This whole arrangement felt too good to be true, which meant it likely was. The urge to go next door and talk to him banged around inside me like it thought it could push me there from the inside, but we had customers in the store. Autumn was in the café area, where a few people were working away on their laptops, and she could probably watch things, but…why did I need to go see Gideon? I’d just left him snuggled in my bed a few hours ago.
My bed.
Gideon slept in my bed.
Ugh. Crushes sucked.
The bell over the door jingled. “Hi, welcome to—oh, it’s just you.”
“Gee, don’t be too happy to see me,” Rachel said.
“Sorry. I’m almost always happy to see you, but I also don’t need to greet you like you’re a customer.”
“Good point.”
I stacked the books on a cart and wheeled them over to the window display I was setting up in front for summer reads. Gideon let me use some of his beach towels, and we’d gone to the dollar store for buckets and shovels and other goodies to make it look really cute.
I sighed.
“What’s wrong, sweets?” Rachel asked.
I almost bit back a reply, but what was the purpose of having friends if I didn’t actually use them for the things friends were meant to do? “I’ll probably never have a boyfriend,” I admitted. Before, it had really only been the lack of sex that bothered me. Now I was having orgasms with someone, and I realized I wanted more. I didn’t even know if I’d ever be able to have sex with anyone else because it was a long shot that I’d ever find someone I trusted the way I did Gideon.
He would be the best boyfriend.
“Why do you say that?” she asked while I organized books.
“Because I know me.” A lot of people couldn’t handle me, and I couldn’t handle a lot of people, so that made my odds pretty dismal.
She was quiet, contemplative for a moment, before saying, “Gideon likes you.”
I tried not to get too excited, tried not to hope she was right. “Gideon is a nice person, who’s also my friend and likes to have sex with me.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she did an awesome dying-fish impersonation. “Wait. Slow your roll there, buddy. You’re having sex with Gideon?”
I studied the shelves. “This is all wrong. It looks ridiculous. I think I need to rearrange it.”
“Nope. Sorry. Absolutely not. You don’t get to drop a bomb like that and then go about your merry business. I mean, I knew the two of you were close, and there was the whole hand-holding incident…and he touches you a lot…oh, and God, the way he looks at you.”
“Huh?” I stopped what I was doing. “Gideon looks at me in a special way? And is there something wrong with me having sex with him?”
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with screwing him. You deserve to get yours, and I swoon over the way he looks at you. It’s the way we all hope someone will stare at us.”
That caught my attention. “What way? How does he look at me?”
She smiled. “It’s a cross between him wanting to eat you alive and—”
“Gross. That doesn’t sound good at all.”
Rachel waggled her sculpted black brows. “Oh, but it is.”
Realization hit me. “Like he wants to have sex with me?”
She glanced around, and I realized I might have said that too loudly. “Like he might die if he doesn’t have sex with you right then and there.”
I thought maybe Rachel had an active imagination. “I look at Gideon all the time, and I don’t notice him wanting to rip my clothes off in the middle of the bookstore. Also, that doesn’t mean he wants to be my boyfriend. It means he enjoys my penis.”
“Whoa, you top him?”
“Rachel!”
She held her hands up. “Sorry! You’re right, not my business. But you didn’t let me finish. He looks at you like…I don’t know, like sometimes he can’t believe you’re real.”
I shook my head. “Probably because he thinks I’m weird.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I knew that, but I kept my mouth shut. “Gideon stares at you like he’s lucky to even be in your orbit, Milo, like if you leave a room, you’re going to take everything good with you. Like maybe he doesn’t know how he ever survived without you.”
My stomach suddenly decided it was time to compete in a gymnastics event, flipping over and over again. “People don’t really look at others that way. It’s book stuff, fantasy, romantic movies.”
“Well, your love interest is Gideon.”
We chuckled together, and I really, really wanted to look at Gideon to see if she was right. Maybe I’d somehow missed it, but I didn’t believe it was true. I’d drive myself crazy until I knew for sure, though. “Can you finish this, please?”