Chapter 16 ARE YOU IN LOVE?

He smiled and looked away when I asked him that, which piqued my interest in wanting to get to the crux of the whole thing. It seemed to me as if Mr. Lozano was deeply in love with the way he was blushing when I asked him about the girl. The thing wasn’t supposedly anything serious, but just a matter of love, from the way it looked like.

I hadn’t thought of Charles falling in love. The way we talked at the beginning showed his interest in me, but then it declined after I moved in with him. At least it felt like that to me, but it didn’t matter to me because I knew the difference between us very well, and I had accepted that he was never going to ask me out. Despite getting various chances, he didn’t care about taking our bond to a new level, and that was enough for me to control my wishes.

A girl in Charles’s life felt like a big deal to me, and because I was his friend, I wanted to know more about the girl to make sure she was as serious as him. Clearly, failing at getting more out of him, I thought of taking a chance, and I commented, “That is some news!"

“I want to know more,” I mentioned when he blushed and got up from the couch that he was sitting on. He took a few steps forward before he turned back and came to where I was sitting. The expression which he had on his face was not only new to me, but it was contagious enough to make me smile as well just the way he was smiling.

As he sat down on the couch, I was not expecting him to tell me anything about her. But he started to justify his liking and list his expectations to me instead. Very clearly, I remember him telling me about how difficult it was for him to have lived all alone after his family died in a car accident a couple of years back.

The way that he tried to get his needs and wants fulfilled was not enough because he couldn’t welcome any of those girls into his life because almost every one of them cared only for his money. And he also told me about him being immature back then. It was difficult for him to take over the business as he was still learning to handle it and also to give the time those girls demanded.

All the time that a girl mentioned that she needed more attention from him, he would lose interest in that girl. He was afraid of committing at that point because he was also finding himself as he was also not that old enough. The company of friends who he had were into all kinds of illegal activities and spent huge loads of money on it.

That was something that his father always warned him about because he was the only son, and the family business would come to him only. Having that much money and not having a clue about taking care of it would have led him nowhere.

He wasn’t this sorted before the death of his parents, and he would very much be a part of all the activities his friends organized. It was only when the load of handling the many businesses which his father owned came on him, did he understand every word that his father mentioned to him. He cut off from all those so-called friends of his to be able to fully focus on what was most important at that point.

Charles telling me his story was interesting to me as I was getting to know all about him that not everybody in his life knew about. It was nice to know his feelings on everything that he had experienced in life on the family front, but I was also getting impatient to know about the girl who he had started liking because he was the most suitable guy according to me.

While he was telling me all about his personal life, I must have finished three pints of beer as I was drinking very slowly, so that I remained in my senses for the entire duration that he was talking. Over that time my eyes dropped to his lips one more time after they tempted me a lot when we fell down on the bed together, and he was just a hairbreadth away from me.

The way his lips were forming as he was saying the words in a melodious tune, and for a few seconds I was completely lost in him. That is when he waved his hand at me a few times to get my attention and brought me back into the reality where he was sitting just as far away from me before I started living my fantasy. Only after I looked in his eyes and blinked, he stopped waving his hand.

First thing that I heard from him was when he questioned, “Where are you lost?”

It wasn’t as appealing as what he was talking to me about before because of the blank expression on this face that was there after what happened. I shook my head in order to divert his attention from that question of his as I couldn’t have told him that I was daydreaming about being with him.

Maybe because he had realized that I was not listening to him with the interest as I was earlier, he asked me to say something. Whatever I had in mind, I definitely wanted to talk about it but not in a very direct manner. Wanting the conversation to start delicately, I asked, “Have you started loving someone?”

He controlling his smile already told me the answer, but I was just as eager to know from him with actual words because that would have strengthened my decision to move out as soon as possible it could have been. I couldn’t have lived in his house knowing that he would get some other chick at some point of time in life because I fucking loved him too much to see him with anyone else but me.