Prune 18, Rum Raisin 4
Author: Marina
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Prune 18 (no peace for the wicked), Rum Raisin 4 (brother - My Treat: Kevin does try to be a good brother)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel, Malt (Casey’s Truth: What does Kevin tell Sidney and Lindsey about the dragon world afterwards? If nothing, how does he explain it?)
Word Count: 2,530
Rating: PG-13 (foul-mouthed MacLeods are foul-mouthed)
Summary: Five years after their ordeal in the dragon world, three of the kids come clean about what happened (Part 1 of 3)
Notes: I am slowly figuring out how the kids try to explain things and how long it would take for the truth to come out, so have a short series of pieces about it! Kevin’s first.
“That is bullshit.”
There was a second of silence, during which Laura probably winced, not that Kevin could see it from his end of the phone call. Then, very tentatively, “Kevin…”
“I’m not apologizing,” he spat, knowing even as he did so that he would regret it later. “It is bullshit. Five years, Laura! Five years of keeping it secret because His Royal Highness said to, and now all of a sudden, it’s okay? What the hell kind of difference does he think it’s going to make now?”
“Kevin, I know that, I’m sorry,” said Laura. “And so is Chase, he really is.”
“The hell he is! Your brother’s never given two shits about me-”
“Kevin!”
The tone of her voice, not its volume, made him pause. It had been years since the last time he had heard her sound so distressed. Kevin clenched his jaw tightly against the rest of his tirade, and forced himself to apologize. “It’s been a long day,” he said, by way of excuse. “My American History prof hates my guts.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, and he could tell she knew why he was backing off. “Look, you’re right, Chase doesn’t like you that much but he really is sorry. He feels awful about everything, and so do I.”
Kevin wished, right then, that he had never met either of the Mitchells. “Right, okay. Thanks for telling me, anyway.”
After an awkward and abrupt farewell on Laura’s part, he hung up and threw his cell phone at the opposite wall as hard as he could. It popped open, falling to the floor in three pieces, but he hardly noticed. “Fuck you, Chase,” he snarled, clenching his fists. “Fuck this.” With a frustrated growl, he slumped against the wall nearest him and ran his hands over his face.
It probably didn’t matter anymore to the rest of them. Carrie had always been grateful that they had agreed to keep it secret. “I wouldn’t know how to explain it to my mom even if I could,” she had said. Laura and Aaron had felt similarly, but they also had each other to depend on, and their families were still whole. The three of them probably had no plans to tell anyone they knew.
Not that Kevin did, either. Not five years after the fact, anyway.
He folded his arms tightly over his chest and glared at the ground. Not for the first time, he wondered if telling his parents where he had been for those eleven days would have made any difference-if it might have saved his whole family the pain of a nasty divorce and years of strained relations. It was too late, of course. The only way the MacLeods could be civil with one another was by putting as much distance between them as possible. Lindsey had already transferred to a university in another state. By the end of the year, their mother and Sidney would be back in Virginia. The schisms were much too wide to repair.
A tap sounded on the door, making him jump. “Kevin?” his dad called.
Shit, Dad’s home, Kevin thought, suddenly apprehensive. He hadn’t been paying attention to the time because of Laura’s phone call. How much did he hear? “Yeah?”
“I heard something hit the wall, everything okay?”
He exhaled in relief. “Yeah, fine.”
A moment of silence followed. “Well, all right then.” After another pause, the sound of retreating footsteps let Kevin know that his father had decided to drop it, as usual.
He sighed, bent to pick up the pieces of his phone, and snapped them back into place. When he turned it back on, he saw that five o’ clock had come and gone. It was almost time for dinner. The last thing he wanted, just then, was to sit down with his father over leftovers or frozen meals and make awkward small talk, the way they always did. He knew himself well enough to know that it would end badly.
Automatically, he hit ‘2’ on the keypad and raised the phone to his ear. “Hey, Sid. You busy?”
***
When he offered to treat her to dinner, Sidney asked to go to the Poppe Shoppe for hot dogs and floats.
