly, retreating.
He wasn’t looking at ‘us,’ Joey thought, a surge of bitter clarity cutting through the bourbon haze. He was looking at me. He was looking right into the mess.
Their food came. Some fancy fish, vegetables arranged like art. It tasted like cardboard. Joey ate mechanically, his gaze drifting past Sarah’s shoulder, through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The infinity pool was a sheet of black glass now, lit from below with a soft blue glow. Empty loungers stood like silent witnesses.
His eyes tracked the edge of the patio, the path to the cabanas.
Stop walking over here.
He flinched, his fork clattering against the plate.
“You okay?” Sarah asked.
“Fine.” He grabbed his glass, found it empty. He caught the waiter’s eye, pointed at it, made a circling motion with his finger. Keep them coming.
The alcohol was turning viscous in his veins, a slow, thick current. It didn’t numb the pull; it amplified it, stripping away the thin veneer of his anger and leaving the raw, humiliating curiosity beneath. It wasn’t about sexuality. That word was too clean, too political. This was something older, more primitive. It was about power. Elias had it. An absolute, effortless command. Joey had always believed his own power came from his strength, his straightness, his role. Now he saw it for what it was: a performance, a script he followed. Elias didn’t follow a script. He wrote them.
How did he get that body? The thought was a stuck record. The discipline. The pain. The denial. Joey knew that language. He respected it. To see it embodied in that, to feel both repelled and reverent… it was a fracture in his world.
“Joey.” Sarah’s voice cut through. She’d stopped eating. “You’re on your fourth drink. You’re not even tasting your food.”
“I’m on vacation,” he slurred, the defiance childish even to his own ears.
“You’re chasing something. What is it?”
The directness of the question pinned him. He stared at her, his wife, her face full of genuine, confused concern. Love. She loved the man she thought he was. The man he was before today. If you love her. Elias’s voice, a whisper in his mind’s ear, cool and certain.
A hot wave of shame broke over him, followed by a reckless, surging anger. Who was that asshole to tell him anything? To lay down a law? To look at him and see… what he saw?
“I’m not chasing anything,” he said, his voice low and thick. “I’m sitting right here. With my wife. On my honeymoon.” He said the words as incantations, trying to weld himself back into the picture frame.
He didn’t see the waiter approach with the fifth bourbon. He just reached for it. The room had developed a gentle sway, a slow seesaw that made the candlelight smear. Sarah’s words became a distant buzzing, like a fly against a windowpane. He nodded occasionally, grunted, but the only thing clear in the haze was a specific, tormenting geometry: the sweep of a latissimus dorsi, the line of a quadriceps.
He paid the bill with clumsy fingers, fumbling the credit card. Sarah had to steady him as they stood. The polished floor seemed to tilt.
“Let’s just get you to bed,” she murmured, her arm around his waist, her voice tight with a disappointment he couldn’t face.
***
The walk to the room was a humiliating stagger. His weight kept leaning into her, his feet catching on seams in the carpet he couldn’t see. “I’m fine,” he muttered every few steps, a useless protest. Sarah didn’t answer, just focused on steering him, her body rigid against his side.
The cool, silent room felt like an accusation. She helped him onto the bed where he sat, head swimming. “Just sleep it off, Joey.” Her voice was flat, all the warmth drained out. She turned toward the bathroom, closing the door with a soft, definitive click.
He fumbled with his shoes, gave up, and collapsed back onto the pillows. The ceiling spun slowly. He replayed the dinner, his own boorishness, Sarah’s shrinking disappointment. But layered over it, sharper, was the memory of being assessed and discarded. Habibi. The word felt like a brand. He passed out with his clothes on, the taste of bourbon and shame coating his tongue.
A dry mouth and a headache like a vise woke him. The digital clock glowed 2:17 AM. The bed beside him was empty, the sheets cold. He listened; the bathroom was dark, silent. Sarah was asleep on the pull-out couch, a blanket-covered mound in the sitting area. The sight was a punch to his gut.
The hangover was a physical throb, but it was nothing compared to the mental static. The fury was still there, white-hot and coiling. Disrespect from a fag. The ugly word bounced in his skull, a desperate attempt to box the feeling into something familiar, something he could hate. But it wouldn’t stick. The image that came wasn’t of spite or mockery, but of that calm, superior dismissal by the pool. It wasn’t the what that burned him; it was being deemed unworthy of any further engagement.
He needed a drink. Not to celebrate. To smother.
He rolled out of bed quietly, his body aching. He splashed water on his face in the bathroom, avoiding his own bloodshot eyes in the mirror. He pulled on a fresh t-shirt and shorts, the mundane fabric feeling like a disguise. He pocketed his key card and slipped out, the door latching with a hushed sigh behind him.
The resort hallway was a tunnel of oppressive quiet, the patterned carpet absorbing his footsteps. The air conditioning hummed a monotonous dirge. He followed the discreet signs to the main lobby bar, a place he’d noted earlier, all dark wood and low lighting.
It was nearly empty. A lone bartender polished glasses. A couple whispered in a corner booth, their intimacy feeling like a foreign language. Joey slid onto a stool, the leather cool through his shorts.
“Double bourbon. Neat. The cheap stuff is fine,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep and poison.
