“There he is again” Nat thought to herself as she saw Alex going into the club with yet another man. Each night this week, while Nat had been working in the all-night diner, she’d seen Alex going into the Peacock club with a different guy and sometimes he’d come out with 2 or 3.
Nat wasn’t a prude, she didn’t care that Alex flitted from one guy to another, sometimes over the course of the night. But she wanted to know what he had, that she didn’t. She was fun, good looking and single, yet here she was volunteering for a night shift because yet again she didn’t have a date.
Nat and Alex met a few years ago in the diner, Alex often stopped by for lunch and one day when Nat was serving his coffee, she noticed he was drawing the most amazing cartoon she’d ever seen. Nat loved to draw and before she knew what she was doing she blurted out, “that’s incredible” startling Alex who was engrossed in his work. His hand slipped but he was lucky he missed the paper instead drawing over the table in front of him. Nat couldn’t believe she almost ruined such a beautiful drawing, she was mortified.
In front of him Alex was working on the latest artwork for his story, it depicted a strong, naked muscle man planting gentle kisses onto his smaller male lover. Another edition of his Mighty Max series about a bisexual superhero. Alex was usually a pretty quiet guy, but when Nat started asking him about his work, his eyes lit up and he came alive. He loved his characters and the adventures they went on, he loved to feel how they developed and grew on their own. They inspired the words; he was just the lucky one who got to write them down and tell their tales.
Nat and Alex had been friends since that day, often chatting about Alex’s work or Nat’s latest artistic creations. Nat once asked Alex about why he always had so many different men each night, but he just replied “Research” with a cheeky wink. Although she would ask how her normally shy friend managed to be so successful with so many men, Alex would always just chuckle and nothing more. Nat wished she knew his secret, maybe then she wouldn’t be alone working the graveyard shift while everyone else was out having a good time.