He didn’t get an answering smile. “I told him.” Dalton swallowed. “About Dunthorpe.”
“Thank you,” Tierney said again, a little bit of tension easing out of his muscles. “That makes one thing easier.”
Dalton opened his mouth, and Tierney leaned forward. But before Dalton could do more than draw in a breath, Ian’s door opened, and Sam came out.
Tierney grabbed the golf magazine and sat back in his seat, flipping through it for all he was worth, listening to Dalton and Sam mumble something about lunch. Was Sam mad? Why did that make him feel a little damp under the arms?
“Hi Tierney,” Sam said, suddenly right in front of him, and Tierney almost dropped the magazine. He managed to fumble it shut and stood up. Seriously, did the dude have to be taller?
“Hey. How’ve you been? I just came by to see your, uh, Ian.”
Sam’s huge mouth broke out in a huge grin. “I figured. I’m on my way back to campus, but I was just telling Ian he should invite you over sometime.”
Tierney blinked. Like, for bridge or tea or something? He inspected Sam for signs of pity, but instead he found some sort of shiny emotion in his eyes. Excitement? Why would inviting him over make Sam excited? Christ, he didn’t, like, want a threesome, did he?
With me? Not.
“That’d be cool, I guess.” Way to sound friendly. “I’d like to hang out with you guys.” Jesus, he needed to work on this social thing.
“Awesome.” Sam literally bounced up on his toes. Hopefully he didn’t see Tierney flinch away. But his attention had switched to Dalton, for that second at least. Then he turned to Tierney again, stepping closer. Like, about to touch him? Why would he want to touch—
Oh my God, he’s hugging me! What do I do?
Hug back, douche bag.
He attempted it. One arm around Sam, patting him between his shoulder blades, the shock of full-body contact with another man making him dizzy, then Sam let him go and Tierney fell back into his seat. Next thing he knew, Sam was over in front of Dalton’s desk again, both of them standing and talking in those low tones.
So weird that they could both have blond hair, blue eyes, and such suggestive lips but be total opposites. Sam was dorky-cute in a gangly baby animal way, while Dalton should have been modeling some very pricey androgynous cologne in a black-and-white print ad. God, if he could see those lips on him again—
Shut up.
Tierney closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to will the image away.
“Bye!” Sam sang. Tierney jerked up to see the kid waving to both him and Dalton as he went out the door.
“Hey, man, wanna come in?” Ian’s voice startled him. When Tierney swung around, his friend was standing in his office doorway, smiling.
“Uh, yeah.” He stood, wiping his palms on his jeans even though he tried to tell himself not to. Walking over to Ian, he kept Dalton’s bright hair in his peripheral vision, then caught the guy’s eye one more time when he glanced up and mouthed “thank you” again.
“You look pretty good,” Ian said, shutting the door after Tierney had come through it. “Dalton said your family sent you away after what happened at your grandfather’s wake, but he didn’t tell me why. It wasn’t some kind of thing to make you straight, was it?”
Tierney snorted. “You seriously think I’d announce I like dick to all those people and then agree to get all ex-gayed?”
“No.” Ian headed back toward his desk, sitting as Tierney reached a visitor’s chair. “So, was it alcohol?”
“Sorta.” Tierney waved a hand around. “I wasn’t in alcohol rehab so much as, like, life rehab. Alcohol was part of it, though. I’m, um, a nondrinker now.”
Ian’s brows pulled together, and he planted his elbows on the desk. “Just tell me what’s going on, T.” His voice was soft. Trying to be gentle with someone fragile. “I want to know. I’m trying to figure out what’s changed and how to, I don’t know . . . help you, I guess.”
“I came to apologize.” Tierney gripped the arms of his chair, digging his fingernails into the industrial upholstery. “For real.”
Ian nodded, but his jaw had gone hard. “Yeah, dude. Here’s the thing.” He sat back and steepled his fingers under his chin. “Do it with actions, not words. Because you’ve cried wolf too many times. I hear you say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I think, ‘Here we go again.’ I have a hard time believing it anymore. Show me, because the words mean fuck-all.”
Tierney swallowed. “I’m gonna. Show you.” He so deserved that from Ian. Squeezing his eyes shut, he blurted the thing that had been running around in his mind the last few weeks, “I’ve always been kind of an asshole, haven’t I?”
“Pretty much.” Ian’s chair creaked.
“But we’re friends, right?” Carefully, he met the guy’s gaze again. “I mean, we used to be. Real ones.”
Ian smiled slightly. “Yeah. We are.”
Tierney took a deep breath. “If I change everything about me, do you think we’ll still be friends?”
“Like, if you stopped trying to be the biggest dick around? Yeah. I think we’ll still be friends.”
All his muscles went slack. He’d been hoping for Ian to be sure, but he’d take that answer. “Jesus, I’m pathetic.”
Ian curled his lip. “What makes you say that?”
“This whole fucking situation. I fucked my life up good.”
“Because you were honest for once?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, huh?” he said, smiling. Relaxing all over again, but in a more controlled way. Settling his nerves. He’d done it, gotten the hard stuff out.
Ian laughed. “I guess. Listen, man, you should come play rugby again. McDaniel set up a bunch of off-season scrimmages, and it’d probably help you to do something normal, you know? Plus we could just hang out, like old times.”
Tears prickled his eyes. It had happened all the time at Dunthorpe, but he wasn’t expecting it here. Probably because he hadn’t been expecting this much support from Ian. Didn’t believe he deserved it. He forced out a response past the constriction in his throat. “Thanks. I’d like that.”
How dare he? It took Dalton long minutes of staring at his desk to form a coherent reaction, but really . . . how dare he? Tierney had behaved as if they barely knew each other. What the fuck was with that?