Too Stupid to Live(Romancelandia) (33 page)

In the morning, life sucked until Nik crawled to the store to get some electrolyte replacement elixir. Once Sam drank that, he began to feel like maybe he’d survive this hangover. Surviving the heartbreak was still debatable.

They went out for a gross, fat-laden breakfast. It was just like old times. Sam stared down at his eggs. “Why did we want to do this again?”

“Tradition,” Nik said dully.

“Let’s discontinue this one.”

“That’s what we said last time.”

Sam nodded, remembering now. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s not forget next time.”

“Agreed.”

Breakfast did help, though. Until Nik brought up the Exposed Innerds concert. Sam groaned. “I forgot that was tonight.”

“How could you
forget
?” Nik looked appalled.

Sam gave him a long look.

“Never mind,” he said, flapping his hand at Sam. “Well, so maybe when Ian meets us at the club tonight he’ll be ready to talk.”

“He’s not coming,” Sam said tiredly, running his fingertip along the edge of the table.

“He might?” Nik offered.

Sam shrugged. “Hopefully Dalton will, or else Miller won’t have a date, either.”

“Oh, if that happens and Ian doesn’t show, you can be Miller’s date.”

Sam gave him another look.

Nik smiled slightly. “Or not.”

“How’d you get Miller to go out on a date with Dalton after that party disaster?”

“I think ‘disaster’ is a bit strong. I prefer to think of it as ‘not a complete success.’”

“Uh-huh. So, he must agree or he wouldn’t be willing to go out on this blind date.” Sam pushed the issue, because he was suspicious.

“Oh, you might not want to mention Dalton to him. It’s a little bit of a surprise.”

Ahhhh
. “Nik?”

“Yes?”

“Now that I’m single again—”

“If! If you’re single again.”

Sam sighed again, shoulders sagging. “
If
I’m single again, you don’t get to set me up on any dates.”

Nik didn’t answer, he just pouted.

“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.