He didn’t have any problem with that. He just wanted the relationship to continue when they got home. He didn’t want things to keep going as they had been, only to be blindsided one day by Sharon telling him that she’d found someone she wanted to date.

No. He wanted to lock it down, make things official, and give this a real try.

“What happened to me not being your type?” she asked. There was real concern on her face and she seemed just as serious and anxious as he was.

It suddenly occurred to him that she wasn’t waffling because she wanted to say no. She was waffling because she wanted to say yes – and she was afraid to. The only reason she’d be afraid would be of things turning out badly, which was why she was voicing all of her concerns instead of saying yes. Jake immediately felt a lot better and a lot more confident.

She was going to say yes, he just had to reassure her that he was worth taking the risk on.

“Well, none of the women I thought were my type have worked out,” he said, a smile starting to spread across his face. “Besides, the more time I spend with you, the more I like you and want to be with you. Why not give it a try?”

“Uh, because it could go horribly wrong and we’d still be part of the same group of friends.”

“The same thing could happen while being fuck buddies, especially if we start having feelings for each other. And I already have feelings for you and I think you already have feelings for me too,” he said matter-of-factly. “If we ended things right now, you don’t think that everything would be horrible and completely awkward for a while?”

Sharon’s tongue flicked out, licking her lips nervously as she stared at him. Her dark eyes were conflicted, but she was leaning slightly forward, and the expression on her face was wariness tinged with longing. He leaned forward too, lowering his voice. No one around them was listening, but it still felt like too private a moment to be louder.

“I like you, Sharon, a lot. Despite the fact that you’re not what I’ve always thought of as my type, or maybe because of that. I don’t want to stay stuck in limbo with you. If you want to go on some real dates, then we can do that, but I think we’ve both proved over the past few weeks that we do work in a real relationship. That’s what we’ve been doing, even if we haven’t called it that.”

He took a deep breath, still searching her face for a positive reaction, but feeling better with every word he spoke.

“I want to start calling it what it is.”