Too Stupid to Live(Romancelandia) (8 page)

“So,” Jurgen said once Ian sat down next to him.

“So,” Ian returned. He sipped his coffee. Jurgen smiled. Ian cleared his throat. “Sorry. I mean, what can I say?”

Jurgen shrugged. “Nothing.” He turned back to his paper. “Have a good time last night?”

Aw, fuck
. “Yeah,” Ian said. “Thanks for inviting me.” He sipped again.

“Sounded like you had a good time.”

Ian closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just say it.”

“You fucked Sam.”

“Sort of.” Not that Jurgen would care about the gray areas.

“I told you to leave Sam alone.”

“Yes.” He met Jurgen’s eyes. Jurgen didn’t just look angry, he looked
disappointed
. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Jurgen threw down the paper and stood up. “Don’t apologize to me.” Ian thought he wanted more coffee, but Jurgen headed toward the hallway instead. “You should probably get the hell out of here. You start that new job on Monday,” he added before he hit the door.

Aw, fuck
. They’d never talked about Sherri—Ian’s single failure at a relationship in the past, the one that had pissed Jurgen off so totally—but for the first time Ian felt like he wanted to try. He had a good relationship with his cousin most of the time, except when it came to this.

“Listen, I get that you’re still pissed about Sherri.” Jurgen stopped in the doorway, so Ian kept talking. “But it was seven years ago. I was a fucked-up kid. I wasn’t trying to use her, I really thought . . .”

“Thought you could be straight?”

“I thought it might be a mistake. Maybe I
was
straight. I liked her, I even loved her, but not—you know—like that.”

Jurgen sighed and turned around, folding his arms across his chest. “You haven’t been serious about anyone since then.”

“You’ve never been serious about anyone until Nik.”

Jurgen stared at him a long time. “So what are you trying to say?”

He wished he knew. “Just, maybe I’m trying to figure some shit out.”

“This is how you figure shit out? Take advantage of a guy like Sam and sneak out before he wakes up?”

“It’s not like he didn’t want it. He wanted to be with me too.”

“So did Sherri.”

Hell
. Ian closed his eyes and listened to Jurgen walk out. Seemed like a good idea, so he left too.

Having a job, going to school full time, and being a Graduate Teaching Fellow was a pain in the ass. Sam spent half of his fifteen-minute break at Fatty’s trying to think up things that would suck worse.

Having an incurable disease and no health care. That would suck much worse. Meh. Wasn’t working. He didn’t care how much some hypothetical life would suck, because his real life sucked right now.

Okay, time to think of the positives.

He was going to have a big, fat, juicy (yet cooked to “well done” to avoid any nasty intestinal bugs) cheeseburger for dinner, and it wasn’t going to cost him a thing. The internal happy meter barely wiggled. That thought had held more power six months ago, when he’d started working at Fatty’s. Having a cheeseburger for dinner twice a week for six months—even a Fatty Burger—had somewhat dimmed the simple joy of meat, cheese, Fat Sauce, and no bill.

How about he finally had his own place because of this job? If the happy meter were a penis, it would have blinked with interest, but mostly just lain there like a fat, disinterested slug.

I had the best sex of my life eleven days ago
.

Ding ding ding! The happy meter had a stiffy. Sam sighed, smiling.

“Break’s over,” Tineke said, bursting through the kitchen door and making Sam jump. She had an annoying habit of being very
present
wherever she went. Right now, she began messing with lemons or something, meddling with Juan Miguel’s plating while he scowled. She didn’t seem to care.

“You have a big group just seated in the center,” she said to Sam. “I had to push three tables together.” She stopped harassing Juan Miguel and looked at him. “Are you thinking about that guy again?”

Sam sighed happily. “Yep.”

Juan Miguel snatched his plate away from her while she was distracted. “Stop it,” he grumped, fixing whatever she’d “fixed.” Juan started muttering to himself in Spanish.

Tineke bounced and clapped her hands. “Tell me about him again. Pleeease?”

