And it had been easy when he was younger, in the brief time before Jack came; he’d thrilled at the casual nature of anonymous sex. It rendered him nameless, just a body, just a mouth to fill. It had been hot and numbing and satisfying. An itch he had always needed to scratch. He was aroused by possibilities and disgusted by the reality, disgusted by himself. He’d lost the ability, the knack. He leaned back against the bar, hot eyes on all the things he wouldn’t let himself have, and he prevaricated.

“Not like anyone here would want to go home with me.” The gin and vermouth sweetened around the lie in his mouth.

“Oh, right.” Phil rolled his eyes, managing to look even more handsome in the plebian gesture. “That must be why everyone in the place can’t stop staring.”

Theo knew that, and flushed. “That’s just my body. Nothing to do with me.”

“Your body needs things, too.”

He shook the ice in his glass, looking down. He could feel Phil’s stare on his cheek. “Yeah.”

“Have you really never—”

“No. Not since—then.”

“Hmm.” Phil finished his drink, lifted his elegant fingers for another. “You’re overdue.”

“I’m not unfaithful.” As if that had been the real reason why he hadn’t—

“Right, you have all of these monogamy ideas.” A false shudder.

Theo snorted. “It’s not a dirty word, you know.”

Phil picked up his new glass, clinked it with Theo’s. “I suppose.”

“Phil, I just can’t—I couldn’t—”

“But you can now, love. Maybe you should.”

He felt the gin in him, and the Manhattans they’d shared back at his house, and there was a dizziness, not from the alcohol but from feeling he was up on a ledge, high, moments from flying. A vertigo of choices. Of a future laid out in front of him, uncharted, unplanned. He felt his pulse in his throat, exposed, beating at a different rate than the bass of the music, off-tempo and mad.

He missed Jack so much that he could slap someone. Slap himself.

“I just want you to see that there are more options, if you want them.” Phil nodded at a young man, dark-haired with a crooked smile, who’d been darting his eyes over, hungry. “Don’t you think you could want someone else? It would be simple. You wouldn’t have any trouble finding—”

“Have you ever wanted anyone other than Genni?”

Phil lifted an eyebrow.

“For more than one night, I mean.”

It was Phil’s turn to stare into his drink, half a frown and then a warm, shy smile on his face. “No.”

“It wouldn’t be simple for me.”

“It’s not simple for me, either.” Phil pursed his lips, “But I know that I’ll always need—I’ve never had any shame about this.”