Alien Proliferation

me equal not a bad thing?”
    “He’s not like Brian was.” Abigail sat down on my other side. “Kevin told us about that. Now, Brian was obsessed and not over the real you. Glad you worked that out with him, because he and Serene are so into each other.”
    “Mutual obsessives obsessed with each other. Yeah, match made in Heaven or Hell, depending. Heaven, in this case, thankfully.”
    “Right. But Chuck’s not obsessed with you.” Abigail took Jamie and burped her this time, while I started to change clothes.
    “What you two are saying sounds obsessed to me.”
    “No, he’s just thorough.” Naomi sounded thoughtful. “He accepted that you were marrying Jeff, and why, over a year ago. The moment you two were married, his focus was to make sure you were going to stay married, happily.”
    “Okay, I can buy that. I mean, he told me he could be married with a ton of kids and would still do what he could to keep Jeff on his toes. But I don’t see how this focus on me is moving him on to someone, anyone, else.”
    “I do,” Abigail said calmly. “Before, he didn’t talk about you at all, to anyone.”
    This was true. Chuckie was a very private person to most. Until a year and a half ago, really, to anyone other than me and his parents. “So?”
    “So he didn’t talk about you because he was keeping you to himself, locked away, where all the things you did that he loved, or made him laugh or feel special, all your shared experiences wouldn’t be shared with anyone else. They were his, and yours, alone. And if you’d picked him over Jeff, they’d still be his and yours alone.”
    Naomi nodded. “But because you didn’t pick him, he’s actually letting you go by talking about you. It’s not like he talks about your past together to just anyone, but we’re close to him. He tells us about you, and because he’s opened that locked part of himself, it’s also relaxing the hold you have on him, so to speak. The more he tells us about you, the more the romantic love part fades.”
    “The friend part’s still there,” Abigail said quickly. “He’ll never stop loving you as his best friend. But I think he’s already well on the way to not loving you romantically any more.” She grinned. “Based on the fact that I know by heart how many times you made him listen to Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic and Rocks albums until you made him agree they were the best rock albums of all time.”
    “And then you made him choose which one was best between the two,” Naomi added with a laugh. “And then argued about how he was wrong.”
    “I just think Toys in the Attic is a little better,” I mumbled.
    “We know,” Abigail said. “Trust us, we know .”
    “Which is why we know it’s helping him,” Naomi said.
    “I hope you’re right.” I wasn’t convinced, of course, in part because Guilt liked the idea that Chuckie was talking about me because I’d broken his heart.
    “Give it time,” Naomi said. “He’ll work his own way out of it into where he should be. Don’t worry, don’t push him. The harder you push for him to find someone else, the harder he’ll resist it.”
    “Yeah, sounds like Chuckie.” I contemplated whether to tell them, but I figured they might know anyway. “He was alone on Christmas.”
    “We know. We invited him to be with our family. Our mother still likes to celebrate it. He didn’t want to. We understood. I think his parents did, too.” Naomi laughed. “They know he’s working through the situation in his own way.”
    “You’ve met his parents?”
    “Oh, yeah. Chuck doesn’t treat us like lab rats. And I think he wants to keep an eye on us, so no one else can treat us like lab rats.” Naomi checked Jamie’s diaper.
    “Or worse,” Abigail said darkly. “I’ve heard some fights he’s had with others in the C.I.A.” She shook her head. “I wish Jeff and Christopher and the rest of the guys would stop treating him like the enemy. Sometimes he’s the only friend we have.”
    “Yeah. Your diplomats pulling this stunt is one of the worst things for A-C safety, too. Earth governments don’t like it when the crafty aliens try to take over the world.” I sighed. “So, what’re we going to do to try to keep our minds off worrying?”
    Naomi shrugged. “Your family’s still in the library, I think. Why don’t we go there? Might at least distract us.”
    “Works for me.”
    Abigail gathered the few baby things we had for Jamie, including the