HAPPY | ✔

DANIEL: 07.0 A DISTRACTION

**Warning: you aren't ready.***

I had almost forgotten how vivacious New York night life could be. Almost.

It was so loud in here I could feel the bass in the walls. I stuck to the edge of the crowd, shouldering my way past grinding bodies. It was a task and a half evading greedy, audacious hands leeching out like claws to hook and pull me into this pool of debauchery.

It would have been easy to give in, effortless. Like lying with your arms and legs spread in the middle of the ocean, content to submit to the push and pull of the waves. Afterall, it is ingrained in human nature to seek out intimacy. Not just lust, or even love- a closeness. A certain proximity to another that eliminates the suffocating sense of seclusion.

On nights like this, Spirits' ground floor was a riot of provocative persuasion. Beneath flashing lights, bodies were just that- bodies. Heat to warm the cold and desperate. But my misery aside, desperation was still some distance off. The only warmth I sought was Joyce's, not nameless, meaningless faces.

Spirits was comprised of a three floors. The further up you went, the tamer things became. In my head, I always described the first floor as being mere steps away from a mass public orgy. The second was a bit tamer, reserved for patrons worth at least six figures. Bigwigs of the celebrity variety: usually partying models and artistes dodging the paparazzi. My destination was the third, far away from depravity and temptation. Here, the music was low, the space dominated by conversation.

They were exactly where I expected them to be, the distraction I needed gravely.

"Honey, you missed me?"

I palmed Oli's head in a hand and bent at the waist so I could pepper the side of his face with kisses. He twisted around in his seat and squealed like a wild boar.

"Darling!" He jumped up form his chair and tackled me into an embrace, "I feared you'd forgotten us!"

His overzealous enthusiasm was enough to incite an eyeroll. I refrained, grinning indulgently as I tried my best to match his fervor, "Never!"

"I don't know how I've survived without you, with only these loathsome bores for company. In your absense I've been mocked, illtreated and ignored!" He fanned his face like a nineteenth century matron.

"Sweetheart," I patted his arm affectionately, pretending to care, "it's because you're insufferable."

His face cracked into a grin as he pushed me away, his baby blues twinkling with humour. "Fück off."

At my arrival the table erupted into chatter, greetings and teasing abundant. Surprisingly, all my boys were present.

"Wasn't expecting to see you tonight D. Heard you got cuffed." Hans put a glass to his lips and tilted his head back until every drop of amber disappeared.

I tried for a chuckle. His ears perked up like a hound, catching the strain.

"My lady's out tonight," I conceded "so you're stuck with me."

He clutched a hand to his chest and made a show of looking dismayed, "Oh no."

I clapped him upside the back of his head before I moved on.

Hans and Oli were troublemakers. The two of them in the same room was bound to inspire some level of disorder. I was tempted to stick Victor between the two spawns of Satan before they could instigate a riot.

Vic was forever the collected, level-headed one in the bunch. He was patient and calm, far wiser than his thirty years. He couldn't have been more trustworthy if God had stamped the word on his forehead like the mark of Cain. That's why not one of us had hesitated handing him the keys to the castle, i.e. our respective bank accounts. Within only three years at Granger & Perry LLP, he was on the fast track to becoming one of the leading CPAs in the firm.