To my immense relief, Beckham laughed. “I figured as much. I was actually at the zoo yesterday. Loved going there as a kid, decided to visit again. Was reminded that they only have the Sumatran tigers there, commonly confused with Bengals. But, well, I didn’t think you’d confuse them.”
“Wow, and you were going to let me go on digging my grave, huh?”
“You were the one shoveling, mate.”
I smiled and leaned back on a wood railing.
“I’m glad you came clean about that, Jamison.”
“Actually…”
I didn’t get a chance to make myself look like even more of a crazy liar. William came up beside me, nudging me with a shoulder and nodding at Beckham. His white T-shirt was splotched with sweat, two big, round marks on his chest that looked suspiciously like breasts.
“Hey, Will, you done getting down and jiggy in there?”
“Yeah, were you getting ‘down and jiggy’ out here?” He smiled at Beckham, who offered his hand and introduced himself quickly before leaning back on the bar, leaving me and Will to our own conversation.
“Kind of,” I said, suddenly feeling bashful.
Will gave me a very obvious wink. “All right, I’ll head to the hotel, then.”
“What? No, you don’t have to end your night. Go find whatever girl you were dancing with. Take her back to the room.”
“You planning on sleeping somewhere else tonight?”
Thank God the club was dark because my cheeks had turned cherry red. “Maybe,” I answered, knowing Beckham was sipping on his drink and pretending not to hear even though Will was speaking louder than the music.
“All right, I’ll see who I bring back, then.” I went to give him a hug goodbye, but Will was already gone, most likely on the hunt for whatever girl he had been dancing with.
“Was that your boyfriend?” Beckham asked when I leaned back on the bar. Maybe he hadn’t been paying attention, then.
“What? No, no. That’s my best friend. We came together on this trip. It was his idea actually.”
“Ah, got it. Didn’t know if you were in an open relationship or not. Not too rare these days.”
“Nope, I’m just in a nonexistent relationship with Ricky Martin. That’s about it. And I guess he wants it to be open, so I’m just going with it.” I mustered a smile and lifted my glass. “Livin’ the vida loca, eh?”
That got Beckham to crack up. When he was able to get his breath back, he looked at me kind of funny. He looked at me in a way that made the oxygen in my lungs instantly burn up.
“You’re a special one.”
“Oh really? How so?”
Beckham just smiled and drank from his glass. I knew I wasn’t getting an answer to my question, but that was all right.
His smile was all the answer I needed.
3 Beckham Noble
Well… this was new. Time was blurring by. I was laughing and smiling and having a grand fuckin’ time, even with the envelope holding my father’s letter burning a hole through my back pocket. I had watched his casket being lowered into the ground hours before. And even though I held zero emotions toward him—zero—I still half expected to go to sleep in a dark mood. I didn’t expect to be chatting about my immensely strong dislike of Taco Bell after a particular harrowing incident with someone who I was sure was lying to me about his name.
But that was okay. Jamison or not, this guy was pulling me in. There was an air about him. Like he didn’t care, even though I could see through a couple of thin cracks in his facade. He was funny and smart, and he was fit with a capital F.
“So no Taco Bell for me ever again,” I said, finishing the story.
“I mean… after that, I don’t think I’d even look at a taco or ring a doorbell the same way ever again.”
We both laughed, neither of us realizing the place was beginning to clear until we were the last two left on the patio, our empty drink cups sitting on the bannister.
“Oh shoot, we’re about to get kicked out.”
“My flat is only a short walk away,” I said. Suddenly, my heart pounded hard in my chest. I flashed back to earlier in the night, when that young douchebag called me out for being older. It had left a mark. “You don’t have to if—”
“Let’s go,” Jamison (or Fred or Brad or Jason) said.
Okay, okay, good. I could breathe properly again.
We walked through the patio, into the pub. The lights had been flicked on, throwing the scene into stark reality, making me wish I’d put on beer goggles just to walk through the filthy space. I was pretty sure I saw five different puddles that could be considered as hazardous waste by government officials.
Outside, the London air was fresh. It was early October, so the temperature wasn’t blistering cold yet. We could get by with light jackets, although I’d been underneath the Miami sun for so long that even seventeen degrees Celsius started to feel like the dead of winter to me.