All Night Long Read Online Free PDF Page A

the club high over the patrons' heads every fifteen minutes—was the place where she and Billy had first met.
    She remembered that night well. It hadn't been all that long after she had met Kiley and Esme, and she'd decided to go out clubbing on her own. X, her aunt's driver, had dropped her there, then headed off to a gay club in West Hollywood. She'd found a place at the bar and immediately discovered the joy and fun of having random men offer to buy her cocktails. Almost immediately, she'd taken a liking to something called a California Condor—rum, Red Bull, Kahlua, and milk, topped by a splash of eggnog.
    X had come back to pick her up and had brought Billy with him. For sure, Lydia had decided, Billy was gay. First, he was close friends with X, who was unequivocally gay and had better fashion sense than nearly anyone she had met. Second, he had the chiseled good looks of the denizens of West Hollywood, for whom skin, face, and body were high priorities. Only it turned out that by some miracle Billy Martin wasn't gay. That changed everything. And the fact that he'd been raised by parents in the Foreign Service, which meant he shared some of Lydia's experience of being a stranger in a strange land, had brought them even closer.
    “Hey, want to dance when the music starts?”
    Lydia wasn't even halfway to the bar when the first guy hit on her. He was in his twenties, with tattoos of dragons covering both arms, and the tight black pants/tight black shirt combination of a metal rocker.
    “Can't, meeting my
girl
friend,” she told him.
    “I remember this town before lesbian chic,” the rocker lamented.
    “Get a boyfriend. Excuse me, I'm getting a drink.”
    “Make that two drinks.”
    Lydia turned. It was Billy. He was wearing black cowboy boots that made him even taller than his six foot two inches, and his light brown hair was short and spiky. He wore a simple light blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and black boot-cut jeans that highlighted his toned thighs. Next to him, in a white Stella McCartney slip dress short enough to make Sienna Miller's shortest seem floor-length, she felt like a shrimp. A shrimp, however, that was in very good handsome company.
    “Hey,” she said softly.
    “Hey, yourself.”
    “Wait—I thought you were gay!” the tattooed rocker protested to her.
    “One look at this guy and I went bi. Can you blame me?”
    With a wink at the rocker guy, she took Billy's arm and followed him past the bar and into the quieter back room. There, the bird theme continued, with paintings of parrots and other exotica on the walls, and feathered couches and loves seats. There was soft jazz playing in the background, instead of the raucous rock out front, and waiters with brightly colored outfits served multicolored drinks.
    Billy laughed as they headed for an unoccupied seat toward the rear covered in pink flamingo feathers.
    “What's so funny?” Lydia asked.
    “That music. It's Charlie Parker. His nickname was Bird,” Billy explained.
    They sat in the love seat, and a waitress in black and yellow took their order for two California Condors. Then Billy looked at her with his soulful eyes. “I owe you an apology.”
    The waitress had left a couple of bottles of Poland Spring water on the low table in front of them—a nice touch, Lydia thought, in a city where tap water was notoriously disgusting. She opened one and drank as Billy pressed on.
    “Your friend Esme talked to me last night. At the Derby.”
    “She did?” Lydia feigned ignorance.
    “Come on. You had to know she did. How else would she have known where to find me?”
    “I might have mentioned that,” Lydia agreed. “But I'd never ask her to talk to you.”
    “Well, she did anyway,” Billy explained. “Good friend.”
    The lights in the back room dimmed slightly, and the musicshifted to an exotic solo piano. “Chick Corea,” Billy pronounced as the waitress set their Condors down. They were served in large, opaque,