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Charlie met them at the door to his home, welcoming and ushering them inside enthusiastically.

“Good morning, good morning!” Charlie beamed, “Well, I suppose it’s afternoon now.”

“You seem rather chipper, Dad,” Rae observed, making her way past him and into the kitchen.

“And you look like you were at a toga party last night,” Charlie commented. “Jeez, Rae, did you swing by Starbucks on the way here? Where’s your Frappuccino?”

She shot a glance at Quinn that said I told you so! He couldn’t help laughing. Charlie and Rae always thought and acted so much alike; it directly paralleled the way Margaux and Camille were so similar.

“Well, I’m sorry I don’t look more presentable. That’s apparently what happens when you get woken up by the concierge informing you that there’s a mob of people waiting to take your picture in the lobby,” said Rae, rifling through cupboards and finding the supplies to make her own iced coffee.

“Oh, well forgive me, Princess Rae. Us common folk don’t know what that’s like,” Charlie mocked. He faced Quinn. “Great, she has one paparazzi experience and is already a diva. It’s like she’s a teenager all over again. The drama never stopped with this one.”

“Oh, believe me, I remember,” Quinn replied, smirking when Rae made a face at him.

“I still can’t believe it took you two this long to get together,” Charlie said, “but I suppose, better late than never. ”

“You’re tellin’ me,” Quinn muttered under his breath, but it didn’t go unnoticed.

Charlie smiled in his direction before saying to the both of them, “Well kids, I have some work I need to get done, so I’ll be in my office if you need me.” And with that, he ducked out of the kitchen toward his study.

When Rae’s coffee finished, she poured it into two cups, giving one to Quinn before gesturing out of the kitchen and toward the stairs.

He followed and eventually found himself feeling as though he’d gone through a time warp as he stood in the doorway to Rae’s bedroom.

The walls were still the same silvery gray, with the lavender accents throughout the room.

The vanity dresser, the desk, and the bedframe were all the same.

New curtains had been put up, and on the collage wall over her desk, there were now pictures from her college years mixed in with high school, middle school, and earlier.

Quinn gravitated toward the collection of photographs, wanting to see the familiar ones he hoped would still be up there.

And there they were: Quinn and Rae at the pool when they were eight years old, the two of them playing volleyball in her backyard when they were ten, and another sitting in one of their many blanket forts, watching a movie with a giant bowl of popcorn between them.

In middle school when Chris and Jett had joined their duo, there were pictures of the four of them at the baseball field or at the park.

Quinn laughed at one in which they must’ve been playing soccer beforehand.

They looked to be about thirteen, and Jett was on his knees, ripping his shirt open, looking like he was screaming, Chris was posing like a bodybuilder with his arms flexed in front of his body, and Quinn was standing between them, the soccer ball under his arm at his hip and Rae on his back, arms wrapped around his shoulders.

In so many of these group pictures, Quinn and Rae were a pair.

They were coupled, but not a couple. They had arms wrapped around each other, leaning back-to-back, Quinn giving her a piggy-back ride or picking her up in his arms. There was one from their senior year that he was shocked to see displayed.

He wasn’t sure who had gotten the shot, but was glad the single best moment of his high school career had been documented.

It had been his last baseball game of high school- the state championship game.

The game was close the whole way through, but they didn’t have to run any extra innings because of his final home run hit.

As amazing as that hit had felt, nothing could have prepared him for what met him at the end of that run on home base.

“You were so mad all this time, but you kept all these pictures up,” he said, his gaze swiping over all the memories. Pointing to that championship photo, he grinned. “That was quite possibly...the best moment of my life.”

“It’s funny looking at these again with how different everything is now,” Rae said, searching the photos. “I guess I kind of get why everyone just assumed we’d date back then. We were all over each other without even trying to be.”

“It’s like on some level,” said Quinn, still zeroing in on his favorite picture, “we knew when we met. Maybe we fell in love when we were seven and just didn’t know what to call it.”

“I had that thought yesterday,” said Rae, smiling.

Quinn glanced at her now and saw that her eyes had fallen on the same photo he’d picked out.

