For Constance, Renée, and Ariel...Y'all work too much!

Love you!

"Fuuuuuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck," Kevin thought as he wandered around the large, expansive second hand bookstore that was kinda like Edd's own personal retreat from the world. "Eddy's gonna kill me," he sighed to himself as he looped down another long aisle of books, keeping his frustrated green eyes peeled for a certain smarty pants, but said smarty pants was nowhere to be found.

All he had wanted to do was to hang out, and Edd suggested that they stop by the second hand bookstore in the city before grabbing a bite somewhere because he was looking for a few hard to find D&D expansion books because Ed wanted to play old school style versus on his laptop.

Kevin and Edd both suspected that it was because he missed hanging out with his friends like they used to when they were kids as their high school lives were much busier than their middle school ones, but Edd couldn't help but want to get back into tabletop game himself as he missed playing.

So here they were, on a rainy fall Saturday afternoon because it was the only time they had to spare, in a dusty bookstore and Kevin's lost the bookworm who's blue eyes he's spent all summer getting lost in.

They worked together at Target, but it was only about once a month that their schedules would be on the same shift and that's when Kevin got to know another side of his dorky neighbor.

The kid knew how to have fun.

While Edd was a regular cashier, Kevin stocked Toys and Electronics, and Edd would have a tendency to sneak over and rearrange Kevin's not so carefully arranged gaming setups, have basket races through Home Goods with Ang and Marie, and make obscure announcements over the PA system that only management seemed to understand. But it was always funny to watch Nazz's mom speed walk to the front of the store, red faced and delightfully frustrated as she called for a team meeting only Edd would remember or make an announcement that everyone on the clock actually understood.

No rules would ever be broken, but the shenanigans broke up the monotony and helped them build a rapport that extended into their non-work life.

It was hard to just hang out sometimes as they both had their own lives to live, but Edd being on the swim team helped put him in Kevin's main radar.

Work schedules rarely matched, but work out schedules did.

It was fun, but for Kevin, even that got to be not enough.

So he'd talk up movies, video games, TV shows, music, books for crying out loud, anything to get Edd's attention and keep it.

On the rare occasion that they could get out somewhere where it was just the two of them, Edd was always keen on telling his friends that he'd be busy with Kevin, so they wouldn't worry where he ran off to without them. Or if any of the bullies at school got to him and he just couldn't fight back on his own.

Kevin tried to convince himself that Edd did this with everyone he was out with sans his other like named friends, and it was true that he did, but for some reason, Eddy was always on his case on bringing Edd back "in one piece, Shovelchin!"

Kevin barely ever laid a finger on Edd growing up, and he hadn't bullied anyone since that summer between sixth and seventh grade when he met a bigger bully than himself and saw that just because you were tougher than someone, that didn't make you a man.

But past experience being predictive of future intentions, he could see Eddy's side. Even if it annoyed the shit out of him.

Thing was, as his friendly feelings grew for the smartest person he had mostly likely ever met, he was having a hell of a time dealing with some more amorous ones, and if Eddy's protective nature over his best friend was anything like that of the Dad's and older brothers, cousins, and guy friends of the girls he's dated over the years, he'd lose Edd for good if he didn't get him back to Ed's for the three friends video game night as promised.

But somewhere between making fun of the covers to the Harlequin Romance novels and perusing SAT and ACT prep books, he's actually lost Edd.

As he walked up and down the many aisles of the store, a few graphic novels and overlooked first edition comics caught his eye.

Remembering that his Dad's birthday was coming in a few weeks, he grabbed a few first edition comics that his dad would get damn near misty eyed talking about because his grandma tossed them when he went away to college. He then looked through a bin at the end of the aisle that was a bit of a round-about between the Murder Mysteries and Self Help sections. Grabbing a hardback of a psychological thriller that his mom teased his dad about being his first true love as he couldn't put it down when they were dating, he tucked it under his arm with the comics before setting off to look for Edd again.

When he came to a nook between the Children's Literature and Young Adult Fiction, he finally found him.

He was sitting on a small bean bag, his long legs crisscrossed underneath him, piles of D&D books, fantasy novels, and comic books surround him.

Despite looking as if he should have been in Bookworm Heaven, his face was squished up into a bit of a pout as he tapped away on his phone.

"Everything ok?" Kevin asked as he leaned on a shelf of American Girls Collections Spanish language books and his heart actually cracked a bit when disappointed blue eyes met his own.

"No," Edd sighed. "The guys have to cancel tonight because Eddy has to work late and Ed apparently has to chaperon a date between Sarah and Jimmy."

"That sucks," Kevin groaned empathetically as he found another bean bag in the nook and plopped down in it.

"Yeah," Edd sighed again. "I'm just gonna grab these and we can go."

"Go where?" Kevin said brightly as he sat up and Edd looked at him incredulously as he answered.

"Home. Don't you have stuff to do tonight?"

"Not really," Kevin shrugged as he checked his phone for messages. "Prolly just gonna watch a movie or something on Netflix and do some XBox Live with Rolf and Johnny maybe."

"Then we should go," Edd said as he stood up and started to gather up the books he had picked out. "Just because I don't have anything to do doesn't mean that I'm keeping you from your plans."

"That are now cancelled," Kevin snorted as he tapped at his phone, telling his friends that he was busy and ignoring their 20 Questions interrogations about his date, because logical reasoning aside, there was no way in hell he was missing this chance with Edd.

"Oh," Edd said as he adjusted the pile of books in his hands, a look of disbelief crossing his features for a brief moment before he shrugged and asked, "So, what do you want to do now?"

Kevin's grumbling stomach answered for them and Edd laughed as he leaned over and offered Kevin his hand to help him up and said, "C'mon, I know a spot."

It'll take Nazz to tell it, but at Peach Creek's Tea Haus and Café, there's a tiny table in the back that will always be open for bookworms of all types to meet, and hopefully, maybe, surely, fall in love with more books, and maybe even a friend.

Tell them Kevin and Edd sent you.