Too Stupid to Live(Romancelandia) (17 page)

The coffee was the color Ian liked it, too, lightened with just enough milk. “Did you use the two-percent in the fridge?” he asked, wrapping his palm around the cup.

“Yes, I did.”

Ian sipped. It was perfect. He looked up and studied Dalton, still standing beside his desk with his hands clasped. “Did you ask Andy how to make my coffee?”

Dalton looked at him quizzically. “Of course I did. How else would I know how to make it?”

“When can you start?”

On Sunday, when Sam got home, he did all his homework, prepared for his classes, and then actually stooped to cleaning in order to avoid thinking about Ian and that morning. Cleaning sounded very distracting. And it
was
very distracting, at first, but before Sam realized it, he’d fallen into a pattern of work and his brain was free to roam again.

Bad brain. Bad
. Because all roads led back to Ian, and if he thought about Ian, he would begin to analyze what had happened, and
that
would result in him searching for parallels to a romance novel plot. It was his single worst vice. Probably.

Don’t think about it
.

The thing was, whatever had happened between him and Ian was certainly fraught with internal conflict, because all romances—okay, romance
novels
—had some kind of conflict, and if it wasn’t external it had to be internal. Since Ian wasn’t saving Sam from international drug-smuggling terrorists, and he wasn’t the captain of an enemy starship that had captured Sam in battle (
ungh
, revenge sex), their plotline—his and Ian’s—had to center on internal conflict.

AKA
emotional
conflict.

Obviously, if an outside observer had to guess which of them had the more serious emotional conflict, they’d pick Ian. Sam wasn’t the one who didn’t even know what constituted a relationship. By default, that made Ian the screwed-up one, right?

Focus on something other than Ian
.
Like cleaning the toilet
.

Maybe he should call Nik and see who he favored for the more serious emotional conflict. But what if he accidentally let slip what had happened this morning? He couldn’t just
tell
Nik the story of Ian’s injury. Ian had acted as if sharing that was unusual for him. Sam definitely didn’t want to tell Nik about how it had felt to make Ian come in his hand—like Sam had comforted him, and they’d created a connection beyond sex. That was private.

Sam suddenly felt lightheaded. What happened this morning had been
special
. The big, important special, maybe even a little like what Nik had with Jurgen. He tried to put his head between his knees, but the toilet bowl was there already.

Oh, look at that. The porcelain was sparkling white, and he didn’t even remember cleaning it.

When he went to mop the kitchen floor, his thoughts gained control again, and he recalled the weird scene when Ian had to leave. He’d given Sam a
key
. Sam let himself marvel over that for a bit, but the suspicious little thought he’d been walling out finally wormed its way into his head.

Maybe Ian had wanted him to stay in bed because he was afraid his friend would see him.

Ian said he was telling people if they asked, but was he trying to keep people from asking? Sam wandering around his apartment early on a Sunday afternoon would look suspicious. It wasn’t as if he could pass for straight, like, ever.

When looked at in that light, the formerly bright, shiny key to Ian’s apartment seemed tarnished.

You’re thinking about it
.

Yeah, but just for a minute
.

Sam knew damn well that if he were a good little romance novel hero, he would dismiss the possibility of love. For him to actually
get
love, he needed to wander into it all unknowing, like a lamb stumbling innocently to the slaughter.

Wait, that analogy wasn’t quite right. Um . . . the birthday boy walking blindly into his surprise party. That worked.

Point was, for this to be a romance novel plot, Sam should naïvely assume that Ian had meant it when he said he didn’t want anything more than sex.

It just seemed like Ian wanted more.

This is nothing like any plot I can recall
.

Maybe that’s because it’s real life and not a romance novel
.

Sam sighed. Here he was, back to thinking about things he shouldn’t be. And he’d mopped himself into a corner.

On Monday, Sam took his courage (and other pertinent body parts) into his hands and did something he’d been planning on since he’d been pierced.

He bought a captive bead ring—ten gauge (gulp), five-eighths inch in diameter.

The word
captive
made him a bit shivery, and possibly sympathetic to women in gothic novels who were prone to swooning. He began to see the appeal.

Having the girl who’d pierced him in the first place change his jewelry from bar to ring was less fun. She was the first, last, and only girl—other than his mother, presumably, but like he wanted to think about
that
—who had ever handled Sam’s manly bits. He’d had some idea he could do it himself, but she looked at him askance when he asked her if he’d need any special equipment for changing his body jewelry.