Kevin agreed readily, even though he felt heartily sick of the place-and most of Madison, for that matter. Sidney loved it, and she had to take every opportunity to go while she still could. They arrived just in time to beat the worst of the dinner rush. One of the rollerskating hostesses directed them to a two-person booth near the window. As they sat, he glanced over to the door and caught the first signs of an oncoming throng. His mouth twitched briefly into a perverse half-smile.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Kevin?” Sidney asked, for the third time.
I won’t be if you keep asking me that, he thought, rather annoyed. “Fine, Sid, I told you.”
Instead of dropping it, she pushed. “You don’t look fine.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, it does.” She gave him a pointed look. “You look like you’re two seconds away from exploding, and honestly, hanging out with you is a lot more fun when you’re not being a raging asshole.”
Her frankness made him laugh. “I promise not to be a raging asshole,” he said, lifting his right hand in a mocking oath.
“Fine.” Sidney glanced at the menu. She smiled, but her eyebrows still knit together in worry. “Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
Kevin didn’t bother with the professor-from-hell excuse this time, but he didn’t answer right away, either. “Maybe,” he said then. “Maybe not. It’s…complicated, Sid. Not like I can tell you I just had a bad day. It’s years of shit all piled up, on top of a bad day. Hell, I’m not even that pissed about most of the stuff that happened today, really.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she said quietly.
No, you don’t, he almost said, but the filter that always went into place around his youngest sister stopped him. He had no idea how else to reply, so he only watched her for a minute, considering it. It was possible that she did understand. Things were different for her, but she knew what it was like to be under constant stress just as well as he did, and her problems were by no means less weighty than his. “Sidney,” he said slowly, “would you be angry with me if you found out I had a secret I wasn’t telling you?”
Sidney shot him a puzzled and slightly apprehensive look. “What are you talking about?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I guess it’d depend on what the secret was and why.” She shrugged, but didn’t look away. “Why’re you asking?”
“Gooood evening!” said a perky waitress, who had materialized on Kevin’s right while neither of them were looking. Kevin jumped, sending his menu flying out of his hands. The woman only laughed and bent to pick it up. “Sorry to startle you. Are you ready to order?”
“Can I have a chili cheese dog and a root beer float?” Sidney asked, looking very amused and entirely unsympathetic.
“Same thing for me,” Kevin muttered. The waitress jotted it down, beamed at them both, and skated away. “Those people have the goddamn worst timing ever.”
“It’s hilarious,” said Sidney. “Especially when they do it to Chase. I taped it once. Best life decision ever.” She snickered, and pulled out her purse to look for nickels.
Kevin let his head drop into his left hand as his right began to clench and unclench under the table. I can’t talk to anyone without him popping up, he thought, annoyed all over again and ready to punch something. Unfortunately, the Poppe Shoppe happened to be a place where he would have to pay for any dents he made in the wall, and he had better things to spend his limited funds on than public anger.
“Kevin, you’re looking murderous again,” Sidney ventured, with a frown. “Just tell me what it is already.”
“Might as well,” he said into his palm. “You’re right, I probably will explode if I don’t tell someone. Not that it’ll do any good now.” He lifted his eyes to hers, and then straightened in his seat. “Look, I…I lied. About not remembering what happened to me, when I disappeared while you were sick.”
She didn’t speak, so he went on. “I didn’t meet Laura at a gig. I met her when we were both kidnapped. Chase, Aaron, and Carrie, too. We were all grabbed at the same time.”
“Why would you lie about that?” she asked, looking more confused than hurt.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Kevin, you know I trust you more than anyone. There’s no way you’d try to cover that up if you didn’t have a good reason.”
He exhaled. “All right. The guy who did it used magic.”
Sidney blinked. “Okay, wasn’t expecting that.”
“It gets better,” said Kevin, with a faint smile. “He had to use magic to do it because he was in a parallel universe to ours, and it was the only way he could get us there.”
She didn’t seem to have a response for that revelation. After a moment, he went on, relating the whole story the best he could while keeping an eye out for the peppy waitress.
Their floats arrived as he was describing the unexpected attempt the dragons had made to rescue them from Geran’s search party. By then, Sidney was absorbed in the story, and her impatience at the interruption encouraged Kevin somewhat. He kept talking while she ate. It took so long that she completely finished her meal while she listened to him, while his sat untouched in front of him. “Wow,” she said, sitting back in her chair and frowning at the table. “Yeah, I definitely don’t blame you for lying. I’d have lied, too.”
