A Promise to my Stepbrother (13 page)

I
heard
the word “yes” and just let go. I leaned forward, and we shared the best kiss I’ve ever experienced. It was like time hadn’t existed between the shore of the lake house and now. Our hands wandered to places they had never been before. We were not just kissing each other, we were exploring each other with a sense of unleashed joy.

She pushed her lips hard against mine, opened her mouth, and I felt the wet softness of her tongue. We were re-living the first promise in the best way possible.

I shifted my weight to my knees and knocked over the bottle of wine. “Look out!” I said as I pulled us against the foliage. I righted the bottle, but it was too late. There was wine all over the dirt.

Katie laughed. “We should go somewhere else anyway.” She took my hand in hers. “Some place private.”

I nodded. “Hotel room?” We both knew the promise couldn’t wait.

A smiled formed on her face. “The lake house!”

I couldn't help but laugh. “That would be so perfect, but it's three hours away.”

Katie shrugged. “I’ll enjoy the time with you.”

“I don’t know, Katie. Mom and Dad will freak if we just leave.” Katie lowered her head, and I could have kicked myself. Hadn’t I learned my lesson? I did. “You know what? I don’t give a shit. We’ll just tell them that we are going somewhere to catch up. It’s our party. We can do whatever the fuck we want to do.”

Her smile returned. “Sounds like a plan.”

Mom was pissed, but we didn’t care. Dad just shrugged. “They have spent very little time together over the past four years, dear. Let them celebrate in their own way.”

The funny thing is that we didn’t go right to lust. I could easily have run my hand up Katie’s thigh or to even more provocative places, but as we buckled up I asked her about her art, and before I knew it we were sharing everything about our lives that we had missed. We talked about our studies, our teachers, and the challenges we faced and will be facing.

“I’m feeling kind of aimless,” I admitted, and Katie reached over and took my hand. We intertwined our fingers and kept them that way for the rest of the drive. “I spent so much time swimming, but what did it get me? I’m done, and it feels like a bunch of wasted effort.”

“Don’t talk that way!” Katie replied. “You
love
swimming. I swear you’re part fish.” I glanced over, and her face showed both concern and amusement. “You loved the being and the doing, Max. That’s enough.”

We talked about art, and her concerns about her career. The hopelessness in her voice devastated me. How could her light have dimmed this much? She kind of wistfully said that she wanted to focus on oil painting, but there was no money in that unless she could get some gallery shows, which was nearly impossible.

“Just because it’s nearly impossible doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” I know you only too well, Katie. You won’t give up on anything, and
that
is why you’ll make it someday.”

“Where were you for the past four years, Max? God, I needed you.”

“I’m here now,” I said, and she leaned over and lay her head on my shoulder. I kissed the top of her head. We were an hour from the lake house.

W
e pulled
up the gravel to the house. We hadn’t brought anything, so I jumped out and ran around to the driver’s side of the car. As Max exited, I threw my arms around him and kissed him hard. “Your room or my room?” I whispered in his ear.

“My room.” We held each other tight and kissed again. There was no awkwardness, no uncertainty. Just two people who wanted nothing more than to be with each other. I pushed him back and skipped away.

“I’ll get the key.” I ran ahead to get the key that our parents hid under the gnome near the door. Max arrived just as I was turning the key in the lock. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I just paused, enjoying his touch and the love behind it.

I turned the doorknob with my other hand, and we stumbled forward into the lake house. Max closed the door behind him, and I turned around to kiss him again. He pulled back and pressed his forefinger against my lips. "Go up to your room. I’ll go turn the breakers on, and meet you there. Just give me two minutes."

I kissed his finger. “I don’t think I can wait two minutes.”

“Well, if you don’t get going it will be three.” I pouted but turned and walked up the steps. It was already pretty dark, so I was actually glad Max thought to get all the electricity turned on. I walked down the hall, and I could see the shadows of the bathroom. I once more remembered seeing Max there, and I shivered. Soon.

I turned on the lamp near the head of my bed. It filled the room with a warm glow. Everything had an aura of soft edges and romantic shadows. I liked the idea of making love to Max, watching the shadows flicker along his gorgeous body. I sat on the bed and kicked off my shoes.

A minute later Max stood in the doorway. He looked absolutely stunning. His broad shoulders filled out his shirt, which was tucked into his khakis. He was tall and muscular, and his face was a combination of pure joy and something that I knew had probably been there for a long time but I had never recognized—desire. “You look gorgeous, Katie,” he said.

