When I open my eyes, I'm standing on the stage, and looking around, I can't help but feel alone and cold. The bright neon lights are on me, but I can't feel the warmth from the lights. It's completely silent, and the lights in the room, except for the lights to the stage, are off. The only thing I can hear, is my own heart beat. Or at least, that is until I hear three separate screams in the darkness of the room.
The lights turn on and I gasp as I see Lucas, Brock, and Marcel in the middle of the room with darkness surrounding them. Tears are running down all three of their faces as the darkness inches it's way closer to them.
As if it was a snake, I see lines of the shadows lunge towards the three of them. Two lines grab a hold of Brock and Lucas and it starts dragging them into the darkness, however, Marcel grabs both of their hands and tries to hold onto them for dear life.
I watch helplessly from the stage, frozen in fear, as Brock and Lucas are pulled in two different directions. Marcel screams in pain as his arms are stretched out. Brock sees the pain in Marcel's face, and shuts his eyes before he lets go of his hand, allowing the darkness to swallow him. With tears in his eyes, Marcel grabs Lucas with both hands and tries to pull him away, however, the darkness continues to pull him in, even dragging Marcel with him.
Suddenly the lights shut off again, and I hear three screams again. Two of pain, and one of heartbreak. All of them bring tears to my eyes from what is behind them, and my heart instantly starts to ache.
Slowly, the lights come back on, and the darkness is gone. In the middle of the room is one man, shaking as tears streaming down his face. He failed to save the other two, and now, he is left to feel broken.
I want to run over and hug him, but I'm still unable to move. So, I open my mouth, and just scream his name.
***
"Is Brock going to be okay," Jonathan asks, sliding his hand across the table and taking my hand.
It's almost four in the morning, but I was not in the mood to go home. Panda didn't close down the club again because he said we had to do that too many times already, so we had to clean up Brock's vomit and saliva off of the stage and keep working. Marcel took Smitty home after we were done with work and told me that he was going to stay at the hospital as well to keep an eye on Brock. I haven't heard from him since, but it's only been thirty minutes, so I can't think too much of it.
"I don't know. I know that Brock and I didn't get along for a while, but I don't want to see him die from this too."
I look up and see Jon biting his lip and looking away. "What's wrong," I ask, wanting to know what he was thinking at this point.
"Nothing."
"Don't even try it. What are you thinking?"
He sighs and says, "I know that you had this goal in mind about running the club, but I'm starting to worry about this whole thing. This is the second overdose that's happened since we started dating, and you've told me that some of the dancers have gotten stalked, not to mention your friend that fell off the stage. Babe, I am seriously worried about you. I don't want to see you get hurt, and that's all I can think about now. I don't want anyone trying to stalk you, and I don't want you-"
"I would never do drugs, Jon," I quickly say.
"I'm not saying you would. But I don't want someone trying to drug you, or for you to take the fall if someone has something or for someone to attack you or set you up or, fuck. There are so many things that could happen, and I don't want anything to happen to you." He then reaches over the table and takes my hands. "I'm just worried about you. I love you so much, Ev. I don't want anything to happen to you."
I feel my heart beat hard in my chest and my face start to heat up. I never thought me doing my job worried him, but hearing him say all of these things, it's romantic and it hurts. He's so worried for me, and I didn't think about it while I told him all of these things that happened to my friends. It feels so selfish now.
Looking down at our hands, I silently think about what I should do. I can't help but give a tiny smile as I think about Ohm and Brock. I never realized how much I would miss them until now when I wish they could tell me what to do. Then my smile fades away as I think about how my parents should be able to help me. How much I miss them. How little I probably matter to them.
Focus! I know how to answer this! It's only fair and it makes the most sense. The club meant the world to me for years. It saved me and made me feel like I had a home and a family. The people there were the best thing to have ever come into my life, and most of it turned out to be a lie. The smiles, the pure memories. And now one person is dead, I've seen someone almost die, another person could be on their death bed! Not to mention Ohm quit and Smitty is half way out the door!
"I'll quit," I say, my voice shaking as I hold back tears.
"Evan, I'm just saying I'm worried about you. I don't want you to quit if you don't want to."