Kevin picked up his fork and cut up his chili dog. “That’s not why. I mean, yeah, you’d think it would have been easier to make something up and try to forget about it, but I didn’t want to do that. I honestly would have tried. We all agreed to keep it a secret, though.”
“The rest of them didn’t want to tell anyone?”
“Chase didn’t want to tell anyone.”
That seemed to shock her more than the story itself. “Why not? I would’ve thought he’d have been excited to share, seeing as he’s really into fantasy and all.”
“That’s the thing,” Kevin said. He paused for a moment to scoop up a bite of chili dog, chew, and swallow it. The action earned him a very impatient look from his sister, to which he responded with a dramatic roll of the eyes. “I haven’t eaten yet because I’ve been talking to you, okay, give me a minute. Chase was terrified. What Geran did to him really fucked him up, and he didn’t think anyone would believe us. Laura said she didn’t want to make him deal with that if he didn’t want to. So we all lied to protect him.”
Sidney pondered the idea in silence, giving him the chance to devour most of his chili dog and a few bites of the melted float. “Guess I don’t blame him,” she finally said.
“I blame him,” Kevin said quietly. “If I’d told the truth back then…” He shook his head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m only telling you now because Laura told me he’s finally giving us permission. Seems like he’s finally gotten over it, or whatever, so congratu-fucking-lations to him.” He glanced down at the last bits of chili dog, but it no longer looked appetizing, so he pushed the plate away.
“If you’d told the truth…what?” Sidney asked, hesitantly.
“What do you think, Sid? Our family’s screwed up because of everything that happened that year and if I’d just told Mom and Dad, it might’ve made a difference. Maybe not a lot, but maybe enough that we’d all still be together. Now it’s too late. If I tell either of them now, they’ll just get angry, so there’s no use.” He folded his arms defensively over his chest and looked at the wall.
“Kevin,” she said, sounding very alarmed, “it’s not-"
“Don’t try to tell me it’s not my fault,” he said bitterly.
“It’s not, though,” she insisted. “Bad things happened to us, yeah, but honestly? Mom and Dad just aren’t right together. They would’ve gotten divorced eventually. My accident and you disappearing just made it happen faster. Besides, it’s not like I asked that asshole to hit me, and it’s not like you asked to be kidnapped. These things just…happen.” There was a pause. “Well, okay, people don’t get snatched into parallel realities with creepy magic every day, but whatever.”
Kevin shook his head and buried his face in his hands. He wanted desperately to believe her, but the hurt and guilt he had tried so hard to ignore had welled deep inside him and would not budge.
“Besides,” Sidney continued, “it’s not like good things haven’t happened to us, too. Aren’t you glad you met them?”
“Not right now,” he mumbled. “Chase can rot, as far as I’m concerned. Aaron’s always hated my guts, too. And Laura…” He swallowed. Laura. Fuck, I can’t start thinking about her like that again.
“Laura’s your best friend-"
“Not anymore.” His eyes were starting to burn again. “I screwed up and ruined everything. We’ve tried, but it hurts so much I can’t even look her in the eye, hardly. But I feel like I can’t keep going without her, either.” He hadn’t meant to tell Sidney any of this, let alone anyone else, but he couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of him. “I always thought that that whole mess was worth it just because I met her, and now I don’t even have that, and it’s my own fault. So what good did it do? I’m fucked up, they’re fucked up, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Sidney was silent so long that he almost forgot she was there. “Chase and Carrie have been really good friends to me,” she said, startling him even though she spoke very quietly. “They let me be in their group even though the rest of them are so much older than me. They didn’t have to do that, but I’m glad they did. I needed friends badly when I got out of the hospital. They were there. They’re still there.” She bit her lip. “I’d never have met them, if you hadn’t.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Kevin said, looking at his hands.
They paid their tab, got up, and walked out to the car. Sidney made no move to get in. Instead, she surprised Kevin with a tight hug around the waist. “I love you, Kevin,” she said. “I’m glad you told me.”
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders without hesitating, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Love you too, Sid. I’m glad you believed me.”
