She's Glitter and Gold

"Sweetie, do you mind grabbing the eggs for me?" my mom asks over the sound of the mixer.
I get up from the table and go to the fridge. "What are you making?" I ask as I hand her the carton and try looking over her shoulder at the opened cookbook.
"Cookies for the boys."
"Boys?" I ask questioningly. Unless she'd had a few extra kids I didn't know about, Bonnie and I were her only children.
"Alex and the band," she clarifies as she cracks an egg into the bowl. "Jack especially. I swear, that boy eats nothing but pizza."
I laugh and go back to my seat at the table. "Tell me about it. I brought him grocery shopping the other day because all he had in the house was beer."
She glances over her shoulder at me and smiles. "You two seem to be getting on well," she comments, her casual voice hinting.
I roll my eyes and curl my legs up onto my chair. "We're just friends."
"Mhmm," she hums, not sounding convinced. "So, where were you Sunday night? You never came home." Her voice is full of teasing and I know she knows exactly where I'd been.
"The roads were really bad," I say defensively. "I crashed on his couch." I don't add that he was on the couch with me, because that would sound like we were more than friends. Which we aren't. We're just friends and we hardly know each other and I just got out of a relationship. Nothing more than friends.
God, why am I having to convince myself ? "He's a really nice boy," she says as she starts putting chocolate chip cookie dough onto a pan.
"That's nice," I say, acting like I'm unaware of her hinting.
She falls silent for a while, and I start back at filling out job applications online. After a while she asks, "You're staying for Christmas, right?"
I look up from the laptop and find her looking at me hopefully. "Yeah. I probably will," I say with a shrug, earning a bright smile from my mom.
"Oh, good!" she says happily as she turns to pull the cookies out of the oven.

An hour or so later my mom finds me in my room, a plate wrapped in tinfoil in her hands. "Would you mind running these over to Jack's for me?" she asks as she tries to hide an obvious smile.
"Can't Bonnie?" I ask with a raised eyebrow.
Before my mom can reply, Bonnie yells from her room, "CAN'T, SUPER BUSY WITH HOMEWORK!"
I sigh, sensing this to be a small conspiracy, and stand up and take the plate from her. "Let me get dressed," I say as I shut the door behind her.
I strip out of my hoodie and sweats and into jeans and an absolutely hideous, red Christmas sweater that's decked out with little white reindeer. I grab his clothes that I had yet to return and the cookies before leaving my room. "Take your time," my mother yells from the kitchen. She wasn't subtle at all.

JACK'S POV:

"Hey sexy," I say into my phone.
"Where are you?" Rihanna asks, ignoring my super romantic greeting.
"On my way home from Alex's," I reply as I turn off of the main road and onto a back one. "Why?"
"I'm in your driveway. My mom made you cookies."
I'm immediately more cheerful, and I don't know if it's because I'm going to see Rihanna, or if it's because of the cookies. Probably both. "Fuck yes," I say excitedly. "The front door should be unlocked. I'll be there in like, five minutes."
We hang up and I happily hum along with the annoying Taylor Swift song that's on the radio.
Even though I have yet to score with her, I like hanging around Rihanna. The way she smiles and laughs is almost addicting, and I love the way she blushes or rolls her eyes whenever I say something sexual.
Stop , I order myself. I don't like her like that. She's just a friend I want to have sex with. I'm not interested romantically
I continue to try convincing myself of this until I pull into my driveway and walk in the front door. "Honey, I'm home," I yell as I kick off my sneakers.
"In the kitchen," she calls back and I follow her voice until I find her in said room, loading the dishwasher.
"I can do that," I say with a small frown. "I'm not helpless."
She laughs and my stomach does a weird turn at the sound. "You're a guy," she says as she smiles at me. "That's synonymous for being helpless."
"I take offense to that," I say as I pick up the foil-covered plate off the counter and find a bunch of cookies underneath. "Nice sweater, by the way," I comment when I notice the awful Christmas pattern.
"Isn't it super sexy?" she asks as she finishes loading and running the dishwasher.
She turns so she's facing me and dries her hands on the front of her dark jeans. "Totally hot," I agree as I take a bite of a cookie. "I'm pretty sure my grandma has the same one."
"Your grandma's pretty stylish," she comments as she takes a cookie from the plate. "Fuck, I missed her cookies," she says through a mouthful of chocolate chip amazingness.
I smirk at her. "She's been supplying me with them since Balex started happening."
Her eyebrows draw together and she asks, "Balex?"
I grin at her confusion. "It's what the fans call Bonnie and Alex," I explain. "Like Bradgelina."
Her eyebrows shoot up. "My sister has a celebrity couple name?" she asks, sounding a little impressed.
I nod and eat what I think is my sixth cookie. "We could have one," I tease. "Jianna or..." My eyes widen and a slow grin spreads across my face. "Rack! We could be Rack!" I start performing my own personal cover of Rack City, resulting in her giggling and throwing half of a cookie at my face.
"You're a weirdo," she informs me as she goes to grab another cookie.
I hold the plate just out of her reach. "No cookies for people who throw cookies at Jack."
She pouts and bats her long eyelashes at me. "Please Jacky?" she asks in a baby voice.
"Puppy dog eyes don't work on me," I smirk, making her frown and she tries jumping for the plate. I laugh and hold them up even higher. "You're not getting any," I taunt as I reach my other hand up to grab a cookie and stuff it in my mouth.
She stops jumping and starts pouting again, and I swear her eyes get even bluer. "You're not very nice," she whines and she steps closer to me, her eyes widening even more.
"Says the girl who threw perfectly good cookie at me," I shoot back and try to ignore that she's so close to me that if I took a really deep breath my chest would be touching her boobs.
Her bottom lip sticks out even further and I really want to kiss it. Or bite it. Or both. "It was self defense," she says matter of factly. "I mean, you were singing Tyga. What was I supposed to do?"
I can't help but smile at how cute she is right now, and I find it a little hard focusing on our conversation because she drew her lip back in and licked it once, and made my urge to kiss her a hundred times stronger. "Kissing always makes me shut up," I say with a shrug.
I look up from her lips, only to find her eyes trained on my mouth. "I'll keep that in mind," she says, her voice a little softer.
"What are the chances of me getting punched if I kissed you right now?" I ask as our faces seem to be moving closer.
"Fifty-fifty," she replies as a small smirk plays across her lips.
And so I do it. I cock my head to the side and press my lips against hers as my eyes shut.
Her lips kiss mine back softly, and I lower my arm and set the plate on the counter so I can put my hands on her waist. One of her hands rests on the back of my neck and for some reason this kiss, that's severely lacking tongue and intensity, feels like the best kiss ever.
"Hey Jack?" she murmurs against my lips.
"Hmm?" I open my eyes reluctantly and see a red-faced, grinning Rihanna grinning up at me.
"I got a cookie," she informs me, and before my brain can process what she said, she's bolting from the kitchen.
"THIEF!" I yell as I run after her, but she's already out the front door. I watch her as she hurriedly gets into her car and waves at me with an evil grin, before stuffing the stolen cookie in her mouth and driving away. "Bitch," I mutter to myself. With a laugh I walk back into my house, and try to fight off the weird, butterfly feeling.