The Night Before We Met

  Copyright © 2020 A.J. Lucas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contact the author on Twitter and Instagram: @AJLucasWrites

  For you, whoever you are.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Synopsis

  1 - AFTERNOON

  2 - EVENING

  3 - NIGHT

  4 - After Midnight

  Sneak Peek

  About The Author

  Books In This Series

  Synopsis

  Felix is a hard-partying, easygoing surfer who likes to spend his days hitting the waves and his nights hitting the apps, looking for a guy to share his bed for a while.

  One day, after a particularly frustrating day at work, Felix meets up with a friend, gets a little too drunk… and invites someone over… and together, they explore a side of Felix he doesn’t get a chance to indulge very often…

  This is a standalone short story prologue to The Night the Waves Were Electric, an erotic romance about Felix and a man named Foster who he sparks an undeniable connection with one day on the sands of Venice Beach. This story takes place the night before they met, detailing the events that will cause a conflict between the two lovers who meet the following morning…

  1 - AFTERNOON

  There are few things I hate more than someone telling me I’m wrong. I especially hate hearing it from someone who I know knows less about something than I do. It drives me nuts, makes me see red, makes me want to take their face in my hands, makes me want to bring it close to mine, makes me want to bend in and kiss those big, red, inviting lips…

  Okay, maybe that’s just the case with the guy standing in front of me now, telling me I’m wrong about the best place to catch waves in SoCal. He’s probably a frat bro here on vacation with the boys who are lurking at the sunglasses rack to my left, eavesdropping. He’s about my height, tall and slender, wearing a cutoff tee that shows off impressive biceps, and he has sandy blonde hair and the most beautiful lips I think I’ve ever seen. I focus on them, imagining them pressed against mine, imagining how it would feel to run my tongue over them, instead of paying attention to the words he’s saying.

  Then I catch a word that snaps me out of my fantasy.

  “What did you just call me?” I ask him, looking around the small shop to see if anyone else heard what I think I just heard. No one meets my eyes.

  He falters immediately, and his buddies start snickering. “I didn’t— uh,” he says, taking a step back as my chest swells involuntarily. “I just thought you’d want to know you’re wrong, Venice sucks. No one surfs there except freaks and fa…. uh…”

  “I’d like you to leave my store now,” I say, stepping around the counter. I have easily 25 pounds on the guy, and without the cash register between us, he shrinks away from me. “No one calls me that.”

  I see immediately that he’s going to comply, so I relax. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to physically remove someone from the Hollywood Boulevard souvenir shop where I work — we get lots of belligerent drunks and know-it-all tourists — but it’s never fun, and Hank, the guy who owns the place, would rather I be a pushover than potentially inconvenience him by having the police called.

  “C’mon,” the frat bro says to his friends. “This place sucks anyway.” They follow him out onto the bustling sidewalk, and I step back around the counter, breathing deeply.

  I hate being called that word. It takes me right back to high school, before I was really okay with myself. Somehow, all of the jocks at school knew I was gay before I did, and they weaponized it against me before I had a chance to figure out what it really meant. Even though it’s not telling me anything I don’t know at this point, and I no longer even slightly feel the need to reply, “What?! No I’m not!” it drives me nuts anyway.

  The next customer up to the register is a slightly overweight middle-aged white woman with an aggressively midwestern haircut tucked into a visor. Her shorts are too short and the pocketbook that dangles off her arm is too big. She’s buying a plastic Oscar statuette that says Best Sister on the plaque on the bottom.

  “It’s for my sister,” she says, as though I needed that explained to me.

  I smile politely. I know my smile is winsome; it’s my best feature, my mom always said. I haven’t spoken to her since I came out at 17, almost ten years ago, and she told me she no longer had a son. The smile seems to work on this lady, though, who leans in and whispers, “I heard what he said to you. That was very rude. You handled it very well.”

  “Thank you,” I say, adding that she owes $9.35.

  While she roots around in her purse for her credit card, she continues, “I know you’re not like that. You’re too handsome and manly; you probably have ladies lining up for you.”

  For a second I expect that I’ll be upset, but instead, it takes everything I have not to burst out laughing.

  “You have no idea,” I say, and she seems satisfied.

  —

  After the lunch rush, but before the happy hour rush, there are a few minutes where no one comes into the store. People tend to congregate farther down Hollywood Blvd., by the bigger souvenir emporiums around Hollywood and Highland, and our little shop a few blocks the wrong direction sometimes has lulls the bigger stores never experience.

  When it seems like I’ve definitely hit the afternoon slump and should have a few moments to myself, I pull out my phone. I launch Grindr just to see who’s around, maybe catch the eye of a tourist whose profile is just a headless torso. I don’t let myself scroll the grid, though; I like them to come to me. That way I don’t have to deal with the desperate indignity of sending a message that never gets answered, and instead I’m the one replying to people who I already know are into me.

  Instead of scrolling, I dial Harrison, my best friend. Harrison’s straight, but I don’t hold it against him.

