Chapter Text
“I’ll do it.”
“What?”
Azriel shrugged, finishing off the last bit of his beer in a single, open-mouthed gulp.
Nesta stared at him incredulously.
Under her scrutinizing gaze, Azriel did not balk. Instead, he ordered another beer for each of them and leaned back in his bar stool to look her over. His face was even, but his eyes danced with a subtle spark.
“Are you drunk?”
“Maybe,” Azriel shrugged again, casually laying one arm over the back of Nesta’s bar stool. She watched the gesture with wide eyes. “But that has nothing to do with my answer.”
“Sure,” she scoffed, chugging the last sips of her own beer before moving on to the fresh, frothy one the bartender set in front of her. “I was just joking. You don’t want to do this.”
“I do,” he said, starting off his fresh beer, too. His thumb wiped a single line over his top lip, catching the dampness left there. Nesta was staring. Darkly, Azriel chuckled, “why is it so hard to believe that I would do this for you?”
Snapping herself out of her short-circuited gaze, Nesta pulled her eyes away from Azriel’s lips and intently focused on the dissipating foam of her beer. Now it was her turn to shrug. “After all the stories I’ve told you of how obnoxious my sisters—and their husbands—are, I didn’t think there’d be anyone volunteering to spend a beach vacation with them. While pretending to be my boyfriend nonetheless.”
Nesta traced the path of a single drop of condensation down the side of her glass. The bar was hot and sweaty, the humidity from the outside practically seeping through the walls. The air conditioning didn’t stand a chance against this heat wave. When the drop finally hit the bar top and Azriel still hadn’t said anything, Nesta assumed that he had actually been joking. Some small part of her deflated, but Nesta cursed the emotion as quickly as it came.
Azriel’s face gave no indication of his thoughts. He was openly looking at her, mouth pulled resting in a straight, simple line. His contemplative silence prevailed.
Nesta’s eyes flared wide as she tipped her head towards him, trying to coax an answer out of him.
Deep in his throat, he let out a single chuckle, wetting his lips with his beer again. And again, Nesta watched, enamored, as he used his thumb to wipe at his top lip once more.
A small smile formed on his face when he looked directly into Nesta’s eyes and said, “how about instead of thinking about it as a family vacation with your obnoxious sisters and their obnoxious husbands,” he said obnoxious like he believed Nesta to be exaggerating. To which she had to roll her eyes in response. Still, she found herself hanging on to his every word. “We instead think about it as a beach vacation with each other.”
Warmth fluttered through Nesta, and it had nothing to do with the heat wave outside or the thick beer settling deep in her stomach. “Are you sure?”
Arm still tucked on the back of her chair, Azriel swiped a thumb over her shoulder exposed from her tank top. Goosebumps licked over her skin. He leaned into her conspiratorially, delight dancing in his eyes. “Absolutely, baby.” And then he winked.
*****
“So Feyre is married to Rhys—Feyre is the youngest. I think you might have met her once. I’m not really sold on Rhys. We get on each other’s nerves. They met at some frat party in college while she was still dating this other guy and she’s really embarrassed about it. So don’t ask about it. And Elain is our middle sister. She’s married to Lucien, who’s a pretty good guy. They’ve been married for like two years, but we only ever see them for holidays because they live in Boston now. Honestly, for them to make the drive down here to go to the shore is surprising.”
Nesta looked out the window of Azriel’s truck, watching as the familiar trees of the highway flew by. Her family had been going to this beach since she was a kid, but they hadn’t gone in recent years after their father got sick and passed away. When Feyre suggested a family vacation, just the three sisters, something had broken in Nesta realizing that they were all the family she had left. This road was the same, but everything was different.
“Feyre is going to try and do things the same way they’ve always been. Same ice cream shop, same diner, same board games. And Elain is going to hate her for it because she can’t stand to do the same traditions now that nothing is the same.” Nesta thought about it for a moment, realizing that she fell somewhere in between her sisters’ thought processes on how to handle old memories and new memories. “Actually, I think that’s why Elain left Philly to move to Boston.”
Azriel nodded, but did not say anything else. With his wrist draped over the steering wheel and the air conditioning blasting, ruffling his hair ever so slightly, Nesta couldn’t help but find herself staring again, caught by the intensity of being alone with him.
Thank god his eyes were focused on the road.
She cleared her throat, and continued to prepare Azriel for their week ahead, nerves causing more and more thoughts to bubble out of her. “Elain and Lucien actually met through Feyre. She and Lucien both worked as teachers at the same high school. Feyre introduced them, they hit it off, and the rest is history.”
Again, Azriel nodded.
Nesta considered what else she needed to prepare Azriel for, feeling the need to preface the whole week. “They’re nice people, we just don’t really get along—we’re not really close. At least not anymore. Well actually, I don’t think Feyre and I ever really got along. But Elain and I used to be best friends. Until college.”
“What happened?”
She snapped her head to him, surprised by his prompting question.
He smirked at her reaction. “I am listening.”
“I know,” she said. “But I’m aware I’m rambling.”
He shrugged, checking over his shoulder to switch lanes.
Nesta sighed, answering his question. “I don't know what exactly happened. With Feyre, we were always at different stages of life. She was always just young enough to not be able to go on the same roller coasters as me, to be into the same video games as me, to like the same bands as me. She was in middle school when I got my license, and that really was just the end of me ever really being around her again.”
Azriel huffed out a laugh, his imagination painting some picture that Nesta was not privy to.
