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“Syd.”
They’re halfway through the second bottle, sitting on the floor of her kitchen while a vinyl cracks through something jazzy in the next room. Carmy’s voice is like velvet, like the warmest thickest caramel coating her tongue.
Worst of all, he’s looking at her with those big fucking blue stupid eyes and forcing her to translate instead of saying what he means and God, does it piss her the fuck off. Especially when he’s saying the most annoying shit he’s ever not said. Especially when she’s three sheets to the wind and wants it. Even though it’s so, so stupid.
“No, Carm.” She says, too patient for him and too drunk to let herself entertain the thought for even a moment. “Put that shit away.”
“What shit?”
“You know what shit.”
“Well, I’m just saying—“
“I know! Stop it! Stop saying it!”
“Come on, Chef.”
His smile is non-existent but she can see it in the twitch of his cheeks and the squint of his eye and this is what she hates the most. That buzz that she gets inside of her whenever he’s happy and they’re happy together and everything just makes sense. They make sense together. She knows what he’s fucking saying. And yet, the answer is still—
“No!” She pours two shots and hands one over, watching him swallow.
“Chef,” he coaxes.
“Chef.”
She’s serious and it must finally get through because he removes himself from her space with a put upon sigh.
She reads the lines between the sag of his shoulders and the barely tucked away bottom lip and grabs his hand, rolling her eyes. The look he gives her is so full of surprise, she can’t help but laugh out loud. His smile is real this time and he takes her hand and kisses the back of it, three times.
His lips are cold from the bottle and it bothers her that she even noticed.
“You don’t really want this.” She smiles, staring at their fingers tangled together.
“I don’t?”
“Of course not. You don’t want us. You don’t even know what that looks like.”
“Oh yeah?” He says, bemused and still holding onto her. “You’re gonna tell me how I fucking feel now?”
“I tell you how you feel every fucking day, Carm. Every single day. Do you know why I can tell you how you feel and you not hate me for it?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not your fucking girlfriend!”
“That doesn’t—what does that even fucking mean, Syd?” He scoffs.
“You know what it fucking means.”
“I-I don’t, I’m sitting here trying to ask you some serious shit and you’re just saying—“
“No! I’m saying no, Carm because you can’t even be a grown up and spit it out! There are a million reasons why it doesn’t make sense but let’s start with the fact that I have to read your feelings from a fucking look because you can’t be bothered to tell me!”
“Okay, well fuck you. I love you. How about that?”
Syd looks at him and can’t even imagine the face she’s making. It’s pitiful really— the way he doesn’t even know how much of a dick he is.
“I love you.” She says anyway.
“I’d dig up the world for you. I’d lasso the fucking moon if you asked me. I got you a fucking star. I don’t —hell, none of this works without you.”
“I know. And honestly Carm, if you asked me to marry you, I’d consider that more than this.”
Carmy actually laughs this time and it’s ecstasy, it’s heaven, it’s everything. It’s been a week since she last heard it and it’s been eating her up inside.
“You’d marry me but not date me? You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
She shrugs. “What’s marriage but another contract. I’ve already signed two of those for you.”
“Alright, fine.” He concedes, shaking his head fondly.
“Fine.” She grins, a little sloppy with it but genuine, in the face of his smile.
“Syd.”
She looks at him and he’s close again but this time he’s warm and smells like spice and sweat and stove instead of liquor and desperation and she knows he wants to kiss her, he’s saying “if not for real, then at least for a second. Let me just see what it’s like. Don’t you want to know too?”
And he’s Carmy and she’s Syd and so unless it’s completely unreasonable—and often even when it is—she’ll give him whatever he wants.
“Alright, fine.”