Dres is nervous for Thanksgiving. Which is new. Dres being nervous about anything, honestly, is a strange turn of events. That's usually my preordained role. I wake up that Thursday with a slew of texts from him, sent as early as five a.m. He's freaking out in a very Cas-like fashion.

     I scroll through my messages, eyes burning and watering from the brightness. It's only now nine a.m., still too early for me to be up when I don't have not a single obligation, no swim or work. The only obligation I have is to show up at the table at three with a hefty appetite, and I fully intend to oblige.

     Dres's texts start off normal enough. Are any of your family members allergic to nuts? The first one reads. Valid question, food allergies are certainly important to note.

     How do we feel about a new take on the pecan pie? Walnuts?

     I've never had a walnut pie before, but I'm sure if there's anybody who could pull it off, it's Dres.

     Never mind, I'll just stick with traditional. Your grandparents are probably old school.
     Does anybody actually eat sweet potato pie? I'll make one to be on the safe side.
     Should I bring gluten-free options?

     And it goes on, play-by-play of all his baking choices. From flour choices to cookie shapes. It is too much to dissect this early in the morning through text, so I call him.

     Dres answers the phone with, "I burnt the apple pie."

     "I love burnt apple pie," I say, my voice scratchy with sleep.

    "I don't have any more apples," Dres responds, sounding both distracted and distressed.

     "So don't do apple pie. You did the pecan, right?"

     "You can't not have apple pie."

     "Nobody really eats pie on Thanksgiving, anyway."

     "Everyone eats pie on Thanksgiving."

     "Fine, I'll go to the store right now and bring you apples. It'll take thirty minutes."

     "I already ran to the only place that's open and they're completely out of apples." Dres sounds so forlorn, I get the impression he may fake sick and not come at all. God forbid he arrive to a family event sans apple pie. What kind of impression would he make with only seven other pies in hand?

     I try to keep my tone neutral when I say, "Do you want me to go and pick you three pounds of apples from the nearest orchard? I will literally go apple stealing through everyone's backyard for you. Give me sixty minutes."

     "This isn't a joking matter," Dres grumbles.

     "This is absolutely a joking matter. I promise you we'll survive without apple pie. I swear on it. I'll put my life on it."

     In true Dres fashion, he hangs up on me. I send him a bunch of apple emojis before I set my phone down so I can shower and get ready for the day.

     I've dragged my gaming consoles downstairs, the PS4 and the Xbox because options, and am trying to tune out my grandmother's discontent over missing her soap opera's to watch me shoot people. For the record, I'm shooting aliens, which makes it okay. Gramps is sitting quietly in an armchair by the window, reading some book with Mohammed Ali's face on the front of it. A biography, I suppose.

      Grandma moves from the video games to nitpicking, dropping comments like "fix your hair, Cas" and "you're wrinkling your sweater" as if she, my cousins, and Dres haven't all seen me in worse states. And, anyway, sweaters are physically incapable of getting wrinkled, ok? That's just the law of clothes material.

      I'm mostly impressed with how chill I'm being, and at ease I feel up until the exact moment the doorbell rings, at which point my collectedness flips into a bundle of raw energy and uncontainable nerves. I practically brain myself tripping over the couch to get to the door before my grandma. As I shove past her, she tsk's and goes, "Cas."

     I take a deep breath before opening the door, manage to nail my shoulder on the frame in the process, and am mid groan-of-pain when I'm greeted by Dres's sister, and then Dolores who is coming up the pathway carrying a tray. Dres is, notably, not in immediate sight.

     Amelia is hauntingly Dres's identical non-twin.

     I stare at her and wonder how it is possible for siblings to look this much alike without being from the same embryo. Amelia smiles big, which is so distinctly not Dres that it disorients me.

      Her expression says this is exactly what she expected, like I'm exactly who she expected.

     "Happy Thanksgiving Cas," Dolores calls, jolting me from my staring.

     I clear my throat, and extend a hand to Dres's sister who's still standing directly in front of me, sizing me up without any pretense. "Calvin," I say as she takes my hand and shakes it, slowly. "You can call me Cas, though."

