13. Lance
Lance
Elliot is exactly as advertised.
Short dark blond hair, grey-green eyes, a composed posture, and an easy smile. I step out of his car and the night air slides across the back of my neck, carrying salt and the low slap of water against hulls.
He holds the door for me at Breakwater, which I appreciate. Warm overhead lighting, windows thrown open to the bay. String lights glow over the back patio. The bridge lit up in the distance.
It’s a good date location. Elliot chose well.
I follow him to the table and sit. The server drops off our drinks. My hands feel too big for the glass.
“You ever notice how some places make you slow down the second you walk in?” he says, glancing around before looking back at me, his green eyes flick briefly over the room. “Not the music or the crowd. It’s just the way it’s put together.”
I take a slow sip of my drink and let the burn settle. “You’re in work mode,” I say, remembering he’s some sort of architect.
“Always,” he says, and the corner of his mouth lifts.
“Look at this. Narrow room, but it doesn’t feel tight.
They kept the sightlines open, pushed everything low, let the windows do the work.
” He tips his glass toward the dark water outside.
“You get water, movement, air. Your brain reads it as space.”
“That sounds expensive,” I say.
“It is,” he replies easily. “Or it’s just knowing where not to overbuild.”
The server drops off our drinks. He thanks her without breaking his sentence, then turns back to me like there was no interruption at all.
“I’m working on a place down the coast right now,” he says. “Old structure. Everyone wanted to strip it back to nothing and rebuild, start fresh. But the bones are good. You don’t throw that out. You work with it, let it tell you what it needs.”
“What does a building need?” I ask.
“Respect,” he says, then lets out a low laugh. “Patience, and a lot of problem-solving. You’d be surprised how much of my job is fixing things someone else rushed.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Yeah?” He leans in a fraction. “You get that a lot at the hospital?”
“All the time.”
He nods once, like that makes sense. “Figures,” he says, picking up his glass.
I nod like I’m following every word. My thumb keeps rubbing the same spot on the glass.
Elliot talks in full paragraphs, everything neat and thought through before it leaves his mouth.
George would have said three words and then waited, letting the silence do most of the talking.
The comparison arrives without permission. I shove it back down and smile.
The conversation keeps moving. I ask questions.
I laugh at the right moments. My shoulders stay loose even when my stomach keeps tightening in small, stubborn knots.
This is my first real date with a man and the guy across from me is doing everything right.
Good-looking. Polite. Interesting. My brain keeps supplying the checklist like it’s trying to prove something.
But every time Elliot leans forward to make a point, I notice the way his watch catches the light.
Clean hands. No faint scent of engine oil that clings to someone who’s been working with his body all day.
My mind drifts again. I catch it, drag it back, and take another sip so the movement covers the slip.
I’m an awful person. Elliot doesn’t deserve the ghost sitting at the table with us.
“You okay?” Elliot asks.
“Yeah. Long week,” I manage to say, already smiling.
Huh. I’m usually the one who can’t shut up if I try, but tonight I seem to have left that entire personality at home.
The table beside us has been getting louder for the past forty minutes.
Four men, mid-thirties, a level of drunk that’s moved from social to territorial.
One of them keeps looking over at Elliot, who’s been gesturing expansively while telling a story about a zoning board meeting, his elbow occasionally crossing into the space between tables.
I keep an eye on the situation the way you do when the numbers on a monitor in the ED start trending in the wrong direction. Elliot doesn’t notice at all, completely unaware of how much of him is drifting towards their table.
Then the big one leans back in his chair and speaks up, loud enough that the tables around us go silent.
“Look at these two fags.” He doesn’t bother lowering his voice. “Out here on a little date. Can’t even eat dinner in peace anymore.”
Elliot’s face goes tight. He straightens in his chair.
“Hey,” I say, easy, turning slightly toward the other table. “We’re just having dinner. No trouble here.”
The big one smiles like I’ve handed him something. “Oh, it’s indeed a date? That’s sweet. What, you two gonna toast to it next?”
His friend laughs. “Bet they’re splitting the dessert too. Real men don’t do that shit.”
I keep my hands relaxed on the table. “Real men don’t need to announce it at someone else’s table,” I say. “But sure.”
