Page 108 of Wants and Needs
“We ordered Greek. You want to eat some?” Carter asks him.
“No thanks. Save me some for later since I’ll probably be up before dawn, but I need to sleep now. Which room can I use?”
“I’ll show you.”
Rich goes to grab a couple of suitcases while he has a duffel bag strapped across his chest, but Wolf waves his hands away.
“You get your shit upstairs and sleep,” he grumbles at him.
“Come on.” Carter nods at the stairs while looking at Rich, then he looks at me. “This is Liam, by the way. He’s my boyfriend.”
“Hey.” Rich only nods, which I copy.
“Hello.”
“You okay if I take him up?” Carter asks, softly enough that I think maybe no one else heard.
“Yes,” I assure him, then turn to CJ and Wolf. “Do you guys want something to drink? We set the food out in the living room.”
I point toward the back of the brownstone with my thumb.
“Water is fine,” CJ says with a smile. “We’ll just set all this up by the elevator so we can take it up when we’re done.”
I walk back with them, feeling dumb for not offering to help,but I do hurry to get them water, and by the time Carter is back downstairs, we’re just settling in on the couches in the living room.
“So, Liam,” CJ asks while he loads up breadsticks with tzatziki. “What happened with Mrs. Blackwell investing in your app?”
“You don’t—” Carter starts to fend CJ’s questions off, but I wave him off.
“It’s fine,” I tell him, then I turn in CJ’s direction. “She decided not to invest.”
“Why?” he asks with a frown and takes another bite.
“I honestly don’t know.” I shrug, feeling the helplessness all over again.
“Wait, explain to me again what your app will do.”
That’s one topic I can always talk about. It is after all how I first became close to Carter. So while the three of them eat, I give him a condensed version of my research and the resulting algorithm, then explain the concept of the app.
When I’m done Wolf is actually smiling, which is a rare sight, but CJ is frowning slightly.
“What is it?” I can’t help but ask, my nerves over building a good rapport with Carter’s friends coming back with a vengeance.
Instead of answering right away, CJ stands and tilts his head in the direction of the front of the brownstone.
“Why don’t you come with me to the front parlor?”
I look at Carter to see if anything in his expression will clue me into what is happening, but he just shrugs and stares at me. He’s leaving it up to me.
I could just say no. The fact that Carter is giving me the option to say whatever I want leads me to believe he thinks nothing bad would happen if I did that. But why would I do that?
CJ is a good person from everything I’ve seen of him, and he’s close to Wolf and Carter, two men who I know well and respect.
“All right,” I murmur and follow him to the stuffy, not-at-all-homey front parlor. It opens right into the entrance hall, so it’s not really private, but I don’t think I could hear Carter from here if he talked at a normal volume.
“Did Carter tell you I’m a doctor?”
It’s only the first question and I’m already very confused.