Her smile turned a little mischievous and she peered at him from the side.

“Tell me something, some thought or fantasy you had when you were seventeen or eighteen.”

One eyebrow raised as a grin tugged the corner of his mouth up.

“We spent so much time in here,” Rae looked around the room, “lying next to each other in bed, sleeping across the hall from each other. Even spending time in the pool or hot tub...you had to have fantasized about doing something at one point or another.”

He could feel himself blushing as he bit his lip.

His high school fantasies were far more innocent than anything he thought of now.

Hell, they were more innocent than a lot of things he and Rae had actually done together.

Why was it so weird to express the thoughts he’d had about her when he was a teenager?

He almost felt like he was sharing someone else’s secrets.

Like the ghost of his seventeen-year-old self was sitting there in the room, waving his arms and saying “Oh my God, do NOT tell her that!” Little did seventeen-year-old Quinn know, keeping his thoughts to himself was a stupid idea that kept Rae from him for way too long.

“Okay, but they’re probably going to seem pretty mild,” Quinn said. “I mean, I was still innocent back then.”

“Not that innocent,” Rae reminded him.

Quinn nodded his head from side to side, trying to remember specific fantasies and daydreams he’d had about the two of them.

He remembered zoning out at times when they were together, especially in her bedroom, with images of himself grabbing and kissing Rae finally, taking her off guard.

He’d always imagined the kisses escalating into so much more, but that wasn’t really a fantasy.

That was just something he’d wished he had the guts to do. He sat on the bed and thought back.

“Well, I remember that first time Jett walked in on you changing, actually,” he admitted. “I obviously wished it was me. And would imagine you just letting me see you, and I’d slowly walk over and kiss you...you’d let me finish undressing you and I’d just...explore your body, I guess.”

“I do undress myself a lot,” said Rae, sitting next to him on the bed. “I suppose I could let you do that more. What else?”

“I remember when we were in the hot tub once- just the two of us. And I got hard,” Quinn chuckled shyly.

“We were sitting next to each other and you were wearing that strapless bikini top. The one you wore at my eighteenth birthday party...so it looked like you were naked. And I just kept imagining that you were. And I think I was half hoping you’d figure out I was hard for you, like if you knew you’d just..

.go with it. I pictured you grabbing onto me by accident and being shocked but then turning naughty with it. ”

“I probably would’ve,” Rae laughed. “If it was our senior year, I was definitely into you by then. We’d go to the weight room together after school and I’d wait for you to get all sweaty and I’d just stare.

Just waiting for the sweat to drip down your muscles.

It was dangerous. I almost dropped weights on myself a few times. ”

“How did I not notice that?”

“You are very focused when you lift. That might be another reason it was so sexy,” she said. “Did you ever think about sneaking into my room when you slept over?”

“I thought about you sneaking into mine,” Quinn replied.

“You’d come in while I was in bed and slip under the covers and already be naked.

” This was a regular fantasy that he’d had, especially after the pact they’d made.

He kept hoping she’d forget about waiting until the end of the year and just join him in bed and they’d take it from there.

“Would you be mad if I told you I totally considered doing that? I just didn’t want to be like all the other girls who threw themselves at you. I wanted you to come to me, I guess.”

“Why would I be mad? We were clearly on the same page at some point.” If Rae had done that, he didn’t know how he would’ve reacted.

The fantasy version of himself was a lot cooler and more collected.

In those dreams, he obviously knew what to do, but if it had actually happened, he likely would have been a fumbling, awe-struck mess.

Thinking back again to his eighteenth birthday party, he remembered Rae asking him to rub sunscreen into her back.

He’d been caught off guard at first, but quickly gained composure and was able to play it cool.

Until, of course, Charlie had interrupted.

Shit, Quinn had never been more afraid of Rae’s dad in his life.

He wasn’t exactly intimidating, but damn , that was a whole different situation.

He wondered if Rae’s intention was to turn him on.

“At my birthday party that you guys combined with the end of summer party,” Quinn began, “you had me turned on when I was rubbing that sun lotion into you. I wanted to pull you right into my lap and show you how hard it made me just to touch you.”