  “Hey Felix! How’s it going?” he asks when he answers the video call. He’s an attractive-enough guy, kind of goofy-looking but in a way that works for him. He looks especially goofy now, staring down at his phone at an odd angle while he walks somewhere.

  “Oh, you know, just another day at Hollywood’s Best Souvenir Shop!” I say wryly. I’m not joking; that’s literally the name of the store. Hank says he picked it because there are so many international visitors that he wanted something matter-of-fact that would tell them what they needed to know, as though the racks of postcards and snow globes we wheeled out onto the sidewalk each morning didn’t get the point across.

  “Yeah? Anything fun?” Harrison asks, looking distracted, walking through a crowd.

  “Well, some frat bro called me a faggot,” I say, surprising myself by saying the word out loud.

  Harrison brings the phone up to his face and stares directly into the camera. “You need me to kill someone?” he says, looking deadly serious.

  I laugh, glad I have a friend like him. I doubt he’d really kill someone, but if I asked him to, he’d certainly come help me rough someone up. “Yeah,” I say, “I have him tied up in the back, how soon can you get here?”

  Harrison grins. “How kinky.”

  I sigh. “He was super hot. But yeah, no. I kicked him out.”

  “Good!” Harrison says. “You should!”

  “What are you doing later?” I ask, my mind filling with thoughts of barhopping around Marina Del Rey or Venice,
wing-manning him and downing as many shots as my body will handle before finding someone to take home for myself. There are always a few nervous gay guys hanging around those straight surf-town bars, hoping one of the hunks around them will turn out to be a homo. I’m always happy to be the one for the night.

  “Dude, I have no idea, but if I don’t get laid I think I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “I know the feeling,” I say. “It’s been a couple weeks.” I briefly remember that night — the feeling of a kiss on my inner thigh, how it felt when he wound his fingers into my hair and pushed me down on his dick — and then banish the thought.

  “Fuck you,” he says, frowning at me. I’m tempted to screenshot his face and use it as a reaction image next time he sends me a groan-worthy text. “Weeks? Try months! I barely even remember whether or not I like women!”

  “Well, you know who to call if you want to give dick a try,” I say. He likes when I flirt with him. Makes him feel attractive, I think. Not that I’d ever actually want to sleep with him. He’s attractive-enough, but not really my type. I like ‘em muscly, and Harrison is… decidedly not muscly.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says dismissively. Then his face lights up. “Hey, do you wanna go for a surf later? I think I wanna go looking for a girl on my own — you know how people tend to ignore me when you’re around — but I’d love to catch a wave or two this evening. Could be fun around sunset, the tide should be perfect.”

  “Absolutely,” I grin. “That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say. What time works for you? I get off at 5 here, and could be at Venice by like 6:30? I’ll just rent a board.” The one good thing about where I worked was that we were encouraged to dress casually, to play into that laid-back SoCal lifestyle I guess, so I could absolutely go surfing in the tank top and board shorts I was currently wearing.

  “6:30 works great,” he says, flipping his camera around so I can see where he is. He’s on the Venice Boardwalk already, lucky bastard. Harrison’s parents gave him a condo in Santa Monica when he turned 21, and he pretty much lives off the fees for renting out the second bedroom to travelers online. Meanwhile I’m spending most of the week working at Hollywood’s Best Souvenir Shop and most of my weekends teaching Beverly Hills rich kids how to surf, scraping by in order to barely afford my Culver City studio.

  Just then, a full bachelorette party walks into the store, glittery sash and all, clearly already quite drunk despite the fact that it’s barely 3:30PM.

  “Gotta go,” I say to Harrison, hanging up before he can respond.

  As I slip my phone back into my pocket, one of the bridesmaids sidles up to the counter. “Hey there,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “My friend is getting married,” she says, actually twirling her hair around her finger like a ditz in a romcom.

  “I can see that,” I say. The bride-to-be is listening from across the store, and I wave at her. She blushes but doesn’t turn away.

  “See, we’re doing this thing where we want her to kiss the hottest guy in Hollywood,” her friend says, “and I just have to be honest with you….” She turns and giggles at the other girls before continuing. “…we saw you from outside, and I gotta say… you’re the hottest guy we’ve seen since we got to LA yesterday.”

  I flash her my smile, and she titters. “Well, thanks,” I say, “but you must not have seen too many guys then.”

  She hits me on the arm playfully. “Oh, stop it,” she says. “You know you’re gorgeous.”

  Guys do tell me that all the time. I feel my phone buzz in my pocket; that’s probably someone on Grindr telling me I’m gorgeous right now. I have curly hair and a hairy chest, a lean, cut build, and, yes, that smile. It makes getting laid pretty easy.

  “I mean, I guess I’m not bad,” I say playfully, wishing this were a bachelor party instead.

  “So?” she asks. “Can she kiss you? It doesn’t have to be like, a makeout or anything. No tongue.” She looks like she’s about to say something scandalous and adds, “Unless you want tongue.”

  The bride-to-be joins her friend at the counter, looking up at me hopefully. She’s a pretty girl, with big blue eyes and rosy cheeks that are probably about to make some guy somewhere very happy soon.

