*Hazel's pov*
"No, not there! On this side of the table!" Jason yelled at me as I tried to figure out where to put the gravy.
Today was Thanksgiving and we invited the Grey family over for dinner. We were all freaking out because the were coming in an hour.
"Finn, get your lazy little butt over here!" my mom yelled when she saw that he was sitting on his phone instead of taking the turkey out of the oven.
"Relax, mom. They still have to take the time to drive over here." Finn rolled his eyes.
My mom gritted through her teeth,"They're. Our. Neighbors." That got Finn standing and helping in no time.
We all helped my mom make food because we were all pretty good cooks. When our parents got divorced, my mom had a hard time finding motivation to cook, so we all took turns. There were seven kids and seven days of the week so it worked out. Leo was too young to cook on his own though, so Cameron got two days and Leo helped on one of them.
"Okay, everything looks good," my mom sighed,"Now everyone, go get ready."
We all raced to our rooms to get dressed. We all showered earlier so that our hair had time to dry.
I put on a knitted long sleeved shirt with warm toned stripes, a light brown denim skirt, light black pantyhose, brown leather boots, and autumn leaf earrings. I touched up the look with a brown knitted scarf. I decided to wear mascara, lipgloss, and highlighter. I didn't feel the need for anything else.
I ran into the bathroom and brushed my teeth for like the tenth time that day. I brushed my hair and curled it a bit so that it was wavy.
I finished the last curl as I heard the doorbell ring. My mom ran downstairs to open the door.
"Hello, Mrs. and Mr. Grey! Hi, Asher! Hi, Ava! Hi, Jaxon!" I heard my mom shout from downstairs. It was a signal to let us know we had to come down.
I ran into each of my brother's rooms to call them down. "They're here." I passed through each room as if I were Paul Revere announcing the arrival of the British.
We all walked downstairs as casually as we could in the little crowd we formed. We huddled together because we felt comfortable that way.
"Hey, kids. Come say hi." My mom gestured towards the Grey family. We shuffled forward in our huddle as we greeted everyone.
I shook Mr. and Mrs. Grey's hands. I never formally greeted or talked to Ava and Jaxon so I shook their hands as well. It was pretty awkward until I got to Asher.
I was going to turn away instead of greeting him just to push his buttons, but he turned me right back around, and lifted me up into a bonecrushing hug. I won't lie, though. I sort of kinda maybe almost liked it a teeny weeny little bit. "Hey, Princess."
It was very surprising that he did this because just not too long ago, my very existence annoyed him to no end.
"Asher...I... can't...breathe..." His eyes widened and he set me back down. When I regained my access to oxygen, I looked up at him and flashed a grin.
"Shall we get started with dinner? It's already seven-thirty." My mom hosted as she helped get everyone adjusted into the table.
Once everyone was seated and serving themselves food, the little conversations started going around the table.
I was seated with Asher on my right side and Leo on my left. Asher and I mostly just teased each other. "Nice leaves you got there. Did you take them from the tree outside?" He tried to suppress a grin as he lightly flicked my earring.
"Very funny. These just happen to be very adorable." I shot back proudly.
"Yeah, they are." He whispered.
"Wait, what?"
"What?"
Luckily, we were saved from the awkwardness when Mrs. Grey spoke loud enough to bring the attention to her conversation with my mom. All the other side conversations died down.
"So, Mrs. Ambrielle, where's your husband?" My mom nearly choked on her sliced ham but quickly suppressed it and smiled. We got pretty good at lying to the Grey family about my dad.
"Oh, you know... His job keeps him pretty busy. They wouldn't even give him Thanksgiving off! That's okay, though." At this point, my Dad was always on business trips whenever the Grey's asked about him. We all got pretty used to it.
"Oh, well that's too bad. Hopefully, we get to meet him some other time." Mrs. Grey said in disappointment but quickly tried to change the subject. "So, how are you guys doing?" She looked at my brothers and I with a big smile.
We all gave her brief updates on how we were doing in school. Soon, the side conversations came back again.
"Hey, Ash." I whispered to him as I swallowed a spoon of mashed potatoes. He hummed in response and looked up at me with his electric blue eyes. He was leaning down to eat so he had to look up at me for once. Gosh, those eyes were so darn captivating and sharp.
"Wanna excuse ourselves from this dinner for a few minutes?" I asked, my eyes fixated on him, waiting for an answer.
"Won't they find it weird that we both leave together at the exact same time?" He furrowed his eyebrows.
"That's why I'll excuse myself first and then you'll excuse yourself a little bit after, duh." He nodded and gave me a grin.
