A Promise to my Stepbrother (4 page)

T
he swim team
had issued some kind of space age swim suit to Max, and he just had to show it off to the family. One of the maddening things about Max was that he was pretty shy at school, especially around the pool, but at home he was totally relaxed. So I had to live with the torture of watching his incredibly hot body barely covered by fabric so thin that it looked painted on. To make matters worse, Max would put his finger under the waistband and tug to show how tight they were.

I knew he was completely oblivious to just how sexy it was, and Mom and Dad just thought it was interesting in a technical “how can that make you swim faster” way. That is until he dropped the bomb that the swimsuits were allegedly see-through when wet, Mom freaked out a little bit at that, and Max made no qualms about going and jumping in the shower to test it.

“Ha, it was just a myth!” Max yelled from the other room. A few moments later he walked in, soaking wet. His swimsuit wasn’t see-through, but if I thought it hugged his body while dry, it left very little to the imagination while wet. I cleared my throat and said, “Yep. Not see-through,” as I was torn between averting my eyes and staring.

Later that night, Mom and I were doing the dishes, and I decided to dive right in and ask her about Max and me. I had plenty of evidence that she would not take the question well, so I approached it from a different angle. “Do you think I’m bad for Max?” I asked.

“Why in God’s name would you ask that?” Mom replied as she took a plate from my hand and started to dry it.

“Well, we do so much together. We are constantly hanging out together.” I handed her a cup. “You know he’s my best friend, right?”

“Yes, and I think that’s wonderful. But I’m still confused how you think that’s bad for him.”

“Well, we love spending time together. We are best friends. We share all the same interests. Don’t you think that makes things with anyone he dates difficult? I mean, I’m practically his girlfriend.” I held my breath after I spoke the last sentence. I felt that I hid the statement behind a context that would make it appear to be innocuous, but I wasn’t sure.

Mom laughed out loud, put the cup down, and smiled as she looked at me. “Oh my gosh, Katie. You are not at all like his girlfriend. You’re his
sister
. That’s completely different. Girls will understand that.” Mom laughed again. “Can you imagine being his girlfriend? Oh my gosh, that would be so horrific. I would never be able to show my face in town again, and can you imagine the incest jokes that you two would face at school?”

My heart fell. I knew my mom wasn’t trying to be cruel, but the casual way she talked about how ridiculous it would be for me to fall in love with Max tore me up inside. The thing was that it didn’t change my mind. I just realized that we’d have to be boyfriend and girlfriend without Mom or Dad finding out. Now all I had to do was see if Max would be on board with that.

It seemed like a possibility after Max revealed that our promise was still real. I even had a plan to turn the trips that we took as friends into actual dates. We did stuff together all the time, from hanging out at Barnes & Noble or Starbucks to going to the movies. Yet we never did “date type” things like hold hands or put our arms around each other or kiss. I was yearning for that physical connection in the worst way, so one night when we were at the theater, I did a simple thing—I lay my head on his shoulder. I figured it was a small step that would make the next one more comfortable.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I wanted him to take my hand or lower his head against mine or for him to put his arm around me and pull me close. He did none of those things. He just watched the movie. I felt self-conscious and after about five torturous minutes I lifted my head and watched the rest of the movie. Max was always the logical one, and he would always laugh about how I couldn’t control my emotions and that I just charged into situations without thinking. This was no exception, as when we got to the car, I was hurt and angry.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” I asked Max, most likely with more intensity in my voice than I intended.

He paused his pre-driving routine of attempting to look in every single direction at the same time before pulling out of the parking space, and stared at me. “Of course I think you’re pretty.”

“Do you think I’m hot?” Charging in without much thought. Yep, that’s me.

“Jesus, Katie. What kind of question is that?”

“Fine. Don’t answer it.” I crossed my arms.

“So you want to go there?” Max looked annoyed.

“Go where?”

Max closed his eyes and was quiet for a moment. Just as I was about to make another provocative and pointed comment, he spoke up. “You know I love you, right?” I nodded, but left the question as to
how
he loved me unanswered. “Good, because I want you to understand that nothing will ever change that. But things are… complicated.”

“I can handle complicated,” I replied emphatically, although I thought of my Mom and the reality that I really couldn’t handle her drama.

“Yes, Katie. You can handle anything. I get it.” His comment hurt, but I let it go. I knew I was pushing things. “Here’s the thing.” He turned in his seat, and, to my shock, took my hands in his. “
I
can’t handle it. Things are just not as simple as you sometimes like them to be.” He reached up and touched my cheek with his palm and added, “I think that we just need time to figure things out.”

“We’ve had years, Max.”

“Sometimes it takes that long.”

“I don’t know how long I can wait.” I didn’t really mean it, but I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to push Max to… what? I didn’t know. Say he couldn’t wait any longer either? Tell me he loved me and wanted to be my boyfriend? All I knew is that I wanted some kind of acknowledgment from him.

Max didn’t say anything for a long time, and I wondered if I had made a huge mistake, that by saying I couldn’t wait he took it as an admission that the promise just didn’t mean as much to me as it did for him or that I was unable to control the desires that were constantly top-of-mind for me. “Well, we still have the promise,” was Max’s eventual reply.

In the context of the conversation it didn’t sound like much at all. In fact it sounded like a weak way of dismissing my very real longing for him. Max pulled out of the parking lot, and with each mile I felt my heart being left in pieces behind us.

When we got home I went to my room and cried.