  I step around the counter as all the girls crowd around to watch.

  “What’s your name?” I ask her.

  “Shelby,” she says, her face bright red.

  “That’s a pretty name,” I say, taking her hand like I’m a loyal subject greeting a princess. “I’m Felix; it’s great to meet you.”

  “You too,” she says.

  I stand close, feeling the sexual tension mounting between us. The girls can feel it too, and they’re all whispering excitedly to each other.

  “I fully support you kissing the most handsome guy you can find,” I say, leaning down, practically purring into her ear. She nuzzles into me, but I don’t let her kiss me, staying just out of lip range. “The only thing is…”

  She gets closer. “Yeah?”

  “…I don’t think my boyfriend would appreciate it.”

  2 - EVENING

  “Well? What did they say?!” Harrison asks as we cross the beach, boards tucked under our arms, headed for the ocean.

  I stop, and he stops too, looking at me, waiting for the rest of my story. I grin. “Well,” I say, “everyone started laughing, and I thought it was just that they thought it was funny that I’m gay.”

  “And?”

  “And then she looked up at me and said, ‘I know the feeling, because I’m not sure my girlfriend would appreciate it, either!’”

  Harrison stares at me blankly, and then cracks up. “Wait… lesbians?!”

  “Lesbians,” I confirm.

  The beach isn’t as crowded as I’d expected, which is good, but the waves also aren’t as big as I’d hoped, which is bad. We’re not going to be able to surf tonight.

  Instead, we get each get a sandwich, a basket of fries, and a beer from one of the shacks on the boardwalk and walk out into the sand. We sit on our boards as we eat and Harrison tells me about his plans for the night.

  “So, I was actually thinking about it,” he says, “and if you wanted to come with me, I wouldn’t mind. I’m gonna go to this new place in Santa Monica that I heard is great. It’s called, like, The Archipelago or something.”

  I’ve heard that place sucks, but I don’t want to ruin his night. “Nah, I’m okay,” I say instead. “I think I’ll probably just grab a bottle of tequila and sit at home alone and drink my day away.”

  He frowns. “Dude, that sounds incredibly sad,” he says.

  “I know,” I say, “but today really sucked.”

  “The lesbian thing was funny, though,” he says, punctuating his point by waving his sandwich in my direction.

  “Yes,” I agree. “It was.”

  We eat in silence for a few minutes as we watch the people around us. There’s a happy-looking gay couple a few yards away, sitting together on a picnic blanket, holding hands and looking out over the ocean. They look like twins, both kind of short and stocky, two cubs contemplating the sea.

  It looks nice, and I’m sure they’re wonderful people, but also: no thank you. That’s just not for me. I’m the kind of person who loves the hunt, loves the push-and-pull of talking to a guy, attempting to figure out the right combination of knee-touches and supportive smiles and saying just the right thing to get him under the covers for a night. I love it virtually too, figuring out the right moment to use certain emojis and the exact instant to deploy a dick pic that’ll have someone knocking at my door shortly thereafter.

  Sleeping with one person forever sounds incredibly boring to me; how am I supposed to know what I like if I haven’t tried it all, with a wide variety of guys?

  On the other hand, I do pretty much know what I like at this point. I like being dominant in bed with guys who are slightly smaller than me, but not typically less fit. I take care of my body so I can surf the best I can, an
d I tend to go for guys who do the same. The taking-care-of-themselves thing, not necessarily the surfing thing, although surfing doesn’t hurt. I’ve certainly had my fair share of changing-room hookups with guys whose eye I’d caught out on the waves and followed back up onto the beach, and I wouldn’t trade the full-body exhilaration of situations like that for a whole eternity of lovey-dovey picnic-blanket handholding.

  “What are you thinking about?” Harrison asks, and I realize I’ve been staring off into space.

  “Dick,” I say.

  He throws a French fry at me.

  —

  A while later, as the sun begins to set and the sky fills with vibrant pinks and purples, we decide go for a swim. The waves aren’t conducive to surfing, but we still paddle out anyway and just float together on our boards, chatting.

  “What kind of girl are you looking for tonight?” I ask.

  He thinks a moment and then says, “Honestly, anyone who shows interest in me.”

  “Now who sounds sad?” I say. “Have some standards!”

  “Okay,” he says. “Someone with good hygiene. How’s that?”

  “Eh,” I say, waving my hand. “Hygiene’s overrated. I love when a guy is sweaty and musky.”

  “Ew,” he says.

  “What can I say? Really gets me going.”

  “Okay, how about: someone who’s well-groomed?”

  “Nope,” I say. “The hairier, the better. Love a big bush. Besides, what are you going to do if you get her home and she has more hair than you expected? You gonna tell her to leave?”

  He hangs his head. “Nah. I’d still hit it.”

  “Of course you would,” I say.

  “So you’re telling me not to have standards?” he asks. “That’s what I said at first and you said it sounded sad!”

  “It’s not that, exactly,” I say, considering my words carefully. The sun is mostly down at this point, the sky around us a brilliant, deepening blue. “It’s more like…”