Page 133 of Step Bully

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“He’s a complicated fellow.”

“He sure is.” Jules snickered and pulled a cookie sheet out of the cabinet.

“Do you want peas or corn with dinner?”

“Ew, neither.”

“You need to eat at least one vegetable a day.”

“But I had one yesterday.”

“Which means you need one today.” I gave him a stern look when he stuck his lip out in an exaggerated pout. “Don’t give me that face. It’s cute, but it doesn’t work.”

“Being an irresponsible, not quite adult means I don’t have to eat veggies. This is my time to say no to the four food groups.”

“Jules.”

“Fine! Corn. Just so that everything on the plate is the same color because I know that drives you crazy.”

I pulled the fries and nuggets out of the freezer and handed them to him.

“A sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

“And you say I’m ridiculous.” He snorted as he arranged the nuggets on the cookie sheet.

“I guess we’re both a little ridiculous.”

“When do you want to leave next week? Wednesday night?”

I leaned against the counter. “I honestly don’t even want to go.”

“Same.” He sighed. “Another Thanksgiving when Dad and Crystal pretend like we’re one big happy family.”

“We could stay here.”

“How would we explain that? We hate each other but we want to spend the holiday cooped up in our apartment together?”

“I hate this.”

“I know. But it’s only a few days. We can leave early, tell them we have homework to catch up on.” He put the cookie sheet in the oven and set the timer.

“Definitely don’t want to be there any longer than we have to be.”

Jules walked across the tiny space and cuddled up to me. I wrapped one arm around him and held him close.

“I’m not looking forward to having to pretend like I hate you again. I’m scared they’ll see how I look at you and just know.”

“At least we’ve set the precedent that we ignore each other unless we have no choice. That should make things a bit easier.”

That was the part of the visit that was going to be the hardest. It would be suspicious as hell if we came back best buddies after a few months of living together.

“You’d think the hardest thing about telling your stepparents that you’re together would be the actual relationship part and not the part about us being two dudes,” he said softly.

I squeezed him tighter.

“Yeah. Double whammy for us.”

“I wonder if they’ll tell you to keep yourpersuasionsto yourself like they did me. At least they did that after they finished yelling at me for getting outed and everybody knowing they had a gay kid. That was tons of fun.”


Tags: Willow Dixon Romance