The bartender nodded, a study in professional neutrality. The glass appeared before him, amber liquid catching the dim light. He didn’t sip it. He knocked half of it back, welcoming the familiar scorch. It settled in his stomach, a small, central fire. He stared at the rows of bottles, their shapes blurred. He wanted the alcohol to burn the obsession out. He needed it to calcify the confusion back into simple, clean anger.
But the bourbon just warmed the pathways, making the thoughts run faster. Stop walking over here. The command was an itch he couldn’t scratch. Who did that guy think he was? Some kind of god? Joey’s knuckles whitened around the glass. He was a man. A tradesman. He built real things with his hands, things that stood up. He didn’t just lie around a pool showing off.
He finished the drink and tapped the glass. The bartender refilled it. The second double went down smoother. A heavy, liquid heat began to radiate through his limbs, dulling the edge of the headache but doing nothing to quiet the riot in his head. The humiliation fermented, twisting into something more dangerous: a need.
It wasn’t a sexual need, he told himself. It was a need for resolution. For a win. He had to flip the script. He had to make Elias see him. To force that detached gaze to focus, to engage, to… to what? Acknowledge him? Fight him? The end goal was a fog, but the compulsion to move toward it was crystalline.
He signaled for a third. The bartender paused, a flicker of assessment in his eyes. “You sure, sir?”
“Do I look unsure?” Joey’s voice was a low growl. The man shrugged and poured. Joey’s vision was getting soft at the edges now, the room’s details melting. But the image of the pool, the lounger, the smirk, remained in hyper-focus. He was drowning in plain sight, and the only thing he wanted to grab onto was the man who’d pushed him in.
He fished a wad of cash from his pocket, slapped down too much, and slid off the stool. The floor tilted, then righted itself. He felt invincible and utterly ruined. The lobby was a vast, empty canyon. He knew, with a drunkard’s unwavering certainty, exactly where he needed to go. Not back to the room and Sarah’s silent judgement. Not to bed.
He turned, not toward the guest wings, but toward the glass doors leading back to the pool deck. The night air hit him, humid and heavy with the scent of chlorine and night-blooming flowers. The pool was a flat, blue-black mirror under the security lights. The world was asleep.
As he reached the arched doorway leading back to the lobby, Joey’s head lolled. His bleary gaze swept the dim, landscaped path that led down to the pool deck, now empty and serene.
It wasn’t empty.
A single figure stood at the far rail, looking out at the dark ocean. Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, silhouetted against the ambient glow. He was wearing a simple white tank top now, and shorts, but the shape was unmistakable. It was a cut-out of pure dominance against the night.
Elias.
He was staring straight at him.
The contact was a physical impact, a jolt that straightened Joey’s spine against the doorframe. The space between them, thirty feet of manicured tile and shadow, seemed to telescope, pulling taut.
Elias’s expression was unreadable at this distance, just a pale oval framed by dark hair. But the focus was absolute. He wasn’t casually glancing. He was waiting. He’d known Joey would come.
Joey’s heart hammered a sick, arrhythmic beat against his ribs. All the bourbon in his system seemed to flash into vapor, leaving behind a sharp, chemical alertness. He swallowed, his mouth a desert. He should turn around. Go back to the room. Preserve what was left.
His feet moved forward. One heavy step, then another, onto the cool deck. The night sounds rushed in—the shush of distant waves, the electric hum of pool filters, the frantic cicada-song of his own pulse in his ears. He was a missile locked onto a target, his path unwavering.
He stopped ten feet away. The details resolved. Elias’s arms were crossed over his chest, the white cotton of his tank strained across the impossible breadth of his shoulders and pecs. His face was calm, but his eyes held a dark, predatory amusement. He looked Joey up and down, a slow, deliberate survey that took in the rumpled clothes, the bleary eyes, the defensive hunch of his shoulders.
“You don’t listen,” Elias said. His voice was quiet, but it carried perfectly in the stillness. It wasn’t a question.
“I needed some air,” Joey croaked, the excuse pathetic even to his own ears.
“Air,” Elias repeated, tasting the word. A faint, dismissive smile touched his lips. “You look like you need a gutter to sleep in. Does your wife know you’re down here, chasing ghosts?”
The mention of Sarah was a spark to tinder. “Leave her out of it,” Joey snarled, taking a half-step forward. The aggression felt automatic, a suit of armor he’d worn for decades. It was rusted now, and ill-fitting.
Elias didn’t flinch. He seemed to grow stiller, a mountain regarding a pebble. “She is the only thing that should be in it,” he said, each word precise and cutting. “But she’s not, is she?”
Joey had no answer. The truth of it strangled his rebuttal before it could form. He just stood there, breathing heavily, the object of that relentless gaze. He felt like a specimen pinned to a board. The urge to swing, to break the tension with violence, thrummed through his fists.
Elias unfolded his arms. The movement was fluid, powerful. He let out a soft, almost imperceptible sigh, as if bored by a trivial game. He stared Joey down, his dark eyes stripping away the last of Joey’s drunken bravado, leaving only the raw, humiliated want beneath.
Then he turned.
He walked away, not toward the lobby, but along the edge of the pool toward a curtain of lush, trailing bougainvillea that marked the entrance to the secluded, private lounging area—a grotto of padded daybeds and quiet fountains, hidden from the main deck.
Joey watched the retreating back, the muscles of Elias’s shoulders working under the thin fabric. Every cell in his body screamed at him to stop, to go back, to end this madness now.
Joey followed.