I stood up and walked over to him. I kissed him on the cheek, and whispered in his ear, “I’ve waited years for this.”

“So have I,” he replied.

We stumbled over to the bed, not worrying about such irrelevant things as walking. All we cared about was enjoying every moment of something we had waited years to make true.

T
he next morning
, I woke to an empty bed, and I was filled with a sudden fear that Max was worried again about our parents or our friends our anyone else who may not understand that a stepbrother and stepsister could fall in love. To my relief Max’s shirt and underwear were still in a pile on the floor. I put his t-shirt on and walked downstairs.

Max had his back to me as he was making coffee. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. He seemed so natural, so sexy, so utterly mine. I smiled and just took in the view. I remembered a few years earlier when I accidentally snuck a view of him naked. Now I could enjoy it every day.

I walked up and put my arms around him, pressing my cheek against his back.

“Good morning, ya lazy bum!” My heart leapt at his teasing. We were still best friends, after all.

“Ha! Good morning, you nut,” I replied, letting go. “The concept of sleeping in just does not exist for you, does it?” I sat down at the small dining table, and watched as Max poured our coffee.

“This
is
sleeping in!” He glanced at me and his eyes went wide. “Hey, you look
way
better in that shirt than I do.”

“This is true. You look better with nothing on.” We smiled at each other, and he placed the mug in front of me, sliding into the chair to my right.

“I was thinking about yesterday.”

“Mmmm. So was I. We are so doing that again today.”

“Oh yes, I agree. We totally have to make up for lost time.”

“If making up for lost time means that we spend every second together for the rest of our lives, I’m totally down for that.”

Max laughed. “Yes. Anything less than that is more lost time.” He took a small sip of his hot coffee. “Anyway, that’s not exactly what I meant by thinking about yesterday.” I raised an eyebrow. “I meant our conversation in the car. You need stability while you do your art, a place where you don’t have to deal with stress and can feel inspired.” I nodded, but felt a fluttering in my stomach. I was petrified he was going to recommend some kind of secret lover thing. I couldn’t deal with that, especially while wearing his shirt.

He took a deep breath and continued. “Why don’t you move in with me in San Francisco. I already have the expenses covered. You can focus on your art. There are a lot of galleries there, so it’s a good spot to make your mark.”

I had been dreaming of that since the drive in the car, but I was afraid to mention it to Max. We had just made a monumental leap in our relationship. Would living together be moving too far, too fast? “I love that idea, Max!” I reached out and held his hand.

“Plus, we don’t have to tell Mom and Dad for a while, since they’ll just think I’m helping you.” My heart fell, and I pulled my hand away. The secret lover thing. I was going to be sick. I felt disappointment and rage building inside me as I considered his comment.

Before I could angrily tell Max that this was the same attitude of his that led us to four years of separation, he spoke up. “No. That’s a horrible idea. We should be honest. We have nothing to be ashamed of.” He reached forward and kind of tentatively took my hand. I squeezed and held his tight.

I decided to test him. “Let’s tell them face-to-face. It will be more difficult, but I think it will be easier for them to understand with us holding hands and showing them how much we love each other.”

“Katie, I’m going to make you another promise.” I smiled, thinking back to our virgin promise and the kiss promise before that. We had a good track record of keeping promises. “I will hold your hand and tell Mom and Dad that I not only love you, but that they have to accept that we’re a couple.”

“And what if they can’t accept that?”

“They’ll either deal with it or deal with the fact that we’ve abandoned them for our life on the West Coast.”

Max’s voice was serious and calm. He was the careful one, the one who didn’t let his heart get in the way of his mind. In this instance he didn’t know how things would go, he just knew that he wanted to follow his heart.

“So I have a promise for you.” He raised his eyebrow. “I promise that if you haven’t had sex by the end of the day, I’ll totally take care of that.”

Max laughed. “How deep and romantic!”

I shrugged. “Hey, we were friends before we were lovers. And, as your friend—your best friend—I just want to warn you that you may be in a bit over your head with me.”

Max laughed even harder. “Do tell.”

“Well, take all that swimming you did, day-after-day and year-after-year. You pretty much couldn’t escape it. Replace that with me and a different kind of work out, and I think you get the idea.”

“Pretty sure I can handle that,” he replied, and I didn’t think I had ever seen him smile so widely in his life.

“Oh, one more thing.” It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “I love you so very very much.”

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. We were brother and sister, best friends, and lovers, but none of that, however, mattered as much as this—we were together.

K
atie was Katie
, and I don’t think she saw what was coming. As we drove home, she talked about Mom and Dad as if they would embrace us with open arms.