That gets a reaction. The big one shifts forward. “You got a mouth on you.”
“I do,” I say. “And I’m using it to tell you we’re not interested. So leave it there.”
For a second, I think it might actually work. The men turn back to their drinks, still muttering, but easing off. Elliot stays rigid beside me, turning fully in his chair.
“No, actually,” he says, voice sharp. “I want to hear what he means by that. What exactly is your problem with us?”
My stomach drops. “Elliot.”
He doesn’t stop. “Because if you have something to say, say it properly. Don’t mutter it at our table like a coward.”
The big one’s smile goes flat. “There it is. I like ‘em feisty.”
Another one stands.
“Okay,” I say, getting up, keeping my voice level, putting myself between Elliot and the four men. “We’re all going to take a breath. Nobody needs to do anything right now.”
The big one looks at me. “You brought this here.”
“We sat down for dinner,” I say. My voice stays low. “That’s all we did.”
“You people always got something to prove.”
There it is, that lazy, contemptuous line, reducing everything they don’t want to understand into something small and easy to dismiss. My feet stay planted, but my hands won’t settle, itching for something to hit.
I’ve heard it everywhere. In the ED, in waiting rooms, in corridors where people think they can get away with it. I’ve never let it slide, not even back when I thought I was straight and it had nothing to do with me.
“You know what,” I tell him. “You’re right. I do.”
I take one measured step forward.
“We get to be here, same as you. Who I take to dinner is nobody’s business but mine. You don’t get to sit there and make us into a problem you didn’t ask for, because we’re not a problem. You want to throw words at us, fine, but they don’t land the way you think they do. This stops here.”
I hold his gaze. “So we can do this the easy way, where you sit back down and we all finish our meals. Or we can do it the other way. Your call.”
The silence stretches tight between us. He then steps in close enough that I can smell the sour beer on his breath. The other three move with him, crowding. Two of them taller than me. I guess this was never going to end any other way.
I hear Elliot’s chair push back behind me. Hear him stand. For a second I think he’s going to say or do something, and maybe the other three think so too because one of them turns toward him with smug looks, waiting.
Elliot holds their gaze for a beat, then drops back into his chair. The one who’d been watching him laughs and turns away, satisfied.
“Guess it’s just you,” says the big one in front of me.
His hand closes around the front of my shirt and yanks hard.
Fabric twists tight across my chest, cutting into the back of my neck.
I’ve got one second. My hands come up quick, weight shifting back onto my heels as I start calculating the grip, the angle, how quickly I can twist free and drive my knee up.
Then something moves in my peripheral vision, fast. Faster than a man that size should be able to move.
“Hands fucking off him.”
George’s voice cuts in, low and stripped of anything familiar.
He steps in from my right and drives a short, compact punch straight into the big guy’s jaw with his splinted hand.
The crack is loud. The man’s head snaps sideways and his grip on my shirt drops instantly.
He stumbles back, shoulder slamming into his own table.
Glasses and bottles crash to the floor in a sharp explosion of sound and shards.
I suck in a breath. “George—”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” The second man comes swinging wild.
I see it before it lands and step in, catching his arm, shoving him off line.
It buys him some time. George uses it. He turns just enough, lets the hit glance off his shoulder, then answers with a tight hook that folds the guy mid-motion.
The force sends him reeling backward into the third man.
They collide hard, feet tangling, both of them nearly going down.
“Hey! Break it up!” someone shouts. Staff are moving, and no one listens.
The big one shakes his head and comes back in, furious now. He lands heavy hits to George’s face and ribs. George grunts but doesn’t back off. His eyes are dark, focused, running way too hot. Blood now trickles from a split on his cheek.
He blocks the next swing and drives his good fist into the guy’s gut, doubling him over.
“Enough,” I snap, stepping in again, grabbing at the third guy as he tries to circle behind, driving him back with a shoulder into a chair that skids out from under him. “Back off.”
George doesn’t hear me. The rage is pouring off him in waves, like something in him has snapped.
Everything’s fast and loud. Too loud, with glass underfoot, people shouting.
One of them swings again and lands another hit to George’s ribs.
I feel it in my own body.
I throw myself between them, shoving hard against George’s chest, grabbing his arm when he goes to follow through. “That’s enough!”