I stood up in my chair. "Um, I need to excuse myself for a bit." I walked upstairs into the hall as the conversations continued again.
I leaned my back against the wall and slid down slowly until I was sitting on the floor. I pulled my knees towards my chest and put a hand under my chin as I waited, bored.
"BOO!!!" Asher popped out of nowhere and made me scream and fall back. He started laughing at my terrified response.
"Oh my gosh, Ash! You scared the life out of me!" I put my hand to my heart and adjusted myself back into my position. This time my eyes were on his. He sat down next to me against the wall.
"So, you finally come up with a nickname for me and it's Ash. How generic and predictable." He chuckled.
"What, would you rather I call you something else? Perhaps, my knight in shining armor?" I asked, batting my eyelashes and clasping my hands together dramatically.
He shook his head. "Too long and too cliche."
"Says the one that calls me Princess." I laughed. "How about....Muffin. Yeah, Muffin!"
"Pfft! Could you get any more cliche?" He said sarcastically and cocked his eyebrow.
"Again: Says the one that calls me Princess." I chuckled.
"Touché. Fine, you can call me Muffin so long as you let me call you Princess. Deal?" He put out his hand for me to shake and looked at me expectantly.
"Deal." I took his hand and shook it firmly. We didn't let go for a few seconds and just looked at each other until we were interrupted.
"Asher! Hazel! We're cutting the turkey! If you want to be able to get some, come down!" My mom yelled from downstairs.
Asher and I let go from the handshake and looked away. I was blushing a bit, but I covered it with my curls. We stood up from our places against the wall and walked downstairs.
"Please tell me that mom didn't cockblock you guys." Jason teased. My mom slapped his shoulder from the seat next to him.
I blushed even harder as I shuffled to my seat. Asher followed and sat next to me.
We each served ourselves some turkey and began to eat. I looked at Asher, desperately wanting to break the awkwardness that came after we entered the dining room again.
"So....,"I drawled out,"enjoying that turkey, Muffin?"
He looked up at me and smiled with full, puffy cheeks. "Yeah, I am. It's a very delicious turkey."
"Aw, that's too bad, then." He looked confused but realized what I meant when I grabbed a chunk from his turkey and stuffed it all into my mouth. It was a really big piece, so I looked like a bunny with those cheeks. I probably looked like an idiot but I didn't really care.
Asher gasped and put his hand to his chest. "How dare you?"
"Heyw, I waws hungry!" I defended, not really able to speak intelligibly because my mouth was stuffed.
Leo tapped on my shoulder from my left side. "Hazel, Ms. Ortega says that you're not supposed to talk with your mouth full. It's not polite."
"Who's Ms. Ortega? His teacher?" Asher asked.
"No. Well actually, kinda. She's his behavioral therapy teacher. He's on the autistic spectrum and has ADHD so he goes to therapy every week." I explained as I swallowed some but not all of the turkey so that I could be understood.
"Oh. Well I'm glad she's teaching you how to be polite. I think Hazel needs a teacher to tell her how to be polite." Asher said, smirking at me. I punched his shoulder and swallowed the rest of my turkey.
"Yeah, she does. I asked mommy if Hazel could get one, but my mommy said she doesn't need one. I think she does, though. She was eating with her mouth open just right now!" Leo squeaked.
Leo and Asher laughed and teased me as I sat there in a grumpy fit. "You guys are so mean to me."
"But we still love ya!" Asher winked as he took a bite of steamed carrot. I didn't think he even realized what he just said... I blushed at his words. He kinda just said he loved me. Well, I knew he was playing around. But still! Ugh, he would be the death of me.
Minutes passed and Asher and I were playing a game on who could annoy each other more. I nudged his side, he tickled my stomach, I pinched his cheek, he squished my face. We weren't really annoying each other. Well at least I wasn't annoyed, but we were mostly just teasing and playing around.
Then he took my glasses from my face and put them on himself. "Woah! Everything is so distorted! How do you see with these?" I tried not to cringe at the cliché comment that someone trying on my glasses always said.
"They fit my eyes perfectly. However, they have to be on my face to help. I can't see much of anything right now." I narrowed my eyes at him.
Then I realized I kinda wanted to be able to see what he looked like with my glasses. So, I secretly took out my phone and snapped a picture of him.
"Hey! If you take a picture of me, we have to take a picture of us both. It's only fair!" He took the phone from my hand and held it far out with the front camera on us.
I sighed. "Fine." I scooted closer to him as we looked at the camera, me barely being able to identify it. Then he put his arm around me which gave me little tingles and we smiled as he snapped the photo. He handed my glasses back to me so we could see how we looked.