"No," I say, looking up and locking eyes with him. "You're right. The job is dangerous, and the more I see, the more I realize it. I mean, the guys lied about so many things already. I don't know what else they have been lying about. I'm worried about everyone there, and the new guys that were just hired today. But, I can't let my worry for them keep me there forever. I need to get out of there eventually."
"So when do you think you'll leave?"
I look down and think for a bit. After a while, I look back up to him and say, "I might be there for a while. I think, the best thing I can do for now is work as often as I can and get as much money saved up as I can get."
"Why?"
"Well, college will be expensive, I'm going to get kicked out of my apartment when I quit, I have to worry about my car and phone bill along with insurance." I sigh and look back down to my hands. "And none of that would be a worry if I wasn't a dumbass before."
"Hey, don't beat yourself up."
"But it's true. I've been working with this club for two years and I spent every cent I made on food, video games, I have two cellphones, a laptop, a shit ton of clothes, and the list keeps going. I didn't need all of those things, but I wanted them. Now, I'm starting to think it was a bad idea."
"Babe, everyone buys for themselves when they have the money. And you didn't even have to pay rent. I'm sure if I was in your place, I would have done the same." He then reaches over and makes me look up at him again. "Besides, I'm going for offer one thing that I know will help. How would you like to move in with me?"
"What?"
"I don't mean right now, but, when you're ready to quit. I want you to move in with me."
"Do you really want me to do something like that," I ask, nervously.
"Of course, Ev," he says, looking deep into my eyes and holding my hand with both of his. "I-"
"Are you two going to order anything or what," we hear Mark ask us, annoyed.
I pull my hands back and cover my face in embarrassment. "Just get us what we normally get and get lost," Jon then says, trying not to laugh. After a moment, Jon pulls my hands away and looks back into my eyes. He then drops his head, gently banging it against the table before saying, "I can't remember what I was going to say."
I laugh before I lean over and kiss the top of his head. He looks back up at me and smiles before he puts his hand on the back of my head and pulls me in for a kiss. As we kiss, I hear the bell above the diner door ring as someone walks in. When we pull away, I hear two men start to talk over by the counter.
"It's about time you showed up. I was starting to worry."
"I just needed to sneak away from the others."
The second I hear the second voice, I spin around to make sure I'm not hearing things, which I wasn't. "Steven?"
The second I say his name, Ze turns around and I see his jaw drop. "Evan? What are you doing here?"
I bite my lip, knowing I can't lie. If I don't introduce Jon as my boyfriend, he'll be mad or suspicious. If I tell Ze who Jon is, I'll have to continue to lie to him about my age, and no one can mention it around him.
I'd be telling them to lie to him like how they've lied to me... But do I have much of a choice.
"I'm having a late dinner with my boyfriend. What are you doing here?"
He looks over to the man next to him before he looks back to me and says, "I'm doing the same." The guy turns around in his seat and looks at Jon and I, and I have to hold back my gasp when I see that he's a police officer.
"You're dating a cop?"
"Please don't tell the others," he then says, rushing over to the open next to the booth. "You and I both know there's a lot of stupid things that the guys do there, but I don't want them to leave me out of things because of my boyfriend."
I blink, knowing that he has a good reason to want to hide this. This cop isn't one of our regulars, which means I would have to hide my age to him especially, and everyone at the club would have to worry about getting in trouble for the drugs they take if he was ever around. It would be easier to just ignore Ze until he broke up with the guy, but that might not be something he would want to do.
"I promise, I won't say a thing, as long as you keep my relationship a secret too."
"Why?"
"Well," I say, looking over to Jon with a little smirk. "This is a friend of one of the security guards from the club, and he doesn't really want me dating him."
"Oh, alright. It's a deal then."
I look back to Ze and then say, "Hey, why don't you guys join us?"
He blinks before looking at his boyfriend, who just shrugs in response. He then smiles at me and says, "Sure; that would be cool."
I look over to Jon, who smiles back at me and nods, tells me it was okay. He and I then move closer towards the window, making room for both of the men to join us. Ze sits next to me and says, "I guess I should introduce you guys. Evan, this is my boyfriend, Michael. Mike, this is one of my new co-workers, Evan."
His boyfriend looks over to me with a friendly smile and puts his hand out towards me. "Nice to meet you."
