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Bobbing my head, I lean across the coffee table in the living room and stab my fork into a delivery container full of chicken and cheese flautas. Before the fried, yummy goodness makes its way to my lips, Ro snags my hand and redirects it to his waiting mouth.
“Hey!” I cry, batting him away before he can eat the whole thing in a single bite but it’s no use, his mouth is huge. Giving him a glare that would wither a weaker man’s balls, I brandish my now empty fork like a weapon. “There’s an entire table full of food. Get your own, asshole.”
He waggles his brows, and the movement is so like the old Ro, the one who I pried from his shell before he left, that I find my cheeks burning.
Even after all this time apart, he still gets through my walls like no one else can. Except now, he’s got the added perk of being covered in a myriad of black and grey tattoos, a few piercings, and a new haircut that makes him look both stylish and grungy.
He’s so damn hot and I find my mouth watering for a reason other than the delicious scents wafting from our feast.
“Why would I when yours is so much better?” he asks, his annoyingly thick lips ticking up in a grin that has me wanting to bolt for the hills.
It should be illegal to look the way he does. All rippling muscles, tapered waist, chiseled jaw. His hair is flopping haphazardly across his forehead and it falls every time his head shifts from the food to the tv to me.
Like now.
“What are you looking at?” His expression is so damn cocky, so self-assured, that I can’t help but want to actually stab him.
Rolling my eyes, I ignore the way my entire body flushes under his attention and turn back to our spread. We’re both sitting cross-legged on the floor, our backs to the sofa, the coffee table covered in all the different things I couldn't decide between for dinner. We basically sampled one item from every restaurant within a twenty-mile radius.
I had no idea Divinity Falls even had options like these, or that there were places just outside of town filled with amazing cuisine. Fuck, I didn’t even know what Doordash was, and that’s just sad.
So fucking sad.
My smile falls and I poke around at the shrimp dish in front of me.
I feel him shift at my side before I see him, his messy hair flopping into his eyes as he pops into my line of vision.
“Why do you look like that?” he murmurs. “What just happened?”
There’s something to his tone that makes me melt. Something protective and worried, like he’s ready to go to war against an unseen enemy just to bring my smile back. I don’t know why, but for a brief moment, my eyes burn even as my heart drops to my stomach and twirls around.
With a shrug, I force a small smile to my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t do that,” he chastises, shaking his head. “You were laughing and then you weren’t and I know it has nothing to do with this bullshit show you’re forcing me to watch.”
I scoff. “You love Big Brother.”
“So do you,” he mumbles before slowly licking sauce from his lips in a way that’s anything but brotherly. My core heats even as my brain screams at me to pull away, to protect myself.
So, I do the only thing I can think of and punch him in the gut. Or try to, but he swats my hand away before I even make contact.
“Stop being a brat and tell me.”
Sighing, I go back to my lo-mein. “I just can’t believe I didn’t know what Doordash was.”
It’s such a small, simple thing, but it’s a perfect reflection of my life.
Small and simple when all I want is big and complex, wild and unpredictable.
He stares at me for a long moment, but once again, I ignore him. It’s easy to do. I just pretend like it’s his ghost, a memory of the boy I used to love all those years ago, hanging out with me while binging trash tv like we used to. Ro and I may not have been together, but we were getting there.
Slowly yet surely, he was becoming mine and I his.
And then, he left, and I spent the next four years having conversations with his ghost. Imagining I wasn’t so alone.
Maybe…
Maybe this is all just another dream.