"You look freaking adorable with glasses, Muffin!" I grinned deeply at the picture and pulled Asher into a quick side hug.
He scratched the back of his neck and...nervously laughed. "Thanks. You look really um, really nice without your glasses. I mean, you look nice with them, too! You look nice either way. Uhh, just forget it-"
"Really? You think so? Thank you!" I smiled and looked down. Asher was becoming really nice out of nowhere.
Then, unexpectedly, I grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled him into a hug. A real hug. Not a side hug or anything. Luckily, no one noticed because they were all too caught up in their conversations.
Asher choked on air, caught by surprise.
"Really, thank you." I rested my chin on his shoulder as he hesitantly wrapped his arms around me.
"No problem." He replied in a low voice into my brown curls. We hugged for a few seconds and then slowly let go.
"Well, thank you for having us over! We need to get going, though. Thomas, Jaxon, and I have work tomorrow. Asher has to babysit Ava." Mrs. Grey was putting her stuff into her purse.
"I would offer to help babysit but I work tomorrow, too. Oh wait! How about one of you guys help him. You're all still on break." My mom looked at my brothers and me. "How about you, Hazel? You and Asher are friends."
"Sure, okay. I'll help him babysit." I smiled at Mrs. Grey and nodded.
"Thank you so much, Hazel! Well, bye! Thank you so much everyone!" Mr. And Mrs. Grey thanked everyone.
Jaxon and Ava went around with their handshakes again. "I'll see you tomorrow, little lady." I said and smiled at Ava. She laughed and said goodbye.
Then I got to Asher. I laughed awkwardly as he ran his hand through his hair.
"See you tomorrow, Princess." He placed his hand lightly on my shoulder for a split second before turning to leave.
"See you." I said quietly after him and waved even though he didn't see it.
The door closed behind them and we all let loose. We collapsed on the couch and let our Thanksgiving bellies pop out.
A chorus of us saying I'm so full! was thrown around several times. We cleared off the table and went up to our rooms to go to sleep. I changed into my Spiderman shorts and matching t-shirt and pulled on my knee-length fuzzy socks. I pulled my hair into a bun and walked over to get into bed but stopped.
There, across my window, I saw Asher with no shirt and plaid pajama pants. I covered my heated cheeks as I saw his abs in perfect view. I walked over to my window and rapped my knuckles on it to grab his attention. Once he looked at me, I gestured for him to open his window.
We both opened our windows and looked at each other. "Nice pajamas!" I laughed into the cold night air as I swung my legs over the windowsill to sit on the edge.
He leaned against his windowsill and smirked. "I could say the same to you. Nice Spiderman PJ's. I love those fuzzy socks!" He said sarcastically. Then, he looked at my bottom half and looked away, leaning back from the window.
I looked down to see why. My shorts were short. Very short. I blushed but quickly cut through the awkwardness. I stuck my tongue out at him.
He stuck his tongue right back out then laughed. "What are we, five?"
"Yeah!" I shouted as I jumped on to the tree next to me and dived into his room. I crashed into his bare chest, knocking us both onto the ground.
I looked down at him and laughed but found that he wasn't laughing back. He was blushing. I looked down and realized that I was straddling him...in my very short shorts while he was shirtless. My hands were pressed flat against his abs. Pretty soon, I was blushing, too.
"U-uhh... Um, s-sorry!" I exclaimed and sat up. He just looked up at me and blushed even harder. Then I saw the even bigger problem. When I sat up, I went right above his.....little Asher.
I scrambled off of his lap and sat nearby on my legs. He shot up as well.
"Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Oh my lord, I'm so sorry!" I shut my eyes and chanted the words over and over again.
"Hey, it's alright. No harm done." He helped me up and smiled at me. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
I nodded and smiled. He helped me out of his window and back into mine, safely. We said goodnight to each other and shut our windows. I climbed in bed and turned off the light on my nightstand.
As I drifted off to sleep, the scene of what just happened played over and over again in my head and at that point, I was as red as a stop sign. But soon, I fell asleep, looking forward to tomorrow.....
A/N: Let's get PHYSICAL!!! But seriously, the sexual tension at the end! This is what Hazel wore btw:
Well I made a Thanksgiving chapter for you guys! Gosh, was this chapter packed with cute Asher x Hazel moments or what? What should their ship name be? I don't think I chose one yet. How about Ashzel, Hasher, Hazshel, AshHaz, HazAsh? I'm thinking either Ashzel or Hasher. Well, I hope you guys have a happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate it! I hope you liked this chapter! Please keep reading and vote! Thank you so much for reading! Bye my lovelies!!!â¤â¤â¤
---Your author, Gen