Page 14 of It's Just You

5

Finn

“Here you go.”I handed Kane his beer, making sure our fingers accidentally brushed against each other.

Kane looked up at me as they touched, then down to where my fingers still held their firm grip on the cup, covered partially by his. “Uh… I got it?” He nodded down.

“I’m sure you do.” With a grin that would’ve brought lesser men to his knees, I finally relinquished my grasp on the cup. But Kane, as I discovered through a quick look up through my lashes, didn’t even seem to react. Damn it. I waited a few seconds, then he was next to me. He didn’t look like he’d been even slightly affected. I turned toward the path and started walking.

Was he that straight? Hell, no. He couldn’t be. Not with the way he blushed and stammered around me sometimes. But since he didn’t react, his poker face had to be way better than I’d expected.

Or maybe he was just that oblivious.

I discarded that thought right away. No one could be that oblivious.

He gave me an odd look as we walked, then cleared his throat. “Are you… having fun?” he asked lamely.

What? Fun? What was he talking about?

I switched back to the here and now, where I wasn’t intent on getting naked with him. “Uh, yes. Sure. It’s…” I trailed off, trying to find the words. “Nice?”

Kane snorted. “Watching high school kids getting drunk is nice?” A smirk tugged at the corner of his lip, just enough for me to see it before it vanished. He didn’t seem to know how to react to me, or even to his own dry jest.

“Since I’m not the one puking my guts out and I don’t have to clean it up, yeah. Sometimes. I love seeing how stupid they are.” I paused. “Then appreciate that I’m not.”

“What, stupid?” he asked with a quirk of his brow.

“No, puking my guts out. My tolerance is definitely higher than it was back then.”

Kane’s lip twitched again, though whether it was in amusement or disapproval — fuck, was he really that much of a prude? He couldn’t be, with Sam as his brother — I couldn’t tell. “You sure that’s a goal to be proud of?”

Was he teasing me or judging me? I could never tell with him.

We were walking slowly away from the bonfire, drifting in a way that wasn’t obvious or intentional, but instead providing a respite from some of the noise.

“That’s depending on the point of view.” I turned toward him. “If not puking after a couple of beers isn’t a goal of yours, what are you doing with your life?”

This time, he actually chuckled. “Not actively trying to kill brain cells, that’s what. I drink a little, obviously,” he said, holding up the cup a little. “But not enough to get hungover.”

“I don’t know. That sounds a little appealing. Sometimes, it would be nice to just let go and kill off a few of the fuckers. Preferably those with bad memories, like the time you ate too many cookies.”

Too many cookies?What the fuck was I even thinking? Was I even thinking at all?

“I… What?”

I stepped partly in front of him, not really stopping him but instead making sure he’d have to slow down or run into me. “Never eaten too many cookies? What are you, an alien?” I raised a brow.

“I don’t think I need to drink to get rid of memories of eating too many cookies,” he said, looking absolutely baffled.

Fuck.

I’d never had problems with this flirting thing before, but with him, everything seemed to fall apart. After a few jokes, a few witty remarks, and a few bats of my eyelashes, they usually ate out of my hand.

Not this one, apparently. It made him interesting. He was… curious enough to be willing to keep me company while Sam made an idiot of himself, but I couldn’t be sure beyond that. Was he really straight? That much in denial?

Just fucking with my head?

“So no excessive drinking for you then. What else do you do for fun? Besides annoying Sam, that is.”

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