only slightly less painful than either Hyde or Evangeline had been imagining. It's almost like a normal, family meal. They have pleasant conversation, intermixed with bickering and painfully awkward silences. Maggie actually seems to take an interest in Hyde and what is going on in his life. Evangeline keeps glancing wearily between the two the whole time, waiting for her grandma to pull her aside and lecture her about a boy in the house when she's not home.

"So, Steven, you're a senior?" Maggie takes the tiniest bite of her salad that Hyde has ever seen. After the fuss she had made about lunch, Hyde had expected something extravagant, or at least something slightly more involved, and appetizing, than just salad and some bread. Evie attacks her second loaf, dipping it into the same olive oil dribbling down her chin as she takes a bite. "At Point Place High?"

He gives Evie's grandma a tiny nod, glancing at Evie out of the corner of his eye and swallowing the leafy green joy down painfully. He clears his throat and looks the woman drowning her meal in italian dressing. "Yeah, I'll graduate this year—or next year, whatever."

Maggie nods, holding his gaze for a second as if searching for something in his words. Then she turns to Evangeline who has pushed her salad towards the middle and is chowing down on a piece of bread slathered in butter. "Evangeline should be a senior too." She takes another bite as Evie sends her a glare, very different from the playful, teasing one she gives Hyde.

"Grandma," she says warningly; a few crumbs fall from her open mouth as she speaks. "I'm going to school next year."

"No, you aren't. We already talked about this." Maggie's tone says the case is closed, but Evie bounces back with no we didn't, which tell Hyde that it isn't done. "Evangeline! Later," Maggie says as Evie continues to argue her going to school. Hyde can't understand why she wouldn't be going to school next year or why she would want to go anyway, especially if she's being offered a way out. He personally spends most of his time figuring out ways to avoid being at school. "Steven, what do you plan to do after high school?"

Hyde pauses, unsure of what to say. The older woman stares at him with an intensity that bores straight into his soul. Her eyes say that she can read his inner thoughts. Hyde glances down at his plate, taking another bite to avoid her gaze. "I'm not sure," he says honestly after a moment. "Maybe college. Maybe something else."

Maggie hums and takes a final bite of her meal, the clattering of her fork as it hits the plate echoing through up into the vaulted ceiling. "Well, higher education isn't for everyone." Maggie pushes her chair back, picking up her empty plate and dropping it in the sink.

Evangeline's mouth falls open as Hyde's eyebrows scrunch together. "Grandma!" She grabs her own dishes and drops them into the sink and starts a heated conversation that Hyde can't hear. Evangeline starts waving her arms around before crossing them over her chest, tapping her foot anxiously as her grandma whispers something back to her, equally as incensed.

Hyde takes a piece of bread and gobbles it up, not bothering to clean up the mess he made on the table. He listens as Maggie repeats her earlier sentiment and Evie groans loudly and stomps off up the stairs.

Both Maggie and Hyde follow her with their eyes until she disappears behind her slammed door. Maggie sighs and returns to scrubbing. Steven remembers Evie telling him once that even though they own a dishwasher, her grandma refuses to wash anything in it because things don't get cleaned the way they're supposed to.

"Uh, Mrs. Ross, should I help you clean or—?" Hyde tentatively asks, not because he wants to actually clean, but he isn't quite sure what he's supposed to do after that familial interaction. He brings her all the dishes he can carry, slightly ashamed of the half-eaten salad on his own plate.

Maggie shakes her head and glances at him briefly. "Don't worry about it, Steven." She unloads the dish-ware from his arms and gives him the tiniest a hint of a smile, the first semblance of sympathy he's seen from her. "You should go make sure she's okay."

With a slow nod he backs up a step before twisting on his heel and taking the stairs two at a time. He knocks on the door waiting for the tiny come in that he hears from behind the solid wood. "What was that about?"

"She's always like that." Evie collapses onto her bed, covering her face and sighing heavily. "She always has to have things her way."

"Why doesn't she want you to go back to school?" Evie purses her lips, her eyes flickering to the box that's now shoved halfway into her closet. Hyde sinks down next to her, wrapping his fingers around her hand. She looks back at him and the corners of her lips quirk up in a small smile before falling back into a frown. "If I was you, I would take not going to school all day."

"The alternative is worse," Evie says, pulling him to her side and guiding his arm over her shoulder.

Hyde leans his head against hers and runs his hand up and down her arm comfortingly. "What's the alternative?"

"Living with my grandma forever. Never leaving Point Place again." Evangeline thinks about never returning to the white, sandy beaches of the Carolinas and her heart sinks. In the few years she'd been there, she had fallen in love and returning here had been unbearable. Until she stumbled upon the one thing that made it better.

"What's so bad about this place? I'm here." Hyde pokes her side teasingly as she agrees with a laugh, saying it's not that she doesn't love the people, she just hates the place. "Yeah, it's pretty much a dead end for people like you, huh?"

"What do you mean 'people like me?'" Evangeline furrows her brow at his choice of words.