“They may be a bit upset, but they’ll be fine,” she said for perhaps the tenth time. I felt like she was repeating herself in an effort to make the sentiment real through pure force of will.

“They may be a bit more than upset, Katie. We have to be prepared for one or both of them totally losing it. Remember, they see us as son and daughter. The idea of us sleeping together? It’s going to freak them out.”

“Yeah, I can see that. But they’ll understand eventually.”

My fear was that what Katie considered “eventually” was a lot shorter than what I considered “eventually.”

And, of course, things didn’t go well.

M
om and Dad
were
really
upset. When we left they thought we were going to wander off and talk or walk around the neighborhood. They didn’t think we would be gone for a full twenty-four hours. We texted them but ignored their calls, so be the time we walked in the front door of the house, they were raging.

That quieted down real fast when they saw us holding hands. I think they grasped that holding hands wasn’t the kind of thing that brothers and sisters who just graduated college do, and in that realization I think a stunned awareness was taking shape.

We walked into the living room, and the remnants of the previous day’s party still littered the tables, chairs, and floor. Max and I sat down on the sofa, still holding hands, while Mom and Dad sat on separate chairs facing us. The look utterly dumbfounded, and I was positive they had finally figured out with certainty what was coming.

Max spoke first. “Dad, Mom, this may not make sense to you, but all I ask is that you don’t say anything until I’m done talking.” They nodded their heads in an almost robotic daze. “Katie and I met when you two started dating. She quickly became my best friend, someone that I could share everything with and I trusted with my entire being.” I nodded and squeezed his hand. “By the time you two got married, Katie was already more than a best friend to me. At the time, it was easy to embrace that as meaning we were brother and sister. Being brother and sister—that’s what made our relationship special.”

“That
is
what made it
special,” Mom cut in.

“That’s only part of it, Mom,” I replied. “It’s a different kind of special.” Mom appeared to be in total denial. I turned and looked at Max, and he continued with the story of how we had not just loved each other from day one but that we were
in love
. Becoming stepbrother and stepsister just muddied the waters and confused things.

As Max told our story and the development of our relationship, I watched our parents. I felt a keen love for Max during that conversation. He explained everything in honest terms and even choked up a bit when talking about how we both tried to bury what was an obvious truth—we loved each other in the way that Mom and Dad loved each other.

By the time, he got to the end of college and told the story of how we both independently came to the understanding that we belonged together, Mom was shaking her head. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was taking it poorly.

“So we are in love. We’ve always been in love.” Max finished, and I braced for the worse.

Mom pursed her lips. “I don’t know where to begin, but I will say this: Your feelings don’t matter. This is just not right. You are brother and sister.” Her voice increase in volume and strain. “This is wrong.”

“Unfortunately, your opinion doesn’t matter,” I said succinctly.

You could have heard a pin drop. All three eyes looked at me, with my Mom’s face a mixture of shock and anger. Then all hell broke loose.

“Well, young lady, I think you’ll find that my opinion matters quite a bit. Do you think that I’m saying this out of spite? You have just decided to ruin your life—”

“First of all, I don’t care,” I replied, my own voice rising. “And you, of all people, can’t speak to me about making mistakes with love.

“What the hell does that mean?” My mom’s eyes narrowed.

I was ready to get the blades out. If Mom was going to go after my love life, then boy did she open herself to some major criticism of her own. Pots. Kettles. That kind of thing.

Dad broke in and said, “Calm down,” as he held up his hands. His voice was commanding, but I could tell he was confused and didn’t know what to say or do other than to have everyone get along more than we were currently.

“Yeah, Katie, it’s not productive to talk about who has the worst relationship judgment.” Max put his hand on my arm.

Of course, I wasn’t very happy with that comment. “Are you saying I have poor judgment?” I spun and glared at him.

“Hello. Phil? That guy was a dick.”

“Oh, you are going to go there are you?” I waved a finger. “How about miss bubble-headed blonde?” There was a smirk on Max’s face that both annoyed me and, for some reason, made me smile. It was almost as if we were arguing over Walking Dead and Peter Jackson all over again.

“Erin was not bubble-headed. You were just jealous because she was pretty.”

“Jealous? Of
her
? Are you kidding me? You kicked her to the curb almost as fast as your girlfriends in high school.” I was getting a good head of steam and, truth be told, I was enjoying myself. Max and I had a habit of arguing heatedly over everything, but in the end we always knew it was just for fun.

