“How old are you, Dalton?”Had he already asked this?
Dalton’s lips pursed, which probably meant Dalton had already told him.“I’ll be twenty-seven in March,” he said.“I worked full-time while going to school and finally earned my bachelor’s from State University in June.”
“The guy I’m seeing is a grad student there.”Ian nearly slapped his hand over his mouth.Thefuckhad he said that for?Dalton’s head bobbed up, and he looked as surprised as Ian felt.
“Oh.Um, is that why you’re sort of ...”Dalton made a circling motion with his index finger near his temple.Ian’s eyes bugged out.Crazy?“Inattentive?”Dalton finished.
“Um ...”
“Maybe I should get you some coffee?”Dalton offered.
“I guess ...”
Dalton bounced up out of his seat.“Okay,” he said.
Ian watched him walk out, then looked down at the résumé in front of him.Dalton Lehnart had worked in the Dean of Admission’s office for five of his six college years.He typed seventy words per minute.Was that fast?Itseemedfast.
“Here you go,” Dalton sang, traipsing back into the room.He set a mug in front of Ian.The right mug, no less—Ian’s favorite solid red, cylindrical one.
The coffee was the color Ian liked it, too, lightened with just enough milk.“Did you use the two-percent in the fridge?”he asked, wrapping his palm around the cup.
“Yes, I did.”
Ian sipped.It was perfect.He looked up and studied Dalton, still standing beside his desk with his hands clasped.“Did you ask Andy how to make my coffee?”
Dalton looked at him quizzically.“Of course I did.How else would I know how to make it?”
“When can you start?”
On Sunday, when Sam got home, he did all his homework, prepared for his classes, and then actually stooped to cleaning in order to avoid thinking about Ian and that morning.Cleaning sounded very distracting.And itwasvery distracting, at first, but before Sam realized it, he’d fallen into a pattern of work and his brain was free to roam again.
Bad brain.Bad.Because all roads led back to Ian, and if he thought about Ian, he would begin to analyze what had happened, andthatwould result in him searching for parallels to a romance novel plot.It was his single worst vice.Probably.
Don’t think about it.
The thing was, whatever had happened between him and Ian was certainly fraught with internal conflict, because all romances—okay, romancenovels—had some kind of conflict, and if it wasn’t external it had to be internal.Since Ian wasn’t saving Sam from international drug-smuggling terrorists, and he wasn’t the captain of an enemy starship that had captured Sam in battle (ungh, revenge sex), their plotline—his and Ian’s—had to center on internal conflict.
AKAemotionalconflict.
Obviously, if an outside observer had to guess which of them had the more serious emotional conflict, they’d pick Ian.Sam wasn’t the one who didn’t even know what constituted a relationship.By default, that made Ian the screwed-up one, right?
Focus on something other than Ian.Like cleaning the toilet.
Maybe he should call Nik and see who he favored for the more serious emotional conflict.But what if he accidentally let slip what had happened this morning?He couldn’t justtellNik the story of Ian’s injury.Ian had acted as if sharing that was unusual for him.Sam definitely didn’t want to tell Nik about how it had felt to make Ian come in his hand—like Sam had comforted him, and they’d created a connection beyond sex.That was private.
Sam suddenly felt lightheaded.What happened this morning had beenspecial.The big, important special, maybe even a little like what Nik had with Jurgen.He tried to put his head between his knees, but the toilet bowl was there already.
Oh, look at that.The porcelain was sparkling white, and he didn’t even remember cleaning it.
When he went to mop the kitchen floor, his thoughts gained control again, and he recalled the weird scene when Ian had to leave.He’d given Sam akey.Sam let himself marvel over that for a bit, but the suspicious little thought he’d been walling out finally wormed its way into his head.
Maybe Ian had wanted him to stay in bed because he was afraid his friend would see him.
Ian said he was telling people if they asked, but was he trying to keep people from asking?Sam wandering around his apartment early on a Sunday afternoon would look suspicious.It wasn’t as if he could pass for straight, like, ever.
When looked at in that light, the formerly bright, shiny key to Ian’s apartment seemed tarnished.
You’re thinking about it.