     "Amelia," she says, her grin widening. She has big teeth. I try to remember what Dres's teeth look like but I'm drawing a blank. My gaze darts along the rest of her face, looking for things that distinguish her from Dres. Her lips are fuller than Dres's, but she has his jawline, only a bit softer.

     "It's the nose," she says suddenly still grinning because I'm still staring. "And the eyes. They're pretty much the same."

     She's right. She has Dres's eyes – a vibrant shade of blue that sometimes looks grey. They look more grey than blue on Amelia, but I think that's mostly got to do with the eyeshadow she's wearing. She has his whole damn face, if we're being frank about it.

     "Sorry," I say finally, glancing at the ground. Dolores makes it up the steps and I go to take the tray from her.

     She squeezes my arm once her hands are free, and says again, "Happy Thanksgiving."

     I smile. "Happy Thanksgiving, Dolores. Where's Dres?"

     Dolores glances back at the street. "He found a spot down the street some. Amelia, here," Dolores shoots her daughter a look, who's engaged in her phone now, "jumped out without grabbing anything so he needs a hand." They look alike, too. Dolores's genes are just as strong as Reese Witherspoon's, I suppose, stronger even.

     I nod my head. "Right, gotcha, uhm, let me show you guys inside and I'll go help him."

     I let Dolores and Amelia enter first before following them inside. Not all that surprisingly, my grandmother's waiting in the foyer. Her expression is confused as she searches for the male face. She has been bugging me to see what Dres looks like. I'd warned her about the tattoos and piercings but that seemed to only intrigue her more.

     "Grandma, this is Dres's mom, Dolores, and his sister, Amelia," I say as I set the tray down on the end table in the hallway.

     "Hello," grandma says in the voice she uses when she answers the telephone and goes to nice restaurants. "I'm Layne. It's a pleasure to meet you." Pop has moved from his chair and is standing in the archway. Grandma says, "This is my husband, Robert."

     "Okay, I'll be right back," I say out loud but to nobody in particular since they're not really paying attention to me.

     I rush back out the door, closing it behind me because the heats going inside and my mom will flip out ("I'm not paying to heat the entire neighborhood, Calvin!" is her favorite line.) I head down the street, scouting the curb for Dres's truck. I find him standing at the trunk of Dolores's SUV and nearly miss him. He's stacking food trays and doesn't hear me.

     "Hey," I say as I come up behind him, so I don't scare him. Dres isn't the kind of person you want to sneak up on, not when he's 96% muscle mass.

     He still jumps a little before turning towards me. "Happy Thanksgiving," I say, stiltedly. My face goes hot, thousands of blood vessels undoubtedly bursting. I think I may have just formed and dislodged a coronary thrombosis. Blood flow has ceased to my brain. "Huh," I say, not intentionally.

     Dres raises an eyebrow.

     "You are ridiculously beautiful, you know that?" I ask and it comes out too earnest to sound like the joke I was aiming for. It doesn't matter, I suppose, since I mean it.

     The other eyebrow joins the first as he repeats back, "Ridiculously beautiful?"

     I resist the strong urge to face palm. Why did I say that out you loud? It's weird, right. Too honest. Too much.

     "Nevermind," I say quickly with a shake of my head. "It's nothing, you just, you look nice, is all. Let's leave it at that. Except, you know, next time look less nice. It's distracting."

     He regards me, warmly. "Everything distracts you."

      "Not everything. Just you." That feels like more of an admission than I was going for so I add, "Especially when you dress like that."

     Dres is flushing, maybe, a little. He glances down at himself, brows furrowing questioningly. "You can't even see what I'm wearing. I have a coat on. You should have a coat on, too, you know."

     "I can see what's going on underneath." I gesture to his chest where his coat is open. He's got on a crisp white button up and dark slacks that fit sinfully well. "Dangerous things." The cold weather is doing nothing to cool down my face. Dres smirks as he steps closer and the impulsivity in my speech remains. "Well, that's not helping."

