Strangely, he believed her.His shoulders relaxed.“I’m not supposed to do that anymore,” he said.“Just hook up with guys.”
Janet looked completely serious for once.“You said you didn’t want to anymore, yes.Is this helping you to develop a personal connection to someone?”
“No.”Damn, he sounded like a sulky teenager.
“Have you thought about giving up on this man and looking—”
“I wanthim,” Ian interrupted.Hell.He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the chair.“Okay ...I got in the car with my buddy from college, Tierney.He’s got this fucking car, you know what I mean?”How could she possibly know what he meant?“It’s all about him being a chick magnet.He’s fostering the image of himself as a player.”
“And he’s not?”Janet asked.She would let him go on in this nonsensical direction only so long, he knew from experience.
Ian opened his eyes.“I don’t know if he is anymore.He used to be, you know?It’s why we were friends in the first place, because I was just like him.But I had something to prove.”He lifted his head slightly, to see if she got it.
“You wanted to prove you weren’t gay?”
Ian didn’t know if that was all there had been to it, but for now he shrugged.“I guess.So, I was watching Tierney pull this shit on Sunday, looking like a fucking idiot.He just lookedold, you know?”
Janet opened her mouth, then paused.“No, I don’t know what you mean.”
Ian sat up and planted his elbows on his knees.“He looked like a lonely, thirty-something jackass trying to prove he’s still young and hot and all he needs out of life is sex.”
Janet nodded, although Ian had no clue if she got what he said.Hedidn’t get it.“I used to be that guy, and I’m looking at him and wondering if I’m still that guy.I mean, what the fuck do I know about personal relationships?My mom died when I was barely a teenager, and after that, my dad was a neglectful asshole, and I’ve just told the guy I was supposed to beconnectingwith that all I want is more sex.”
“Is that really all you want?”
“No!”Ian shot out of his chair and turned to the window.“But I don’t know if I know how to do anything else.”Shit, he’d said that out loud.He could feel the blood drain from his head.
Janet was silent until he got his breathing under control and turned to her, barely able to meet her eyes.
“Ian, what you were before doesn’t have to define what you are now, or what you will be in the future.”
He fisted one hand on his hip.“What the fuck does thatmean?”
Janet watched him calmly.“It means you aren’t that guy now, but you have to continue to choose not to be him again.”
Ian dropped back into his chair and sighed.“Hell,” he muttered.
“That’ll be one hundred fifty dollars, please.”
“Ha.Ha.”But then he ruined his mad-on by laughing.
Friday night.
Date night, or so he’d always heard.Sam had a date with a glass of wine and the phone.He took a sip of the first and eyed the second, working up to calling Nik.Not that Nik would be anything less than sympathetic, but Sam couldn’t help feeling like a failed, pathetic fool.And then there was the issue of Jurgen overhearing everything and thinking, “I told him so.”
It sucked that Jurgen didn’t have a GPS friend-spying app on his phone.Sam had stalked—that is,monitored—Nik’s whereabouts all day with that app to determine where he was and when might be a good time to call him.He checked his phone one more time.Nik was at home.Chances were Jurgen was there too, but ...yeah.He chugged the rest of his wine and reached for the phone.
The doorbell rang.
Sam’s fingers froze in midair.Who would ring his doorbell?No one rang his doorbell, his friends all knocked.He scoffed at his irrational hope that it was Ian and dropped his hand to think.It was Friday night, so the only people likely to ring his doorbell were ...Proselytizers.
Hmm, hide or answer, pretending to be a mentally unstable Satan worshipper?Both options had their charms.The doorbell rang again, and Sam found himself walking toward his entryway, trying to screw his face into an off-balance expression.
But when he opened the door, no religious zealots awaited him there.Just Ian.
“Hey,” he said when Sam didn’t say anything.
“Hey,” Sam said steadily in spite of his galloping heart.
