Midnight. Wide awake. Staring at the bedroom ceiling.
Sam groaned.
Beau Jenner was flirting?
“No way.”
Would she even recognize flirting?
“Nope.”
And what if she did? What was she supposed to do about it? Flirt back?
“Yeah, right.”
She wasn’t sure what that looked like either.
If she was brutally honest with herself—and it seemed a night for brutal honesty—she’d had a few crushes through the years. A few. Three to be exact.
There was the boy in high school, smarter than she was, a loner like she was. A perfect match. Except he was, unbelievably, more socially awkward than she was. They never attempted to have a conversation. Not a hello passed between them before they parted ways, he to Harvard, she to UCLA. She imagined that he had become a researcher. He would probably find a cure for cancer someday.
She met similar guys in college, brilliant and backward. Two relationships had progressed beyond hello and she enjoyed conversing with them about engineering. She even had coffee with one a few times and studied with the other before finals. They both dated bubbly chatterboxes who didn’t know the first thing about the application of the mechanics of equilibrium to force systems, let alone the fundamentals of chemical reactions, kinetics of biochemical systems, or ion exchange.
Sort of like Jasmyn. Her BFF.
Sam grimaced.
She’d never had a best friend, girl or boy. She had acquaintances who generally did not giggle or do meaningless activities like buy refrigerator magnets. She gave those acquaintances the time of day probably because she did not do those things either.
And why was that? Besides the fact that those activities were silly. Was it because no one had included her in those things? Not that she’d ever been exactly approachable. Who purposely approached a porcupine?
Besides Jasmyn. She was different, enough of a fruitcake to ignore Sam’s exterior.
Sam smiled. Okay. To some small degree, she had enjoyed herself that evening, not counting the time between Beau’s arrival and departure. Liv, Inez, and Louis came to the dinner because they were nice people. Chad came for the food. Riley was a standoffish mystery who had her hands full raising Tasha by herself. She must have been desperate for company. And Tasha…
Tasha had hugged Sam, long and hard, and said Congratulations. That was a first. Everybody got Tasha hugs except Sam. Sam wouldn’t dare hug Sam. Why would a little girl approach a porcupine?
That hug had felt indescribably good. So good, in fact, Sam had hugged her back.
Okay, when all was said and done, maybe she was on the verge of accepting friendly overtures, of joining the human race. Liv and Inez were not going away. Jasmyn would be there for a short while longer. Maybe she’d come back to visit. If her BFF wanted to go for a run or occasionally do something silly, Sam might be amenable to it.
Beau, on the other hand, was a no-go. That fish out of water feeling she experienced around him was…well, it was unsettling. Disorienting. She would simply ignore him. He would lose interest. Life would continue.
Sam flipped onto her side. Then she flopped onto her other side.
It was going to be a long night.