Woo, crossed 15k!!!
If there was one thing Robert hated, it was social situations where he wasn’t sure how to behave. And that was most social situations. Business, sure, he was fine. But parties? Bah. High school had been painful, and college had been atrocious. Hour after hour after hour of parties where he’d stood around and consumed beers alone and silent until either someone took pity on him and chatted with him a little or he got drunk enough to try talking to them. Either way, they almost always got a glazed look in their eyes and meandered away afer only a few minutes. The length of time he could go without that glazed look appearing was gradually lengthening, but it was only about five minutes now. He really wanted to talk to Sheena for more than five minutes, but he wasn’t sure how to go about doing so.
“Just do it, man,” Sameer said. “At least go tell her happy birthday, geez.”
It was easy for Sameer to say it. He was one of those geeks who was sufficiently incompetent in social situations that he couldn’t tell when he was being really, really annoying. That was an advantage for him in that he rarely noticed he was being rejected, but it was a real disadvantage for the people who were the subjects of his attention. Robert, on the other hand, was painfully aware of rejection, but hadn’t quite mastered the art of not getting rejected in the first place, or even lessening the chance of rejection. He was good with his own kind, but women and non-geek men were like aliens to him.
Fascinating, often very attractive aliens.