Hyde presses a kiss to her forehead. "People who're way too smart to stay in a town who's main commodity is slaughtering." They both laugh as they think about just how much their town relies on the killing of animals to keep it running at any capacity. "You could do anything—what do you want to do?"

"I don't know either. And it kills Maggie. She subscribes to the belief that you need to have your life figured out before you turn eighteen." Evangeline scoffs, stretching out her legs and leaning her head back against the headboard. "Like she did. Well, I'm already there and I have no idea past high school. And now, that might be gone." The last part she says so quietly, Hyde is barely able to catch it.

"She just cares about you," Hyde says in an attempt to placate her. It may be a backhanded way of going about it, but Hyde can see how her actions could stem from a love for her granddaughter. "You know, you say she doesn't like very many people, but just from the sheer number of pictures of you alone, and not to mention people I'm guessing are related to you—either that, or she has some sort of fetish for beautiful blond people—" Evie laughs, grabbing his hands as he pokes her stomach again— "I'd say she probably likes you. Probably cares about you."

Evangeline's face twists into one of unbelief, shrugging half-heartedly as her fingers reach for their favorite thing—Hyde's chest. "Cares about her reputation, more like it."

Hyde hums his disagreement, but doesn't say anything. His arms snake around her waist and pull her body as close to his as possible. "Can I ask you something?" Evangeline nods as Steven pulls her into his lap. "Why'd you leave this morning?" he asks, his lips hovering over her ear and sending a chill down Evie's spine.

"'Cause another thing my grandma doesn't approve of is people who aren't married sharing a bed, or much of anything else, no matter how innocent." Evangeline arches her neck as Steven pushes her onto her back, and, supported by his elbows, leans his head down to brush the scruff of his beard against her chin, eliciting a giggle from her lips. "But I like sharing a bed with you."

"Me too," he mumbles against the underside of her chin, pressing gentle kisses to the soft skin. He meets her gaze for a brief second before his eyes flicker to her lips and back. It was quick, but the quick motion lights her cheeks on fire. "Evie, I really wanna kiss you."

Instead of answering the boy's whispered words, she tilts her chin towards his, brushing their noses together, slanting her lips over his delicately. They move slowly at first, the initial unfamiliarity of the action only hindering them for a brief second, before Evangeline is rapt by the taste of his tongue in her mouth, earthy with a hint of sweetness and completely addicting.

Steven squeezes her waist, gripping onto the spongey material of her sweatshirt as she bites the tip of his tongue, causing him to retreat back into his mouth in surprise, before she takes the dominant position.

Evangeline slides her hands underneath his shirt over his bristly chest, his muscles tensing under wherever she moves her fingers. She hooks one leg around his and pulls him closer to her with her hands woven into his curly hair. This one blows their first kiss out of the water, and tops all others she's ever received from any other guy. Hyde is sweet and gentle but at the same time firm and commanding in a way that makes her toes curl and her stomach clench in delight.

When Hyde pulls away, she makes a dissatisfied sound at the back of her throat, making the boy smile. In consolation, he pecks her lips a few times, brushing away that pesky lock of hair that won't ever stay in its place. "I didn't realize how much I wanted to do that until just now."

"Can we do it again?" Evie flutters her eyelashes innocently and spreads her fingers over his warm skin.

Hyde shakes his head, burying his beard in the crook of her neck again. "As much as I'd love to, I feel I wouldn't be able to stop myself and, well—if that's something you even want—I wouldn't want to do it in your grandma's house. No offense." He chuckles to himself and brushes his bristly beard underneath her chin, obsessed with the the way she laughs like she hasn't a care in the world.

"Another time then, perhaps," Evangeline says, throwing him a cheeky wink as she wriggles out from under him, the hem of her hoodie riding up to reveal a hint of bare skin underneath. She sashays over to her record player, bending over to put on a record, which give Hyde a full view of her lace-covered ass.

"Can you wear that sweatshirt again next time?" Hyde smirks as she spins around and starts dancing to the first song that plays. "There's something incredibly sexy about a girl wearing a sweatshirt and nothing else."

"Is there now?" she asks, crawling towards him from the foot of the bed, the neckline of the hoodie sagging as she crawls towards him. Evie straddles his waist, setting her hands on his shoulders as he snakes his arms around her lower back to support her. "Maybe I will. One thing you have to know, though."

"What's that?" Hyde asks, the whisper of her lips against his sending his heart into overdrive.

Evie pushes Hyde onto his back and trails her fingers seductively down his chest towards the waistband of his sweats. Her face hovers and inch over his, her hot breath fanning his face as she says, "I prefer to be on top."

A wicked grin stretches across the boy's face as he cranes his neck to kiss the blonde again. "Fine by me," he whispers, as her fingers toy with the strings of his pants. This girl is driving him crazy, and he loves it.

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i rewrote this like chapter like six times 'cause i had no idea where i wanted to go with it

but i figured it out lol

hope it's good?

honestly idek lmao