Chapter 1: Grinding on Strangers, Drowning a Breakup
The bass hit first, a physical thing that thrummed through the soles of her boots and up into her ribcage before the doors had even fully swung shut behind them. Violet and electric blue light bled across every surface, strobing in time with the music, turning the crowd into a single breathing organism of glistening skin and tangled limbs.
Breanna stopped just inside the entrance, her hand still wrapped around Matt's wrist.
"I can't do this," she said.
Matt turned, and even through the fractured light she could see the exact shape of his grin—the one that had convinced her to do tequila shots at noon on a Tuesday, the one that had talked her into getting bangs in eleventh grade, the one that had somehow made her believe that dyeing her hair platinum blonde two weeks before her sister's wedding was a good idea. He looked like trouble personified in a black mesh shirt and jeans so tight they should have required a permit.
"You absolutely can," he said, tugging her forward. "You're already here. You're already through the door. The hard part is over."
"The hard part is the part where I have to interact with humans."
"Wrong. The hard part was staying in that apartment for three weeks while Simon's ghost haunted every corner of it. The hard part was crying into your third pint of Ben & Jerry's while I watched you slowly turn into a very sad, very sticky couch gremlin."
Breanna winced. "I wasn't that bad."
"You named a houseplant after him."
"It was already named that."
"You bought the plant after the breakup specifically so you could name it Simon and then slowly watch it die."
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. He wasn't wrong. The plant—a small succulent she'd purchased from the grocery store at 2 AM during a particularly rough night—sat on her windowsill now, brown and shriveled, a monument to her inability to move on. Or maybe just her inability to water things. Both felt equally pathetic.
"Come on," Matt said, and his voice softened just enough to cut through the music. "One night. One night of not thinking about him. That's all I'm asking."
He was already moving, weaving through the crowd with the kind of easy confidence that came from years of navigating spaces like this one. Breanna followed because that was what she did. She followed Matt. She had been following Matt since college, since the first time he'd found her crying in a dorm bathroom over some guy whose name she couldn't even remember now, and he'd sat on the tile floor with her until she stopped. Loyalty was a hell of a drug.
The bar was a glowing beacon at the far end of the room, backlit shelves of liquor creating a halo effect that made the bartender look like some kind of deity. Matt found a spot against the counter and gestured to a man with a shaved head and a beard that belonged on a lumberjack.
"Two shots of your cheapest tequila," he said. "And I mean the cheapest. I want to feel like I'm in college again."
The bartender—his name tag said Marcus—raised an eyebrow. "That's a dangerous request."
"That's the point."
Marcus poured two shots and slid them across. Matt pushed one toward Breanna. The liquid caught the light, amber and menacing.
"I hate tequila," she said.
"You hate everything right now. That's the problem." He picked up his shot and held it between them. "To Simon, who never deserved you."
"Matt—"
"To Simon, who had a receding hairline at twenty-eight and tried to hide it with hats."
"Matt."
"To Simon, who—"
She grabbed her shot and slammed it back before he could finish. The tequila burned a path down her throat, hot and sharp, settling somewhere in her stomach like a lit match. She coughed. Matt laughed and followed suit, his shot disappearing with practiced ease.
"There she is," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "There's my girl."
Breanna shook her head, but something in her chest had loosened. Just a fraction. Just enough. The tequila was already doing its work, warming her from the inside out, softening the edges of everything.
"Another round?" Marcus asked.
"No," Breanna said at the exact moment Matt said, "Yes."
Matt won. He always won. Two more shots appeared, and this time Breanna didn't argue. She drank, and the room tilted slightly, and the music seemed to get louder, deeper, wrapping around her like a second skin.
And then Matt's hand was on her back, pushing her toward the dance floor.
"What are you doing?" she asked, digging her heels in.
"Your prescription." He nodded toward the sea of bodies. "Anonymous hips. The fastest cure for a broken heart. Trust me, I've done extensive research."
"I don't want to—"
"Breanna." He turned her to face him, both hands on her shoulders now, his dark eyes serious in a way they rarely were. "You've spent three weeks thinking about him. Three weeks letting him take up space in your head. He doesn't get tonight. Tonight is yours."