I smile back and shake his hand before I say, "Well, this is my man, Jonathan, or Jon for short. Jon, this is Steven, the new dancer I was just telling you about."
They then shake hands before he turns back to his boyfriend. "Seeing you actually reminded me, I needed to ask you something, babe. Does the name, Evan Fong ring a bell to you?"
I blink and look over to Mike, who's jaw drops when he hears my name. "Yeah, of course that rings a bell," he tells him. "That's the name of a missing person that we've been looking for for almost three years."
After he says that, it's my turn for my jaw to drop. "A missing persons with my name?"
"You're name is Evan Fong?"
"Yeah."
He blinks before he raises an eyebrow and asks me, "How old are you?"
I feel my heart stop for a second, but quickly pull out the same lie I told Jon. "Twenty-one."
He sighs before he looks down to his hands. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Steven just said you were his co-worker."
"Now I remember," Steven then says, gently grabbing Mike's arm. "Evan was the name of the missing kid from the next town over. He was the case you had been looking at ever since you started working for the precinct."
"It still makes no sense to me how the guys in his town fucked up so badly. I mean, his mother came in the next morning with a note saying he had ran away, and they sent her home without looking at the note. Telling her, he was probably at a friend's house and he would be back soon."
"Wait, the police in this kid's home town said that," Jon asks, confused.
"Yeah. I mean, from what I had learned in the academy, a large amount of cases of run aways go to one of their friends and stay there for a breather from their home life. But, they didn't even look into his friends. Normally, we call their friends, ask them if he's there, and tell them that his parents are looking for him and are worried, and put on the pressure for them to tell us anything they know. But these guys didn't start doing that until a month later, and that's only because his school got involved and stood behind his mom when she came back, putting pressure on them. However, since a month had gone by, most of the leads they could have had were gone. So now, it's a case of a kid walking out of his house in the middle of the night and disappearing. This case is in every city in the state, because they're hoping he's still at least in the state still."
"How old was this kid," I ask, already know the answer.
"He was fifteen when he ran away, so he should be seventeen, eighteen now."
"That's crazy," Jon then says, covering his mouth.
I bite the inside of my mouth and try not to drift off into thought. ... My mom put in a missing persons report? Why haven't Panda or any of the regulars told me about it?
"So Evan," I hear Mike say, snapping me out of my mind. "How long have you worked at the Big Bad Panda club?"
"Almost two years."
"Really? So you know a lot about what happens there? Woul-"
"Mike, stop," Steven quickly says. "I asked a bunch of questions, like you asked, so please don't interrogate my co-worker."
"I just want to make sure you're okay there. I've seen that there have been a lot of cases of stalking towards the dancers and the fact that there have been-"
"Mike, I get it," Steven says, rolling his eyes. "I swear, you worry too much."
"Well, pardon me for wanting to make sure my boyfriend doesn't get hurt."
"How long have you guys been dating," Jon butts in. "Like, two years?"
Both Steven and Mike stare at him in shock before Steven says, "Yeah actually. It'll be three years January first. How did you know?"
"Ya'll bicker like an old married couple."
I instantly start laughing when he said that, and through my laughter, I say, "I was thinking the same thing."
Mike and Steven roll their eyes before Mike says, "And judging by the baby talk I heard before talking to you two, I guess you guy have been together for less than five months." I stop laughing and look at him in shock. "The honeymoon stage is so sickening to hear sometimes."
"But it was fun while it lasted," Steven then says, looking off. "But then again, I'm happy that we got through it. It may have been fun while everything was new, it's easy to talk to each other now. Plus, when we fight, it feels great knowing that at the end of the night, we'll work it out before bed, or at least we'll work it out by morning."
I look at Mike and Steven as they look at each other and see a strong bond between them. The gentle gaze they're giving each other, it has the I love you's built into them, and I can feel how much they care about each other just from it. I look down between them and I see Steven gently caressing the side of Mike's hand with his thumb.
I look over to Jon and see him staring back at me, with a little smile on his face. I smile back and slide my hand across the table towards him, which he happily takes. He and I may not have been together for that long, but I know, after everything that's happened, that our relationship is strong too. And that we'll be there for each other just like Steven and Mike.