It would have been, but he didn’tsaythat.
“Secondly,” Scott continued as though Charlie hadn’t spoken, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know if I’m looking. I don’t feel like I need anyone else in my life right now. Friends, sure. But not… not a girlfriend, or anything.”
Charlie wished he felt the same. He loved his friends, but he needed someone. Someone who was his, and who he could belong to, first and foremost. Someone for whom he was the most important person in their life. He needed someone to feel that way about him, too.
“Try to stay that way,” Charlie said.
“You can always come and hang out with the dogs if you need to feel loved,” Scott responded.
Charlie plucked a book off the shelf and handed it to him, trailing his finger along the spines to make another selection.
He liked the sound of going to hang out with Scott’s dogs, but he wasn’t sure he could handle the torture of being alone with Scott for any length of time. Not yet, anyway.
“I’d like that,” he finally replied, knowing it was the polite thing to say. Scott didn’t need to hear about how disappointed he was.
Charlie’s disappointment wasn’t on Scott. It was on him. Just like his short-lived disappointment over Devin, and over all the other men before them.
“So am I invited to drinks this weekend, or…?” Scott asked, shifting the growing pile of books in his arms.
“Of course,” Charlie said. “They really do like you. My friends, I mean. They are all queer, though.”
Scott shrugged. “That, I don’t care about. They’re cool. As long as they don’t mind a straight guy hanging around.”
“Are you kidding? You can explain straight people to us.” Charlie grinned. “Is it really so hard for straight men to be friends with straight women? Why do you dress babies in shirts that say ‘ladies’ man’ on them?”
“Uh. In order, no, it’s not hard, and I have no idea. I’ve never dressed a baby.”
“I have, but her romper just had a dinosaur on it. Also, it’s harder than it looks.”
“I bet,” Scott said. “Umm. Thank you for not being weird or anything, by the way. I was scared you were gonna hate me.”
Charlie turned to look at Scott. “I could never hate you. You’re basically a human puppy.”
“I’ll assume that’s a good thing,” Scott said.
“It is,” Charlie promised, smiling to himself as he plucked another book from the shelf.
He could definitely just be Scott’s friend. He’d get over his crush in no time.
Chapter Twelve
“I’m just saying, if they call them TIE fighters, and theylooklike bowties, then bowties have to exist in theStar Warsuniverse,” Scott said, sipping his beer and grinning at the look on Charlie’s face.
It was nice to hang out. He was glad he’d apologized to Charlie about last Saturday and they’d stayed friends despite it. Scott didn’t have so many friends that he could afford to push any of them away.
“But TIE is an acronym for twin ion engine. It has nothing to do with bowties,” Charlie argued.
“I don’t think that’s right,” Scott said, taking out his phone. “I’m gonna look it up.”
Charlie sighed heavily, leaning against his side. Scott dropped his shoulder to make him more comfortable, focusing on his phone screen.
“Check out the nerds arguing overStar Wars,” Amber said, sitting back down with two glasses of wine. Apparently, it was her and Lanie’s third first-official-kiss anniversary.
Scott wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but they were cute together. They couldn’t have been more different, Lanie quiet and a little on the reserved side, Amber… well, Amber’s earrings could have doubled up as the rims for bicycle wheels in an emergency, and that was probably the subtlest thing about her. But they obviously made it work.
“There’s literally no point in calling a librarian a nerd. It comes with the territory,” Charlie retorted. “Scott is totally a nerd, though.”
“Hey,” Scott objected, though he didn’t really have a leg to stand on.
