12. Sam
SAM
All three of us watch as she leaves and flags a cab down the end of the street.
Then we walk back in, the door closes, and Jake turns on Adam.
“What happened?”
“I don't know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t give me that. You guys were in that bathroom way too long, and when you came out, you couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Come on, give me the lowdown, you sly dog you.”
Adam ignores him and shakes his head. “Listen, this is going too far. You were flirting with her and making her uncomfortable.”
“I wasn’t making her uncomfortable,” he says and then frowns. “Did she say I was?”
“She didn’t have to. We all saw how uncomfortable she was. Just give it a rest, why don’t you?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You sure you’re not just saying that because you want her all to yourself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says.
“I’m trying not to be,” he says with a casual shrug, though his eyes are narrowed. “But it’s just that you’re so insistent on me not pursuing her..”
“Because it’s a bad idea from all angles.
" He throws up his hand in a rare moment of frustration. "I can’t believe I’m the only one who sees it.
We work with her, she’s James' sister, and more importantly, she doesn’t seem to want anything to do with us.
You know what happens if we keep chasing her?
We become the creeps who can’t take no for an answer. ”
“We?” he says, and once again a sly smile crosses his lips. “I didn’t know you joined the equation. Whatever happened in the bathroom was pretty hot, huh?"
He rolls his eyes in exasperation and walks away muttering about how we won’t listen, and being with us is starting to feel like babysitting.
Jake chuckles, clearly amused by Adam's anger.
On the other hand, my mind is somewhere else.
On a pattern.
You see, I'm one for patterns, and I can't help but draw them through every aspect of my life.
I draw it now, noting that most of the conversation during the meeting had been between Jake and Chelsea.
She didn't seem uncomfortable around him. She smiled at him at least fifteen times and smiled at me once.
She responded to all his questions with ease, and mine with some discomfort.
Do I make her uncomfortable?
I grip my mug against the turmoil because just the thought of that causes me distress.
All my life, I’ve unintentionally made people uncomfortable, even though I never wanted to. I can’t seem to help it. There’s just something about me that puts people off, whether I’m silent or not.
Then again, I haven’t had much practice talking, so it's a given that I've gotten rusty at it.
I don't typically meet new people, and on average, I say only a handful of words a day.
It's gotten worse in recent times, when I've essentially hermitted myself in my home.
Now, when I do talk to people, they just stammer or stare at me while struggling to formulate a response.
Usually, I don’t care and can brush off the awkwardness.
But not with her. I don’t want her to be uncomfortable around me.
I want her to crave my company the way I crave hers. I want her to give me the same small smiles and cute little snorts that she gives to Jake, and the shy looks and blushes that she gives to Adam.
I swallow.
This isn’t a competition, I remind myself. And she’s not something to be won.
But if it were a competition, then I would firmly be on the losing end.
But I don’t have to be. I just haven’t had much practice actually trying to woo a woman.
Usually, the type of women I attract seem to enjoy the fact that I’m silent, so they can project their own fantasies on me.
The second, it’s clear that I have thoughts of my own, or my odd personality peeks through, that’s typically when they run for the hills.
It’s happened twice already, so I stopped attempting to date, though at times I do want to settle down. I want just one person that I can spend the rest of my life with, make a family with, understand, and protect. And maybe they will like me enough to stick around despite my idiosyncrasies.
Sounds pathetic when I put it like that. Why should I want someone to tolerate me?
In fact, why would any sane woman put up with a man who doesn’t even know how to talk to her, one who would rather spend his weekends holed up in his basement carving than go out to meet people?
She wouldn’t. Which means I have to change. Be different, be someone more like Adam or Jake. I need to ease up, learn how to make jokes, and how to instantly make women comfortable.
Well, not women. Just her. She’s the only one I'm interested in at the moment.
“He's really pretending nothing happened in the bathroom, like I didn't hear what I heard," Jake mutters, and I look up at him. "Can you believe him?”
“Hmmm.” Maybe I should spend more time with Jake today and figure out the way his brain operates, so I can be more like him. Or at least pretend to be.
Although I tried that at some point in high school. For a month, I tried to study his mannerisms, tried to think like him and act like him, and it only made me exhausted.
Sure, I guess it worked in the sense that it fooled a few people.
Strangers were much nicer to me when I was pretending to be normal, and a bunch of them wanted to hang out, but then those very same people started to irritate me, so I hid from them as well. I'm not really the type for big friend groups and constant attention.
