Drink in hand, Derek navigated through the crowd to the shadow filled far corner. As he approached, he studied the stranger waiting for him, who threw back shot after shot of the horrid blue-black drink Cody had called an Undertow. The black cowboy hat was pulled low over the stranger's eyes, but stringy blonde hair curled around the brim of the hat, gray-green in this bad light, as if the man spent too much time in chlorinated water. His skin was sallow, unhealthy looking, and what Derek could make of his face looked thin and pinched--a pointed chin, a heavy lower jaw, a wide mouth that split into an easy grin when Derek stopped in front of his table.
The stranger looked up at him, giving Derek a glimpse beneath the hat and, to his surprise, he recognized those red-rimmed eyes. He remembered where he'd heard the caller's voice before--it had been years since he heard it last, when he had been much younger and Tad not yet in his life. The air seemed to rush out of him as he dropped into the seat opposite the man who had been his first friend, his first love, all those years ago. Lingering affection and a hint of nostalgia filled his voice. "Kellen."
Across from him, Kellen tipped back his hat, allowing Derek to get a good look at the man who had grown from the boy Derek once knew. The same lines that rimmed Derek's eyes spidered around Kellen's; his skin was taut, tight over sharp cheek bones, and pale as if he'd stayed underwater for too long. But his smile warmed his features, and his sea-green eyes sparkled with mirth when he murmured, "Da, Dere. Ichta san chia."
Without thinking, Derek's mind translated the ancient language into English. It has been too long. With a sip of his drink, he grimaced, then replied, "I'm known as Derek now. By Mananan, you're the last person I expected to find waiting for me here. So you're the one who was calling me? Why didn't you just say so?"
A faint smile toyed around the edges of Kellen's lips. "Would you have showed up if I had?"
The smallest hesitation contradicted Derek's reply. "Of course," he said, sipping again at the drink in his hand to avoid meeting Kellen's steady gaze. "We're old friends, Kell."
Reaching for him across the table, Kellen's long, thin forefinger stroked the back of Derek's hand. The touch was ticklish but Derek didn't pull away. He watched, mesmerized, as Kellen traced runic patterns onto his skin, and remembered those fingers elsewhere, smoothing along his chest, curving between his legs. In a distant voice, Kellen whispered, "We were more than friends, once."
Derek jerked his hand from under Kellen's then ran it through his close-cropped hair to play off the gesture. "We were just kids then."
"There is nothing childish about the way I feel for you," Kellen replied.
Is, feel. As if time had not yet dulled the edge of Kellen's affection for him. This was why Derek would have never agreed to meet the man. He had never returned Kellen's feelings, not to the extent his friend hoped for, and for that, Derek was sorry. His heart belonged to Tad the moment he met the man, the rest of his old life--his old friends--had fallen away.
)