She stared at him. The lights pulsed. The music thrummed. And somewhere in the crowd, a woman threw her head back and laughed, loud and wild and free.
"One dance," Breanna said.
"One dance," Matt agreed. "I'll be right here."
He wasn't right there. The moment she stepped onto the dance floor, the crowd swallowed her, bodies pressing in from every direction, hands and hips and shoulders moving in a rhythm she couldn't quite find. She stumbled, caught herself, kept moving. The violet light painted everything in shades of purple and shadow. The bass was a heartbeat, steady and relentless, and after a while she stopped trying to fight it.
She closed her eyes.
Simon's face floated up immediately—the way he'd looked when he'd told her he was leaving, that he'd met someone else, that he was sorry but not sorry enough to stay. The way he'd packed his things into two cardboard boxes and walked out of their apartment like it was nothing, like three years was nothing, like she was nothing.
She moved faster. Harder. Let the bass drown him out.
A hand slid down her spine.
Breanna's eyes snapped open. She didn't know when the body behind her had arrived, didn't know if it was a man or a woman, didn't care. The hand was warm and confident, fingers trailing from her shoulder blades down to the small of her back, and it felt good. It felt like being wanted, even if it was just for a moment, even if it was just anonymous.
She didn't turn around. She just kept moving, let herself lean back into the touch, let the music carry her somewhere else entirely.
This was what Matt had meant, she realized. This was the cure.
The hand disappeared. She felt its absence immediately, a cold spot on her back. But before she could mourn it, before she could turn to see who it had belonged to, someone else was there—another set of hands, another body, another heartbeat pressed against hers. The crowd was a living thing, and she was part of it now, swept up in the current.
She danced until her legs ached. She danced until she forgot her own name. She danced until the only thing that existed was the bass and the light and the heat of bodies all around her.
And then Matt was there, his hand closing around her wrist, pulling her off the floor.
"I need water," she gasped. "And maybe a defibrillator."
Matt laughed, steering her through the crowd toward the bar. But they didn't stop at the bar. They passed it, Matt's grip firm on her wrist, and kept walking toward a shadowed corner at the back of the room.
"Where are we going?" Breanna asked.
"Somewhere I want to show you."
She should have asked more questions. She should have stopped, planted her feet, demanded an explanation. But the tequila was warm in her veins and her body was still humming from the dance floor, and Matt was her best friend, her anchor, the only person in the world she trusted completely.
So she followed.
The corner was darker than the rest of the room, the strobe lights barely reaching this far. A black door stood flush against the wall, unmarked, almost invisible. And beside it, a man with shoulders like a refrigerator and a face that had seen some things stood with his arms crossed, watching them approach.
Matt nodded at him. The man nodded back.
And then Matt was pushing open the door, and warm amber light spilled out into the darkness, and Breanna heard something—a sound that didn't belong in a club, a sound that was too intimate, too raw, too—
"Matt," she said. "What is this?"
He turned to look at her, and his smile was different now. Softer. Sadder, maybe.
"It's a surprise," he said. "Trust me."
The staircase spiraled down into the unknown, and the amber light pulsed like a heartbeat, and from somewhere below, muffled and distant, she heard a moan.
Breanna looked at Matt. Matt looked at Breanna.
And then she took a step forward, toward the stairs, toward the light, toward whatever was waiting for her in the dark beneath the dance floor.
The stairs curved downward, each step taking her deeper into warmth that had nothing to do with temperature. The music from the club above faded with every turn, replaced by something else—a low hum of voices, the occasional laugh, sounds she couldn't quite identify but that made her pulse quicken anyway.
The amber light grew brighter as they descended. It came from sconces mounted on dark walls, casting long shadows that danced and shifted. The air changed, too. Thicker. Warmer. Carrying notes of leather and something sweet, like honey or maybe vanilla, mixed with the unmistakable musk of bodies.
Breanna's hand found the railing. The metal was cool beneath her palm, a stark contrast to the heat building in her chest.
"Matt," she said again, but quieter this time. Less a question, more a plea.
