Chapter 42
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.” Ian stood next to Janet’s office window, looking out over downtown.
“Well, what normally happens is you come in, we chitchat about nothing until I direct you toward something you’ve decided to work on, or you start telling me about something that’s bothering you.” Ian could hear the smile in her voice.
“My father called me this week.”
“And it was bad?” she asked, serious now.
“One of the worst.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because I’m done taking his shit.”
“Is that it? I thought you were done a while ago.”
Hell. Ian traced the shape of a building outside with his fingertip on the glass. “I really let him get to me. It was like . . . I was weak.”
“You’re not a weak man, Ian,” Janet said. “But maybe you’re vulnerable?”
“I shouldn’t be.”
“Why not? Everyone is sometimes. You get no free passes.”
“I thought . . . I thought this emotional connectedness stuff was supposed to help me, not make me weak.”
“Vulnerable.”
“It’s the same fucking thing!”
“No, it’s not.”
He turned to face her. “How not? I was done letting him get to me, I haven’t listened to his shit for months, I got the fuck out of there.
But now all the sudden I’m breaking a date with my boyfriend because I let that bastard, just, I don’t know.
” He ran hand through his hair. “I let him influence how I feel.”
Janet tilted her head and looked at him a silent second. “Let’s talk about Sam.”
Ian closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Whatever. He knew he needed to discuss Sam anyway. “What do you want to know?”
“Is he weak?”
“No!”
“You told me you saw him that way when you met him.”
Well, that was a little dose of shame that he totally deserved. Ian shoved a hand in his pocket and paced across the room and back. “That was like someone else. Not the guy I met—me, I was like a different person then.”
“That was barely a month ago.”
He turned to face Janet. “I changed a lot. He changed me.”
“Or did you let yourself change?”
“What’s the difference?” Ian flopped on the couch, arms crossed over his chest, and stared at the ceiling. After a few seconds of silence, he checked, and yes, Janet was watching him. “Fine,” he muttered. “I let myself.” He hated it when she was right.
She returned to her original point, whatever the hell that was. “So you see Sam differently now. What makes him not weak?”
Ian sighed, his head falling back on the couch.
It must be his fifteen minutes of shame.
“I was a bastard to him in the beginning, but he still took a chance on me. It was like . . . I don’t know what I thought.
It looks weak that he saw me after that, but it’s not.
It’s strength. He could protect himself enough to open up to me.
” He jerked his head up and looked at her in horror, sharp pains knifing his chest. “What if he hadn’t done that? ”
Janet shrugged as if it wasn’t important. “Then he wouldn’t be the guy for you.”
How could she take this so calmly? “He is the guy for me. But I could have lost him by being a bastard.”
“You didn’t, Ian, you did what you needed to do. Sam made himself vulnerable to you, and you honored that. You made yourself vulnerable in turn, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“And was it worth it?”
“Yes,” he answered louder.
“Do you feel weak for doing it?”
“No.”
“Then why is it different when it’s your father whom you made yourself vulnerable to, and he fucks it up?”
“Because I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable to him! I didn’t have control.”
She shook her head, smiling. “So you’ll learn control, and you’ll figure out how to protect yourself. You’re like a snake.”
“What? Can’t I be a bear?”
She waved a hand. “No, it doesn’t work with my analogy.
You’re like a snake. You’ve just shed your skin for a brand new one, so for a few days this new hide will be tender and fragile, and you have to protect it from sharp objects.
Your father would be a sharp object here.
You’ll toughen up your hide and ignore him. ”
“What if I just don’t want to deal with him?”
She nodded. “You can make that decision. You can do whatever you need to protect yourself. Sam could have decided not to see you again if he felt he needed to, to protect himself.”
Ian had liked where this was going, but now he scowled. “So if I want to be as strong as Sam, I have to talk to the chief?”
“No. It all depends on the threat level. Your father is a much bigger threat to you than you were to Sam at the time.”
Ian thought about it awhile, staring up at Janet’s ceiling. He thought he got it. “How come everything seems so clear when I’m in here, but when I leave I lose that insight and everything gets confused?”
Janet sighed in resignation. “It happens to everyone. You get clarity or enlightenment or whatever, then you lose track of it for a while and you’re wading knee-deep through crap hoping for the truth to reveal itself.
Just do the best you can, and try to stick with what you know until you get that clarity back for a while. ”
“I know I love Sam,” Ian said immediately.
“There you go. Have you told him?”
He looked toward the window, remembering. “I did. The other morning when we were, um, in bed.”
Janet frowned. “Did you tell him during sex?”
He cleared his throat and nodded.
“You should tell him again, and not during sex. People say things in bed all the time that they don’t really mean. I thought that was common knowledge.”
Ian stared at her very serious expression. Hell. “I need to talk to him.”
Calling Sam took more balls than Ian had expected.
He knew he’d upset Sam when he broke their date last night, and he needed to explain, but he wanted to do it in person.
It wasn’t until he got to work, telling himself he had important things to take care of before he could see Sam, that he realized he was avoiding talking to him.
You’re scared.
Oh, hell yes I am.
Admitting it may be the first step to solving a problem, but Ian was at a loss as to what the next step might be.
Self-fulfillment would be so much easier if everyone could agree on the necessary steps, write down the instructions, and then make sure they were widely available. Drop them from airplanes or something.
And shit, what if he’d really upset Sam? Ian thought it was reasonable, asking for a night alone, but Sam had seemed so, just, sad, as if Ian were trying to end things. But how could Sam think that? He went over it again in his head, but he still couldn’t see how Sam would get that idea.
Since he hadn’t quite worked up to calling Sam, Ian made a plan.
He made reservations at the restaurant where they’d had their first date, but late reservations, because he wanted time alone to talk to Sam first. Okay, yeah, and maybe mess around.
