Chapter 24
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.
Ian ran a hand through his hair. “Um, do you want to . . .” He trailed off, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, staring at Sam’s hand on the knob.
“You never called me.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that,” Ian mumbled. He cleared his throat. “Sam, would you go out to dinner with me tonight? Please?” he added when Sam just stared.
“I guess . . . I have my own parameter.”
Ian finally looked up at him, eyes widening.
“When you say you’ll call me, you actually will.”
Ian nodded quickly. “Okay.”
“Let me change and we can go.”