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Prune 18 (no peace for the wicked), Rum Raisin 4 (brother - My Treat: Kevin does try to be a good brother)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel, Malt (Casey’s Truth: What does Kevin tell Sidney and Lindsey about the dragon world afterwards? If nothing, how does he explain it?)
Word Count: 2,530
Rating: PG-13 (foul-mouthed MacLeods are foul-mouthed)
Summary: Five years after their ordeal in the dragon world, three of the kids come clean about what happened (Part 1 of 3)
Notes: I am slowly figuring out how the kids try to explain things and how long it would take for the truth to come out, so have a short series of pieces about it! Kevin’s first.
“That is bullshit.”
There was a second of silence, during which Laura probably winced, not that Kevin could see it from his end of the phone call. Then, very tentatively, “Kevin…”
“I’m not apologizing,” he spat, knowing even as he did so that he would regret it later. “It is bullshit. Five years, Laura! Five years of keeping it secret because His Royal Highness said to, and now all of a sudden, it’s okay? What the hell kind of difference does he think it’s going to make now?”
“Kevin, I know that, I’m sorry,” said Laura. “And so is Chase, he really is.”
“The hell he is! Your brother’s never given two shits about me-”
“Kevin!”
The tone of her voice, not its volume, made him pause. It had been years since the last time he had heard her sound so distressed. Kevin clenched his jaw tightly against the rest of his tirade, and forced himself to apologize. “It’s been a long day,” he said, by way of excuse. “My American History prof hates my guts.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, and he could tell she knew why he was backing off. “Look, you’re right, Chase doesn’t like you that much but he really is sorry. He feels awful about everything, and so do I.”
Kevin wished, right then, that he had never met either of the Mitchells. “Right, okay. Thanks for telling me, anyway.”
After an awkward and abrupt farewell on Laura’s part, he hung up and threw his cell phone at the opposite wall as hard as he could. It popped open, falling to the floor in three pieces, but he hardly noticed. “Fuck you, Chase,” he snarled, clenching his fists. “Fuck this.” With a frustrated growl, he slumped against the wall nearest him and ran his hands over his face.
It probably didn’t matter anymore to the rest of them. Carrie had always been grateful that they had agreed to keep it secret. “I wouldn’t know how to explain it to my mom even if I could,” she had said. Laura and Aaron had felt similarly, but they also had each other to depend on, and their families were still whole. The three of them probably had no plans to tell anyone they knew.
Not that Kevin did, either. Not five years after the fact, anyway.
He folded his arms tightly over his chest and glared at the ground. Not for the first time, he wondered if telling his parents where he had been for those eleven days would have made any difference-if it might have saved his whole family the pain of a nasty divorce and years of strained relations. It was too late, of course. The only way the MacLeods could be civil with one another was by putting as much distance between them as possible. Lindsey had already transferred to a university in another state. By the end of the year, their mother and Sidney would be back in Virginia. The schisms were much too wide to repair.
A tap sounded on the door, making him jump. “Kevin?” his dad called.
Shit, Dad’s home, Kevin thought, suddenly apprehensive. He hadn’t been paying attention to the time because of Laura’s phone call. How much did he hear? “Yeah?”
“I heard something hit the wall, everything okay?”
He exhaled in relief. “Yeah, fine.”
A moment of silence followed. “Well, all right then.” After another pause, the sound of retreating footsteps let Kevin know that his father had decided to drop it, as usual.
He sighed, bent to pick up the pieces of his phone, and snapped them back into place. When he turned it back on, he saw that five o’ clock had come and gone. It was almost time for dinner. The last thing he wanted, just then, was to sit down with his father over leftovers or frozen meals and make awkward small talk, the way they always did. He knew himself well enough to know that it would end badly.
Automatically, he hit ‘2’ on the keypad and raised the phone to his ear. “Hey, Sid. You busy?”
***
When he offered to treat her to dinner, Sidney asked to go to the Poppe Shoppe for hot dogs and floats.
