In a crowded room, you can hide all the most obvious secrets.
Your mama used to tell you that sometimes, but when you're just a kid, you do nothing but roll your eyes and forget. It isn't until you're actually standing there that you realise how true it all is.
Kev has you behind the bar with the words, "Get the fuck back here and do something useful and you can forget your tab."
You actually do what he says just for something to do. You managed to convince Lana – your fucking wife and doesn't that just make you want to puke – to stay at home and so you're just sitting there, staring at your beer dregs while the bar screams around you.
You've always thought New Year was pointless though, so in a way it's good to see that some things don't change.
You've told Frank to fuck off eight times, split beer down yourself twice and only threatened to punch four people when he walks through the door. He's soaking wet, water dripping from his fringe and his cheeks stained that ruddy shade of red that always reminds you of those earlier days.
The days when he was so young and fragile and it was twice as wrong what you were doing, but you couldn't stop. Not when even though he flushed red like a fucking boy, he snapped his hips into you like a man.
He blinks quickly and you wish you were close enough to see the water falling from his lashes, but he hasn't taken a step closer and you're too scared to move out from behind the bar. You're pretty sure Kev is yelling at you, but you can't do anything else but stare.
He's so different and exactly the same. He's looking at you like he hates you, like he wants to wrap those long fingers around your throat and just squeeze. But he's also smiling, the corner of his lip quirking up in that way that it always used to when you said stupid shit, because he didn't know how to resist you.
And you never wanted him to learn.
He licks the water off his lips and it feels like someone's just walked over your grave or however that stupid saying goes. Either way, their a chill down your spine and your fingers flex around the glass in your hand tight enough to crack it.
You bite at your lip and he blinks again.
Gotcha, you think as he smirks, flashing white teeth at you across the room and shaking the water from his hair like a dog.
By the time he starts to move forwards, you've forgotten how to breathe. And by the time he's standing opposite you, you don't even care.
How did you ever think you could forget the pattern those fuckin' freckles made across his face?
You don't want to look away, so you do.
You take the order of some fat chick – the sort once-upon-a-time you would have fucked. Just to get a rise out of him, just to prove something to someone that wasn't even there to watch, just to prove something to yourself; like you hadn't stopped believing your own bullshit around the same time as a bullet went through your thigh.
Your scar aches and you scratch it.
You can feel his eyes on you as he talks to Kev, as he takes a pull from his beer and swipes a thumb over his lip.
Maybe you've had one too many, you think as you give the fat chick a smile that wasn't for her.
Or maybe just enough, you think when he laughs in that way that was never for anyone else but you.
He turns away and your eyes trace the contours of his back, the shape of the muscles that his wet shirt clings to. You want to set your teeth there, you want to hear him whine. You want to hear him say your name.
You're not stupid enough to think that any of those things are gonna come easy.
And even though the room is fuller than you think it has ever been, you know what your mama meant. You don't feel like anyone at all is watching you and the secrets flickering behind your eyes; nobody except for that one person that you never want to look away.