He’s solid under my hands, heat and tension wound tight. Breathing hard through his nose, shoulders locked, eyes still fixed on them. His splinted hand is already red and swelling worse from the punches he’s thrown. I can feel how close he is to losing it completely.
“Hey—eyes on me,” I snap, one hand gripping his jaw, the other pressed flat against his chest. “Look at me, George.”
I don’t think. I wrap my arms around him tight, hugging him hard against me, pinning his arms to his sides so he can’t swing again. My face presses into his shoulder. He’s warm and shaking with leftover adrenaline.
Someone’s on the phone calling the police. Voices from the other tables shout about who started it. The four guys are already hesitating, suddenly a lot less brave with the whole room watching and George still standing there like he’s not finished.
George’s gaze finally shifts, his eyes finding mine. For a second he still looks half out of it, chest heaving. His splinted hand twitches against my back.
“You’re bleeding,” I mutter into his shirt. My voice cracks. “Your hand—”
He goes still, probably finally realizing I’m right in front of him. His good arm comes up, firmly and surely wrapping low around my back, pulling me in until there’s no space left between us. It’s him anchoring me there, dragging me close enough that I have to meet him.
“Lance,” he says, lower this time.
Up close, his eyes are locked on mine, searching, like he’s checking for damage he can’t see. His grip tightens, keeping me from pulling away even if I tried.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice still hasn’t fully calmed down yet.
I nod, close enough that my forehead brushes his beard. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
He watches me for another second, like he doesn’t quite buy it. He exhales hard, the tension bleeding out of him in pieces. His hold doesn’t drop right away but it loosens by degrees, like he’s making himself let go.
“Fuck, G. I had it,” I say, my voice barely holding it together.
He grunts.
“I was handling it.”
“You were.”
“What the fuck are you doing here anyway?” I nearly shout. He punched with that sprained hand many times, driving straight through the pain like none of it matters.
The four guys are already backing off. Staff have stepped between us, one of them with a hand out, telling them to sit down and stay put.
The big one is breathing hard, rubbing his jaw, while his friends mutter and glance toward the door like they are looking for an exit before the cops show up.
None of them look eager to keep going now that the whole place is staring.
George turns toward Elliot, who sits frozen in his chair, eyes huge, mouth slightly open like his brain hasn’t caught up to the last few minutes.
“He goes home with me,” George growls, the words coming out hard, aimed straight at him.
My chest locks up, ribs pulled in too tight. There’s no room left for air. Everything stalls. Breath. Thought. Even the instinct to move. It just…cuts out.
George is standing here bleeding, his fucked-up hand even worse now, all because he showed up tonight when he had no business being anywhere near this date. And now he’s deciding where I go like it’s his call to make.
“You absolute idiot.” Some words finally slip out of me soft, almost helpless.
I reach into his pocket and take the keys.
He doesn’t argue. He just lets me have them, his breathing still heavy as he works to settle himself.
That subtle surrender tells me everything.
The hand is hurting him a lot more than he’s letting on, but his eyes stay on me instead of the guys still being herded back by the staff.
It’s like he’s making damn sure I’m still okay.
When we start toward the door, Elliot finally finds his voice behind us.
“Wait—”
George stops beside our table. He leans down close to Elliot’s ear, one hand braced on the back of his chair, and mutters something low, barely more than breath.
I catch only the tone, enough to make the air shift.
Whatever he says makes Elliot’s shoulders stiffen.
The guy nods fast, eyes dropping straight to the floor like he suddenly cannot bear to look at either of us.
George lingers there a second longer, then straightens and keeps walking without another glance.
Elliot tries to speak when I move to leave.
“Hey—” he starts.
I stop just long enough to look at him. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” he says quickly, then more subdued, “I think so.”
“Good,” I say. “What a first date, huh.”
It lands wrong and right at the same time. I don’t push it further. I place some cash on the table to cover for the food and the damage.
“Goodbye, Elliot.”
He blinks like it takes him a second to understand it. “Right. Yeah. Bye.” He hesitates, then adds, a little awkwardly, “Sorry.”
I shake my head, tapping his shoulder once. “Don’t be.”
Then I turn and follow George out.