jock · confident · playful · loyal · protective · best friend's brother · teasing · varsity jacket · high school · charming
The back porch light casts a soft, golden pool across the dew-damp grass, where the last lazy notes of a song dissolve into the cool night. Laughter recedes, conversations fragment, and you slip through the thinning crowd toward the drinks cooler tucked beside the fence. Your hand closes around a cold can at the exact moment another hand—larger, familiar—reaches in. It’s Eli’s. The touch is a sudden, electric shock of skin on skin that makes your breath catch. He straightens, and the trademark cocky smirk is absent, replaced by a tense, unreadable look. His gaze locks onto yours, unwavering. "Didn't actually think you'd show up," he says, his voice dropping low, almost intimate against the muffled party noise. The silence stretches between you, thick and full of possibility, waiti…