One House Behind | ✓

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲

Tanner

After I had met the new little man in Shelly's life, I spent fewer days at her house. There was a new variable and I figured that I shouldn't add to it. It had to have been hard for her to feel somewhat normal again.

"Why don't we go over to my house?"

Her dark chocolate eyes looked up and she frowned. We were on her bed doing our homework. Her father had made sure that we had Sebastian in the room with us so that we couldn't do anything. Not that I would but it was still pretty slick.

"Because I'm supposed to be studying. I mean, I have my AP tests in a few months."

"Exactly! In a few months, we have time. How about we go to my house and take a break?"

"That little pout you do and then turn it into a cheeky smile isn't going to make me go. I have to study, please?"

She turned it on me. Her face morphed into a mirror image of mine, not literally, but it had similarities to what I did to her. I grunted before I tickled Sebastian.

"Tan!" He screeched.

"You scream like a little girl."

"Do not!"

"Do so!"

"Shh! I'm working here!"

"Sorry," both of us said before he led me away from her.

"Don't take him!"

Shelly pushed her work away as she grabbed my wrist. Sebastian had the other one and I stood between them with my lips pursed. This was not how I thought siblings were supposed to fight over a guy, considering one of them is a five-year-old boy.

"You said you were busy and we had to be shh. I want to play."

"After I'm done. I only have three pages left."

"You said that forever ago!"

Footsteps made all of us look down the hallway. Their father came forward with his eyebrow arched and his mouth going up with it. It was funny how much in common Shelly and her father had. The same slant to the nose, same eye shape, same standing position. I'd never admit it to her but she had a bit of a hunch too.

"What's going on?"

"I'm being fought over!" I answered.

"Shelly? Seb?" He looked over at his children.

"I want to play! But Shelly wants her boyfriend and doesn't want to play with me! So I took him!"

"That's not true!" Shelly gasped, "I told him I had three pages left, and then I'd play with him, you little stinker!"

"Okay, calm down. Your mother is asleep and she needs downtime. C'mon Seb, let's go play."

"But Tan."

"He can stay with Shelly, c'mon."

Their father picked up Seb and took him to their room. I felt pained for him that he was so ostracized behind his back. He couldn't sleep with his still wife, or was it ex-wife, and his daughter still had some hurt feelings for him. He really only had his son, who both of the girls liked, but even Seb was leaning toward them.