𝐃𝐎𝐍’𝐓 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐄 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Erik’s living room always smelled faintly like coffee and film reels. You’d spent so many hours here with him, surrounded by half-empty mugs, ink-stained notebooks, and stacks of screenplays that never made it past the rewrite stage. The two of you had been friends for years, long before he ever thought about becoming a writer.

Erik had always been the quieter one. Thoughtful, a little unsure of himself, but full of heart. He listened when you spoke, which was rare in this house. Maybe that’s why you’d grown close — the Menendez home was big enough to swallow people whole, and sometimes you both felt like ghosts haunting it.

That afternoon, you were sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, a pen between your fingers and a half-edited page of Erik’s screenplay spread across your lap. He was pacing, muttering bits of dialogue under his breath before suddenly stopping.

“You hungry?” he asked.

You didn’t even look up from the page. “Yeah, actually.”

“I’ll grab something,” he said, already reaching for his keys. “Stay here, keep working on that scene. I’ll be back soon.”

You just hummed in response, too deep in a rewrite to argue. The front door clicked shut, and the silence that followed was the comfortable kind — the type that let ideas breathe. You could hear the faint ticking of a clock somewhere in the hallway, the soft rustle of paper when you flipped to a new page.

Then came the sound of footsteps.

You didn’t look up at first. The Menendez house was always busy — the creak of a stair, a door opening, someone moving around wasn’t unusual. But then the footsteps stopped, and you could feel eyes on you. His eyes. And you didn’t have to look up to know it was him.

Lyle hadn’t meant to stop there — he’d been walking past, thinking about something else entirely, when he saw you sitting on the floor in the afternoon light, hair falling over your shoulder as you scribbled notes in the margin. For a moment, he just stood in the doorway, quiet, watching. There was something about the way you looked when you didn’t notice him — unguarded, focused, soft in a way that made his chest ache.

You two weren’t supposed to be anything more than friends — not here, not under this roof. But there were moments like this, small and stolen, when he couldn’t help himself. When looking felt like remembering something only the two of you knew.

He leaned against the doorframe, the corner of his mouth twitching up slightly — not in mockery this time, but in something almost tender.

You finally looked up, sensing him there, a soft smile tugging at your lips. “Can I help you?”

Lyle’s grin deepened, just a hint of that teasing spark you knew too well. “Oh, no, no. Don’t mind me.”

But the way he said it was soft, low.

You tried to go back to your notes, pretending his gaze wasn’t tracing over you from across the room, pretending you didn’t feel it. And maybe he pretended too — that he was only watching, not remembering the secret nights spend together and phone calls after you left the house.