He was so ridiculously endearing when he blushed like that.
“How about we go super fancy and do chicken nuggets and fries?”
“You mean dino nuggets and smiley fries?” I teased.
“Yes. We’re going to be adults with our dinosaur-shaped nuggets and our smiley face fries.”
He stood, tugging me up with him.
I snickered. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You love it.”
He snapped his mouth shut, his eyes wide and flashing with something akin to terror.
“I didn’t mean that. Forget I said anything—"
“Jules.”
“It was a slip of the tongue. A saying. A colloquialism if you will—"
“Jules.” I cupped his cheeks with my hands, hoping to cut off his babbling.
He swallowed and looked up at me, his eyes filled with so many emotions I couldn’t pinpoint what he was feeling.
“I do love it.” I dropped a kiss on the tip of his nose. He smiled again.
A part of me was tempted to tell him that I loved him, but it was too soon. Things were so up in the air right now. We’d only been doing, whatever this was, for a few weeks now. We were still getting to know each other, and nothing was official.
By unspoken agreement, we’d kept this quiet. He might have told his friend Dec, but that was it as far as I knew.
I hadn’t told anyone at all.
It wasn’t that I was ashamed to be with him, but it was complicated with us being stepbrothers and former enemies.
As far as everyone was concerned, we still hated each other, and I wasn’t sure when or how I wanted to officially come out and let the world know that I also liked dick, especially when it was attached to Jules, my stepbrother.
He knew I was struggling with coming out, and he was being supportive, but I still felt like an ass for shoving him back into the closet because I wasn’t ready to announce my truth.
Jules was… everything. He was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stifling world. He was the one person who made me happy, who made me feel like there wasn’t anything wrong with me. That I was good enough exactly the way I was.
He had no idea how much that meant to me.
How muchhemeant to me.
Not ready for that conversation, I pressed a quick kiss against his lips, then stepped back.
“I still can’t believe you bought fries that are literal faces.”
“Why not?” He shot me a look as he tugged me into the kitchen. “I mean, your dinner is going to smile at you. That’s like, happiness on a plate.”
“Yeah, but then you have to eat that smiling face. Over and over again.”
“It’s just creepy when you put it that way.” He pouted. “You ruined smile fries. Don’t you dare talk smack about my dino nuggets.”
“I’d never talk smack about your dino nuggets. Hello, I get to eatdinosaurs. My inner child loves them.”
“But your inner child is psycho enough to equate smile fries witheating people’s faces.”