him and the entire restaurant.” He leaned his face in close. “Do I make myself clear?”
He could feel the man’s swallow against his arm, and when he was sure the man was about to piss his pants, he let go. There was a moment of trembling and gasping, and then the guy turned on his heel and scrambled out the door.
Ilan followed at an easy stride, and the guy turned to see if he was looking, so Ilan tipped him a little wave. He was still too far to hear what the man was saying, but he saw Fredric smile genially, and offer his hand before the guy hauled ass out the restaurant doors.
When the space was clear, Ilan turned back to Gail and pointed at the table. “Send my bill over there?”
She shook her head but smiled and waved him on, and Ilan weaved through the tables until he came to a seat.
“Well, well, well. Papa.”
Fredric startled visibly, his hand flying to his chest. “Ilan?”
“I don’t know if I’m more surprised to see you here, or if I’m more surprised to see you on a date with a man,” Ilan said, and he felt something in his stomach at the way Fredric’s cheeks went pink.
Clearing his throat, Fredric quickly regained his composure, then sat back and offered Ilan his usual smile, though this time it made Ilan’s heart beat a little faster. Maybe because he was happy to see him, or maybe it was because he was feeling guilty for what he’d done. But he also had no regrets.
Reaching for his wine, Fredric took a long sip, then sighed and rested his elbow on the table. “I suppose we have a lot to talk about.”
“Yes,” Ilan said, leaning toward him, “I think we do.”
Chapter 6
There was something lost in translation listening to a tinny little robotic voice read texts in his earbud, especially since Fredric had accidentally set the voice to feminine. The idea that he was taking a leap and going on his first date ever with a man was already throwing him, but hearing the texts from John read aloud like that killed the bit of spark he might have been feeling otherwise.
It had taken him over three hours to learn even the basics of the app. He’d once considered himself technologically advanced, even for an old man—picking up the computer really well with JAWS and then years later with his braille refresher. Then smartphones had come along with their flat screens and voice-over and complicated swipes, and he was ready to chuck the thing into the Atlantic and give up forever.
But Fredric had never let roadblocks like that stand in his way, so he’d politely declined Agatha and Ted’s offer to help him further than getting set up, and he spent a sleepless night navigating profiles. It wasn’t entirely blind friendly. None of the images had descriptions, but a lot of the men on the app threw a few bits about themselves in their bio so he had some idea what he was getting into.
He had his own photo, taken beside his neighbor’s pool after Teddy had artfully tousled his hair, and Agatha tugged down the collar of his shirt and arranged his limbs into some pseudo-casual pose that made him think of old author photos on the backs of hard-cover coming of age novels. He hadn’t thought about his own appearance in years, but he wondered if he just looked like some desperate old man trying to find himself after a fresh divorce.
Not that it was wrong, really. That’s exactly who he was in that moment.
But whatever the pair of them had done, Fredric found himself listening to the soft ping of new messages for most of the night. He probably took a hundred times longer than anyone else to answer them, but he had to assume there were other people his own age just as baffled by that technology.
Eventually, though, he came across John’s profile. He was thirty-six, younger than Fredric had really intended on dating. But he worked as a director of IT for a company he didn’t name, he had a house not far from the Cove, and he liked to fish and paddle board on weekends.
Fredric couldn’t say he was a fan of any of those things, but they were all the marks of someone who had his life together, and Fredric appreciated that because he wasn’t quite sure there was room in a relationship for two people who were trying