Sam rolled his eyes and stood up from the rickety chair he’d been occupying. He managed to stifle his grin. “Later. I have to go back to work now.”

Tineke pouted, but she was professional enough not to argue. Barely. She was head of the waitstaff, so she couldn’t really get away with making him sit back down and talk. “Okay. But maybe we can overlap our dinner breaks a little?”

Sam laughed.

“I checked your other tables and got menus for the new group, but I bet they’re ready to order drinks now,” Tineke said, turning back to Juan Miguel and reaching for the plate. He slapped her hand away as Sam walked out of the kitchen, checking the pocket of his apron for his order pad. He kind of liked the white apron thing. It was the only nod to a uniform at Fatty’s. Other than jeans, but that was more habit than requirement.

The group in the center was big, but the lighting at Fatty’s was so low it was hard to make them all out. Fatty’s was all about the mood, the booze, and the burgers. At least that’s what Sheff, the owner, said. As far as Sam understood, for Sheff, “ambiance” meant “almost too dark to see your food.” Since Fatty’s didn’t have many windows, it was pretty much always dark, not to mention loud. The acoustics matched the ambiance.

Sam ambled over to the new table. From what he could tell, there were about twelve customers, and everyone in the group wore a suit. They sat a bit stiffly, as if they didn’t know each other that well, but they were comfortable enough to chat. The people at the table were mostly men, but a woman sat on the corner closest to him. Something in her body language screamed that she was in charge.

Regardless, he’d learned it was smart to make the women happy; they always seemed to be in control of the tip. Sam smiled his extra-friendly smile as he walked up to her. “Hi! How are all of you doing tonight?”

“We’re just fine,” the woman answered, smiling back at him. Murmurs around the group agreed with her, and someone coughed.

“I can take your drink orders now and give you all a little longer with the menu, if you need.” Sam made a show of looking around the table, even to the shadowy figures at the dim far end, but he focused mostly on the woman in charge.

She didn’t even bother to ask anyone. “We’ll order drinks and appetizers now—three orders of the truffle-oil fries—and we’ll be ready to order dinner when you get back with the drinks.”

Oh, she was so in charge. Sam started playing the guessing game as he worked his way around the table, taking orders. What business were they in? A conservative one, judging by the clothes, but not a lucrative business. Not sales—the suits didn’t have that flashy edge, and no one was ordering fruity drinks. Salespeople were tropical drinks people.

Not stockbrokers or bankers; they ordered brand-name alcohol with special instructions, like, “I’ll have a Sapphire tonic with two limes, a lemon, and a cherry on one of those little plastic swords—a red sword, please.” These people were a little more down to earth.

They couldn’t be lawyers, either. The suits weren’t quite expensive enough, and no one had ordered a $25 glass of wine yet. Lawyers always had at least one wine snob in the group, even at a place like Fatty’s.

Fatty’s
did
take its booze very seriously.

Sam turned to his ninth customer, down at the shadowy end of the table.

“Hi, Sam,” Ian said. He looked entirely too calm, as if he’d had fair warning he was about to see a previous hookup, unlike some people.

“Ian!” Sam gulped. Ian smiled tightly at him, while Sam just stared.

“Friend of yours, Ian?” a woman asked.

“Sam, this is Andrea, one of my coworkers.” Sam managed to flick the woman next to Ian a smile, then his eyes went back to Ian. “Sam’s my cousin’s—”
cough
“—partner’s friend. We met a couple weeks ago at a party.”

“Eleven days,” Sam said.

D’oh
! Heat flooded his face. That had to be an attractive look. And telling.

The woman—Andrea—looked at him assessingly.

“Nik’s party was eleven days ago,” Sam explained to her.
Lame
.

She smiled like the cat with the creamy man and asked Ian, “Is Nik your cousin?”

Ian hesitated just long enough that Sam knew he wasn’t comfortable. “No, my cousin’s name is Jurgen.”