Kevin agreed readily, even though he felt heartily sick of the place-and most of Madison, for that matter. Sidney loved it, and she had to take every opportunity to go while she still could. They arrived just in time to beat the worst of the dinner rush. One of the rollerskating hostesses directed them to a two-person booth near the window. As they sat, he glanced over to the door and caught the first signs of an oncoming throng. His mouth twitched briefly into a perverse half-smile.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Kevin?” Sidney asked, for the third time.
I won’t be if you keep asking me that, he thought, rather annoyed. “Fine, Sid, I told you.”
Instead of dropping it, she pushed. “You don’t look fine.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, it does.” She gave him a pointed look. “You look like you’re two seconds away from exploding, and honestly, hanging out with you is a lot more fun when you’re not being a raging asshole.”
Her frankness made him laugh. “I promise not to be a raging asshole,” he said, lifting his right hand in a mocking oath.
“Fine.” Sidney glanced at the menu. She smiled, but her eyebrows still knit together in worry. “Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
Kevin didn’t bother with the professor-from-hell excuse this time, but he didn’t answer right away, either. “Maybe,” he said then. “Maybe not. It’s…complicated, Sid. Not like I can tell you I just had a bad day. It’s years of shit all piled up, on top of a bad day. Hell, I’m not even that pissed about most of the stuff that happened today, really.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she said quietly.
No, you don’t, he almost said, but the filter that always went into place around his youngest sister stopped him. He had no idea how else to reply, so he only watched her for a minute, considering it. It was possible that she did understand. Things were different for her, but she knew what it was like to be under constant stress just as well as he did, and her problems were by no means less weighty than his. “Sidney,” he said slowly, “would you be angry with me if you found out I had a secret I wasn’t telling you?”
Sidney shot him a puzzled and slightly apprehensive look. “What are you talking about?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I guess it’d depend on what the secret was and why.” She shrugged, but didn’t look away. “Why’re you asking?”
“Gooood evening!” said a perky waitress, who had materialized on Kevin’s right while neither of them were looking. Kevin jumped, sending his menu flying out of his hands. The woman only laughed and bent to pick it up. “Sorry to startle you. Are you ready to order?”
“Can I have a chili cheese dog and a root beer float?” Sidney asked, looking very amused and entirely unsympathetic.
“Same thing for me,” Kevin muttered. The waitress jotted it down, beamed at them both, and skated away. “Those people have the goddamn worst timing ever.”
“It’s hilarious,” said Sidney. “Especially when they do it to Chase. I taped it once. Best life decision ever.” She snickered, and pulled out her purse to look for nickels.
Kevin let his head drop into his left hand as his right began to clench and unclench under the table. I can’t talk to anyone without him popping up, he thought, annoyed all over again and ready to punch something. Unfortunately, the Poppe Shoppe happened to be a place where he would have to pay for any dents he made in the wall, and he had better things to spend his limited funds on than public anger.
“Kevin, you’re looking murderous again,” Sidney ventured, with a frown. “Just tell me what it is already.”
“Might as well,” he said into his palm. “You’re right, I probably will explode if I don’t tell someone. Not that it’ll do any good now.” He lifted his eyes to hers, and then straightened in his seat. “Look, I…I lied. About not remembering what happened to me, when I disappeared while you were sick.”
She didn’t speak, so he went on. “I didn’t meet Laura at a gig. I met her when we were both kidnapped. Chase, Aaron, and Carrie, too. We were all grabbed at the same time.”
“Why would you lie about that?” she asked, looking more confused than hurt.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Kevin, you know I trust you more than anyone. There’s no way you’d try to cover that up if you didn’t have a good reason.”
He exhaled. “All right. The guy who did it used magic.”
Sidney blinked. “Okay, wasn’t expecting that.”
“It gets better,” said Kevin, with a faint smile. “He had to use magic to do it because he was in a parallel universe to ours, and it was the only way he could get us there.”
She didn’t seem to have a response for that revelation. After a moment, he went on, relating the whole story the best he could while keeping an eye out for the peppy waitress.
Their floats arrived as he was describing the unexpected attempt the dragons had made to rescue them from Geran’s search party. By then, Sidney was absorbed in the story, and her impatience at the interruption encouraged Kevin somewhat. He kept talking while she ate. It took so long that she completely finished her meal while she listened to him, while his sat untouched in front of him. “Wow,” she said, sitting back in her chair and frowning at the table. “Yeah, I definitely don’t blame you for lying. I’d have lied, too.”
