Mr. Lone Boy /BoyxBoy/

||Sixteen||

"Do you want some tea?"

Rob nodded and smiled. "What kind do you have?"

I'd let him in the living room, forcing him to stay seated on the couch as he protested, declaring that he only needed to say a couple of words. Eventually, he got tired and followed along, finally settling down.

"I think you'd like jasmine, I don't know, what kind do you prefer?"

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I'm more of a coffee person."

"Everyone seems to be," I said, raising my eyebrows.

"Jasmine is fine."

"And jasmine it is," I said, leaving him in the living room with the dog as I walked over to the kitchen.

I brought the tea over to Rob after I was done preparing it.

He thanked me, supporting the tea cup with both hands, making the cup seem tiny in comparison to his giant looking hands.

"Is everything okay?" I finally asked.

Rob took a sip of his tea, then gently placed it on the coffee table.

"I need your advice," he said.

I winced. "Please tell me you're not about to come out to me."

He grinned. "Does that happen a lot to you?"

I scoffed, which seemed to be a good enough answer for Rob, who carried on with what he was saying.

"No," he said. "I'm not gay."

"Okay, then, what is it?"

"I like someone."

Only then did I realize how much I hated that sentence.

I've always hated. It was the sentence that Devin always used whenever he found a new girlfriend. It was the sentence he used before he told me he liked Ian.

Most importantly, it contained the word 'like' in it.

And that word reminded me of Jake.

"You're scared," he'd said.

Scared.

I shook the thought away, not now.

"So what if you like someone?" I asked.

"I don't know if you've noticed but I don't usually date woman. I usually just fu-"

"Okay, okay. I get it," I interrupted him before he got to say the full word. "You...use them and then you dispose of them. Yeah, I noticed."

He frowned as he nodded. "But this one's different. She's...different."

"Aren't they all?" I drawled lazily.

Rob didn't seem concerned with my tone, he didn't even notice it. "She's beautiful."

His eyes were distant, focused on the wall behind me, his forehead lined with trouble that seemed to physically weigh him down.

"Okay," I said. "How is this different from all the other times you slept with women?"

"Because I like her!"

"Don't you like all the women you sleep with?"

He shook his head. "Not the way I like Adrianna. With the others it was plain physical attraction, now it's different. It's deeper than that."

"So, what's the problem?"

"I want to be with her but she's so out of my league..."

I blinked. "Wow, she got you bad."