Page 118 of The Build-a-Boyfriend Project

“Thanks, we’re . . . figuring things out,” Eli tells her, because he isn’t sure what she knows, how Peter has spoken about them, who she thinks Eli is to Peter. “How do you know Peter? Like obviously you work at Zelus together, but how do you know him?”

“I was his supervisor for a bit before he got a promotion, and we became team leads on a project a while back. Now we’re in two different divisions, but we go to one another when we’re troubleshooting a lot of the time. Lots of overlap.”

“Oh, that’s way more involved than I thought it’d be.”

“We just wound up talking a lot, and he seemed friendly. It took a lot of prodding, a lot of one-sided conversations before we became friends. Though I’m not sure if he sees this as a friendship.”

“I’m willing to bet he does; Peter just takes a little longer than most people would bother putting in, I think.”

“Yeah, he’s a sweet guy.” Francine peers over Eli’s shoulder, daring him to turn around and look at Peter as he gives his order to the cashier. “I was worried he wouldn’t come tonight; I invite him every time we do one of these get-togethers. But I’m glad that he’s here with you.” Francine turns back to the bowling, clapping when one of her coworkers gets a spare. “Yeah!”

Eli keeps his gaze focused on Peter as he taps his card on the reader, stepping down to the end of the bar to wait for the drinks. He must notice the eyes on him, because Peter turns, looking at Eli. He smiles so gently, giving Eli a careful wave.

And Eli waves right back.

* * *

It takes a little longer to get Peter into the swing of things, to go beyond just talking to Francine to chatting with his other coworkers. He meets his supervisor in person for the first time, though he assures Eli that he’s seen her face before in meetings and one-on-ones.

The Jedi Knight is named Jackson, a team lead who actually asks Peter for help with his current project, except it’s pretty late in the night when this happens and he’s fairly drunk, so he asks Peter to message him on Slack when he realizes he’s explaining things poorly.

Eli even gets Peter to bowl a full game where he just barely cracks a score of one hundred before he gets a strike on his very last ball, and Eli can’t resist running up to him and giving Peter a soft kiss, Peter daring to wrap him in a hug and pick him up for half a second. Eli wants the kiss to last longer, to bury his hands in that short black hair and make a fool out of both himself and Peter while they make out in a very unprofessional way.

But Eli stops himself. They haven’t had that conversation yet; he can’t cross that boundary.

As the night goes on, the crowd begins to thin out until most of Peter’s coworkers are gone. Francine waves goodbye as she begins her duties as the designated driver.

And soon enough, it’s just the two of them, the current game left unfinished as the bowling alley has gone dark, neon paint and lights illuminating the building while increasingly random pop music videos play on the projection screens.

“How did I do?” Peter asks as the screen flashes with Jackson’s name as a reminder that it’s his turn, even though he’s long gone.

“A little rough at the beginning, but I could see you getting comfortable.”

“Yeah . . . yeah . . .” Peter lets out a low sigh. “I don’t know why I shut down when I saw everyone here. I guess I wasn’t expecting that many people.”

“That’s okay, I wasn’t either.”

“Were you nervous?” Peter asks.

“Oh, hell yeah.”

His brows knit together. “Seriously?”

Eli nods, taking Peter’s Pepsi cup filled with lemonade. “Absolutely. At least you’d talked to most of them before. I was the total oddball out.” Not that many of the employees had seemed to bring dates, save for Peter’s supervisor bringing her wife and Jackson bringing his partner. “And like you said, I wasn’t expecting that many new faces in a single night.”

“You didn’t seem nervous.”

Eli shrugs, sipping from the straw until he hears the empty sound of ice rattling in the cup. “I guess I’m better at hiding it.”

“Is that the trick?” Peter asks. “Hiding it?”

“I prefer to think of it as fake it till you make it.”

“Meaning?”

“Fake being socially capable until you actually start to trick yourself into believing that you are.”

“Huh . . . I’ve never thought of it that way.”