'tis the season (to love you)

CHAPTER FOUR

Eddy's phone is exploding, shaking wild like an earthquake. It's never really done that before, aside from maybe holidays and emergencies, and he's kinda concerned.

"Oh, don't mind it," Brett tells him from behind the stack of biscuits he's rummaging through, calm as anything even when discussing his best friend's possible humiliation at the hands of the general public. Eddy frowns at the screen for a moment before pocketing the mobile, goes back to studying the rows of potato chips in front of him, if only to take his mind off the issue at hand. So: Brett had suggested a photo together for his grandmother's sake, and then had promptly scared the living daylights out of Eddy by yanking him into a sorta-kiss on the cheek, but not really, because he had been an unknowing participant for it? Anyway.

(There's the niggling feeling that maybe Brett had felt the urge to do such a thing exactly because he might've wanted to in the first place, and wait, no, Eddy's not going to go there. There lies the way to madness.)

Thank god Brett's remembered to fiddle with the privacy settings of the post so only family can see it. If that photo goes public—well. He doesn't even want to think about the repercussions. They're enough to give him nightmares.

Belle's gonna kill him, for starters. She's the type to smack a person while laughing, after all, and his sister's got a mean left hook.

"Hey, you look like you just watched a small animal get run over." Brett nudges his shoulder, brings him back to the present. He realizes he's been standing there frozen for a good thirty seconds. Shit. "What's wrong? Did the Pringles do anything to you?"

"Hilarious," he shakes his head, reaching forward to take the aforementioned chips in hand. "All the Pringles has ever done to me is make me hungry. So I'm taking them."

Brett snorts. "I like your conquering spirit, hey? I'll get me some of that too." He watches as the shorter man takes a few more Pringles cans and then waltzes over to the cash register. Ridiculous, that man, truly. It's disgusting, how adorable he is.

It's almost domestic to engage in such a mundane thing together, but Eddy finds himself enjoying every second of this road trip so far, even as he is also simultaneously teetering on the brink of an abyss. Everything he does feels like a keg of gunpowder about to explode, hyper-focused and hyper-sensitive—the phantom pressure of Brett's gaze on him pressing down with the weight of a fourteen wheeler truck. Fuck, that's dramatic, but he doesn't really care; it's the damned truth.

He's afraid that at some point, Brett will take one good look at him and just know.

"Hey slowpoke, you coming or what?"

It's a dilemma for later. Eddy steps away from the store shelves and tells himself he's enjoying this for the millionth time. He's not exactly sure he's succeeding so far, but it's the thought that counts.

• • •

They stop by a cheap motel, check into a room with twin beds that barely manage to fit Eddy's tall frame in them. He's about to make a joke about how Brett's height fits the bed quite nicely, but one look at his friend's raised eyebrows, and it's enough to send him into peals of laughter instead.

Truth be told, he'd been a little wary of the idea of sharing a room during this whole fake dating thing, let alone the possibility of there being only one bed when they get to Nana Helen's home. It's what happens in all the romance stories, not that Eddy's ever going to admit to reading one. Of course not. He's only—being cautious. Genre-savvy. Something like that.