Just Friends [✓]

22. Veterans of War

[VOTE & COMMENT for Co-habitation!]

Chapter 22 "Veterans of War"

Holy Ground – Taylor Swift

Spencer's POV

"Eight." Jake dead-panned, standing next to Abby by Ethan's bedroom door while the latter and I sat on the tip of his bed. "I give you both eight hours before this falls apart."

"Ha!" Ethan folded his arms. "I ha! at your inept and hasty conclusion. Me and Spencer have been dating for six months and a week now and have known each other for longer. We know each other well enough to be Siamese Twins, or telepathic alien brothers from Mars. I think we can handle living together." Ethan said and the last two words echoed, not in the room (at least I didn't think it did) but somewhere in between my auditory canal and my brain.

When Ethan and I first started to try and find solutions to the problem of me moving as it concerned us, living together was one I had immediately scratched off of the list because, well, my folks would never hear of it.

But, in a move that left me stupefied and had Ethan drooling at the mouth momentarily, Dad said "yes".

And not just a simple 'yes' after a hardened gaze following a long and intense battle of words with rhetoric argument, valid points/graphs/PowerPoint presentations and an award winning speech that left him no choice but to grant me my wish of staying with the Littmans. Oh no. It was the softest I had ever heard his voice and that smile; I didn't think the edges of his lips could curve that far upward. I haven't seen that big a smile since I roundly defeated that blind girl, Abigail Brimley in the spelling bee in 3rd grade.

And that's how I knew something was up. No parent in their right mind would allow their child to move in with their horny, teenage boyfriend (even without the chance of pregnancy) while they switched states. Especially ones who didn't want you to participate in the walk for breast cancer because we would seem to liberal to their conservative bosses.

But here I was in Ethan's bedroom that had been painted a baby blue color and oddly smelled like hotdogs with three duffle bags full of clothing, two backpacks with DVDs, video games and albums and a whole lot of resentment.

This had to be a lesson I was supposed to learn. Something along the lines of Ethan and I were going to be separated and living together definitely wasn't the answer. Some sitcom narrative that I was supposed to understand, but I'd show them. I'd live with Ethan and we'd be the best damn co-habitation couple that this side of Idaho had ever seen; one so damn great that they'd have no choice but to make a sitcom about us.

So great they'd forget the names Rachel and Ross or Sam and Dianne or SpongeBob and Patrick.

"You guys haven't thought this through." Russo noted, sitting on one of my many suitcases with his back to the TV screen and his eyes facing us. "The reason you two work so well is because you don't live together."

Ethan scoffed. "What the hell are you talking about, Russo."

The Asian-American rolled his eyes. "Think about it, E. You and Spencer's relationship works because you're so different. You balance one another out just right enough that you don't claw each other's eyes out. " Ethan opened his mouth but Russo quickly cut him off, "That wasn't a reference to you being gay." His mouth closed back.

"As I was saying, you two spend just the right amount of time together that your relationship stays balanced. Think of it like an experiment: if you add just the right amount of the substances, wonderful things happen. Add too much and boom, Cancer."