Baby Buddies: A BWWM Pregnancy Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

his shyness and gave him advice for pursuing girls.
    For a long while, she had been dating a jerk named Jakob who had no respect for her and who always let her down, but Anaya always went back to him. Every time that she called Owen to cry on his shoulder and talk about how Jakob didn’t care, Owen would be left incredulous at the fact that she kept going back to him, but Anaya insisted that Jakob was a good man. Owen didn’t see it himself. Jakob seemed to him an arrogant, nasty and selfish man, but perhaps Owen was biased because he hated to see Anaya cry.
    “Yeah, yeah,” James replied, rolling his eyes. “I’ve heard that all before. You’ve only crushed on her your whole life.”
    “It’s got nothing to do with Anaya,” Owen repeated, trying to inject more conviction into his voice. “I’m just no good with women. You know that.”
    “Don’t I know it!” James laughed. “It’s hard to be the wingman to the worst flirt ever. I’d go over to a girl and apologize before introducing you, knowing that you were probably just going to turn red and say something incredibly awkward.”
    Owen laughed at the memories of their nights out on the town when Owen had been home from college and had met up with his old school friend. It was true that he was not the most talented at chatting up women.
    “I never know what to say to women,” Owen confessed. “Don’t you feel like they’re always expecting you to blow them away and then you just don’t have anything to say?”
    “A woman is just looking for a guy with some confidence and a little bit of an edge,” James told him. “They want a man with some mystery about him or a guy who’s just a little distant or something, I don’t know. They enjoy the chase as much as we do. Your problem is that you’re too open. You just go in as this ordinary nice guy with his heart on his sleeve and people don’t buy it.”
    In truth, it seemed to Owen that whatever Anaya had with Jakob was what most women were looking for. Owen was a romantic at heart who liked to wine and dine a girl and cuddle up under a blanket on the sofa on a quiet evening and talk late into the night, but soon girls grew bored with the guy who was a good listener or offered the romantic gestures because there were never any surprises in a relationship like that. Girls liked guys like Jakob, who so rarely do anything thoughtful or kind that when they do, it feels like a firework moment for an underappreciated girl who would swoon at the romance.
    Owen knew that in part his disdain for Jakob stemmed from his affections for Anaya. The two had been neighbors when they were young children and had grown up on the same street. Anaya’s parents had moved to a different part of town in ninth grade, but the two had stayed close, even through different high schools and then different colleges.
    “Anaya always told me that girls like a nice guy,” Owen said in his defense. “She said that I’m doing everything right and I just need to wait for the right girl.”
    “If Anaya thinks you’re so perfect, why isn’t she dating you?” James challenged. “Look, Owen, Anaya loves you as a friend, but she’s not the best person to get dating advice from, if you know what I mean. She’s telling you that girls want a nice guy, but she’s wrong. Girls want a guy who makes them feel special, like they’ve been picked out and chosen. They want to feel like the guy could have had anyone, but chose them. You just make it too obvious that you’re available. What’s worse is that you keep pining over Anaya when she’s not interested.”
    The vet felt that he had a closeness and connection with Anaya that he’d never found anywhere else and perhaps that was why he struggled so much to make a connection with anyone else. The flame he carried for Anaya had been burning for a very long time, but somehow the two had missed their time together. Owen had known for over a decade that his feelings for Anaya were more