Dean stares at me. “Colton, buddy, that’s not a casual invite.”
“It’s a bar,” I say. “Not a proposal.”
Sawyer shakes his head. “This is how it starts. First you invite her out. Then you stop responding in the group chat. Then, suddenly, you’re ‘busy’ on Fridays.”
“I don’t do relationships,” I say automatically.
Sawyer raises a brow. “Neither did Lincoln.”
Dean adds, “Or Roman.”
“And Walker swore he’d never settle down,” Sawyer continues. “Now he sings baby songs casually when we hang out.”
“That’s different,” I say.
“How?” Dean asks.
I don’t have a clean answer.
What unsettles me isn’t the question. It’s the fact that the accusation doesn’t scare me the way it should.
If settling down means Melissa sitting across from me every night, laughing and unapologetically herself, I don’t immediately see the downside.
And that thought delivers a warning bell in my chest.
Sawyer watches my expression shift, his grin fading enough to show curiosity. “Oh,” he says slowly. “You’re in trouble.”
I scoff. “I’m not.”
“You are,” he insists. “You just haven’t admitted it yet.”
Dean studies me quietly. “Do you want to admit it?”
The question hangs between us. I take another drink instead.
“I invited her,” I say carefully, “because I wanted her here. That’s it.”
Sawyer nods like that answers everything. “That’s usually how it begins.”
I glance at my phone again. Still nothing.
“She doesn’t change anything,” I add, more to myself than them. “I’m not suddenlydifferent.”
Dean shrugs. “Maybe not. But you look less … closed.”
That catches my attention.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Sawyer laughs. “That’s never true when someone says it like that.”
They finally let it go, and we talk about work, about the company, about how Sawyer and Dean’s tech enterprise somehow exploded into something bigger than any of us anticipated. They joke about early days, ramen dinners, sleeping on couches.
“You realize,” Sawyer says, smirking, “you’re the only one of us who didn’t grind for this money.”
I roll my eyes. “I invested when you asked.”
“And now you’re rich,” Dean says.