Secrets and Stolen Kisses

01

m a d e l y n

Generosity, boldness and love.

Since I was a teeny tiny little girl, my parents made sure I knew those words. I never really understood why those three, of all things, but I just learned to live with it. All I knew was that it meant a lot to them.

My twin brother grew up thinking the same thing. After all, our mom and dad didn't demand much from us. They just wanted to make sure we lived by those three values.

"Dude, if you want to come, you need to hurry up," Archer whined, banging on my door. "We have three days left before school starts, and Nate and I still have shit to do."

I swear, last night, I was certain he had the "love" part figured out. Guess he still had some work to do.

"If you waited two seconds, you wouldn't have had to scream at a door," I opened my bedroom door, walking past my brother and down the stairs. "Come on!"

"Please tell me we're actually finishing all the movies today," he begged, getting into the driver's seat of his car.

"We will if you two quit making me pause every single time you need to leave the room and pee," I remarked.

He groaned, starting to drive to our friend, Nate's place. "But I don't wanna miss anything important."

"Then we won't finish the movies today. We'll probably have one left," I concluded. "Unless you and Nate can sync up your pee schedules instead of going ten minutes after the last one went."

"Fuck you," he rolled his eyes at my comment.

"We both know you don't mean that, Arch."

I could tell he didn't want to admit it, but it was true. My brother and I were stuck together, whether we liked it or not. Luckily, most of the time, we were okay with it.

"You're not wrong."

Soon enough, we were at our destination. Archer parked right outside Nate's house and got out of the car, locking the doors once I got out of the passenger's side.

"You think Jake's at school?" my brother asked.

Jake was Nate's 10 year old little brother. Archer was his favorite out of the two of us, which wasn't very surprising, because when he was six, Archer was the only one who couldn't say no when he asked us to play with him.

Archer always told me he wanted a little brother. I told him Nate was enough of a brother to him, but he got his wish anyway because Jake was like a brother to him too.

"I think he started yesterday so probably," I shrugged. "You're lucky. I heard he's been playing a lot of Minecraft recently. I know how much you hate it."

Archer's face morphed into one of horror. "Remind me to ask Nate whenever we come over if he's gonna be around."

"Please, it's not that bad."

"Talking about me?" Nate opened the front door for us and led us into the house.

"Your brother, actually," I corrected him, walking with them towards Nate's room.

"Not even surprised you two are here again," Nate's dad greeted us as we walked past his office.

My brother and I turned to him and waved. "Hey, Mr. G."

Aside from being my best friend's dad, Grant Reed was also, coincidentally, my dad's best friend. Fun, right? Our dads were the reason we grew up together and became best friends.

We used to call Mr. G Uncle Grant, but when we got a little older, he asked us to start calling him Mr. G because he thought it sounded cooler. We just went with it, he was a pretty cool guy anyway.