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He didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure if he was dissociating or if he couldn’t hear me. I lifted my hand and waved in his periphery until his gaze darted toward me.

“Hi.”

His lips twitched up into the ghost of a smile. “Sorry.”

I made a Y with my dominant hand and tapped my chin. ‘What’s wrong?’

A beat of silence passed, then another. Finally, he stepped closer and pressed a hand to the center of his chest. “I can feel it. The-the beat. The music.” He rolled his gaze up toward the sky. “Since my hearing loss has been getting worse, I’ve noticed I’m more sensitive to other things.”

Ah. The myth of the super senses. But it wasn’t exactly a myth. People Deaf from birth had more sensitive sight because they relied on it in place of hearing. People who were blind from birth had incredibly well-trained ears and sometimes even a natural inclination toward echolocation.

But people like Tameron—people dealing with the slow loss—often dealt with the dark side of losing a sense.

Everything else became a lot for a while.

And it didn’t always go away. Wearing hearing aids, even ambient noise could be overwhelmingly painful.

My brother was profoundly Deaf, but he never, ever wore his if we were going to Deaf events or clubs.

I understood what he was talking about and moved closer, reaching up to his shoulders. “Take them off.” My thumbs brushed his earlobes, and he gave a single shudder.

“But—”

“Trust me?” I repeated myself in sign, and he nodded. “Take them off.” I lifted my hands and switched languages. ‘You know enough to understand.’

He swallowed thickly, then nodded. ‘Okay.’ His fingers had a slight tremble, but he reached up and plucked them from behind his ears and held them in his palm.

‘Do you have your case?’ I signed slowly.

He nodded, then reached into his back pocket for the small, slender gray box. Dropping them inside, he squeezed it so tight his knuckles went white.

‘Talk to me.’

Tameron took a deep breath, lifted his hands, then changed his mind and dropped them. “I don’t like going without them in public.”

‘I understand. But the music will be so loud,’ I signed, waiting to make sure he was following, ‘that it won’t make a difference.

And this way, your ears won’t hurt. You’ll feel the music.

’ I pressed my hand to his sternum and felt his inhale shudder in his lungs.

‘And you have enough hearing that it won’t be total silence. ’

He tightened his jaw, then nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’

I offered the crook of my elbow to him and he laughed, then curled his hand into it and let me lead the way.

The queer scene in the Bay Area wasn’t what it used to be. There had been a sort of frantic intensity about it in the nineties after the AIDS crisis started to wane. A sort of desperation to be seen and heard, not forgotten now that it wasn’t making the news cycle every other week.

So many were terrified the world would forget who we’d lost that we’d celebrated every chance we got. But society had shifted. We were older now, and wiser, but tired.

They had social media. A way of being constantly connected to each other across the globe that clubs felt—in a way—like a dying relic.

Of course they’d never fully go away. This wouldn’t turn into a ghost town.

There would always be people who needed to connect, have a drink, dance, and forget for just a little while how terrible the world could still be.

But it wasn’t the same.

In a way, I supposed that was a good thing. When we walked in and saw it wasn’t wall-to-wall people, Tameron relaxed even more. The tension began to drift from his body in little fits and bursts, and by the time we made it to the bar to order a drink, he was smiling again.

‘Thirsty?’

He pulled his lips to the side in thought. ‘Beer?’

‘I’ll order. Trust me?’

He rolled his eyes and nodded.

It took a moment for the ridiculously hot—and ridiculously young—bartender to make his way over.

He flexed his pecs in his black mesh shirt, the light catching on his nipple rings.

He eyed my pepper hair with the sprinkling of salt and gave me an up-and-down that told me if I wanted, he’d be a sure thing.

But he wasn’t my type.

And the longer I stood there, the more I wasn’t sure I even wanted a quick, dirty fuck anymore. It was starting to lose some appeal. The satisfaction wasn’t as good as my hand or a couple of cleverly designed toys I had in my closet, so what was the point?

“One Coke, one beer,” I said, shouting over the music. “Whatever lager you have on tap. Bartender’s choice.”

He winked at me, gave Tameron a quirked brow, then shook his head with a laugh as he wandered over to the taps.

I felt an elbow against my side and turned to find Tameron scanning the crowd. My middle finger dragged up my chest when I caught his eye. ‘What’s up?’

He bit his lip, then signed, ‘You-like-what? Who?’

It felt like a trick question. I liked him, but I couldn’t say that. I liked men who looked like him, but that would probably be creepy. And frankly, I didn’t really have a type. I liked men who were somewhere between rough and tender. Men who knew when to push and when to pull back.

I didn’t mind if they didn’t know what they were doing so long as it was enthusiastic. And fun. I’d let myself wonder what Tameron might be like, but that felt like a cruel game to play with myself.

He tapped my arm again and raised both brows as if to say, ‘Well?’

I scanned the crowd again, but no one caught my eye. ‘Let’s just dance,’ I signed right as the bartender slid the two plastic glasses toward us.

For a moment, Tameron looked like he wanted to argue, but after a second, he tipped half the foamy beer down his throat, swiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said aloud, though, with the loud music, I was mostly reading his lips. “Let’s go.”

I’d forgotten why I was there, which was silly in retrospect. After a second beer, Tameron went to go find the restroom, and I swayed to the music, which had settled from a party beat to something a little more… I didn’t want to call it romantic, but it was easier on the senses.

“Hey, babe. It’s been a minute.” A voice spoke right next to my ear, and I was startled, spilling a little of what soda was left in my cup. Spinning, my eyes caught a familiar figure half in the shadows of the bar. “Marcus?”

He did a little spin. “You didn’t forget.”

I hadn’t forgotten, but I also hadn’t thought about him in years. He used to be my go-to—a quick call when I needed to get off so I could focus. He lived in San Jose, but he used to drive up and crash at his brothers whenever he needed a break from life.

He was not boyfriend material, a stern boundary I’d set with him and myself because he would always hint around it. But he was the kind of man who wanted to have his cake, someone else’s cake, their neighbor’s cake, and eat them all too.

I respected the lifestyle, but it had never been for me. When I decided to settle down— if I decided to settle down—I wanted it to be with someone I considered my best friend. Someone who made me feel safe, and that would never be Marcus.

I tried for a smile, glancing around quickly for Tameron, but he was still gone. “You look good.”

He laughed and touched my arm. “I know. I’ve been hitting the gym a lot.”

“Mm.”

“You still doing that hero thing? Fighting all those fires?”

He said it like it was a joke, like we hadn’t been called to devastation across the state more often than I wanted to think about over the last few years. But that was yet another reason he had never been on my list.

“I just got transferred up north,” I told him.

His eyes gleamed and he swayed into me, pressing his chest against my arm. When I tried to pull away, his grip on me tightened. “So I guess I got lucky tonight.”

“Well, actually, I?—”

“Hey.” Tameron was speaking loudly, and I wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. He startled Marcus enough that I could pry my arm from under his fingers, and I stepped closer to Tameron. There was a wild, almost feral look in his eyes, and it made my heartbeat quicken.

“I thought you got lost,” I told him, leaning in toward his ear, but not so far he couldn’t catch my lips.

He stared at me, then over at Marcus. “Nah. Ended up in a conversation at the bar with a guy who was freshly discharged. A Marine.”

Marcus cleared his throat. “Dayton, babe, who’s your friend?”

There was an almost crackle in the air, then Tameron cleared his throat loudly and said, “Friend? Yeah, no. I’m his boyfriend.”

And for a moment, everything seemed to stop. My boyfriend. My boyfriend .

It wasn’t real, I knew that. But Tameron had just said he was my boyfriend.