Someone familiar with the area, someone who’s set up a practice before.” Preston tapped his fingers on the table in a short burst, then shrugged. “Personally, I say take your time. You have the savings to be comfortable for a while. Wait until it feels right.”
“Yeah,” Ilan breathed out, and he knew the man was giving him the advice he needed to hear—even if it wasn’t what he wanted. “Thanks.”
Preston smiled, and this time it didn’t look forced or like he was trying. “You’re welcome.” There was a sudden moment where the silence felt heavy, and Ilan found himself bracing against what was going to come next. “Can I ask you to dinner?”
Ilan’s breath stuttered for a second. “I…what?”
“Like a date,” Preston clarified, and he sounded oddly vulnerable. “I know this is probably the worst time to do this, since you were in the middle of confessing your existential crisis, but I always regretted not doing it back when we worked together.”
“I would have said no,” was the first thing that tumbled past Ilan’s lips. And he would have. Because he wouldn’t have trusted Preston not to have an ulterior motive. And he didn’t shit where he ate—at least, he didn’t at the time. That rule hadn’t lasted, but Preston had been long gone by then. “I didn’t uh…with co-workers,” he said.
Preston’s smile didn’t waver. “And you didn’t like me, and that’s okay. I was kind of an arrogant shit.”
“Are you saying that’s changed?” Ilan challenged, and Preston threw his head back with a laugh.
“Touché. And yes. Well, mostly,” he amended. “I’m just arrogant enough, I like to think. And just humble enough to put myself out there knowing you’re going to tell me to go fuck myself.”
“I’m not,” Ilan defended, and then he sat back and really thought about it, because he had no reason to say no. They didn’t work together, he seemed nice enough, they were both single, and Ilan would have picked up a guy like him in a club any day. “Yes,” he said after a short, internal war. Whatever was standing in his way, he knew he couldn’t keep letting it rule his decisions. “I’m still trying to get my shit in order, but yes. We can try dinner.”
Preston looked surprised, then elated. “Tell you what, I’ll look over my calendar, and I’ll text you all my nights where I won’t get called in. Which means you know I can’t pull the emergency card.”
“Like I’d let anyone get away with that shit. I invented that,” Ilan told him, and Preston laughed again.
“It was really good to see you, Ilan. This was…unexpected.”
Ilan smiled, and he knew he should feel good about it. Warm and comforted and wanted—because Preston offered him all of those things. And in truth, he knew he was just out of practice letting himself be open to something like this. Dating, affection, the possibility of a future.
And maybe he was getting ahead of himself, but he knew it was time to start trying. Like Fredric had told him earlier, he needed to stop assuming he was a burden to everyone else, and saying yes to this date was the first step.
He’d probably come to regret it, but it was time for his fair share of relationship pain.
Chapter 9
Sitting at his computer, Fredric’s fingers drifted across the braille display, reading over the last message a man named Hudson had sent him. Fredric was still coming off the disaster date with John, but the few days he’d spent in Ilan’s company had softened the blow to his self-esteem and courage.
It was strange to consider Ilan his own friend, but when he left the last afternoon, Fredric had a moment of realization that he’d been thinking of him that way for years. Ilan had never outgrown Julian, but he’d grown into a mature, clever adult that Fredric found himself unendingly proud of.
And it probably helped that Fredric had never been asked to fill a fatherly space in Ilan’s life. He had been the sort of person Jacqueline hadn’t wanted their children to associate with, but Ilan’s parents were good, kind people. They loved the hell out of their son, and being such a young father, Fredric looked up to them and wanted to be even half as good as they were to his own children.
As Ilan grew into his own, he’d stopped being the mouthy little shit always encouraging Julian to get into trouble, and he’d become something else. A person that Fredric wanted to