“I most certainly see you and Miro and—”
“Not your friends, idiot,” he snapped at me. “Women. Men. Anybody. You only see him. People could strip down in front of you in the middle of the fuckin’ sidewalk and offer you a goddamn lap dance and you’d be oblivious to anything or anyone but him.”
“I don’t think—”
“The women he knows, the ballerinas and models, Sharpe and some of the new guys, they can’t stop staring, tongues hangin’ outta their heads.”
“I—”
“I mean, seriously, I’m very married, but Maven Ashmore is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Sure, but—”
“That woman moves like a panther ready to strike and just…damn.”
“Would you say all this if your husband were here?”
“You know I would,” Ian assured me. “Because I’m making a point about you.”
“Which is?”
“I’ve watched her flirt with you, and you, in turn, have smiled, nodded, and excused yourself to go stand on a fire escape with Celso and talk aboutThe Lord of the Rings.”
“Did you know he never saw that before we watched it together?”
“Which makes him an idiot, but more importantly, means you’d rather do anything with him than get laid by a stunningly beautiful ballerina.”
“What?”
“Don’t saywhatto me. Don’t do it. I’m not stupid, and you don’t get to be a fuckin’ Army Ranger by not being observant, yeah? I see you. I see you because it's like looking in a goddamn mirror.”
I had to think and breathe, and though normally I could do them at the same time, at the moment I was having trouble.
Ian continued, “I get this, right? I know how it is, what it feels like when you start lookin’ at your best friend and think,I wonder what it would feel like if he kissed me.”
And that gave me the opening I needed. “How did you know about Miro?”
“For one, when I was deployed, I missed just sharing air with him. More than anyone, I wanted to talk to him, and hear him laugh, and for him to tell me I was a dumbass.”
I didn’t want to interrupt.
“If I had news, it wasn’t real until I told him.”
That was the same with me. Whatever happened, before anyone else, even my mother, I had to call Cel.
“Things are more fun if he’s there. Everything is always better. I’m more myself when he’s with me.”
That too was the same.
“And I always had this feeling like I didn’t want to leave his house. I wanted to stay there, with him, and there was this stupid pain, this twinge in my heart, and…almost like I felt when something was wrong on patrol. But I was fighting my instincts with him instead of giving in because, you know, Miro was a love-’em-and-leave-’em kinda guy back in the day, and I didn’t wanna turn into a notch on his bedpost or whatever.”
“That was the reason?”
“That was what I told myself.”
“But what was it really?”
“It was what if I fucked up and he didn’t want me like I wanted him. Then I’d lose not only my partner but my best friend. Where did that leave me?”