Make Sam come hard and fast and screaming his name, like that time after he’d messed up at the farmers’ market. Something special just for Sam.
Maybe he was imaging things, but lately he thought it made all the difference in the world to Sam that Ian was with him.
When they had sex now, it did something to Ian.
Grabbed him by the balls and wouldn’t let him go until he came, feeling some little thing inside him—another piece of the “Ian” puzzle—click into place.
At nearly four o’clock, Ian decided he needed to wrap things up and just go. He was pretty sure he knew where Sam would be: at the campus library. Maybe he could just surprise him. That would be so much easi—um, better than calling.
“Ian?” Dalton’s voice said at his elbow. “Jurgen Dammerung is on line one for you.”
Oh, yeah! He should have thought of that—Nik and Sam both had some app on their phones where they could locate each other by GPS. He could just ask Nik. “Hey!” he said when he picked up the receiver.
“You fucking dumbass,” Jurgen snapped. “I can’t believe this shit. What the hell is wrong with you? You love him, and if you fuck this up you’re going to regre—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ian interrupted. But the sick feeling in his stomach already knew what Jurgen was talking about.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“I just needed to think,” Ian whispered.
“Oh my God!” Nik’s voice broke in.
Wait. “Am I on speakerphone?”
Click. Nik’s voice came louder and clearer, without that tin-can quality.
“Have you never broken up with anyone before? You don’t say ‘I need time to think’ if you actually just need time to think.
That’s relationship code for ‘I’m leaving you, and don’t call me I’ll call you’—which you compounded by telling him you’d call him when you were ready to talk! ”
Ian’s palms started sweating. “Uh, can I talk to Jurgen?”
“No! He had his turn, now it’s mine.”
“It was kind of a short turn, and I was on speakerphone.”
“Nikky, give me the phone,” Jurgen said in the background.
“And since your education in these matters is clearly lacking, let me inform you that ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is also verboten.”
Ian sucked in a breath. “What does that mean?”
“It means, ‘I don’t like you, get away from me.’ Jesus,” Nik added in a mutter. “I’m going to be giving you the verbal ass-kicking you deserve now. We all know it’s really Jurgen’s job, but he seems to have some of the same communication difficulties you do—is that a family trait?”
“I don’t have communication difficulties, now give me the damn phone,” Jurgen said, louder.
“Jurgen,” Nik said, suddenly sweet. “Did you sit up half the night and drink yourself sick with a brokenhearted, crying Sam? No? In that case, I’m going to be doing the talking for now.”
A chill walked down Ian’s spine. “Please tell me he didn’t cry. I wasn’t breaking up with him, I swear.”
“I’d love to be able to tell you he wasn’t crying,” Nik said politely, which somehow made the whole situation scarier.
Ian stood up. “Oh my God, I have to fix this.”
“Goddamn right you do. Now, you’re supposed to meet us for dinner before the concert in an hour and a half, so—”
“Concert?”
“Please tell me you didn’t forget about the Exposed Innerds concert tonight?”
Hell. “Okay, I won’t tell you.”
Nik sighed, as if he needed to gather strength. “Sam’s expecting you not to show, but you will, Ian. Won’t you?”
Ian nodded firmly, bumping his chin on the receiver. “Yes.”
“Okay, then this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to make reservations for two at a very nice restaurant—”
“Oh, I’ve done that,” he interrupted, relieved.
“—for 6 p.m.,” Nik continued.
“I’ll change them.”
“And then you’re going to meet us for dinner at five thirty at the Club Monaco, but ask Sam to please have dinner with you, alone.”
“Give me the Goddamned phone, Nikky,” Jurgen said in a voice so low and sexy not even Ian was completely immune.
It was very disturbing.
Nik’s breathing got ragged. “Bye, Ian. Jurgen wants to talk to you now. Oh, and I’ve upgraded you from bastard to ‘dumbassed bastard,’” he added quickly.
“Ian?” Jurgen asked. “Don’t fuck this up. Sam’s your Nik.”
Click.
A half hour later, Ian was just about ready to leave work.
He’d called the restaurant and pled for a new reservation, refusing to hang up until he got it.
Since it was casual Friday, he didn’t need to change; he could just meet Sam at the Monaco.
Should he bring flowers? Was that lame? He texted Jurgen quickly, instructing him to ask Nik.
“Hey, Dalton, you’re fine driving yourself, right?” he called out the door, stuffing his paperwork in files so he could find it on Monday. “I need to pick up Sam for dinner and—”
“Ian?” Dalton stood in the doorway, looking uncertain. “There’s someone here to see you. He seems anxious,” he added quietly.
“I can’t see anyone now,” Ian whispered. “Tell him he has to make an appointment.”
“I said that,” Dalton whispered back. “But he keeps insisting.”
Someone walked up behind him and looked over his shoulder at Ian. It was Tierney. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week.
“Dude, I really need to talk to you. I’m, um, I’m sorry. For last weekend.”
For fuck’s sake. Ian gritted his teeth and exhaled through them. He stared at Tierney a second, then looked at his watch. Four forty. “You have a half hour, dude, that’s it.”
“Fine. Whatever time you can give me.”
Ian closed his eyes and shook his head. “Gimme a minute.” He looked up to see Tierney’s eyes flicker down the back of Dalton’s neck.
Something about that look didn’t sit right with him, and he said harshly, “Just have a seat out there and wait for me.” He stared at Tierney until the man moved.
Then he looked at Dalton. “Can you go a little early and wait for them? Then if I’m a couple minutes late . . . please?”
Dalton smiled reassuringly. Ian got the feeling he had some ideas about what was going on. “Of course. I’ll leave in five minutes. Don’t worry.”
“Having a hard time with that,” Ian muttered after Dalton turned and left.