     I don't exactly dissuade him from closing the distance, letting him snake an arm around my back so I'm pulled flush against him. I take a deep breath. "Mmm, you smell good."

     I burrow my nose into the crook of his neck, breathing in, committing the scent of him to memory. There's Dres — sweet and earthy — and something else, too. Something I don't recognize. Cologne, I realize. Subtle, but there.

     Dres is still, letting me nose down the line of his neck, following the scent to the collar of his shirt. I'm reminded of a time that feels so long ago now, when I wasn't even sure Dres liked me, and now look where we're at. I turn my head and lap at his skin for old time's sake. "Cas," Dres warns, a groan of sorts.

     I want to do all sorts of things, things not decent for the side of the street, not in broad daylight, anyway. In another losing battle between speech and control, I say quietly, "Why do I feel like we never have enough moments like this?"

     Its like he knows my question before I even ask it. "Because you're greedy."

      I finally move my head out of the crook of his neck and look up at him. "It only seems that way because you're so stingy," I retort. He cracks a small smile because it's true.

     "Hey, if you guys could, you know, refrain from whatever sexual activity's about to ensue there's a third party present who'd really prefer not to watch her brother being debauched."

     I jump, yanking back to put a decent amount of space between Dres and I, but he still has his arm around my back and doesn't let me move an inch. He's giving Amelia a look I've never seen on him before – it's all parts I will kill you.

     This is something I'd pay extra attention to, probably even file it away for safe keeping, but I'm too busy losing my mind over the implication that I, me, am debauching Dres and not the other way around.

     "Hey!" Amelia exclaims, holding her hands up. "Mom sent me out here to help you guys. This interruption was not voluntary."

     This is awkward times ten for me, so I wrestle myself out of Dres's embrace and say, "Okay, well, it's freezing out here so..." I trail, not knowing what I'm trying to say, mostly because I'm still painfully distracted by Dres, who also changed his hair.

     It's doing this soft wave thing, and his coat, I know, which is just a coat, looks freaking delectable on him. It's camel colored and he looks like a multi-billionaire taking a stroll down the streets of Cannes. Every time I look at him it's like seeing him for the first time. How is that possible?

     Amelia's laughter pulls me from my train of thought as she comes up beside me and bumps my shoulder. "You're bad for staring, you know that?"

     Dres makes a face, like that's supposed to be something only he notices. Something that I only do with him. He says, with a scowl, "He knows it."

     "I get distracted," I respond, helplessly. This makes them both laugh, and I swear I can't differentiate one sound from the other's.

     We bring everything inside and I lead them into the dining room where two serving tables have been placed in the corner. Dres has a litany of bags and trays, more than I would expect for a couple of pies. Particularly when he had to oust the apple.

     "What else did you make?" I ask as I set down what I'm carrying.

     "What do you mean what else? I made dessert."

      "Uhm, you mean desserts plural."

     "I made enough for everyone."

     I watch with mild fascination as he unloads different cake stands and starts laying out all the pies and pastries he's made. Having him in my house like this is a surprising aphrodisiac. I'm overwhelmed with this urge to kiss him. I don't know where it comes from, but I've got to squelch that shit.

     "What are these supposed to be?" I ask, gesturing with my head to some glazed pastries.

     "I used what I had left of the burnt pie and made apple tarts."

     "You're ridiculous. We could've survived without an apple dish."

     "But now you don't have."

     I reach across Dres and grab one of the tarts, popping the whole thing into my mouth. Dres glares at me. "Quality assurance," I mumble around the mouthful. Dres gives me this look, like maybe he's overwhelmed with the urge to kiss me, too, but then Amelia swoops between us, reaching for a tart, and the moment's lost as he scowls at her.

     "What?" she says hand rising to her mouth as she chews. "Quality assurance."

     I don't try to hide my amusement. "Here," I say. "Let me take your coats." It's a stupid request, I realize nearly immediately, as Dres shrugs out of his coat. He is something devastating. I look away before the two of them catch me staring.