That's kind of the problem with Jake. Living with him in college meant constant socialization, constant conversation until it would make me unreasonably angry.
Which is why, when I could afford it, I insisted on getting my own place. As much as he's my best friend, I can really only tolerate him in bits and pieces.
That's something I have to think about with her.
What if the same thing happens? What if I get sick of her, too? She doesn't seem like the type to tolerate living apart from me.
Maybe I should slow this down a little and get to know her first, so I don't end up hurting us both.
For now, though, what I need is practice.
“We should go to a bar tonight,” I tell Jake.
He frowns. “Bar? Why?”
I shrug. “We haven’t been in a long time."
"We haven't talked in a long time either."
"I just haven't been around."
"I assumed that was by design,” he says. “Don’t think I can’t tell that you’re avoiding me. I’m only giving you your space now because I figure you’re probably going through something you don’t want me to find out about.”
I stare at him. Sometimes, I forget that he's known me since high school. Sometimes, Jake likes to pretend like he's oblivious and unaware of the things that are going on around him, but he actually sees things deeply, sometimes more than others.
“But that space isn’t going to last forever," he says. "Eventually, you're going to have to talk to me about whatever's bugging you."
"Nothing's bugging me."
"Don't lie to me. It's insulting. I mean, come on, dude. We've been friends forever, so why do you still think you can hide this kind of stuff from me? I'm eventually going to figure out what’s bugging you, and we’re going to have words about the fact that you’re still doing that thing where you try to bury your problems instead of talking to us. If you can’t talk to me, then who can you talk to?”
I blink at him, but bury the unpleasant memories and ask, “So?”
"So what?"
"Are we going to the bar or not?
He sighs. “You’re insufferable, you know that? Why do you want to go to a bar?"
"Because I want to meet women and talk to them."
He frowns. He knows me well enough to know that's a big fat lie.
He stares at me and asks, “Where did this come from?”
I shrug. I don't want to tell him that I want to practice to woo the woman into liking me more than him.
That just feels far too pathetic right now.
But something tells me he can tell anyway, even though he doesn't laugh; amusement lingers in his eyes.
The bar doesn't help.
Mostly because Jake doesn't flirt with anyone when we get there.
It's odd. I'm used to us coming here and instantly being swarmed by women within minutes, with Jake facilitating easy conversation between them.
Usually, I just sit there, answering the occasional question until he picks the one he likes the most. Sometimes, if I like her too, we take her home and call Adam over for some fun.
But that's not what happens this time.
Sure, we get surrounded by women when we get there, but Jake isn't making conversation with them. He's clearly distracted as they try to talk to him, and five seconds into the conversation, he asks me if I want to leave and go somewhere quieter.
It's totally unlike him.
We take a breather to go up the boardwalk.
I ask him if he wants to go somewhere else, but he doesn't. He stares up at the sky.
"What do you think her problem is with us?" he asks. "Because she's clearly attracted to us."
"I don't know," I admit. "Maybe Adam's right. Maybe it's because we work together and she's scared of it getting back to her brother."
He shakes his head. "That doesn't explain why she left that first night. She didn't know us then."
"I assume she was just overwhelmed after everything we did, and maybe she thinks we’d judge her or something."
"You think?"
"Maybe."
"But she was the one who asked us for that in the first place. It's strange. That afternoon, she totally came onto us, but now she's acting like a nervous nelly."
"A woman can be both."
"I guess, but to this extent?"
"Maybe she only wants one of us." That's another possibility I considered. Being with three men at once is overwhelming for anyone, but perhaps if it were just one of us...
"Do you think it's Adam she wants?"
"Maybe, or you." As much as it pains me to admit.
"I notice you didn't mention yourself."
"I don't think she likes me all that much yet."
He stops and stares at me. "You don't?"
"No." But I plan to win her over eventually.
"I thought the opposite. She kept staring at you during the meeting, sometimes even while I was talking to her."
"Yeah, but was that a good stare or a bad stare?"
He exhales. "Maybe, Adam's right. Maybe we should let this go."
"Yeah," I respond, but in my head, I'm saying, Maybe you can, but I won't.
I don't know what the other two men are feeling, but the connection I sensed that night, even before we spoke to each other, even before she knew I existed, I can't let it go. I have to know if it's real or if it's imagined. I have to know if she really is the one for me.
I can't let her go now.