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Francyn hadn’t planned the get together with all the members of the ORBIT board at a normal bar.

It was a karaoke bar.

It wasn’t so much that I had an aversion to karaoke bars, because I actually loved singing and pretended that I was halfway decent at it, but it wasn’t exactly the setting I’d had in mind when I arrived at the address that I’d gotten from Exo.

As long as there was booze at this bar, I really didn’t care. I wasn’t planning on getting obliterated, but after the distaste that Matty’s Facebook post had put in my mouth, I knew a Jack & Coke would be the perfect thing to rinse it out with.

“Wallace!”

I heard my name in a high pitch squeal from the corner of the bar.

This karaoke bar was set up with karaoke rooms lining the three walls of the establishment with a bar and dance floor in the middle of it.

Francyn waved me over to the far right corner, where a few of the other board members were lazily drinking their chosen spirits next to the karaoke room.

With a lopsided smile, I joined them. Ozmo, Cresh, and Exo were the only other ones here.

I’d planned on getting here earlier, but my game of Stardew Valley had stolen my time and I’d gotten here a half hour later than I’d planned.

Clearly, I should’ve played a few more days before leaving my condo.

“It is okay that I call you Wallace, isn’t it?” came Francyn’s southern drawl, the remains of a Cosmopolitan in her hand. “Or should I just refer to you as Director Watson?”

Ugh, the thought of hearing Direction Watson every day made my skin crawl. “Wallace is perfectly fine.” I made sure to smile even though my nerves over being perceived by other people was tickling heat down my spine.

One of the two bars was right next to this karaoke room, so I gestured to it. “Did you book a room?”

“Yeah!” Francyn said, excitement flashing like lightning across a dark sky in her voice. “I wanted to wait for more people to get here before starting. Feel free to get yourself a drink!”

“I believe I will,” I said, walking over to where the other three were talking, away from Francyn who was watching the door like she was looking for her misplaced child rather than her co-workers.

Exo, Ozmo, and Cresh looked up as I approached them, interrupting their conversation with a simper.

“Am I the only one who wasn’t expecting a karaoke bar? ”

Exo laughed, but Ozmo was the one who answered me. “Tell me about it. I love the gesture but a regular bar would have been better than this.” They pushed their black hair out of their face so they could properly down the rest of their beer.

“She’s sweet!” Cresh said, cutting through the loud music with her voice. “At least this place is Orb owned and we don’t need to worry about being gawked at too much.”

I nodded, but slipped closer to the bar. Surprisingly, the bartender was human, and really fucking cute. But I ignored the instant attraction and ordered a Jack & Coke.

“I pegged you as a beer guy,” Exo said with a smile, bringing his own bottle to his lips as he took a swig .

Shaking my head, I scoffed. “Can’t stand the stuff. Unless it’s a sour beer or something. Otherwise, I’ll stick to drinking something that at least attempts to cover the taste of the alcohol.”

They all mumbled some semblance of agreeing with me as the bartender handed me my drink with a wink.

“Enjoy.” He said, with an undertone. An undertone that went straight to my dick.

When I gave him a long look, I smiled like an idiot. I held up my glass in mock cheers and he winked. As nice as it was to be gawked at by another man, all it did was make me think about Matty. Hopefully the alcohol could fix that, but until then, I needed to distract myself in other ways.

I joined the group again and held up my glass. “To ORBIT.”

“To ORBIT.” The three of them said together as we took a collective sip of our respective drinks.

Soon enough, the rest of the board members joined us over the half hour that passed, much to Francyn’s delight.

Even Maxim had finally showed up, making sure I wasn’t the only human at this all Orb party.

Once everyone had a drink in their system, Francyn bought every single one of us a shot of our choice.

We stood in a misshapen circle and all took the shot together, taking me back to my Omega Epsilon Omega days in the best way.

Things were going pretty well as we filtered into the karaoke room. The most shocking thing about the room was that it housed all fourteen of us comfortably enough. Kloan sitting on Agemot’s lap helped with space, and everyone else was comfortable enough to gather close and get to know each other.

Another half hour rolled on of people conversing before the singing started.

Shocking no one, Francyn kicked off the karaoke with an actually decent rendition of Celine Dion’s It’s All Coming Back To Me Now .

I wasn’t sure if the others knew it or not, but they were so damn lucky that it was the single version and not the lengthy album version, or else we’d be having a full night of Francyn solos.

I ended up doing my usual karaoke go to, any Taylor Swift song I could get my hands on.

Tonight’s selection was So It Goes… , a particularly sexy song that I couldn’t help but think about the cute bartender while I was singing it.

The performance garnered me a few hoots and hollers from the board members, thanks to my seductive dance that was bloomed by my fourth Jack & Coke.

During Kloan and Agemot’s duet of Closer by Halsey and The Chainsmokers, I noticed Francyn and Wrage sneaking out of the karaoke bar together. Francyn’s smile was wicked and sharp. Judging by the lazily happy look on Wrage’s stony face, I figured they’d made some type of love connection.

I envied them. As nice as it was to flirt with the idea of the bartender being into me, I wasn’t ready. Not without the liquid courage of alcohol, and I needed more of it before I was close to ready. Hell, it hadn’t even been a full twenty four hours that I’d been officially divorced.

