moved marginally, even with his head tilted back so he could look at me. "You knew my Aunt Maggie?"
I couldn't have stopped myself from reaching up and adjusting his frames if I'd actually wanted to, and I definitely didn't want to.
He gasped, his mouth falling open and his eyes nearly crossing as they tracked my hand until I slowly pulled it away, leaving his glasses in place.
"I came by one day to say hi to you, the summer after I graduated, but you had already moved by then."
His entire body jerked slightly, his expression somehow even more shocked. "You came by to talk to me?"
"Yeah. We were friends, right?"
"No," he said, shaking his head slowly. I blinked, raising my eyebrows, and he gasped. "Oh! I would have been your friend. I just didn't know we were friendly. We were friendly?"
Damn. That's cute. And Maddox hadn't been exaggerating. The man was oblivious.
I huffed out a small laugh. "Well, you were my friend."
He bit his lower lip, cringing slightly before his eyes widened. "Are you busy? I just made dinner, and I have plenty." Pausing, he tilted his head, making his glasses slide slightly. "Maybe I should have asked if you're hungry."
We both looked down at my stomach with wide eyes as the thing growled.
"This isn't because you feel guilty because you didn't know we were friends, right?" I asked, after a moment, drawing his attention back to my face.
He scrunched his nose, once again trying to get his glasses back in the correct place and nodded. "No, it absolutely is."
I laughed, shrugging my shoulders. "Eh, I'll take it."
Nodding, he turned, leading me back around the back side of the house and up the back steps, glancing over his shoulder at me several times with an odd look on his face.
"You haven't changed much in here," I said, looking around at the time capsule of a house.
It had actually only been a couple of years since I'd been in there, but the only thing that didn't look exactly the same as it had the last time I'd gone inside was the tropical fish tank sitting on the table behind the couch.
He motioned to the couch, tilting his head to the side. "Did you visit my aunt a lot?"
Smiling, I shrugged. "A few times."
Like at least once a week until she got sick and went to live with him.
I suddenly noticed something else that I was pretty sure I hadn't seen back when Maggie was still living in the house, and I smirked at the half-formed replica of a castle that looked straight out of Super Mario Brothers.
"Legos?" I questioned, biting my lip when he watched my mouth for a long moment before letting his gaze find the blocks.
Groaning, he let his head fall back on his shoulders. "Building things helps me when I'm stressed."
"Are you stressed?"
Shrugging, he moved toward the kitchen, glancing back at me for a short moment. "A little. New job. Being here without Maggie."
I nodded, and he went into the kitchen, coming back a moment later with a plate in each hand and two cans of pop tucked into the corner of his arm.
"She was really proud of you," I said, helping him set everything down on the table, and he raised both eyebrows. "Talked about you all the time. "
He smiled sweetly, sitting down on the couch a couple of feet away. "She was amazing."
"Why did you move?"
I immediately regretted my question when his face fell, taking the sweet smile and a little of the light from his eyes.
"I had to. My dad never signed over custody of me to my aunt. I think it was so he could still claim me as a dependent, even though he didn't actually take care of me."
I frowned, nodding. "Maggie wasn't happy with your dad. I'm starting to guess why."
"You would probably be right. Maggie grew to hate the man before she passed. Turns out, he came up with this amazing plan to get everything he wanted using my credit, and he was worried he'd need me there for some of it. I didn't realize what he was doing until it was too late. Not that I would have been able to do much about it anyway. I almost didn't get to graduate. He moved us out to the middle of nowhere and would disappear with the car for days. The school was twelve miles from my house. Thankfully, there was this nice lady who lived a few miles from me