Daddy is taking the cottage pie from the oven while I finish making a simple salad of tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber.

I am very happy to have him home in time for dinner; I sorely need a big dose of normalcy, and I can see that he is rather tired. He is working way too hard and needs to unwind. He loves his job and tends to lose himself in it, which is one of the reasons why I've decided to go to the university in Silverview, the closest city to home, next year. I want to be able to keep an eye on him. Without me around, he'll forget to come home, eat, and sleep.

A couple of years ago, I returned from a two-week holiday with the Fletchers to find my father in a semi-dehydrated, unhygienic, sleepwalking state because he'd filled the lonely hours with more work and slipped into a bubble where he forgot to live. Since then, I always make sure to have plenty of friends and neighbours look in on him when I join the Fletchers on any outing lasting longer than a weekend. We also have a video call once a day, usually while he is having his dinner.

I think that complete descent into unhealthy regions of self-neglect scared him as much as it scared me, which left him willing to take part in any type of activity I come up with to take care of him remotely.

Fortunately, the university in Silverview is pretty good; most of the Corbin High students will be going there next year, Dell and Ethan included. Honestly, there is no other university I'd rather go to.

"Thank you, Pumpkin, you made my favourite!" my father exclaims happily when he extracts the casserole dish from the oven and is met by the full aroma.

"You're welcome, Daddy," I smile, turning to grab the lemonade from the refrigerator while he puts the steaming dish on the mat on the table. We're about to take our seats when the kitchen door opens, and there is Ethan, carrying a couple of console game cases in one hand, looking healthy and fresh in one of his favourite t-shirts, sporting the very wise warning: "Never leave me unsupervised."

As usual, his blond hair is cheekily doing its own thing, and his dimples are making his smile seem even brighter.

Suddenly, I'm no longer sure whether I made the cottage pie because it is Daddy's favourite or because it's Ethan's. They both love it. I'm transported back to this afternoon when I was standing at that very door experiencing the most gentle, sweetest kiss I've ever had, and now the air is too thick to enter my lungs.

Earlier, I went into my bedroom and saw Ethan entering his room from his bathroom, wearing only a towel. I wanted to run and close my curtains, the way I always do, but I also wanted to reverse back into the hallway and run away, head for the hills, become a hermit, perpetually banging my head against rock formations, trying to come to my senses.

This is Ethan, for crying out loud! My heart should not have been skipping beats then, and it definitely shouldn't be skipping beats now, either.

I was still torn between my two options when he was suddenly standing at his window, taking the one panel of his curtains in his hand and drawing it across, closing half of his window. He gestured at it and made a huge production of drawing the other one as well. I moved to my window during his performance, and when I shouted a thank you at him, he shoved a hand between the two curtain sections and gave me a thumbs up.

He only opened the curtains again once he was completely dressed. Wow!

"Am I too early?" he asks after his initial hello, and to my surprise, he is looking uncertain.

"If you came for dinner," Daddy grins, "you're right on time, Buddy."

Ethan smiles at my father and closes the door behind him, but he is still giving me less-than-confident looks even though I have already laid an extra place at the table just for him. What is wrong with him? He often has a first or second dinner at our place; we don't mind. I always make enough to keep him in leftovers if he doesn't show up. Some days Delia joins us too, but she can usually only handle one dinner per day.

Normally, Ethan would come in, see that we're having dinner and go: "Yay! Food!" and get himself a plate from the cabinet. Feeding him is something we've all been taking for granted for nearly 12 years now. Seeing him looking almost polite and apologetic is highly disturbing.

"Be right back," Daddy says, strolling from the kitchen, through the adjoining dining room and into the living room on its other side. He loves to have some music in the background while we're eating, and we'd been chatting so much we'd both forgotten to turn on the sound system.

"Hey," Ethan says, taking the seat across from mine. "I'm sorry, Kicks. Your dad messaged me, asking if I wanted to come over and play some games with him. I should've cleared it with you first."

"Why?" I frown at him, completely baffled by that statement. Ethan and my father often have gaming nights when neither of them has to get up very early the next day. "Do I now have to clear it with you each time I want to see Dell or your mom?"

I really hope that this deal of ours is not going to destroy our entire dynamic to such an extent that even our relationships with each other's families will be affected. Dell is my best friend, and Aunt Gemma is like a mother to me. We've always been 100% welcome in each other's homes, any day, any time.

