Henry's End Read Online Free

acknowledged. “What can I get for you?”
    Henry noticed everyone was drinking out of mini-pitchers. “What are you known for?” he yelled across the bar.
    “Well, Sunday is our barbeque and beer day. Is this your first time here?”
    Henry nodded at the tanned cutie. “It is.”
    “OK, well I’m going to make you something special then.” He turned toward the bottle lined shelves, then over his shoulder called, “On the house.”
    Vodka. Rum. Gin. Tequila. Triple Sec. Midori. Stabbing a pink straw into the pitcher, he slid it across the bar to Henry with a sex-on-a-stick smile. “Welcome to The Hole.”
    “Wow. Thank you. What is this?” Henry took his first sip through the pink straw, immediately feeling the concoction of liquor coursing through his blood stream with a bang.
    “It’s a Tokyo Tea. You should head out to the patio, that’s where all the action is.”
    Leaving a healthy tip for his new favorite bartender, Henry negotiated his way through the crowd to the strains of Gloria Estefan’s Everlasting Love and out onto the circular tropical patio packed to the gills with bears and cubs and Marines. Oh my.
    Sunglasses back firmly in place shading his eyes from the bright sun and inquiring eyes, Henry wished he had a wingman with him.
    “Nice ass,” a bear, with a warm smile, commented.
    “Thanks,” Henry looked down at his butt and realized he was wearing his second skin black bike shorts, leaving very little to the imaginations of the throngs of men surrounding him on the palm-lined patio. Well, if I’m going to make a splash into San Diego gay life, this is the way to do it, he smiled to himself .
    As he made his way over to a wooden railing to set down his mini-pitcher of Tokyo ‘kick-ass’ Tea, he saw a guy across the patio leaning against the bar, beer in hand. Tall and muscled, from both his regal bearing and short hair, as well as his observant eagle eyes scanning the crowd, Henry surmised that the guy was military. If he were to define his guess a little more, he’d venture to say he was a bona fide Marine. The man was hot, yet aloof, making him even hotter. He took no part in the conversations, laughter or dancing that was taking place all around him. Henry could feel his balls tighten just looking at the guy and had to turn away before he was sporting a semi in bike shorts and embarrassing himself publicly.
    “New here?” a voice beside him asked.
    Turning to see who was talking to him, Henry nodded at the guy. He appeared to be young, early twenties, maybe. Again, the short hair was a dead giveaway. Military. Yes! The place was crawling with them.
    “Just moved here recently on business,” Henry offered as he took another sip of his now half-empty mini-pitcher.
    “Oh, a pink straw,” the guy commented on his drink. “Someone behind the bar thought you were a hottie.”
    Laughing, “Seriously, color-coded straws?” It was then that Henry began to observe the patterns in the straw colors and their respective sippers. “Hottie, I’ll take that.” He smiled to himself.
    “Come dance with me.” The guy grabbed his hand and pulled him to the center of the patio, “I’m David.”
    “Henry,” he yelled over the music, immediately taken away by the beat, as the undeniably masculine scent of sweat and alcohol, and of the men dancing irresistibly too close on the packed dance floor, transported him somewhere, nowhere, just where the music was, as the warm San Diego sun beat down on his face.
    With eyes semi-closed, his too tight from cycling shoulders loosened as he rhythmically stretched them with the lithe grace of a cat. I belong , he thought. I totally and thoroughly belong . And he wondered if he’d ever had that actual thought pattern before – that his belonging and acceptance was so total. Only once before in his life, during a magical month freshman year in college, when he’d worked day and night on a project with three friends, was this feeling approximated.