“It’d be better if I did it for you,” she told him.

“Have I told you I’m gay? I’m not really into—”

“I’m not trying to get a free grope,” Piercing Girl said, tucking her hands in her back pockets. “I just know from experience that it’s safest for the client if the piercer does it. What kind of phone do you have?”

“Wha . . .? Phone?”

“Your cell phone,” she elaborated, still patient, and possibly concerned about his native intelligence. “What is it?”

Sam gaped at her a second. “It’s an iPhone,” he finally told her.

Her brows lifted slightly, as if she found that amusing. He began to feel like a stereotype. “When you bought it, did you have them put the screen protector on or did you do it yourself?”

His face got hot. “I had to take it back and have the salesgirl do it. Those things are . . . yeah.” Sales Girl had been bossy, too.

Piercing Girl seemed to feel a single raised brow was all the answer he needed.

“How hard can it be?” Sam asked, annoyed by her attitude
and
the attitude of the girl who’d sold him the damn phone.

“Okay,” Piercing Girl said, turning to dig through some shiny tool things in a box. “You’ll need at least one pair of pliers, but I recommend you get both the ring-opening and the ring-closing pliers. These—” she turned back to show him some instrument of torture “—are the ring-opening pliers.”

Sam could feel the blood draining from his head. “Never mind,” he croaked. “You can do it.”
Ian had better be worth this
.

Not that he was doing it for Ian.

She was kind enough to hide her smirk by turning away to drop the pliers back in the box. “Okay, get naked below the waist, then lie on the table with your feet in the stirrups.”

He had the strangest feeling she enjoyed saying that.

He spent most of Monday and Tuesday dealing with the new realities of having a heavier and now ring-shaped thing living behind his balls. Realities like relearning how to sit, and trying not to adjust himself too frequently in public. Not to mention the concentration required to keep himself calm every time he walked and the weight between his legs swung, just behind his nuts . . .

Oh God
.

In class on Tuesday morning, the girl who always sat next to him—Eva of the multiple facial piercings—caught Sam trying to reposition the damn ring through his jeans. He’d sort of lost all pretense of subtlety in the previous twenty-four hours.

She looked impressed. “It’s good to see you butching it up a little,” she whispered.

“Thanks, Eva,” he whispered back. The professor wasn’t even there, but classroom habits died hard. “Adjusting myself in public is butch?”

“Totally.”

Ian hadn’t called him by Tuesday evening. Nothing to worry about—he couldn’t appear eager, after all. Sam knew they had
some
kind of connection. Ian would call him eventually. He went to sleep confident things would be fine.

Worry had set in by the time he woke up Wednesday. He went to the library and sort of managed to concentrate on his short story, but by evening he was sure that the strange sense of intimacy they’d achieved on Sunday morning had been too much for Ian. He never should have mentioned Ian’s injury, or asked him what happened. He should have pretended to believe Ian’s taciturn bastard act.

But being incurably curious and dopey, Sam had just had to pry a little. He’d thought he could see some of the paint peeling from Ian’s facade, so he’d picked at it until he could look underneath. When would he ever learn? Guys like Ian didn’t do sharing time. This wasn’t a romance novel, it was real life, and Sam had ruined everything. No more scorching hot, parametered sex for him.

Which was just fine, right? Because he needed to find out that Ian wasn’t the right guy for him and move on. Sam was a husband hunter, pure and simple. He didn’t have time to stop and smell the roses (
snerk
) with guys who were only stellar in bed and had nothing else to offer.

Okay, good, he’d settled that. Now he could stop staring at the phone.

He finally stopped staring at the phone Wednesday afternoon when he had to go work his shift at Fatty’s. Tineke eyed him suspiciously, but seemed to know better than to do more than circle him and wait. Married straight women could sense gay boy heartache like a shark could scent blood in the water.

By the time he had to teach his Thursday evening class, Sam had worn a cell phone outline into the back right pocket of his favorite jeans—the ones he wore for comfort when things weren’t going well. Sometimes, when life really sucked, he slept in them—just because undressing was too much work, not because they gave him an increased sense of security or anything.

That’s what his vintage Snoopy “Later Skater” T-shirt was for.

He barely made it through his class outline with the group of mostly uninterested freshman and sophomores. He let them go early.