"Wasn't planning to."
Jules blinks at me like I've announced my intention to join the circus. The tiny freckle at the corner of her right eye disappears momentarily as she narrows her gaze, studying me with suspicion. "Are you dying? Did you hit your head? Should I call someone?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. This is the opposite of fine. I've known you for four months and I've literally never seen you so much as glance at a woman. Are you having some kind of quarter-life crisis? Did you join a monastery and forget to mention it?"
I finally look up, raising an eyebrow and pushing my hair off my forehead. The curls are getting too long and falling into my eyes every time I bend over. "Done with your psychological evaluation, Dr. Jules?"
"No, actually. Because now I'm wondering if you have a crush on Xander."
I choke on my beer so hard I'm pretty sure I damage something important in my throat. It dribbles embarrassingly down my chin and onto my wrinkled button-down, which has already survived a coffee spill and an unfortunate encounter with a leaky pen today. "What the hell, Jules?"
She's cackling now, actually pounding the table with her fist. "Oh my god, your face! Worth every second of that panic."
"You're insane," I manage, still coughing and wiping at the wet spot on my shirt. "Completely unhinged."
"Maybe. But for the record, we're not doing that thing where someone assumes you're into me, right? Because we established pretty early on that you're not."
"Yeah, when you tried every classic workplace flirt in the book during my first week and I didn't bite."
"I wasn't flirting with you, you moron. I was trying to get Liam's attention." Jules groans, throwing her head back against the booth. "Fat lotof good it did me."
"Pretty sure Liam's scared of you."
"I don't scare him."
"You cornered him in the copy room and asked if he had a favorite safe word."
"It was a joke!" Jules protests, but she's grinning. "He blushed for twenty straight minutes. It was adorable."
"Seriously?" I level my gaze at her, tapping my fingers against the scarred wooden table.
"What?"
"If you like him, just tell him. Be straight with him. You're not as terrifying as you think you are, and the worst he can say is no."
Jules pauses, studying me with those sharp eyes that miss nothing. The slight furrow between her brows deepens as she tilts her head. "Look at you, giving actual functional relationship advice. Look at Dr. Love over here dropping wisdom bombs."
"The bombs were always there. You were just too distracted by the explosions to notice." I shrug, but her smirk deepens.
"Too bad you can't take your own advice."
I frown. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean." She shifts in her seat. "That girl back home? The one you were pathetically texting at two in the morning after I got you plastered on our first night out?"
My heart stutters, then kicks into double-time. That night. Fuck. Jules had practically forced shots down my throat to celebrate my first month at Pixel Dreams. Five tequilas later, she'd caught me staring at Ivy's contact, thumb hovering over yet another message that would never be read. She'd pried until my defenses crumbled like wet cardboard.
I try to keep my expression neutral, but Jules notices the shift anyway. The slight narrowing of her eyes tells me my poker face is garbage.
"Can we not, please?" I say, aiming for casual, and landing somewhere around desperate.
She takes a slow, deliberately smug sip of her drink. "You're not even denying it."
"Jules—"
"No, no, this is fascinating." She leans forward, resting her sharp chin on laced fingers. "I've seen this movie, Caleb. Guy leaves a small town, reinvents himself in the big city, but still carries a torch for the girl who got away."