“But with Elain, we were close enough in age to do all those things together. Sure, she was younger, but we played games together, we bonded over boy bands. She and Feyre shared a room, but Elain was always hanging out in mine. And then by the time we got to high school, she was old enough to be friends with me and my friends. We went to football games together, had math class together. She and I even sat at the same table at my senior and her junior prom. But once we both were in college, we stopped talking as much, especially after our mom died. I stayed in Philly, she went to South Carolina. We texted, but not like we did before. Until eventually not at all. And then when we both moved back home after we graduated, it was never really the same.” It had been a long time since Nesta had pieced through these memories, stringing them all together to see the timeline of their relationship. She was surprised at how much it hurt.
“You used to go to football games?”
A ragged laugh escaped her, distracting her from the discomfort. “That’s what you’re focused on?”
“You just don’t seem like the type of person to go to high school football games.”
“Not anymore. But I was pretty popular in high school.” Nesta smirked, voice taunting, “I always went to those games with a date.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Nesta said, dispelling the tension. “You seem like the kind of guy who was a loner in high school.”
Azriel shrugged, taking no offense. “That’s because I was. Still am.”
“You weren’t a loner in college.”
“I was. You just didn’t notice because you were in the select group of people I cared to talk to.”
Nesta hummed in understanding, feeling much the same about Azriel being of the select group of people she cared to talk to now, too. Their friend group was small—just the way they both liked it. “We’re quite similar. Maybe we would have gotten along in high school, too.”
“I wasn’t going to any football games.” Azriel peeked a glance at Nesta, letting his voice drift with a hint of whimsy he hardly ever let show, “but I would have just so I could've kicked your date’s ass.”
“Asses.” Her smile was wide and silly—triumphant even. “It was a different date every week.”
Azriel grunted, narrowing his eyes at her with humor before returning them back to the road and settling them into a comfortable silence.
Nesta was wearing a tank top but even with the air conditioning blasting, the cab of Azriel’s truck was incredibly hot. The heat wave was relentless and it was an old car. “Think I can roll down a window?”
Azriel chuckled. “You don’t have to ask.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in your car before. Some people are weird about it,” she said, leaning down and biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing when she realized it was a crank window.
“You’ve been in my car before.”
“Never,” she said, slightly louder as she stuck her hand out the window and played with the warm, rushing highway wind.
“You’re wrong.”
“It’s not. Cassian always drives when we’re all together. Besides, I think I would remember having been in your grandpa truck.”
“It’s not a grandpa truck.”
She shot him a death glare, trying to level with him. “There’s a cassette player.”
He stole a look at her. And then had to do a double take at her challenge, eyes squinting with dissent. “Whatever,” he finally grumbled.
Nesta rolled the window back up, satisfied with the air flow, but annoyed with the noisiness of the rising wind. Besides, it was practically a hundred degrees outside, nothing was going to cool her off. A casual silence returned.
This time, Azriel broke it first. “Well, what about us?”
“What about us?”
“How did we meet?”
“We are friends. We don’t have to make up a fake story.”
Azriel sucked on his teeth, but smiled politely. “I didn’t realize you’d be okay sharing that story with your sisters.”
Nesta thought about the night she met Azriel in college—what she could remember. Really thought about how they met. And cringed. “Okay, on second thought, why don’t we just generalize and say ‘college’ and avoid that story altogether.”
“You got it, baby.” He said the term of endearment without a bit of jest, but his deep voice made the word feel like molasses rolling between them, getting caught on every crevice of her body and warming her to the core.
“And keep calling me baby.” Nesta bit her lip. “Feyre will like that.”
“Mhmm. And what about what you like?”
“What?”
Azriel used his free hand to drum against his leg, shifting in his seat. “Well, what do you usually like your boyfriend to do?”
“I’ve never really been in a relationship per se. Unless you want to count Tomas—“
Azriel grunted, cutting her off at the mention of Tomas’s name. He had witnessed the shitshow that was her situationship with Tomas and had never been quiet about his well-placed antagonism for the man. In the end, Azriel had been correct about the man’s character, yet she would never admit that.
But some secret part of Nesta warmed at Azriel’s reaction. She added, “I also never brought him around my sisters, so they don’t really know what I like in a partner to be verifying anything you do.”
“That’s good, but not exactly what I meant.” Suddenly, Azriel got really serious. He put both hands on the wheel, formally placed at the ten and two positions. He sat up in his seat and cleared his throat. And although he was looking intently at the road, Nesta felt his words like a cool breeze on her skin. “Nes, I want you to enjoy yourself this week. My being on your family vacation is supposed to make this easier for you, not add another layer of stress. So tell me what you like—even if we’re just pretending.” Nesta’s breath caught in her throat at the low register of his voice. “And I’ll do it.”
“Okay,” she breathed, stunned. “I’m not really sure what I like.”
“Well, is there anything you definitely don’t like?”
“As long as you don’t get super drunk and handsy and call me a bitch in front of everyone I know, you’ll do just fine.” Her tone was light and sarcastic, but her words held an intense gravity.
Azriel swallowed. “I really hate that guy.”
She tried to play it off as not the big of a deal with a simple click of her tongue, but her heart began to race at even the memory. “I know.”
“I can promise you, I will not do that.”
“Then you’re already streets ahead.”
His hair hung in front of his eyes as he briefly hung his head to chuckle to himself, clearing the air of any residual tension from talking about Tomas.
Nesta was intent on making the most of this vacation because Azriel was right. The whole purpose of bringing her friend along as her boyfriend was to stop her sisters from bothering her about her dating life and to have someone to pair-off with when her obnoxious sisters inevitably paired off with their husbands. “Feel free to do whatever you like in relationships. I want you to have fun, too.”
“I assure you I will. We’re not even there yet, and this is already the best vacation I’ve ever been on.”
Nesta’s smile was genuine, easing any of her worries as she laid back in her seat.