Read When Tony Met Adam (Short Story) for Free Online Page A

going and …
    It was stupid.
He
was stupid. But the kicker came when he checked his email and found a message waiting for him from A Vlachic, with a dot-mil ending to his email address.
    The subject header was empty, and the body of the thing said only
Always do. T
.
    He’d sent it from his BlackBerry—a response to Adam’s stupidly shouted
Stay alert
—mere seconds after he’d walked out Adam’s door.
    Adam had hit DELETE , because Jesus, the way his heart had leapt at seeing that email there made him feel sick to his stomach.
    Which was why he’d come here.
    It was that or finally take the plunge and move out of his freaking apartment. Because Tony had finally done it. He’d exorcised the last of Robin’s ghost. Apparently, it
was
all about timing. It had been long enough, and Adam was now finally ready to move on.
    But first he had to fucking exorcise fucking
Tony’s
fucking ghost.
    He threaded his way through the crowd, trying to squeeze his way up to the bar.
    “Holy shit, you’re Adam Wyndham!”
    He could barely hear the bellowed words over the music, but he could read the other man’s lips. He was extremely attractive, with blond hair, blue eyes, chiseled features, and a body that was ripped. But he had a recent-refugee-from-Oklahoma-so-now-that-he-was-allowed-to-be-gay-in-public-he-was-fucking-everyone-in-sight air to him that wore Adam out.
    Talk about star collectors.
    So Adam just shook his head and avoided eye contact, leaving the guy in the dust as he bellied up to the bar. He caught Roxie’s eye—she knew him well—and the spike-haired bartender delivered his usual, a Long Island iced tea, on the house.
    But the blond followed him—shades of Tony and why the fuck was Adam still thinking about him? Enough already. And maybe a collision with a star collector was exactly what he needed. So Adam turned to face him. He
was
almost angelic in his beauty, no doubt about that.
    So he smiled his intention as he tossed back his drink, letting the alcohol enter his blood stream as quickly as humanly possible without the assistance of IV tubing. He set the empty glass on the counter and held out his hand.
    “Back room?” he asked. He didn’t bother to raise his voice. The angel could read his lips, and if he couldn’t, then he didn’t deserve what Adam was offering.
    But heat flared in eyes that didn’t even remotely match Tony’s in shade, brilliance, intelligence, or wry sense of humor. But it wasn’t his eyes that Adam was interested in—rather his exquisitely shaped mouth. A mouth that smiled in such a calculating, self-satisfied way that it hardened and gave an edge to his beauty and made him look more devil than angel.
    Not that it mattered. Adam wasn’t looking for heaven. He had no misconceptions about ever finding his way there, either in this world or after.
    Although last night, with Tony …? For a moment or two, he’d had the illusion that he’d come pretty damn close, until reality slammed back down on him.
    But Tony was gone, leaving him empty again, in a way that he hadn’t felt since he’d read in some stupid Hollywood gossip rag that Robin Chadwick was getting married to the love of his life, up in Massachusetts.
    The angel took Adam’s hand and leaned close to say, “Come on, baby. Whatever’s bothering you, I’ll make it feel all right.” He tugged him from the bar, leading the way toward the darkness of the club’s back room.
Monday, 4 February 2008
    “Really, guys, I’m fine,” Tony said, for what felt like the four thousandth time. Although this time when he said it, the words were contradicted by the fact that he somehow seemed to have face-planted in the dirt. He had some of the pervasive sandy stuff in his mouth and he tried to spit it out.
    And failed.
    He also failed when he tried to stand.
    “Oh, shit,” he said to Mark Jenkins—who came over to put a wadded up shirt beneath Tony’s head, and help him wash his mouth out with a splash of water from a