Page 226 of Daddy's Pride
Juan tapped his temple. “I know many things, my friend, but what I don’t know is the details of your current love interest.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Uh, he’s not that.”
Juan got another shit-eating grin. “So there is a boy!”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “No.”
“Mentiroso.”
“I’m not lying.”
Juan looked up at the heavens, shaking his head. “And again, he lies to me.”
“Okay, there is a boy,” I confessed. “But he’s certainly not my love interest. He’s not my anything.”
The cocked eyebrow I got told me he wasn’t buying it, and we’d been friends for far too many years, more than half my life, for me to have any illusions that he’d actually let this go.
And if I was being honest, I’d known that before I brought it up.
If I was being painfully honest, it was probably why I’d brought it up.
I already knew the amusing and totally unexpected text exchange I’d had on Friday night wasn’t going anywhere. The boy had mostly likely been drunk, and almost definitely straight.
Now, thanks to Juan, I also knew that he lived halfway across the country, so it was probably for the best that I’d left it alone after for the last few days… even if “leaving it alone” had looked a lot like me re-reading the thread multiple times per day, and fighting off the urge to check up on him again, each and every time I did.
“Dime,” Juan said again, crossing his arms over his chest. “You know you want to.”
“Fine,” I said, since he was right. I did want to tell him, even if it wasn’t for the reasons he was clearly thinking.
I just needed him to tell me to drop it. I didn’t need the distraction, and wasn’t even sure why it had become one. I should have deleted the text thread and moved on from this already, not let the boy whose name I didn’t even know take up so much rent-free space in my thoughts.
“I got a message the other night,” I explained. “It was a wrong number, but the kid was sweet. Nervous, out at a club with friends, and probably intoxicated, but falling all over himself to apologize for accidentally ‘bothering’ me. And he just seemed…”
Cute? Definitely. But more than that. Reading tone and intention into text was always a bad idea, and yet somehow, with him, I’d felt like I could do exactly that.
And it had woken up everysingle one of the Daddy instincts that I really didn’t have time to indulge right now.
“He seemed what?” Juan pressed me, because of course he did.
I shrugged helplessly, then fished my phone out of my pocket and handed it over, opening the thread. “Look.”
Juan read it over, shaking his head a little as his smile grew wider and wider until he finally handed it back. “Ah, I see.”
“Really?” I asked a little sarcastically. “And what exactly do you see?”
He grinned, blowing past my sarcasm as if it didn’t exist. “I see that he’s exactly your type. Fumbling and sweet. Hungry for praise and a little bit needy.”
I rolled my eyes this time. “And straight. And living in Wisconsin.”
“And you are still thinking about him.”
“I…”
Couldn’t deny it.
Juan grinned when I fumbled, rubbing his hands together like some kind of movie mastermind. “And you do not know he’s straight, or that he’s actually in Wisconsin.” He chin-nodded toward Karl. “Doesn’t our newest hire have a phone number from the east coast? You know people move all the time. That doesn’t mean they have to change their cell numbers.”
My pulse sped up. “You’re reaching, brother.”