Gravity (Greenford #2) - Romeo Alexander Page 0,40

a near miss shows that there’s still an attraction there. Add in the fact that you two are able to talk not only civilly but share stuff and get close again. Combined with the attraction, it shows that you both could once again develop romantic feelings for one another.”

“That’s what I said!”

“No, you said fall into old habits.”

“Which is what happened the last time.”

Lucas nodded. “It is. But that doesn’t have to be the case this time around.”

“This time?” Samuel asked in bewilderment. “There’s no...this time, it was just a…”

Lucas rolled his eyes. “Play the game of denial on your own time, Sam. Right now, it’s truth hour. The only way the two of you are going to prevent history from repeating itself in the same way is by...well, not doing the same things again.”

“Oh, so simple,” Samuel said, pushing his plate away.

“Which doesn’t mean avoiding being friends, or even avoiding being more than friends again. But if you guys are going to try for friends or a romantic relationship, you have to be careful not to follow the same bad habits.”

Samuel watched his friend, thinking that in some ways, he and Caleb already had shaken off a few of their bad habits. They’d managed to talk to each other every day, and not once had they showed signs of getting into an argument. The one time Samuel had been prepared to start an argument, Caleb had been quick to calm him down and explain himself, ending it before it began. For his own part, Samuel had been more open with the other man, probably more in the past couple of weeks than he had been for nearly a year in Portland.

“Good,” Lucas said pleasantly, grabbing the check. “I can see I’ve got you thinking, which is what you need to be doing.”

“That’s not exactly a plan, just vague advice,” Samuel grumbled.

“Which is what you need, and the only thing I can do. Everything is up to the two of you...together, working together. So have fun. If you want to have any sort of relationship with this man, you might want to suck it up and talk to him,” Lucas said, handing the bill to the server with his card on the tray.

“Not exactly our strong suit,” Samuel admitted.

“You’re the one who told me that you’ve made some improvement in that area. Maybe now is the best time to not only get even better but capitalize on what you already have,” Lucas said, adjusting his suit before standing up.

“How did this become ‘try to fix Samuel’ instead of a nice lunch?” Samuel wondered aloud, standing up to follow his friend.

“Right about the time you started playing with fire again,” Lucas informed him.

Samuel didn’t think that was fair, but he didn’t see the point in arguing as Lucas already seemed to be on a roll. If there was one thing he’d learned when dealing with lawyers, once you were on the back foot and they were on a roll, it was best to let the conversation die and try again from a different angle somewhere down the road. Otherwise, you’d just end up getting bulldozed and left dazed.

Not that he necessarily disagreed with Lucas, though he was still undecided on whether or not he’d been ‘playing with fire.’ If he and Caleb were going to continue maintaining and building a relationship with one another again, then it was probably inevitable that they would have to address the mistakes and regrets from the past. Otherwise, it would sit there between them and slowly erode at the foundation of what they were working on.

Whether that was for the sake of a platonic relationship or something deeper, Samuel honestly didn’t know. Every time he tried to think about something more with Caleb, his heart raced and it felt like his head was full of static. Apparently, his mind was in no state to give him a proper answer.

And he already knew what Lucas would say if he asked. It would be the same advice he’d been giving for the last half of their weekly lunch.

Talk to Caleb.

Considering his conversation with Lucas at lunch, Samuel felt far more nervous when he approached the door with Caleb’s apartment number hanging on the front. It wasn’t like he was planning on talking to Caleb about serious stuff, especially about them, but his mind, or rather his mouth, tended to function on its own. That was even worse when he’d had a sudden realization, either on his own