“And you decided a live demonstration was the way to go.”
“Would it make it any better if I pointed out that the hotel didn’t have any more rooms free, there was a blizzard, and I needed a place to sleep?”
Greg put down his drink without taking a sip. “No, you dumbass, that makes it worse.”
Yeah. Aubrey thought so too. “Anyway, now he knows,” he said. “So he’s free to take that knowledge and….” He waved his hand broadly to indicate, vaguely,offer himself to the Chicago meat market. “AndIam going to respect his decision to explore what being hot, out, and single is like, because this is probably karma or something.”
“You’re being suspiciously mature about this.”
Aubrey managed a pathetic smile. “Don’t worry, it’s temporary.” He just needed to go out and get it out of his system.
“That’s very reassuring.” Greg shook his head and raised his glass. “Good luck.”
Chapter Nine
DR. DEVONBailey was a thirty-six-year-old anesthesiologist with perfect hair, perfect cheekbones, and perfect teeth. He had two hairless cats because he liked pets but was allergic to dander, he was training for a triathlon, and he’d just become an uncle for the first time.
Nate learned all of this within the first five minutes of their date at Ciao, an exclusive steakhouse in a trendy neighborhood.
Devon was handsome, all right. And Nate could be reasonably sure he wasn’t after his money. He was nice. Nate had never cared for cats and thought the hairless ones looked like Roswell gray aliens only scarier, but pet owners in general were kind people.
Devon was handsome and nice and family-oriented, and he wore a suit really well.
He bored Nate to tears.
At first he thought he was having trouble because it had been so long since he went on a date. Maybe it wasn’t Devon. Maybe the niceties of small talk just didn’t interest Nate anymore because he’d become a misanthropic cave dweller who only cared about himself.
But no. The server came by to take their orders, and Nate cheerfully detoured into a stimulating discussion of the wine list, as it turned out she had once lived next door to one of the vineyards, which happened to be near where Nate grew up. They reminisced about their mutual favorite drive-in ice cream diner until Devon set his water glass down and clinked it against the plate and Nate realized he was being rude and ordered a bottle of pinot.
Thank God he’d taken a Lyft.
“It’s just so hard to meet people at our age,” Devon said as Nate nodded along, hoping his phone would magically come off silent mode and ring with an urgent telemarketing call. “I can’t get into the club scene at all. I just don’t see the appeal of meaningless sex.”
You’ve obviously never met Aubrey Chase, Nate thought, but he inclined his head like he was supposed to. Was this what he used to sound like, judging people for their choices? Feeling alive, wanted, desirable wasn’tmeaningless. God, he was such a douchebag. “It’s a meat market,” he responded automatically. That was the party line, wasn’t it?
“Exactly!” Devon said brightly, nearly sloshing his water out of the glass. He’d informed Nate at the beginning of their date that he didn’t drink more than one glass of wine, ever. This was the most animated he’d been all night. “Exactly.”
Maybe they could still salvage this, Nate thought. Maybe he could just stop answering Devon with what he wanted to hear and have a discussion, a conversation, instead of a call-and-response session. It felt like a weird sermon. Maybe they’d find common ground on a subject that actually mattered and Nate would suddenly find Devon sexually appealing and, if nothing else, go back to his place for sex. Or maybe their food would come quickly and end Nate’s suffering before he started contemplating stabbing his own thigh with his steak knife to escape.
Devon would probably insist on driving him to the hospital, but Nate would at least have a good excuse for feigning unconsciousness.
He didn’t have luck on any count. Devon mostly kept the conversational topics safe—weather, traffic, the proposed site of a hospital expansion. Nate sat on his left hand and pinched his thigh at intervals in an effort to stay engaged. Devon probably didn’t even need drugs to put patients to sleep.
The restaurant was the type of establishment to pride itself on a diningexperience. In Nate’s estimation that mostly meant they took long enough delivering the food that people ordered twice as much alcohol. He didn’t think it would reflect well on him if he finished more than one bottle by himself, so numbing his brain was not an option.
The last time he’d gone out to a nice dinner, he’d been with Aubrey. He’d never felt the least bit pressured to say something Aubrey would agree with. Even in bed—
No. He wasn’t going to go there now, because apparently that was all it took for his dick to go from “medically induced coma” to “sentry duty.”
“Nate?” Devon frowned. “Are you okay?”
Nate snapped himself out of it. “Fine,” he made himself say and turned to the server. “Ah, no dessert for me tonight, thanks.”
Devon looked like he approved. Maybe he wanted to run screaming away from this date as bad as Nate did.
But Nate’s luck persisted. Devon paid the check and then gallantly offered Nate a ride home without even making it sound like an innuendo. Nate couldn’t find a good reason to decline and had to subject himself to an even more boring version of the car-buying spiel Bones had gone through the other night, only this time starring the safety features of a high-end Volvo SUV.
“It’s all part of the IntelliSafe system,” Devon said of the electric seat belts, which would retract if the car sensed an imminent collision but would then revert to normal if the collision were avoided. “There’s even an inflatable curtain in the roof in the event of a rollover accident. I wanted something family-friendly.”
