Page 16 of Secret Baby for My Brother's Best Friends

“I left it somewhere,” I mutter, not losing concentration as I carve the side of her neck, slicing down the gentle slope, making sure I don’t make a mistake. Adam comes around the back to eye me. A shocked intake of breath later, and I know what he’s going to say before he says it…

“Is that...”

“Yes,” I say.

Another shocked silence. Perhaps he’s surprised that I’m spending time carving a woman I only just met weeks ago. Hell, I'm surprised too. I wasn’t expecting this either, that she would haunt me from that day forward.

Unbeknownst to the other two, I saw her the second we walked into the party. She was standing at the side, running her hand down her arm in obvious discomfort. It was really her eyes that got me first, the way they scanned the room as she people watched, then her lips curving into a smile when she heard something funny. She hung out at the outskirts of the group talking, and she didn’t contribute much, just watching. '

She was obviously in her head, but a part of her didn't seem to mind.

A part of her may have even enjoyed the inner conversation she was having with herself, despite the discomfort she felt in being around others.

Or was that just wishful thinking on my end?

She reminded me a little of myself.

I spent an inordinate portion of my youth just watching people talk and converse with each other without participating myself. I was selectively mute for the first seven years of my life, and so by the time I was ready to have conversations, I felt a little behind and also found it hard to care about the things that they cared about.

Eventually, I learned to mask my discomfort better, especially after getting my ass kicked throughout middle school. I got bigger and stronger in high school too, and started attracting women, but would scare them off with my terrible social skills.

I thought that would be my fate, for the rest of my life, until Jake and I met in senior year and he basically forced his friendship on me, in that aggressively extroverted way of his. And then we met Adam in college, and he joined in.

I would say I'm probably closer to Adam now than I am to Jake. Adam tends to have more patience for my idiosyncrasies and doesn't get as annoyed when I need space from him.

Lately, I guess I've been pissing Jake off so much that we rarely hang out alone anymore.

We do work together, though, so it's not like we can avoid each other forever, but there's a notable strain in our relationship that I'm not quite sure what to do about.

I'm not sure if Ishoulddo something about it. He's probably better off without me. Adam too.

They're both better off without babysitting the weird, obsessive freak who spent all weekend painting and carving sculptures of a woman he met once, immortalizing her in clay, oil, and wood.

I guess maybe I'm still trying to figure out what it is about her that's drawn me so totally and irrevocably. Why was I so attuned to her that I basically watched her the entire time she was in the living room?

Even when I walked in and saw her making out with Adam, I should have been turned off, but no. That curiosity grew into a full-blown desire.

It’s the way she didn’t hold back. The way she went for it, grasping his hair, rubbing herself against his chest, swallowing his tongue in her mouth. It was all I could do not to tear him away from her so I could get some of that for myself. It was all I could do not to take her somewhere where it’s just the two of us and caress her body for hours.

It was too rushed. We had sex all night, but it still feels like it wasn’t enough time.

I told myself that I would have more later. In the morning, I would officially ask her on a date, and I would take her somewhere where it would just be the two of us, and we could just talk.

And then I’d take her home and make love to her the way I wanted to, slowly exploring every inch of her delectable body, making her squirm and squeal and scream.

However, that never came to pass, because the next morning she was gone, leaving me with a ghost of a boner and an ache in my chest.

Almost every night since then, I’ve dreamt about her.

“This is…” Adam starts, and I can feel the lecture coming even though he doesn’t complete the sentence. He wants to tell me it’s crazy to carve her. That it’s obsessive and doing so makes me look like a psychopath.

“So this is why you haven’t left your house in a few days? And haven't answered my calls."

I shake my head. “I haven't answered your calls because I don't feel like talking."

He narrows his eyes. "Yeah, you don't get to pull that bullshit when we work together."

"We finished that last project we were on. The building is up and running. I wanted a break."