Page 129 of Tech Bros

“Well, I do.”

After a long moment, I speak. “I sort of feel like I’m not going to end up being enough for either one of you.” There it is. All my fear and insecurity in one sentence.

Isaac looks surprised. Not in a good way. “I think you need to tell me what’s going on.”

“Besides the fact that you say you’re in love with me, but you want to date me and someone else at the same time?”

“I mean what’s going on with you and Deacon.”

“Nice dodge. I mean, how much detail do you want me to get into?”

“As much as you need to,” he says.

“Well, we’ve been having sex…”

Isaac has no reaction to this other than a nod.

“And it’s…vigorous.”

He lets out a short laugh.

“But afterwards…I don’t know. It’s like he goes someplace else.”

“Physically?”

“Sometimes,” I say. Last night after we’d both come in my bed, he’d gone to the kitchen to meal prep after he gave my ass his compliments. He’d come back to the room afterwards, and I was working on my computer. He’d rubbed my shoulders until I was hard again, we had sexagainin the shower,and that time he’d hung around in bed with me afterward. But when I say hung around, I was snuggled up against his chest, he had one arm around me and his phone in the other hand. He was typing with one thumb faster than I’ve ever seen a human do.

I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was alone, and he was pounding the treadmill. It felt like any other morning before any of this happened, getting ready separately, leaving separately.

“What’s he like afterwards with you?”

“It depends,” Isaac says.

“Does he spend the night with you?”

“He has.”

“All night in bed, like you wake up together?”

“Is that not what’s happening?” Isaac asks.

I shake my head.

“And you take that personally?”

Sighing, I shift to be closer to him. He puts his arms around me. “I know I probably shouldn’t. I know he’s wired differently, but it’s hard not knowing what he’s thinking. Wondering if he’d rather I were you or whatever. Wishing you were there, too. You seem to ground him, and I don’t know…I don’t know what purpose I’m serving except to get him off.”

“Have you tried expressing any of this to him?”

“No,” I admit.

“Why?”

“Because what if I’m right? Where does that leave me if he doesn’t have any serious feelings for me?”

“Ihave serious feelings for you. If that matters.”

It matters. It’s actually become a very, very big deal to me. “Do you love Deacon?”