Ethan pulls a face, pushing the fingers of one hand through his already messy hair. He somehow has a way of making carelessly abandoned hair look like it was styled to look that way. I know a lot of people who spend hours trying to get that look. Ethan just towel dries his hair, gives it a quick brush and then leaves it to its own will. The concepts of style and fashion have always been lost on him.

"No, your relationship with them doesn't have anything to do with me..."

"Exactly," I smile. "Your relationship with Daddy is your own thing; it has nothing to do with me or with our... with us... with what we're trying... it's yours. I'll never interfere in that."

Ethan smiles, gazing at me with a far too sincere expression on his face. It's unnerving, and it's making my stomach feel strange.

"Why is it so hard for you to say it, Kicks?"

"Say what?" I ask, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

"Our relationship."

I have no idea what to say to that. Because it's weird? It's fake? It's freaking me out?

I'm saved from answering by Daddy entering the kitchen on the heels of the melancholic sounds from his favourite Gerry Rafferty song, Baker Street. He always plays soothing, relaxing music like that or his Kenny G albums when he is home.

https://youtu.be/dU6w56epBdc

"So," he says, taking his seat at the side of the table between Ethan and me. "How was rugby this morning?" It's sweet of him to ask since I'm pretty sure Daddy knows even less about rugby than I do, but he is always interested in our interests, purely for our sakes.

"It was good, thanks. We won... just," Ethan says, spooning cottage pie on Daddy's plate and then on mine when I hold it out to him. "Kira offered to make fudge for St Albany's blindside flanker," he grins, looking at me.

"He certainly blindsided you multiple times," I grumble, helping myself to some salad.

"You're going to make us some fudge?" Daddy asks, smiling broadly, clearly liking the idea a lot. Which part of St Albany's blind flake did he not hear?

I should really make him some, though. It has been quite some time since my last batch, but it takes so much effort with all the stirring, and the heat is overwhelming. I don't make the quick, smooth, overly sweet microwave kind. I make chunky, ugly lumps of pure heaven.

"Are you guys sure you're not secretly related?" I frown. Those were virtually Ethan's exact words this morning. "We don't have all the ingredients," I concede, seeing the hopeful look on their faces.

"I'll just have to get some then," they say in unison, chuckling happily about their performance, making me grunt and roll my eyes and suddenly, I'm happy. This feels so normal. I love normal.

"Good shell you got today, Ethe," Daddy remarks after saying grace. I quietly eat my food, enjoying their comfortable conversation about the shell, the waterfall, Ethan's multiple near-death experiences on the rugby field today and Daddy's latest project (which makes virtually no sense to me, but Ethan seems to be very interested in it).

As always, their discussions eventually unravel into banter and trash talk about who is going to beat who when they're playing games later. I don't really understand half of what they're saying since I only play single-player, story-driven games like The Last of Us, Beyond Two Souls and Heavy Rain, but I still enjoy listening to them. Daddy always seems to come completely alive when Ethan is around.

My mother passed away a year after we moved into this house. For weeks Daddy was a living corpse, a robot making funeral arrangements and dealing with insurance companies and horrible things like that. When it all died down, and people from the community no longer showed up, bringing us food and comfort, he retreated into himself.

We'd received enough meals to last us a while, and when they finally started to run out, Aunt Gemma made sure that we were fed each day. When I wasn't with Delia, I mostly just hid in my room with my many animal encyclopaedias while Daddy sat in his study listening to sad music, staring out in front of him, not sure how he was going to survive and raise his daughter without his soulmate.

One day, Ethan showed up with his gaming console and insisted on playing some games with him. Daddy is a kind man, and though he definitely was not in the mood for company or games, he couldn't bring himself to reject the little boy's kind invitation. The kid was scrawny and always semi-dirty, with scuffed knees and messy hair. Really cute, especially when he started to lose his baby teeth.

Cute?! What on earth am I thinking?!

Ethan has never been cute! He was a noisy, chaotic monster then, and he is one now; the only thing that's changed is that he grew bigger and his voice is deeper... and he learned how to kiss really well.

Wait, what?!

