I'M FUCKING BEAT when I come home after working a double. I wish I could have the weekends off as Everett can, but I have things to pay for and need to get back on my feet.

When I walk through the door, I'm hit with the wafting scent of baked chicken, and after only having a sandwich for lunch, I'm starving. My feet pull me towards the smell to where Everett is wearing oven mitts as he holds a casserole, and my heart does a little skip.

"Hi," I say stupidly, eyeing the baking dish. "That smells amazing."

He shrugs and sets it on the counter. "I figured you'd be hungry. It's not a big deal."

But it is a big deal. Everett doing anything nice is a big deal. I don't want to miss whatever good mood he's oddly been in for the past two days, so I don't speak on it. Instead, I pull out another envelope and slide it over to him. "From my other job," I say. "And don't bother fighting me on it, Everett. If you refuse it, It'll end up in your underwear drawer."

I'm expecting a screaming match or his eyes to grow as dark as the bottom of the ocean, but he takes the envelope without another word and pockets it.

"What have you done with Everett?" I ask suspiciously.

He rolls his eyes as he dishes up our plates. "What are you talking about, Emery?"

I wave my hands up and down his cheery stature. "This. We've been tiptoeing around the situation for days, but it's getting weird. Was sex all we needed to make you less pissy toward me?"

He shrugs. "Can't it be as simple as that?"

"I mean, that would be great if that was the case, but nothing in life is ever that simple. There has to be some plot twist here, or—"

"Aren't you the one who always says to look on the bright side?"

"I am, but there's never been a bright side with us, Everett." The sentence leaves my lips before I can think about it, and as soon as it's out in the open, the energy seems to shift in the room. Everett grows stiff as a board, all of his muscles becoming rigid.

But it's the truth. We both know that even if this is just sex, it can't end well. Not when Liam is in the picture, and he always will be.

Everett and I have known since we were teenagers that if we were to act on our feelings, it wouldn't be long before it was ruined. So, I won't get used to Everett being nice to me. It can't be this easy because if it was... If I stayed with Liam during those final years of high school because I feared how complicated it would be to leave him for Everett... Could it have been this simple the entire time, and I wasted all those years pretending to hate him? I'll never forgive myself.

A shift switches inside of Everett, and in seconds, his shoulders relax, another smile tugging on his lips as he passes me the casserole plate. "You're thinking too much about this and making it more complicated than it needs to be. Can we have a peaceful night where we eat a fantastic meal that I slaved over and watch a movie without it getting awkward?"

I want to fight back. I want to push and say that no, we can't until this is solved between us and I figure out when the ball drop will be when this all goes to shit, but I know that when I do, he'll shut down again, and the Everett underneath all of the misery is a person I'm beginning to like. Really like. I don't want him to disappear. Not again.

"Fine," I mutter in defeat and follow him to the couch. I sit beside him, my thigh pressed against his, and kick my feet on the fancy glass coffee table. He searches through Netflix while I take the first bite, and I moan from the taste, Everett's eyes sliding to mine, filled with nothing but heat. "Why the hell am I just now learning that you can cook this year?" I ask.

"I'm not a good cook," he replies, "but I can follow a recipe."

"I beg to differ. God, what is in this? Don't blame me when I gain five pounds tomorrow." I stare at the cheesy, creamy goodness on the plate before me, attempting to calculate the calories I'll consume when Everett snorts.

"When I'm railing you from behind, I'll appreciate every extra pound that recoils off that ass of yours."

I choke. I physically choke when a piece of chicken becomes lodged in my throat. I'm hacking up a lung as I cough it up, witnessing Everett double over into laughter. The man is laughing. He's belly-gut laughing, and the sound... I don't know why tears come from his laughter, but I've been waiting to hear his true laugh since I met him. I've been dying to know what he sounds like truly happy, and now that I have...

I'm in deep and utter shit.

"What?" He asks, eyeing my glassy eyes. "Fuck, what'd I say?"

I shake my head, attempting to get rid of my emotions. Everett is not an emotional person. He fights them tooth and nail. The last thing he wants to do is comfort a crying woman. Especially me. "Nothing. I, ah, I've just never heard your laugh before."

He scoffs. "There's no way that's true. You've known me for basically my entire life."

"I haven't," I tell him firmly. "I would have remembered it."

The sentence isn't supposed to have so much meaning, but Everett holds my stare, and the energy that shifts in the room is palpable. Neither of us wants to say what is on our minds because we aren't ready to hear it. The moment our thoughts are exchanged, this will have to end sooner.

I'm fine keeping things casual between us.

Thankfully, Everett asks if he can start a game of Call of Duty instead of watching a movie, and with a nod of my head, I allow him to grab the controller. He widens his legs on the couch, letting them fall to the side, and his lap looks much too inviting. Those gray sweatpants will be the death of me.