I
did
okay on the dating scene my junior and senior year, I guess. I studied a lot and practiced all the time, but I was a swimmer, and girls seemed to like dudes in speedos. It wasn’t until late in my senior year that I realized that I had a reputation as a ladies man. For a guy who enjoyed marine biology and went to bed at nine o’clock, the entire concept seemed absurd, but that’s what Chuck said.

“Look, dude, you go through girls like most guys go through condoms.”

“Which in your case means I’ve had one long monogamous relationship.”

Chuck punched me in the shoulder. “Very funny, Romeo. But let’s look at the facts. Rose, Alexis, Dawn, Amy.” He shook his head in an appreciative manner. “Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. I could even add a few more. You went out with Samantha and Amanda at least once. Hot and hot. Hell, the only hot girl in the class you haven’t dated is your sister.”

“Katie isn’t hot!” I replied, hoping I sounded sincere. In my eyes she was the only hot girl in school.

“I’d comment on Katie’s hotness, but it would only make you mad, so let me reply by saying that you would most likely have a different view if she weren’t your sister. But we have drifted off topic. I’m trying to figure out whether I admire the raw number of notches on your bedpost or whether I’m kind of worried about your inability to form a lasting relationship.” Before I could object, Chuck exclaimed, “Wait!” I turned and looked at him, and he had a shocked look on his face. “You’re not sleeping with half the girls in school to hide the fact that you’re Gay, are you?”

Before I could object, he burst out in laughter. It was my turn to punch him. “First of all, idiot, if I were Gay there’d be nothing wrong with that. Second of all, I’m not Gay. I just haven’t found the right girl.”

“I just want to know your secret,” Chuck finally replied when his laughter died down. I didn’t answer, as the secret wasn’t that I was making my way through the pants of every hot girl in high school. I hadn’t even French kissed any of them. The real secret was that I was looking for a girl who would be everything that Katie was.

I hadn’t found her, and I was starting to think I never would.

I
loathed Dawn Greene
. She was gorgeous, with long, straight, blonde hair and the kind of body that all the guy’s lusted after. She could have been a model. In fact, she had the look that would have worked equally on a New York runway or in a bikini on a showroom floor. Guys salivated over her.

And she was dating Max.

There wasn’t a boy alive that wouldn’t have tried to French kiss her or more at the earliest opportunity, and she and Max had been on three dates. After their third date, she met up with him after swim practice, and as I watched she hung all over his body. This paragon of male desire was desperate for Max. There was no way he could resist, and our promise would be broken.

I had kind of accepted that the promise had already been broken over the past year. After my disastrous conversation with him in the car, Max had gone crazy and started dating a lot of girls. A lot of pretty girls.
Hot
girls. Half the school believed he had slept with all of them, and a few of the girls made a concerted effort not to deny those rumors. For his part, Max would express frustration to me over them. He said again and again that he didn’t have any interest in sleeping with anyone that he wasn’t deeply in love with. But he never said that he didn’t French kiss them.

Well then.

As painful as it was, I never made the mistake of asking Max whether he had broken our promise after the multiple train wrecks of the past two years. I made a different kind of mistake—embarrassing myself in various absurd attempts at subtly letting Max know that
I
hadn’t broken our promise. I clung to the hope that it would matter to him.

The worst was after I broke up with Johnny Simms after dating him for a full month. Max and I were watching TV, and out-of-the-blue I blurted out, “I broke up with Johnny.”

Max’s perfect face was full of worry as he turned to me. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry, Katie. I thought you liked him.” His brows furrowed and he added, his voice tense, “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Oh, god no,” I replied. “It just wasn’t working out.”

Max ran his hand through his hair, which was so incredibly cute that it made my heart skip a beat every time he did it. “You two seemed really close. Are you okay?”

“Well, we didn’t French kiss!” I exclaimed brightly. As soon as the words escaped my lips I wanted to just die. It was obvious and pathetic and stupid that I was bringing up the promise when it was abundantly clear that Max had already broken it tons of times. I clenched my jaw, at a complete loss at how to regain my dignity.

Max stared at me, and his next words stunned me. “I’m going to break up with Dawn.”

I was stunned. “What? Why? Really?” I fumbled with words as I tried to make sense of the conversation.

“She’s kind of clingy.” Max shrugged. “Plus, she wants to move too fast.”

We were facing the same situation, and for that reason my whole attitude changed—we could get through it together. And like that our old friendly repartee returned. “Dude, every guy in the school would
beg
to have her move fast with them. If she ripped her clothes off on the first date it wouldn’t be fast enough.”

Max smiled. “Well, I’m not every guy.”

“Yeah, you have some kind of industrial strength self-control there buddy.”

“Or maybe I have higher standards than the other guys.” He flashed me a smile. “And apparently you.”

It felt so comfortable. So
us
. I had abruptly talked about a break-up and then blundered into talking about the promise, and now we were talking like we always did—sarcastic, teasing, sympathetic, warm, and most important of all, full of love.

“Well, I
did
break up with Johnny Simms. So I have
some
standards.”

“Hey, he’s a good guy. I hope you didn’t break his heart.”

“Unfortunately, I seem to be physically incapable of not breaking hearts.”

Max nodded as he replied, “Me, too.” He then turned his head and stared at me, his grey eyes intense and piercing. “Maybe what I want is impossible to have.”

“Don’t think that way!” I exclaimed. “There’s a special someone out there for you.” My heart broke as I said the words. I knew he had broken the promise even if I hadn’t. He’d eventually find that special someone. But it wouldn’t be me.

“Yeah. She’s out there. I do believe that.” Max suddenly stood up. “I need to go do my homework,” he said, his voice a little strained. He walked out of the room without a single glance back at me.