Charming Like Us (Like Us 7)

My shoes pad along the parking lot as I approach him. His skin is a mixture of light brown and red-gold hues and looks more sun-kissed in the setting light. He’s Filipino-American and biracial: Dad is white, Mom is Filipina.

As I near, he turns his head, and his long lashes lift.

“Hey,” he says with a smile and a genial nod of his chin. His eyes hold mine for a beat longer. A beat that makes me question every fucking thing. It doesn’t help that he does that thing that most people do when they’re checking me out.

The up-down, imperceptible motion. A one-two movement with his eyes. Up-down. Two seconds flat. Barely noticeable.

Maybe he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

But those two seconds tangle the axons in my brain. Twisting. Pulling. Tying them into a confused knot. So far as I know, he’s straight, but sexuality is a fluid thing. He could be questioning, right?

I just don’t know for sure.

The parking lot is quiet. No one else here.

I return the nod. “You hiding out, Highland?” I ask him casually, despite the fact that nerves ratchet up. I don’t need my Yale degree in Kinesiology to tell me why my heart starts racing or my palms get clammy.

I have a crush on him.

A stupid. Silly. Dumbass crush.

I’m the one who nearly choked on my food when Maximoff used that word. Back at his sister’s first Rainbow Brigade outing, he asked me about Jack, “You have a crush on him?”

I laughed.

Crush.

I thought crushes were for twelve-year-olds. But I’ve never been this nervous around someone I like. Is there something different about Jack from all the other women and men I’ve dated? Or is it just because I know this could be unrequited?

He’s probably not even attracted to men.

But the way he’s looking at me…

I toss a cracker in my mouth and stand my ground. Not running away from a crush, that’s for sure.

Jack twists off a lens to the Canon camera. “Just need to switch these out,” he says and then a smile inches across his lips. “Why would you think I’m hiding out?”

“It’s a wedding,” I say into a shrug. “Sometimes being single at these events royally sucks. I wouldn’t blame you, if you needed a minute or two alone.”

His eyes hold mine again. He’s got this way of staring at you like he knows you. Understands you. And I’m not a fucking idiot. A part of that is just his charm, embedded into his DNA. It’s what makes him so good at his job. As an executive producer of We Are Calloway, he’s able to pull out real emotion from the famous ones.

Still looking at me, he wraps the strap of his Canon around his neck and shuts the trunk with a hand. “It’s not so bad,” he tells me. His smile grows. “You’re keeping me company, right?”

He’s flirting.

He’s definitely flirting.

Someone should just pop out behind the bushes with a huge ass sign that says yes.

“Is that what I’m doing?” I say, playing this cool. I pop another cracker in my mouth.

He leans a hip against the hatchback. “You’re single, too, right?”

The food goes down rough. “Yeah…single.” I glance down at the belt on his waist. My belt. When I raise my gaze to his, his eyes flit to the belt he’s wearing, and then back to me, down my toned build.

The air feels warmer.

Skin hotter.

He has a couple inches on my six-two height, but as he leans on the hatchback, we’re about eye-level. Jack nods slowly to me, and our gazes catch again.

I think he’s going to mention the belt.

“It must be hard to date and be a bodyguard,” Jack says, treading a flirty line and surprising me a little. It’s not often that happens. I always feel ten steps ahead of most people.

I nod just as slowly. “Impossible is more like it.”

“What is it all of you guys say…bodyguards are like spouses to their clients.”

You guys.

It dawns on me that he’s talking about all the bodyguards. I’m lumped in with the lot, even if my style of guarding doesn’t match most. I don’t really love that phrase. I’m around Charlie more than a spouse would be. I’m not just his husband. I’m his brother. I’m his father. I’m his cousin. I’m every relationship he has all rolled into one.

But I don’t tell that to Jack. The easiest way to send someone running would be to announce that I have someone else attached to me 24/7. I mean, technically he knows, but I don’t need to spell it out like that.

“Yeah, it’s not easy, but I don’t want to be single forever,” I tell him. “Even if Charlie is my job, and my job is all-consuming.”

He lets out a short laugh. “I know the feeling.”

Production and security are fire and water. Bodyguards want to extinguish one-half of every smoldering ember the docuseries stokes among the public. We have polarizing goals, but we have to coexist.