Authors: Stephanie Brother
Brandon
Connor
is waiting in the same chair, looking thoughtful.
He raises one eyebrow at me but says
nothing.
It’s the technique he uses to
get people to talk.
“I don’t need a ride,” I say.
“I’m gonna make sure she gets home safe.”
Connor nods and stands.
“You’ll come by the bar later?” he asks, but
it’s not really a question, it’s an order filtered down from Adam.
“Yeah.”
I turn to walk back out the door and he follows.
“See you,” he says, turning to leave down the
busy road.
Sammie is leaning against the wall with her hands in
her pockets, waiting.
She looks classy
and sexy.
I’m a man and I can’t help
noticing how good she looks but I feel like a shit for it.
She used to be my stepsister – technically, I
guess she still is – and those kinds of thoughts have no place between us.
“You ready?” she asks, stepping away from the wall
towards me.
“Yeah, let’s go and grab that coffee.
Somewhere that’s got food ‘cause I haven’t
eaten all day.”
“Great,” she says, and slips her hand around the
inside of my arm so we can walk close.
When we were younger I would give her piggy-back rides
and we’d wrestle and muck around.
Everything is innocent when you’re a kid, but her touching me doesn’t
feel innocent now, at least not for me.
Her hand is warm and her grasp is comforting and I want to pull away as
much as I want to draw her closer.
We stroll along the road, not talking at first.
I wonder if she’s as lost in her thoughts as
I am in mine.
I wonder if she feels that
things are weird between us.
Different.
“Where do you live now?” she asks.
“Did you get married?”
“I’ve got an apartment but it’s nothing special,” I
say, avoiding telling her where.
“And
there’s no one sharing it with me.
What
about you?
Someone snap you up yet?”
“Nah,” she says, with a hint of sadness in her
voice.
“I dated someone for a while but
it didn’t work out.”
“He must have been an idiot,” I say, prickling at the
idea that someone might have had the gall to reject her.
“Yeah,” she laughs, squeezing my arm.
“How’d you know?”
“Most men are.” I include myself in that statement
because I’ve spent most of my adult life working my way through women and
trying to avoid them the next day.
People in my walk of life tend to be the type with issues and I’ve got
enough of them myself, I don’t need to be taking on anyone else’s.
“So, what happened to you when you left?” she asks and
I must flinch because she looks up at me with a frown creasing her brow.
“I went to live with my dad.
You know that.”
“Yeah, I know that.
I mean, what did you do?
Where’d
you go to school?”
“There was a high school not far from his house.” I
say.
I don’t tell her how rough it was
or that I dropped out before I should have, to avoid the intimidation.
That, and my dad didn’t see the point of me
studying if I could be out with him making money.
As soon as I hit six foot he had me down at
the gym, lifting weights and getting trained by his friend who’s a boxing
coach.
My fists are what make me useful
in my world, and my cool temper, although last night it wasn’t that cool.
We come to a café that doesn’t look great but I want
to end Sammie’s line of questioning and need food.
“How about this place?” I ask, stopping us
both on the pavement outside.
She
wrinkles her nose and looks up and down the road for a better alternative.
There isn’t one so she shrugs.
“I don’t know.
It looks like food poisoning waiting to happen.”
“There isn’t anywhere else,” I say as my stomach
clenches with an accompanying growl.
“We could take a cab back to my place.
I’ve got steaks in the fridge that I brought
for when my dad comes visiting, but I can get more tomorrow.”
“You wanna cook me a steak?” I say, laughing.
“What?” she says shaking her head, confused at my
reaction.
“I thought you were a vegetarian!”
“Nah,” she giggles, realizing why I was shocked.
“That only lasted a few months, then my dad
kept cooking bacon in the mornings and I couldn’t resist.”
I look into the dive behind us, thinking about the
dirty hotdog I would probably order in there.
Going back to Sammie’s wasn’t on the agenda but I’d be escorting her
back there later anyway.
No way would I
put her into a cab by herself. The prospect of a home cooked meal and a chance
to check out her place isn’t something I’m going to pass up despite my
reservations about this whole thing.
“Come on,” she says, putting her hand out to flag a
passing cab.
We get in and she tells him
her address which is in an upscale neighborhood.
Sammie’s done well for herself and I’m so
damn happy to see it.
We try to talk a bit during the ride but the driver
keeps interrupting with curses about the other road users and useless,
uninteresting details about his life.
Sammie
politely joins in but it leaves me frustrated.
We pull up outside a nice block.
The outside is new and well maintained, the
grounds lush with tended grass and shrubs.
I get out first, reaching to help her out of the cab.
Her palm is dry and her smile warm as she
comes to stand in front of me, straightening her clothes and hitching her bag
up onto her shoulder.
“Come on, Bran,” she says, leading the way into a
spacious lobby with an elevator at the back.
It smells fresh and expensive and I’m glad she suggested we come here
rather than go to my place.
My stairwell
smells of weed and ramen noodles and I’ve never taken a woman there before for
that very reason.
In the elevator I check my cell phone, finding a
missed call from Adam.
