~Melanie~

"They're selling chocolates," the cartoon old fish lady holding a cane yelled. Her aged voice echoed through the television speakers.

"They're selling chocolates?" the cartoon skeleton fish sitting in a wheelchair next to her repeated in a hoarse voice.

"Yeah."

"Chocolate," the skeleton fish said, mystified. "I remember when they first invented chocolate. Sweet, sweet chocolate. I always-"

"Hated it!" Bianca and I both shouted into the living room, then burst out with laughter.

Ethan walked through the front door into the living room, dripping with sweat, still in his Weaver High lacrosse uniform. He plopped down next to me on the violet velvet couch and scratched his head of shaggy blonde hair that stuck to his damp forehead. He grabbed the remote off the wooden oak coffee table, then switched the channel to Comedy Central.

"Hey, you smelly hobo! We were watching that!" Bianca said.

He shrugged, "You're sixteen. Spongebob is for babies. Grow up."

Bianca scoffed as I crossed my arms over my chest in a huff.

He rolled his eyes but grinned as he looked my way, then looked back toward the television. My stomach flipped, and I tried to ignore it.

"Hey, Melanie, let's bake some cookies," Bianca suggested.

I smiled, "That sounds like a great idea."

Bianca grabbed my hand and led me to the marigold-painted kitchen.

I looked over my shoulder as Ethan watched a rerun of South Park. Without their matching blonde hair, no one would be able to tell they're siblings. Bianca's eyes were hazel while Ethan's blue, and Bianca had a small button nose while Ethan's was long and straight. I had known Bianca since preschool. That was around the time Ethan was born. It was strange to think I'd known Ethan literally his whole life.

Last year, the narrow hallway was pistachio mint. A few years before that, it was purple cow. I was convinced the layers upon layers of paint on these walls had made the hallway grow more narrow over the years.

Ethan's bedroom door was slightly ajar when I reached it, but I tapped on it a few times anyway with my knuckles.

"Yeah?"

I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stood in his doorframe.

"I was wondering," I began, but then my heart fluttered and lodged itself inside my throat as I immediately looked away from him and around the dark gray walls.

His bedroom contrasted with the rest of the Page's colorful New England-style home. His black wooden desk was flush against the wall left to the door, with his bed on the far end and a matching dresser catty-cornered to the right.

"What?" Ethan asked, with his arms crossed as he sat at his desk. Droplets of water ran slowly down his face from his freshly showered hair, and a few runaways fell freely onto his bare, toned chest.

"D-Did you want any leftover chocolate chip cookies?" I stuttered as I held the plate out.

"Sure, thanks!"

He took the plate from me and set it down on the desk, but I continued to stand in his doorway.

"Anything else?" He raised an eyebrow.

I pouted. "Bianca fell asleep, not surprisingly, because she does this all the time, as you know, and you know what we're watching, which I've seen like a billion times thanks to you know who. I just don't want to go back down there with her snoring," I rambled as I leaned against the doorframe. "What're you up to?"

I sat down on his bed with about two inches in between us. He smelled like he always did—a mixture of pine and olive soap—when it wasn't straight after lacrosse. I could feel the heat radiating off of him. I let out the breath I was holding in. He hit play.

After watching a handful of videos of cucumbers surprising cats, cars and trucks sliding across icy roads, and a masked duo scaring people in public places, we're both dying of laughter as we leaned into each other. I wiped my eyes as tears collected in the rims.

"Where do you find these things?" I asked, looking at him.

He shrugged and turned to me with a massive smile on his face. I realized then how close he was to me. His smile relaxed as he continued to stare into my eyes. The butterflies from earlier weren't swarming. They were nowhere in sight. Instead, I had the deep urge to run my fingers through his damp hair and out of the way of his piercing blue eyes.

"Knock, knock," Mrs. Page said as she pretended to knock on the door, causing Ethan and me to flinch before quickly pulling away. "I was wondering where you were when I got home and only saw Bianca snoring on the couch." She smiled as she looked between Ethan and me, depleting all the air from my lungs.

"Hi, Mrs. Page. How're you?" I asked.

I wouldn't have known what to do if she saw me in such a predicament with... my best friend's younger brother... her son.

"I'm doing fine, honey. Thank you. Why don't you wake Bianca and head to bed, hmm? It's," she checked her wristwatch, "almost eleven."

"Alright," I said as I scooted off the bed. I turned back toward Ethan, and the butterflies reappeared. "Goodnight, Ethan."

Ethan looked at me, wide-eyed, "Goodnight, Mel."

Later, in Bianca's room, as she slept in her wrought iron bed, I laid on the light blue carpeted floor next to her in my purple sleeping bag I've owned since I was thirteen. The cold end-of-winter wind howled outside the window above our heads. I curled into a ball, attempting to savor all the body heat in my core.

My breath caught in my throat as I realized I had missed Ethan's body heat from earlier. I couldn't believe I was this worked up over him. He's just Bianca's stupid kid brother, after all...

~~~