“Thanksgiving… In the basement.” We’re so close, every time I exhale Carey sucks it straight into his lungs. “We were playing pool… You showed me your piercing…”
“Pervert,” Carey whispers then kisses me.
If I’d known back then how good this would feel I’d have never put myself through the torture of denying us both. “We… We…” I pant out, trying to stay strong. “We need to tell Eden.”
Carey acts coy. “We?”
“Yes, we.”
“But he’s your best friend,” he pouts, and I need to step away. “Where are you going?”
“You’re dangerous.” I point at him then open the fridge to get four more beers. “You can’t look at me with that face, then do what I know you’re gonna want to do to me later.”
Carey takes a beer from me and twists off the cap. “I’ve never done anything you haven’t begged me for.”
“I begged you to leave the shop when you first arrived in town.”
He lightly taps my cheek. “But I could see in your eyes that you didn’t mean it.”
“The. Worst,” I repeat.
Carey slides in front of me. “You love me.”
“Do I?”
“Yep. Just like everything else, I know before you do.”
I smile at him because he’s probably right, I just can’t let him know. “Are you gonna do this, or am I?” I ask, nodding towards my living room.
“They’re your friends.”
“But they already like you better than me.”
He takes a swig of beer and mutters, “That’s not hard.”
I stop at the kitchen door to suggest; “If you start it, I’ll finish it.”
With a sly grin, Carey slowly spins back to me. “You can’t complain if I go rogue.”
“As long as you don’t declare,oh, by the way, we’re fucking,I don’t care how you do it.”
“Deal.” He taps the neck of his bottle against the one in my right hand, and spins back around.
Holding back, I watch him approach the closest couch, step over Anaise’s legs that are perched on the coffee table, and slump down into the cushions beside her. The very same cushions where he fucked me for the first time.
Austin looks up at me, and I make my way over. I hand Anaise a beer then round the coffee table to deliver Austin his before putting my phone down and taking my previous seat beside him on the other couch.
“Why are you two sitting so far apart?” Carey asks almost immediately.
“What?” Austin blurts out then tries to cover it up.
“Why are you and Anaise sitting so far apart?” he says again. “I figured you’d wanna be beside her. I mean, unless you’re already sick of each other.”
Anaise sighs with an over dramatic roll of her eyes. “You’re one to talk.”
“Me?” Carey asks, all innocent. “I’ve got nothing to say.”
“I’ll say it, if you say it.”