Kevin picked up his fork and cut up his chili dog. “That’s not why. I mean, yeah, you’d think it would have been easier to make something up and try to forget about it, but I didn’t want to do that. I honestly would have tried. We all agreed to keep it a secret, though.”
“The rest of them didn’t want to tell anyone?”
“Chase didn’t want to tell anyone.”
That seemed to shock her more than the story itself. “Why not? I would’ve thought he’d have been excited to share, seeing as he’s really into fantasy and all.”
“That’s the thing,” Kevin said. He paused for a moment to scoop up a bite of chili dog, chew, and swallow it. The action earned him a very impatient look from his sister, to which he responded with a dramatic roll of the eyes. “I haven’t eaten yet because I’ve been talking to you, okay, give me a minute. Chase was terrified. What Geran did to him really fucked him up, and he didn’t think anyone would believe us. Laura said she didn’t want to make him deal with that if he didn’t want to. So we all lied to protect him.”
Sidney pondered the idea in silence, giving him the chance to devour most of his chili dog and a few bites of the melted float. “Guess I don’t blame him,” she finally said.
“I blame him,” Kevin said quietly. “If I’d told the truth back then…” He shook his head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m only telling you now because Laura told me he’s finally giving us permission. Seems like he’s finally gotten over it, or whatever, so congratu-fucking-lations to him.” He glanced down at the last bits of chili dog, but it no longer looked appetizing, so he pushed the plate away.
“If you’d told the truth…what?” Sidney asked, hesitantly.
“What do you think, Sid? Our family’s screwed up because of everything that happened that year and if I’d just told Mom and Dad, it might’ve made a difference. Maybe not a lot, but maybe enough that we’d all still be together. Now it’s too late. If I tell either of them now, they’ll just get angry, so there’s no use.” He folded his arms defensively over his chest and looked at the wall.
“Kevin,” she said, sounding very alarmed, “it’s not-"
“Don’t try to tell me it’s not my fault,” he said bitterly.
“It’s not, though,” she insisted. “Bad things happened to us, yeah, but honestly? Mom and Dad just aren’t right together. They would’ve gotten divorced eventually. My accident and you disappearing just made it happen faster. Besides, it’s not like I asked that asshole to hit me, and it’s not like you asked to be kidnapped. These things just…happen.” There was a pause. “Well, okay, people don’t get snatched into parallel realities with creepy magic every day, but whatever.”
Kevin shook his head and buried his face in his hands. He wanted desperately to believe her, but the hurt and guilt he had tried so hard to ignore had welled deep inside him and would not budge.
“Besides,” Sidney continued, “it’s not like good things haven’t happened to us, too. Aren’t you glad you met them?”
“Not right now,” he mumbled. “Chase can rot, as far as I’m concerned. Aaron’s always hated my guts, too. And Laura…” He swallowed. Laura. Fuck, I can’t start thinking about her like that again.
“Laura’s your best friend-"
“Not anymore.” His eyes were starting to burn again. “I screwed up and ruined everything. We’ve tried, but it hurts so much I can’t even look her in the eye, hardly. But I feel like I can’t keep going without her, either.” He hadn’t meant to tell Sidney any of this, let alone anyone else, but he couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of him. “I always thought that that whole mess was worth it just because I met her, and now I don’t even have that, and it’s my own fault. So what good did it do? I’m fucked up, they’re fucked up, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Sidney was silent so long that he almost forgot she was there. “Chase and Carrie have been really good friends to me,” she said, startling him even though she spoke very quietly. “They let me be in their group even though the rest of them are so much older than me. They didn’t have to do that, but I’m glad they did. I needed friends badly when I got out of the hospital. They were there. They’re still there.” She bit her lip. “I’d never have met them, if you hadn’t.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Kevin said, looking at his hands.
They paid their tab, got up, and walked out to the car. Sidney made no move to get in. Instead, she surprised Kevin with a tight hug around the waist. “I love you, Kevin,” she said. “I’m glad you told me.”
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders without hesitating, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Love you too, Sid. I’m glad you believed me.”