Page 59 of Totally Geeked

“I think Harry here said plenty today.” Gordon glances toward Harrison. He didn’t tell me he spoke to Gordon today, but that’s probably because it got him nowhere and he didn’t want me to feel like tonight might end the same way.

“Well, now you are going to hear from me. And then if you want to leave, I won’t stop you, but I’m hoping you’ll stay. I madeDad’s casserole, and you promised I could cook for you after the cast came off.”

Gordon’s eyes flick to the kitchen, then Arlo’s hand linked with mine before resting on the coffee table between us.

“Go on then.”

Okay, this is it. I take a steadying breath and begin my rehearsed statement.

“I get that you’ve always felt like you had to look out for me, but looking out for me doesn’t mean you get to tell me how to live my life.” I don’t pause for him to respond yet, because I need to get this part all out. The few times I tried to practice in the mirror, my eyes stung with tears and I had to keep starting over, so I’m hoping to not have that happen here now. “I know I’m not like you and Noah. I’m not strong or athletic. I trip walking in my apartment and break my fucking wrist. Where you can do a backflip, then throw a ball with perfect precision right into Harrison’s glove.”

“Or at my head,” Harrison interjects, and I swear I catch a slight smirk fighting to appear on Gordon’s lips.

“Did I always have a thing for Harrison? Yeah—”

“Wait, really?” Harrison asks, and I squeeze his hand and smile.

“Not the time, we’ll go over that later.” I return my attention to my brother. “But you knew. You saw how many of my sketches were of him when I was making your book.”

“I figured it was a crush, you’d get over it. I even warned Harrison about it so he could let you down easy.”

“To be fair,” Harrison interjects again, “that was after we were—”

“And that’s not important either,” I cut him off and take back over the conversation. “But even with my attraction to Harrison, that’s not why we are together. Harrison didn’t seek me out or try to hook up with me for some one-night stand business I knowyou think he still wants. He sees me in a way no other person ever has. To him, I’m not some clumsy geek that needs to be looked after.”

Noah smiles and gives me a thumbs-up from behind Gordon.

“We were friends before anything else, and that should be what you want for me. You should want me to be with a guy who doesn’t want to fix me, doesn’t want to control me, doesn’t want to steal from me or hide me away.”

“I do want that for you,” Gordon says, his jaw tight. “Are you done, can I respond now?”

I had more prepared. I wanted to tell him about how we would talk for hours after the readings, how he helped me see myself in a whole new light, how my confidence to even do this, comes from having him in my corner, having his support, but I nod and give him the floor.

“Okay, so yeah I wasn’t convinced that Harry had changed, but he told me he had a boyfriend and just hearing him use that word made me think okay this might be real, he might be giving himself a shot here at more, and then I walk in on him groping you up against a wall and I saw red. I didn’t know you were his boyfriend. For all I knew, Harry was cheating on this guy and taking advantage of my little brother who I just warned him has a crush on him.”

Okay, so lining it all up like that does kind of make his reaction more our fault than his.

“But after you found out the truth, you were still pissed,” Harrison says, and Gordon stands. Noah reaches to grab him, but I shake my head. If he leaves, he leaves. We tried to talk to him. If he still won’t listen, then I guess that’s it.

But he doesn’t leave, he walks to the window instead.

“I didn’t want to be, but yeah, I’m pissed. You both lied to me for weeks.”

“We knew you wouldn’t trust that this was real until you saw for yourself that I was done with the whole hookup scene,” Harrison tries to explain, but Gordon shakes his head.

“You deleted the apps and stopped going out clubbing and calling me at three a.m., I knew you were done. I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t go back, and you know what, I would have been cool if you did because you are my best friend, and if you want to live your life fucking everything that crawls in your bed, then you can do that.”

“As long as the guy he’s fucking isn’t me?” I ask, and all eyes go to me. My cheeks burn, and Noah laughs.

“Go, Arlo,” he says, holding out a fist like I could reach it from here to bump anyway, and I shake my head.

“Yeah, okay, as long as it wasn’t you,” Gordon concedes.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because you’re special.”

“Dude,” Noah starts, but Gordon cuts him off.

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