Not to mention the number of times he’d said, “Chicks dig it,” when talking about the beemer.
Does Dalton dig it? He was half-curious and half-repulsed by the thought. He hadn’t dragged the guy in here to, like, put the moves on him.
Even if he wanted to.
The rustle of Dalton shifting on the passenger’s side brought to Tierney’s attention just how long this silence had lasted—since they’d both settled into the bucket seats a few minutes ago. Turning just enough to catch Dalton’s profile in his peripheral vision, Tierney saw the dude swallowing. Or something like that—some uncomfortable jerk of his upper body. No matter how expensive the leather on the seat was, it couldn’t make a high school move like asking the guy to sit in his car with him in a mostly deserted parking garage any less sleazy, could it?
Just as Tierney was about to blurt out, Don’t worry, I totally know this is just a friend thing, I wasn’t thinking anything would happen, Dalton asked, “You didn’t send me a fruit basket, did you?”
Or they could make small talk. “Fruit basket?”
Dalton shrugged, “It came with a card that only said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but there was no signature. I thought maybe, since you’re apologizing . . .”
“Christ,” Tierney groaned, pressing his palm to his forehead. “I should’ve done that.” Was it too late to order one for his parents in lieu of coming to dinner?
“So you didn’t? Send me one?”
“Uh, no.” Scooting around in his seat, he half faced Dalton. “I would’ve signed my name. I mean, it’s not like you don’t know I owed you, but . . .” Fuck. Why hadn’t he felt like he needed to beg Dalton’s forgiveness, also? “Um, I guess I sorta meant it when I apologized to you in the past.”
“Huh?” Dalton’s nose wrinkled up.
Tierney took a deep breath and held it in his cheeks a second before letting it whoosh out. “The people I’m apologizing to now that I’m back?” He waited for Dalton’s nod before finishing. “Anytime in the past I said sorry to them, it was just to cover my ass, but, like, with you, I guess it sorta, you know, felt sincere. To me.” His cheeks were hot enough to spontaneously combust.
Dork.
But Dalton was smiling, and biting his lip like he was trying to hold it in. A half-mischievous, half-pleased expression that reminded Tierney of an elf—the ethereal Tolkien kind, not the more cutesy pop culture ones. Tolkien elves were so much hotter. If he met one in real life, he’d totally want to fuck.
I am such a horndog. But really, he hadn’t expected that to go away once he came out and had his personality-adjustment procedure. He was probably destined to spend most of his life horny, at least until his sixties, when stress and high blood pressure caught up with him and he couldn’t get it up without medical help anymore.
Yeah. Totally time to knock his thought train off track. “Uh, so your anonymous fruit.” Total porn movie title. Shut up. “No one else needs to apologize to you?”
“More like the people I think should apologize to me don’t agree, and I can’t think of anyone who would and needs to.”
“Guess it wouldn’t have been the bashers,” Tierney thought out loud.
“No.” Dalton pressed back into his seat, eyeing him. “Of course not.”
Tierney suppressed a shudder. “That night scared the hell out of me,” he admitted. “I drank more in the two weeks after it happened than I had in the two months before. I think it maybe even was part of why I came out.”
“Usually stuff like that stops people from coming out.” For a brief second Dalton’s fingers brushed across Tierney’s thigh.
“Yeah. I’ve always been a backward freak. When Sam and Miller were—” he had to take a breath “—attacked . . .” He shook his head, trying to knock loose the words he needed. “How different was I than those guys?”
“Very.” Dalton leaned closer, over the console. “You’re nothing like them.”
“I kicked Ian’s ass when he came out to me.” He snorted, but not in amusement.
“The way I heard it, he won that fight.” Dalton winked at him.
Tierney grimaced. “It was probably about even. Anyway, what if I’d eventually gotten to that point? Where I hated myself so much I’d do what those guys did?”
“Enough to assault someone in a dark alley for threatening your closet?”
Tierney swallowed in lieu of nodding.
“I don’t think so,” Dalton finally answered. “You didn’t do it, did you? You came out instead.”
“If I hadn’t— I only did it because I was afraid of becoming like Grandfather.” The words spilled out of him like pus out of a pimple.
“But you did. That’s the important thing.” Dalton moved even closer, scrunching down and putting himself squarely in Tierney’s line of sight. “I think you would’ve come out no matter what, sooner or later.”
Tierney shook his head. “I don’t know . . . If I hadn’t just sort of sprung it on myself like that, I’m not sure I ever would have.”
“It doesn’t matter; the point is you did, and now you’re trying to fix things by apologizing to Ian and the other people. You’re dealing with your life instead of running from it.”
Tierney groaned. “Can we not talk about it? I mean, I’m sorry, but—”
Dalton smiled sympathetically. “We can not talk about it.”
Ignoring his own request, Tierney went on. “Having to face all those people, it’s, I don’t know, humiliating.” He whacked the steering wheel, but more as punctuation than in anger. “Everyone knows I’m gay, right? They’re talking about it. About me.”
Dalton nodded. “I’m sure.” Fortunately, he didn’t make that big-eyed pitying face other people did or anything.
“So now? I’m the idiot who stayed in a closet for twenty years, who has to go around telling people I’m sorry for the shit I did because I was terrified of exposing my queerness.” He covered his face with his palm.
Dalton laughed. Softly and only briefly, but he chuckled. Tierney dropped his hand, because he had to see that. He’d never heard Dalton laugh before. Dalton’s voice wasn’t high, but it wasn’t low, either—very middle of the road, but his laugh sounded heavier, like the earthy counterpart to his ethereal attractiveness.