Her surprise was very subtle. Sam wasn’t entirely sure he saw it, but he didn’t imagine her pausing slightly too long. “That’s a very German name.”

“Jurgen’s father was from Germany.”

“Can I take your drink orders?” Sam interrupted, because he really needed to get this over with. Oh, and because it was his job. Yeah. He forced a polite smile.

Ian looked back at him, his face blank. “I’ll have a beer, whatever featured microbrew you have on tap.”

Andrea ordered a white wine, and Sam moved on around the table on autopilot. Thank God he had the little pad to write orders on, because he didn’t remember the rest of the faces he saw, and certainly couldn’t recall their individual drinks. He’d have to ask when he came back. He usually prided himself on not having to, but pride had run screaming off about three orders before he finished the group.

Sam dropped the orders off at the bar, nodding woodenly when Sheff grumbled about how many drinks he had to mix. He threw the order for fries on the pass-through, then slammed through the kitchen door. Where the hell was his coat?

Tineke looked up from her magazine, eyes widening. “Sam?”

Sam ignored her and ran back to the employee coatroom to dig out his phone. He nearly dropped it, and thank God Nik was on speed dial because Sam’s fingers were fumbley.

“What does Ian do?” Sam asked as soon as Nik answered.

“What? What do you mean?”

“His
job
. What does he
do
?”

“He’s some kind of administrator for the State Health Division. I told you this.”

“No you didn’t!” Sam lowered his voice. “You told me Jurgen’s
cousin
worked for the Health Division.”

“Yeees,” Nik said. “And Ian is Jurgen’s cousin, now, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that when you told me, did I?”

There was a momentary silence. “Good point,” Nik finally said.

“I thought Ian was a firefighter.” Sam knew he sounded accusatory, but he couldn’t seem to rein it in.

“You heard that, but you didn’t hear the thing about the Health Division?”

“He
looks
like a firefighter.”

“Well, he was a firefighter, but then he was injured, so now he’s an
administrator
.”

“How can he be an administrator? No one ordered drinks requiring salt on the rim.”

“What are you
talking
about? He’s some kind of interagency emergency coordinator. Apparently they don’t make enough for salted drinks. Are you at Fatty’s?”

“Shit.” Sam ran a hand down his face, then beat his forehead against the wall. “Is he out? At work?” he hissed.

He heard Nik asking Jurgen, then, “No, he’s passing. Is he at Fatty’s
right now
?”

“Shit.” Sam hung up and looked into Tineke’s excited, horrified face. “Oh my God,” he groaned, this time running both hands through his hair.

“Do you want me to take the table, Sam?” He had to give her credit, she dealt with the important stuff first. Before pumping him for information. “Which one is he?”

“No. That’s just being cowardly. I may be a giant dork, but I’m not a coward.” Sam straightened up. “He’s the one in the dark suit, red tie, next to the cougar.”

“They all have dark suits and red ties,” Tineke said.

“They don’t all have cougars.” Sam pushed past her to head back out.

Tineke trotted after him. “The woman at the end?”

“No, the other one.”

“She’s not a cougar! She can’t be much over thirty.”

“Shit,” Sam muttered and walked faster.

“I’m arranging our dinner breaks together,” Tineke called after him. “We can commiserate. And you aren’t a giant dork.”

“I have three younger sisters,” Sam said over his shoulder. “I know what ‘commiserate’ means.”

She just smiled.

By the time Sam got back to the dining room, the first of the drink orders was ready to go. And great, Ian’s was on the tray. That would be the one order he did know.

Okay, he could do this. Sam steeled himself and picked up the heavy tray, balancing it on his shoulder.

As he was coming up behind Ian’s end of the table—approaching Ian from the back; he needed all the advantage he could get—he heard the guy next to Ian say, “Looks like the waiter has a crush on you, Ian.”

Sam stopped dead. Could the humiliation get any worse?

It could. It did when Ian chuckled in reply. He clearly forced it out, but he
chuckled
. It was a vaguely familiar sound that, for a split second, drew Sam back into the laundry room of his mind.