Page 38 of Secret Baby for My Brother's Best Friends

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?"