With my arms crossed over my chest, it's hard to avoid my gaze from how focused he looks on this game. Video games are his life, and I can tell from how he's zoned into the television screen in front of us. His eyes bounce all around the map he's playing in, and his tongue darts out occasionally to wet his lips. His fingers move across the controller so fast I can hardly keep up, but damn if I'm not turned on.

When he doesn't get a kill, he cusses under his breath, his knuckles growing white against the controller. The veins are evident in his forearms, bringing me back to when he thrust inside me with my legs over his shoulders with those powerful hands beside my head.

Oh, god.

"I would love to know what's on your mind," Everett says, darting his eyes between me and the screen.

"Nothing is on my mind," I squeak, pressing my thighs together.

He rolls his eyes. "You've always been a terrible liar. Whenever you get horny, your eyes do that thing where they get all low and hazy."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I say, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks.

"Mhm. Sure. Are you going to come here, or what? You're across the couch." He lifts his arms, still playing the game, and I don't know why, but my heart is beating faster than when he was inside me. This gesture feels more intimate than getting naked with him.

"I just didn't know if that's something we could do," I admit. "Fucking doesn't exactly correlate with cuddling."

"Laying on my lap so you don't sit balled up in the corner of the couch won't make me think you love me, Emery. I know it's not like that. Again, stop reading too much into things. You can stretch out and lie down while I play. I don't mind."

Right.

This is casual.

Why do I have to keep repeating that to myself?

But when I move across the couch and place my head in his lap, when those arms fall protectively over my neck, this doesn't feel casual. My head is spinning from the rustic smell of his cologne, and I sigh in contentment, feeling Everett's body relax beneath me. The man is always on edge, always angry, but right now...

I have to distract myself. I have to do anything to stop my heart from exploding. "How do you have such quick reflexes?" I ask, nodding toward the screen. He's shooting people before they seem to get there.

"It's more than just reflexes," he explains. "There's a map in the corner of the screen. Do you see it?" Pointing to the right corner, I see a lot of moving red dots and nod. "I can tell where my enemies are this way unless they have special equipment to keep themselves hidden. For the most part, I know when someone will be there. Plus, I've memorized these maps like the back of my hand. I know where the hiding spots are, you know?"

"When did you start playing video games? I know you played them when we were kids, but did it start as a hobby? How did you know you wanted to do this for the rest of your life?" The questions spew off my tongue too quickly. I've wanted to ask these questions for years but never dared to.

"My uncle introduced me to them. At first, it was just a hobby I did now and then, but in middle school, video games became..." He sighs, shifting uncomfortably beneath me. "Kind of like a haven, I guess. My Dad wasn't around much because of football, and I was lonely. Playing video games was a way to escape my own life and be someone else for a bit. I fell in love with it."

I don't realize my hands have moved to his arms, but I'm holding him tightly, never wanting to let him go. "I'm sorry," I whisper.

"Don't be. In a way, video games saved my life. Without them, I would have turned to other unhealthy habits like drinking or drugs. Escaping to a different reality was the only thing keeping me going in high school. To come home and be a different person for a day..." He shakes his head as if he remembers all of that pain. "It was nice."

"I get it," I admit. "Fashion is the same thing for me. Times were tough as a kid when my parents passed. I'd spend hours digging through boxes of my mom's old clothes stringing together different outfits. As soon as I put them on, it was like I wasn't myself, you know? I could be a goth girl, nerd, or preppy fashionista. I lived out all of my fashion genres. Well, all except one."

"And that is?"

I shake my head, rolling completely over to stare at him. "It's stupid. You're going to make fun of me for it."

He smiles, and I'm still so unused to the gesture that my brain can't process it correctly. Another game is starting soon, the countdown ticking away, but Everett continues to hold his eyes on mine. "I find that doubtful, Em."

Em.

The nickname is circulating through my head as I try to find the room to breathe.

"Come on," he urges. "What was it?"

"Ugh, fine. A Hollywood starlet. There. Happy?"

He scrunches his nose up. "Like, the women from the forties?"

I sigh dreamily. "Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis... I loved them all. My mom introduced me to them, and we'd sometimes stay up late at night to watch their movies. After she passed, it was the one persona I couldn't transform into. Plus, she didn't have anything fancy enough. Nothing would have looked right."

He nods thoughtfully, eyes staring directly at the screen as the game begins before he says, "I don't think that's stupid at all, Emery."

We settle back into our comfortable position. I roll on my side with my head in his lap, but his arms seem to hold me tighter now. I haven't spoken about my parents in years, but they came up without thinking twice while speaking to Everett. I don't know what that means, but this feeling inside my chest... This warmth is almost too much to bear.

And then the breath gets stolen from my lungs when Everett pauses the game and bends down to kiss the side of my head. It doesn't last long, and he unpauses the game immediately after, but the jolt of electricity in my body still lingers.

Casual, I remind my racing heart.

This is just casual.

Author's Note

NOT ME FREAKING OUT

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