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If you really mean it, it all comes round again
"Think you'll stop giving me shit now?" Alex asked with a sideways smirk while elbowing him in the ribs.
The movers had finally arrived to unload her entire existence, packed neatly away in carefully folded cardboard boxes. Much of her furniture had been sold off or donated away, given Jake had his own collection of meticulously curated furnishings already in their set places. It didn't matter much at the end of the day. Alex wasn't devoted so much to things, except her mother's old vanity, which they made room for in the upstairs bedroom.
He threw an arm around her shoulder, drawing her into his side as they shuffled out of the way of the workers flooding through the house. "I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you," Jake teased, but the same smile he'd held since Alex had given him an exact move-in date didn't diminish in its splendor-even as he promised that future mockings were bound to come.
Transporting all her belongings across the country had proven more troublesome than expected. The countless trips back and forth between California and Tennessee to sort all the details had grown tiresome. How had she gone all of 2020 without him beside her when a few days now seemed like an endless torture? Alex didn't know, but she wasn't keen on letting the distance settle into complacency once again.
Leaving her father behind had also been rough. After all, they'd been the only solace the other had for so long after her mother had died. But, he was so busy now with the film adaptation that he himself was away from home more than there, and his words from previous years still rang true.
You could have anything you desired, if only you'd ask for it.
Thank god she'd finally found the courage to ask for it-or maybe Josh had just pushed her into it. Either way, they were here now, at the point of no return, and she'd managed not to look back once.
Jake leaning over to whisper in her ear, while his fingertips gently etched intricate patterns across her arm, shook her from the supposition. "If the movers weren't here..." His voice fettered off to let the insinuation settle thickly in the air between them. That habit of provoking her had only gotten worse, not better, since they now spent nearly every day together. He loved to suggestively taunt her when the situation was too untimely for her to act on it. For the most part, Alex had gotten better at throwing it back in his face rather than being reduced to a fumbling and flushing mess.
But, when she tilted her head back to access him, she found his eyes smoldering, and the look had her lip working overtime between her teeth to bite back the grin threatening to emerge. "Oh yeah, and what would you do? Paint me a picture."
He stayed close, chin resting atop her shoulder as they both watched framed pictures being propped against the only available living room wall, all to be appropriately hung later. "First thing I would do," he began, dropping a brief kiss to her exposed neck, "is invite Josh over because I know you're secretly into that."
