More Than Meets the Eye - Page 123

“Aw.”Sami stroked his cheek.“You can share mine.They like you.And they’re all some flavor of neurodivergent too, so they get it.”

Baz frowned.“Get what?”

“You’re autistic, right?”

…What?

“No, I’m not.”He would know.There would have been signs.

“Oh, honey.You are the biggest black-and-white thinker I’ve ever met.”

Much as Baz would like to deny that, he supposed he didn’t have a leg to stand on after all he put Sami through.“Okay—”

“You crashed out at a party because you didn’t know how to socialize.You called your colleagues having fun ‘barbaric’.”

Because they were!Had Sami forgotten about the beer bong?Besides: “Plenty of people don’t like parties.”

“I saw the way your eyes glazed over when you walked into Dorothy’s Friends.”

“I had a long day and it was really loud!”

“Overstimulating, you’d say?”

That felt like a trap.Was it a trap?

“I guess?”

“See!Also, the thing you do when you twirl your wrists and tap your fingers?That looks like stimming to me.And you make really intense eye contact, like,intense.And that’s hot, but it’s also not typical.”

Eye contact was a bad thing now?The way people had given him a hard time over his lack of eye contact growing up, he thought it was as important as breathing to people.

“So I like your eyes, sue me.”

“I like yours too.Point still stands, though.Oh, and you’ve eaten plain, flavorless bread every morning for years.”

“Bread has flavor!”

“And dare I say it’s comforting for you to eat the same safe food every day?”

“I mean.Maybe.”Nothing wrong with having something solid to rely on.

Sami looked at him with raised eyebrows, like he was waiting for some penny to drop.But…

Baz shook his head.They had much bigger things to worry about right now.Freeing Sami from the clutches of Ian’s dictatorship was Baz’s priority.Ruining Ian was a close second.Everything else, they had a lifetime left to figure out.

“All right.Can we focus on one crisis at a time?”

“It doesn’t need to be a crisis.It’s nothing bad.Just an extra piece of information about yourself that might help you give yourself more grace in the future.”

“Doesn’t feel like the kind of information you should have figured out before me,” Baz mumbled.If it was even true.

“What can I say, game recognizes game.But yes, we’ll put a pin in it.Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring this on you out of nowhere.I thought you knew.”

Hardly the first random thought Sami had dropped into a conversation.It was one of his most lovable traits.

Sami pressed a kiss on his lips and snuggled back into his shoulder.“My friends do come with a lot of inappropriate jokes, but if you can look past that, you’ll fit in great.”

“I’m sure I can keep up.”They still had a trivia night to win, after all.