Well, Daddy always thought he was adorable and said yes to a couple of rounds of a racing game, and it became a thing after that. Ethan would come by almost every day, dragging Daddy from his study to play ball (not one of his skills), swim at the waterfall or dutifully play a few games with him on the gaming console.

At some point, my father realised that he rather likes playing games to unwind and eventually bought his own console, making it easier since Ethan no longer had to transport his back and forth.

After many weeks of forced interactions with the 8-year-old savage, I finally heard my father laughing and chatting with the boy. He even started to relax around me more and no longer looked at me with a mixture of heartache, fear and guilt, as if he personally let me down by not being able to bring my mother back to us. Ethan and Daddy formed a very strong bond during that tragic period, and today, they are threatening to kick each other's butts.

"You're going down tonight, Old Man," Ethan chuckles.

"Smell my socks, Boy," Daddy scoffs, "it's the closest thing to pure perfection you're going to get a whiff of tonight."

I think Ethan is my father's best friend and not just because Daddy has reclusive tendencies that make it hard for him to make friends. They have always understood each other in ways that made me quite jealous when I was pre-pubescent. I came to embrace their relationship as I got older and realised how much both of them need each other. I hope that it will last forever. I think Ethy is the son my father never had.

♂

After we've cleared up the kitchen and Ethan got the coffee maker going, Daddy dashes upstairs to pull on a sweater. The temperature can drop quite a lot once the sun sets for the night, and neither of us has Ethan's built-in heater.

"Ethy," I say, grabbing his arm when he leaves the kitchen, stepping into the hallway ready to head to the living room to go get the game ready.

"What's up?" he asks, turning to look down at me, and now this feels way too intimate. What was I thinking, grabbing him like that?

"N-nothing, I just... well..." Oh, lovely, I've turned into a stuttering, blushing adolescent. "We didn't really cover this in our list."

I don't blame him for pulling a face, his grin turning into a frown.

"Huh? We're gonna work on the list now?"

"No," I say hastily. I must come across as such a pain in the butt. "I just mean... we talked about PDAs in front of our parents and friends and so on... that is pretty clear..."

"Yeah, you said it's not gonna happen."

"You agreed..."

"Yeah, let's say I did... what's bugging you now?"

"Nothing, I'm just wondering, what is the protocol here? Do I sit and watch you and Daddy play? Do I run around carrying snacks and drinks like a good hostess or-"

"The protocol?" he snorts, and now he's laughing at me. "Kicks, seriously, turn off that brain of yours for five seconds, okay? Stop thinking so much."

I suck in the corners of my mouth, fighting the urge to kick him in the shins.

"Look, I'll never turn down a good hostess bringing me snacks and stuff, but what do you normally do when your dad and I have some game time?"

"I tell you you're a noisy idiot and not to cover the entire living room in popcorn again while trying to shoot my father or whatever you're playing... and then I go to bed."

"Okay," he says, frowning at me. "Do that... or whatever you want." His frown slowly slips away, and teasing dimples appear in his cheeks when he smiles. "Or you could cuddle me and cheer me on."

I silently blink my eyes at him, making him laugh. "Or not..." he shrugs.

"Are you ready, Ethe?" my father asks, running down the stairs. "You joining us, Pumpkin?"

"Actually, Daddy, I've been awake for far too many hours today. I'm going to bed."

"Okay, sleep tight, Honey," he smiles, closing the gap between us to kiss the top of my head, and then he turns and walks along the short hallway to the living room.

"Thanks for dinner, Kicks; it was really good," Ethan says, running a hand through my hair, making me struggle to remember my name.

"I a-added extra J-jalapeños and c-cheese," I mutter; my respiratory system is on the verge of collapse... again!

"I noticed; thanks for that. Okay, sweet dreams," he smiles, and I hastily take a step back when he moves even closer, afraid that he'll kiss me again and I'll dissolve in a puddle of mush on the carpet. I don't think my father will take it well.

A shadow passes over Ethan's face, momentarily taking his cheerful expression away, but then he is smiling again and grabbing my hand, he pulls me closer to mimic my father's kiss on the top of my head.

I take the stairs two at a time, wishing for the millionth time tonight that Delia wasn't on a date with Simon. I really need to talk to her about all the weird things happening in my heart and mind, and stomach every time her brother comes near me.

Wait! Can I really talk to Delia about any of this?

♀♂