Maybe the tension of the having just revealed our relationship to Mom and Dad made us retreat to our comfortable repartee. Maybe we had to truly get this old past behind us, and Mom and Dad were unwitting witnesses. Whatever the reason, Max and I had pretty focused on each other.

“At least I had girlfriends in high school. May I remind you that we are discussing relationship mistakes here, and, ahem, you actually have to have relationships to make mistakes in them.”

That was a good one, and I couldn’t resist a small smile. I glanced at Mom and Dad, and they looked like they didn’t know what hit them or what was going on. I loved the idea of keeping them off-balance. Maybe that was the only way we could get through this.

“Relationships? You call working your way through every pretty girl in high school counts as having relationships?”

Max looked at me. “I didn’t work my through
all
the pretty girls, at least not the only one that mattered.”

“Stop it. You both are embarrassing yourselves,” Mom said. Both Max and I looked at her, but before we could reply Dad started laughing. His laughter was deep and loud and just got louder. It was as if he couldn’t control himself.

I glanced at Max, who shrugged. We both were smiling as our little exchange was amusing in the same way that it always had been since we met at the age of twelve. But it was also amusing in that it was so entirely random. We were having this intense conversation and Dad was lost in guffaws.

“Bruce, what is so funny?” Mom asked. She looked annoyed.

“Listen. Just listen, Lisa,” Dad replied, wiping tears from his eyes. “The two of them. This is no different than all those car rides up to the lake house. These two—” Dad started laughing again. “They have always been inseparable.”

“I don’t see how that’s funny,” Mom replied.

Dad stopped laughing and looked at Mom. “We missed it, Lisa.
We missed it
. All the arguments and compromises and pouting and making up we’ve witnessed through all the years. That’s not what brothers and sisters do. That’s what couples do.”

Mom looked at Max and then me, and then back at Dad. “No. They are just close.”

“Honey, that’s not true. In fact, do you know who they sound like?” I was rapt as I stared at the two of them discussing us as if we weren’t there.

“No,” Mom said succinctly, although I could sense that there was a change in tone, as if she was slowly being dragged to a place she didn’t want to go and as she was moving it changed her perception.

“
They sound just like us
.” Dad stood up and started pacing. “That’s what’s so funny about this. It was always right in front of our faces all this time. We tease. We argue. We laugh. We thought Max and Katie were always acting the family members should act because we acted that way. The reality is that they were acting like a couple, like us.”

I wasn’t exactly sure Dad was right. I thought it was probably more accurate that we were acting like friends, and that he and Mom were best friends, too. But I appreciated him making the connection between us as friends or family and us as a couple.

“Bruce—our friends. The rest of our family…” Mom was worried about what others would think. That was something I could understand but hoped she would join us in getting past.

“Oh, it will royally suck, Lisa. I hate the whole idea of what we’re about to face.” Dad stopped in front of Mom and looked at her, his back to us. “This is going to be
really
difficult, and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to handle it that well. But I do know two things.”

“What’s that?” Mom said.

“Katie will never listen to anything we say, and once Max has made up his mind he’ll never change it.”

Mom laughed at that and peeked out from behind Dad, who quickly moved out of the way.

“Kids, I don’t know who I’ll be able to deal with this.”

“That’s okay, Mom. I get it,” Max replied.

“We’l make it work!” I added.

“You two have to be understanding of what we’re going through. We understand what you two are saying, but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier for us,” Dad stated, while Mom nodded her head.

“We’re not jerks, Dad,” Max said with a smile. “We’ll do what we can to make everyone understand and accept it.”

“But no secrets,” I stated. “I’m not living a lie because we are afraid Aunt Hazel will not invite us to Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, Aunt Hazel will most decidedly
not
be inviting us to Thanksgiving,” Mom replied. Her laugh sounded real, as if we were all conspiring together.

M
om and Dad
wouldn’t let us sleep in the same room in the house, which I thought was more funny than anything. So Max and I went out to dinner together and then slipped off to a hotel. As Max drove home, I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“I want to make you a promise,” Max said. I lifted my head up and looked at him.

“Oh. And that is?”

“If we aren’t married to someone else by the time we’re twenty-five, we’ll get married to each other.”

“My dear Max, is that a proposal?”

He smirked. “No, it’s a promise for a proposal.”

I laughed. “That sounds like a pretty safe promise to make.”

“You say that now, but wait until after Thanksgiving and Aunt Hazel.”

Max laughed as I punched him in the shoulder. Shortly after, we pulled into the driveway. Mom and Dad were both waiting up, like any parents whose kids had just gone out on a date that ended late.