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The music in the nightclub blared at a barley tolerable volume, loud enough that Stan could feel it through his feet planted to the edge of the dance floor, but can somehow manage to hear the conversations of couples dancing nearby. The couples around him talk about everything and nothing, but the couples out there are talking, and dancing, and most importantly they’re together. Sure, he’s kept a lazy watch across the dance floor for potential mates to bring back home (home currently being a seedy motel in the south side of the city) for the night, but no suitors have attracted him, even by his pitifully low standards.
From behind, at one of the standing tables next to the wall by the restrooms, he hears a hearty laugh, somewhere between a tenor and baritone in pitch, but it hits him right where it hurts. His mind reminds him to keep his eyes forward and disregard the laughter as pure coincidence, but a sinking feeling in his stomach pressures, nay dares, Stan turn around and confirm his unfounded suspicions. He whips is head over his shoulder and catches sight of another couple, with their arms around each other’s waist, sharing a story over two gin and tonics.
“Hi, sweetie, can we help you?”
Stan’s eyes dart around the wall behind them and comes back into reality, his body now turned to face the couple, now eyeing him up and down.
“You looking for somebody?” The man on the right approaches him, “Are you feeling okay?”
Stan swallows the shame long enough to politely smile, “Heh, no, I…I’m sorry, it’s just I thought that I heard you laughing and…and I guess I thought you were someone else.”
The man’s partner steps forward to retrieve his date, “Come on, they’re playing our song…!”
“Hope you find him, darling!” The first man calls out as he’s whisked away into the center of the dance floor.
“Answer me
Why won’t you answer me?
I can’t recall the day that I last heard from you”
A familiar voice echos the words in the distance, like a cry for help through a forest of bodies all bumping and grinding against one another. It can’t be that same guy again, now that Stan caught his actual voice, he knows it to be a false alarm. And yet, the longer the song plays on, the louder and clearer the voice in the woods becomes.
“But I know that I'm ok
'Cause you're here with me today
I haven't got a single problem
Now that I'm with you”
As the music breaks into its dance section, Stan goes against his better judgement and hunts for the singer in the night. He bumps shoulders with the patrons under the flashing strobe lights, his hands combing through hips pushing people aside, but everyone is too inebriated to care he’s bashing the groove.
Another man, much taller than himself, grabs Stan around the waist and presses his lips to his ear, “Come on, baby, let’s shake it, huh?”
“I can’t,” Stan slips out of the man’s reach. “I’m with someone…” he stops dead in his tracks at the center of the dance floor. He meets a man, with flowing brown mane, who continues singing along with the melody as the song fades to the end.
Stan reaches out and rests his hand on the man’s shoulders, “Stanford, oh thank God, I’ve been looking for you all…” but when the man turns to face him, a heat flushes across his cheeks as he averts his gaze to the floor. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I thought that…well, I heard you sing—”
“It’s quite alright,” the man, whose voice now sounds nothing like the timbre that rang through Stan’s ears, offers a quick smile. “I haven’t seen you here before, are you new here?” The man scratches at his beard, just below his neck.
“No, I’m just — wait, yes, I’m not from here, I mean,” Stan attempts to turn back, but the man grabs onto his shoulders with both hands. “Look, I’m kinda—”
The man plants a kiss on Stan’s cheek as a new song blares from the loudspeakers, “Oh, I love this one! Just one dance? Then a drink, on me.”
Stan’s eyes scan across the dance floor, searching for any last culprits who might turn out to be the one, but with no luck, his once distant stare meets the man before him, “Sure…why not.” Before he can think of how to pull off the first move, the man’s hands slither down Stan’s body and wrap around his waist, luring him in just inches apart.
“What’s your name, honey?” The man shouts through the heavy synth pumping in the air.
Stan shuts his eyes for a brief second to recall which ID he’s carrying as to not reuse any of the names he’s long since abandoned. “Andrew…! Name’s Andrew!”
“Nice to meet you, Andrew…! I’m Paul!” The strings swell, sending a flutter through Paul’s chest. “Follow me!” He begins singing along again, yet his voice now completely transfigured from how Stan perceived it previously.
“If you leave, don't leave now
Please don't take my heart away
Promise me just one more night
Then we'll go our separate ways”
Stan loses himself int he moment, fading in and out of time, watching the strobe lights in his peripheral vision fade into black, as a sole spotlight washes over Paul. But it isn’t Paul anymore…is it? He’s changed. His face now ten years younger, adorning glasses, and not a speck of facial hair to be found. It’s like looking in a mirror into the past. He swears he can smell the salt wafting through the ocean breeze. “Stanford…it is you…” he whispers under his breath, completely muffled out by the music.
“We've always had time on our sides
Now it's fading fast
Every second, every moment
We've got to, we've gotta make it last”
A pair of six-fingered hands maneuver up his chest and cup his cheeks, as the vision of Stanford becomes real. His brother, his lover, now their eyes, their lips, inches apart.
“I touch you once, I touch you twice
I won't let go at any price
I need you now like I need you then
You always said we'd still be friends someday”
Their lips meet. Sadly, crushingly, all too briefly as Stan, though wanting to live this fantasy forever, snaps back into time as feels the scruff of Paul’s beard against his chin. He frees himself from Paul’s grasp, “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry!” He shoves his way through the rest of the dancers to the front of house.
Pushing the bar to open the front door, he feels the rush of cold air as he steps into the chilly midwestern night; the Chicago skyline towering over him. He wanders down the sidewalk before slumping down beneath a light on the street corner. “Stanford…I’m…” his voice cracks, his body shivering from the brisk late-autumn wind. Helplessly, tears well-up in his eyes, blinding him to the dead of night. “Oh God, I just want my brother back. I just…want to know if he’s safe…if he even thinks of me…if he even cares whether I’m alive.”
He brings his knees into his chest, needing to find any source of heat. He’s kicking himself for leaving his coat behind in the nightclub, but the thought of showing his face in there again, especially now, would be worse than freezing to death in a city where nobody knows your name. “God…if you’re still there, if you’re still listening…I’m losing. I’m so…” his voice slumps, “I’m so fucking sick of losing. I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”
He reaches into his pocket. Miraculously, his keys are right where he left them. He looks far down the road, through watery eyes, at his car parked at a meter. Seven years went under the bridge as if time were standing still. Heaven knows what happens now. He always hoped they’d meet again someday.