He didn't answer. Just kept walking, his silhouette sharp against the glow ahead, and she followed because the alternative was standing alone on a staircase that led to nowhere.
The stairs ended at another door. This one wasn't hidden or unmarked—it was wide and wooden, with a brass handle that gleamed in the amber light. Matt pushed it open without knocking.
The room beyond stole the breath from her lungs.
It sprawled out before her, vast and dim and pulsing with the same amber glow as the staircase. Couches lined the walls in various states of occupation. Beds—actual beds—were scattered throughout, some draped in dark fabrics, others bare. Lounge chairs. Chaise longues. Everywhere she looked, there were bodies.
Some were fully clothed, tangled together in intimate conversation, mouths close to ears, hands resting on thighs. Others were less clothed. Much less. She saw skin—acres of it—glistening in the low light. She saw mouths on necks, hands on hips, a woman's head thrown back in what could only be pleasure.
Her eyes couldn't decide where to land. Every direction offered something new, something she'd never seen outside of a screen, something that made her face flush and her stomach tighten with a feeling she couldn't name.
"Matt," she whispered, and this time it came out strangled.
He turned to face her. In the amber light, his features looked older somehow. Softer. The mischief was still there, but tempered by something that might have been nerves.
"Okay," he said. "So. This is a gay bar."
Breanna blinked. "What?"
"The bar upstairs. It's a gay bar. I've been coming here for years." He gestured vaguely at the room around them. "But this—" He paused, seeming to search for words. "This is something else."
"You think?"
"It's a sex club." He said it plainly, no shame, no apology. "But it's not just for gay men. It's fluid. Open to anyone who respects the rules."
"And what are the rules?"
"Consent. Everything here is about consent." He was watching her carefully now, gauging her reaction. "You don't have to do anything. You don't have to touch anyone. You can just... observe. Or we can leave. Right now. Say the word and we're gone."
Breanna's heart hammered against her ribs. The room pulsed around her, a living thing, and she felt like she was standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at water so dark she couldn't tell how deep it went.
"Why did you bring me here?"
Matt's jaw tightened. "Because you've been drowning, Bree. For three weeks, you've been drowning, and I couldn't watch it anymore. I thought—" He stopped, shook his head. "I don't know what I thought. That maybe seeing this, being here, would remind you that there's a whole world out there. That Simon was just one person. That you're allowed to want things. To feel things. To be alive."
She stared at him. The tequila was still warm in her blood, but her mind felt suddenly, painfully clear.
"You should have told me."
"I know."
"You should have asked."
"I know." He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. "I'm sorry. I just—I didn't know how to help you, and I panicked, and this was the only thing I could think of."
She wanted to be angry. She wanted to storm up the stairs and leave him standing there in his mesh shirt and his guilt. But her feet wouldn't move. And the truth was, some small part of her—a part she'd been ignoring for weeks, maybe years—didn't want to leave.
"I don't know what I'm doing here," she admitted.
Matt squeezed her hand. "That's okay. You don't have to know."
A laugh drifted toward them from across the room. Breanna's gaze followed the sound before she could stop it, landing on a woman with silver-streaked hair and a dress that seemed to be made entirely of shadows. She was draped across a man's lap, whispering something in his ear, while her other hand rested on the knee of a woman beside them.
Everyone here seemed so... comfortable. So certain. Like they belonged in their own skin in a way Breanna had never quite managed.
"I need a drink," she said.
Matt's smile returned, small but genuine. "There's a bar in the corner. Let me—"
"Breanna?"
The voice came from behind her, and she turned.
A woman was walking toward her. Tall. Lean. With hair cropped close to her skull, dark skin that caught the amber light like polished stone, and eyes that seemed to see straight through her. She wore a suit—an actual suit, tailored and sharp—with nothing underneath the jacket, the hollow of her throat exposed and gleaming.
She was beautiful in a way that made Breanna's thoughts tangle into knots.
"I thought that was you." The woman stopped a few feet away, her head tilting slightly. "Val. We met at Matt's birthday party last year. You were the one who spilled wine on my couch."
Breanna's face went hot. "Oh god. That was you?"
"I remember you promised to replace it." Val's smile was slow, deliberate. "You never did."