I guess he must be
pissed that I haven’t returned to business right away, particularly since he
footed the bill for my representation.
Fuck him.
I’ve picked up enough
of his shit and dealt with it over the years.
He can wait while I have some decent food and a dip a toe into a life I
was ripped out of against my wishes. Then I’ll be his all over again and I’ll
make sure that Sammie understands that she can’t come looking for me no matter
what.
When I look up, Sammie’s watching me with that frown
again.
I want to stroke my thumb over it
and ease it away.
Worry has no place on
a pretty face like hers and I hate that I’ve put it there.
“Something wrong?” she asks and I plaster on a smile
and shake my head.
“Nothing at all,” I say.
The elevator stops and the doors open, then we’re
walking through a bright corridor filled with plants and nice artwork.
Sammie’s door is at the end and she looks up
at me when she unlocks it, hesitating to push it open, as though she’s
remembered something in there that she doesn’t want me to see.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
She
shakes her head and I follow her in, closing the door behind me, feeling like
things are getting more uncomfortable between us the longer we spend together.
“Let’s get the food going.
You must be famished.”
Her apartment is something else.
Floor to ceiling windows on one side showcase
a stunning view.
The kitchen is open
into the den.
She drops her bag on the
counter and heads for the fridge, pulling out a big pack of steaks and some
vegetables to make a salad.
I walk
around, scanning the shelves that line one wall.
Sammie was always a big reader and her
shelves are packed with books, some names I recognize and others I don’t.
There are massive legal books there too and a
pretty big CD collection.
I’m pleased to
see she still likes some classic country although I wonder if it’s hard for her
to listen to like it is for me, a reminder of bittersweet happy times.
I stand in front of a shelf of framed photos, looking
at Sammie with friends on nights out and on sandy beaches, making funny
expressions and smiling like her face might crack.
She seems so happy but inside my heart
clenches.
I want to feel good about the
way her life has turned out but there’s a tiny, horrible worm in my chest that
resents it too; resents that it’s not me next to her with the megawatt smile,
sharing all her good times.
Lower down there’s
a gathering of family photos and I reach out and pick up one that’s slightly
faded, like my memories of the day the picture was taken.
It’s me and Sammie in our yard, dressed in
our swimsuits, holding our arms in the air and sticking our tongues out.
We’ve got the scrawny bodies of preteens,
ribs showing through our skin, and skinny legs.
Sammie’s hair is plastered to her scalp from where we’d been dancing in
the sprinklers and I’ve got mud on my cheek.
We look like two urchins.
The photo is perfect.
“I remember that day so clearly,” Sammie says from
over my shoulder and I jump because I hadn’t realized she’d come so close.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.
I was so
damn happy…I felt invincible.”
“You were something alright,” I say and she elbows me
in the ribs.
“Watch it, Bran,” she says grinning.
I raise my eyebrows and nod back to the kitchen.
“Those steaks aren’t gonna cook themselves
you know.”
“Are you ordering me back to the kitchen?
Caveman!”
“Hey, you promised me a home-cooked meal…don’t try and
wriggle out if it now that I’m standing here salivating like a dog!”
“Okay, okay,” she says, strutting off.
I get a lump in my throat when I spot a photo of my mom
and her dad on their wedding day.
Mom’s
looking at the camera with shining eyes and a smile that’s just like mine.
Sammie’s dad is in profile, gazing at Mom
like she’s his dream come true.
The
moment snapped in time seems like a dream.
Happiness has always seemed like a fleeting thing to me.
It’s never stuck around for very long and
afterwards, when things are back to their usual greyness, I wonder if it’s me,
if I scare the good times away or somehow don’t deserve them for more than a
moment.
I hear the sizzle of oil in the pan and turn to see
Sammie lowering two big slabs of meat into a skillet.
She’s put her hair into a messy bun and is
wearing an apron tied tight around her middle.
It’s the picture of domesticity and so damn weird for me to see.
“How’d you like your steak?” she asks, turning with
tongs in her hands.
“Rare.”
“I’d have guessed well done.” She laughs and shifts
the steak around so it doesn’t stick.
“Why well done?”
“I don’t know. I remember you always eating the most
burnt chicken from the grill.”
“Your dad burned all the chicken.
He was a terrible outdoor cook.”
“Yeah.”
Her
mouth is soft when she says it, her expression warm.
“He still is.”
“Is he doing okay?”
“He’s getting a bit forgetful but he’s good.”
She studies me for a second and I can almost
see her mind working, considering whether to say what she’s got brewing in her
brain.
“You know he’d love to see you.”
I shake my head.
“Why?”
“Because it’s just better this way.”
The frown lines are back on her forehead and she turns
back to the stove, turning the steaks and then dressing the salad.
I run my hand over the marble counter, the
coolness soothing against my skin, but inside I’m burning.
All the frustration is there, eating away at
me.
I have this urge to slam my fist
hard against the rigid surface, to split my skin open again and let out some of
the seething fury I’ve been suppressing.
I’ve never wanted the life I ended up with.
I’m like a square peg in a round hole most of
the time, but I’m in too deep to get out unscathed.