While I left the karaoke room to order another Jack & Coke from the cute bartender, my thoughts wandered to how nice things had been when Matty and I had first gotten together.

The late nights watching campy 2000’s comedies, drinking until our heads hurt, making a tour around the cities’ best restaurants.

Back then it had been so easy to be together and I’d been truly happy.

I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I’d been stifling myself.

What I wanted to do was play video games, read, watch horror movies, which Matty was proudly against. I shaped myself into someone that could accurately love Matty without realizing that I was diminishing myself along the way.

That’s why things had seemingly changed between us out of nowhere, at least in his eyes.

I’d tried explaining it to him, that I was changing back into who I was, that I hadn’t meant to be a version of myself that was less than truthful, but he hadn’t heard it.

He’d only heard that I was changing and he didn’t understand why I was doing this to us.

Sighing, I tried to stay out of my head and in the moment. The bartender handed me my drink and leaned in close to me so I could hear him over the noise of the music. The dance floor was raging at this point.

“That one’s on the house, handsome.”

As I pulled back and gave him a slight chuckle, I smiled at him. “Thank you.” I projected, and he gave me another knowing wink.

What I wouldn’t give to be in the right head space to pull this guy into the bathroom, push him down to his knees, and make him choke on my dick. But I just didn’t have it in me right now.

Squeezing a path back to the karaoke room, I noticed that more than half of the board members were gone. Cresh was singing Kesha’s Hunt You Down and I stumbled over to the couch where everyone was cheering Cresh on or immersed in their own conversations.

“Where did everyone go?” I asked to anyone who would answer.

Maxim ended up being the answerer. “I think the party is winding down pretty fast. Some said they wanted to dance instead.”

I nodded. That made sense. The dance floor outside the karaoke rooms was raging, probably because now there was a DJ mixing music instead of hits blaring through a supersized speaker.

“Why don’t we take the party to the dance floor after Cresh finishes up?”

This came from an absolutely sloshed Zxe, which was a sight to behold, given that she was so inhuman and cool looking. It still baffled me that Orbs could even get drunk.

“For sure!” Maxim agreed .

Applause ripping through the room as Cresh finished her song, she was absolutely adorable as she posed on stage like she was a star in front of her adoring fans, which considering everyone’s drunk level, she practically was.

The others filled her in on the idea of going to dance and everyone was in perfect agreement.

We filed out of the karaoke room and weaved our way through the crowd so we could make some sort of space so we could all dance.

Exo and Cresh were dancing together, exuding the best sibling energy.

Agemot and Kloan were hanging off of each other like they were the only ones in the bar, making out as soon as the song shifted from verse to chorus.

I hollered, cheering them on because I always became such a cheerleader when I was drunk.

Zxe joined me in cheering, curbing my embarrassment.

Agemot sent us a smirk after they stopped kissing, a chuckle loosening him up.

I felt Maxim dancing next to me as he leaned in and told me he was heading to the bathroom.

The thump thump of the music carried me away as the liquor started to hit me for all I was worth.

I wasn’t exactly one who handled my alcohol very well in the first place, and considering the heft of drinking I’d taken on tonight, it was a wonder that I was even able to remember everything that was happening.

Maybe not right now, but maybe in the future I’d be able to really move on from my divorce and find love again. The kind of love that fit my life like a long lost puzzle piece. But for now, I was perfectly content to dance the night away and bask in the glory of freedom.

A yelp from in front of me caught me off guard as someone on the dance floor was pushed into my side. Wrage barreled his way toward us until I realized that it wasn’t Wrage at all, but rather another petrylle that looked a hell of a lot like him.

He surveyed all of us rather than glancing at me directly. But it wasn’t until he lifted his piercing blue eyes and peered into my soul that I felt my dick stir in my pants .

There was something about him that drew my attention, much like it had when I’d been gawking at Wrage during the ORBIT introductions.

The grey skin that resembled coarse rock.

The built frame that I wanted to feel with my palms. The blue eyes that he shared with Wrage that ignited this previously untapped desire in me that was shaking with interest to be freed.

Arousal rolled in waves in my belly, and I had to steel myself when I realized that he was trying to talk to me.

“Where’s Wrage?” His voice was just as thick as the rest of him, my liquored thoughts wanting to taste his rocky looking grey skin. I had to shake myself of the lustful thought to focus on his words as he spoke again. “Where’s my brother?”

“Wrage?” Cresh interjected with a question burrowed between her brows.

“No, I’m his brother.” He told Cresh curtly. “I recognize you from the interview.” He said with gusto to me, elevating his voice so we could hear him over the sound of the music and the crowd.

He was right, now that I thought about it through my alcohol drenched brain. This petrylle had been present at the address that Wrage had given me during the onboarding process. He was just as hot as I remembered.

God, I really needed to sober up and have a cold shower.

“He left with a friend, I think.”

“Fuck,” Wrage’s brother said. “Thanks.”

As the petrylle left the dance floor to search for his brother, I couldn’t help but notice that my cock hadn’t deflated and that all it wanted in that moment was Wrage’s brother’s lips wrapped around it.