A Promise to my Stepbrother (3 page)

W
hat hurt
me about Max’s attitude toward Jeremy was his coldness. He’d always been analytical and curious, and I wanted him to be jealous. I went to every swim meet just to stare at Max’s body. He pulled himself out of the water, and every drop that slid down his chest, arms, and legs was like I was in a dream.

And his body. God. He had always been cute, and I loved that, but when he started swimming his body fat dropped, and it was like a sculptor had chiseled away the rough draft into an exquisite statue of the perfect male.

He had this shaggy brown hair that he let grow long until he had to shave for regionals. It fell around his angular face, perfectly accenting his gray eyes. He had that perfect swimmer build. Broad shoulders and torso that formed a V at his hips, with leg muscles rippling with every movement.

So when Jeremy asked me to the prom I was kind of shocked. I didn’t even notice many of the other swimmers. Jeremy was handsome, and he was a swimmer so of course he had a great body, but he wasn’t even in the same league as Max. I swear I said yes only to see how Max would react. I wanted him to be angry, to pull me aside and say something like, “You are mine!”

But, no, Max was just as cold and distant as always. I even asked him once or twice what he thought of Jeremy, and he would just mumble something about him being a good guy and that the important thing was that I was happy. Didn’t he realize that I didn’t want him to want me happy? I wanted him to want me unhappy. More specifically, I wanted him to want me.

But it was a lost cause.

The worst was after the prom. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to Max as I walked into the room. Part of me want to tell him just enough to see if I could make one last push to make him jealous. Part of me wanted to tell him the truth—Jeremy was nice, but there were no sparks. And, truth be told, part of me wanted to just grab Max, kiss him passionately, and say that it should have been us holding each other on the dance floor.

But he ruined it all.

All he cared about was details of how we had sex. I had never been sadder. It would have been better if he had screamed at me in jealousy and yelled out, “You screwed that asshole, didn’t you?” But, no, he just kind of dropped the bomb without a care in the world.

At one point I started to cry, and when I looked over at him he had turned away. I loved him so much, and I thought he loved me, but he had just hurt me, and he couldn’t even look at me.

I could never say I hated Max, but at that moment I didn’t like him very much. I stormed out. Jeremy had asked about dating, and I told him I’d think about it. I was going to share that with Max, and we would then conspire on a gentle way of my saying no. But I blurted out that I was going to say yes, and as I ran to my room I knew I had to go through with it.

I had to get over Max somehow, and if it took the arms of another man, then so be it.

A
week
later and to my utter horror Max told me he was dating Holly Morrow. Max and I used to joke about Holly. She had the hugest crush on him, and she would constantly ask me how to get his attention. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, “Well, a good first step would to not be Holly Morrow.”

At one point she decided to go for broke and after every swim meet she would walk up to Jeremy wearing tiny jorts and bikini tops. She would hug him after he swam, whether he won or not. I loved the awkwardness in his face as she would pull him tight and press her crotch against his. I swear if she could slide her hand into his swim trunks without everyone seeing she would have done it.

So when he said he was dating her, my anger over his attitude toward me and Jeremy immediately switched to jealousy over the little slut trying to steal my brother’s attentions.

To make matters worse, I had to admit that things weren’t going well with Jeremy, either. We had been on a few dates, and I froze when he started to French kiss me during the last one. The moment he started to kiss me deeper, I pulled back. I called it a night shortly after.

He was still angry the next day and was cruel in the guise of honesty, asking me about what other hang-ups I had. He wouldn’t understand the truth, a truth that poured cold water over the nice feeling of having a handsome swimmer making out with me—my promise to Max. I felt like those girls at school who say they’re saving themselves for marriage. In my heart there was some deep part of me that wanted to save the special kiss for Max.

And now he was dating a girl who would go all the way in exchange for his phone number. What the hell did a French kiss mean with that facing me? I felt stupid.

His first date was to a movie on Friday night. Mom and Dad let him stay out until one o’clock because I was allowed to do that for the prom, but I think more than anything they were just glad he was finally going out with a girl. His interest in dating was pretty much nil.

They went out to see Kung Fu Panda, which pissed me off because Max said that we would go see it together. The movie was over at like ten o’clock, so I was dreading what they were going to do after that for three hours. I pictured every possible scenario between the two of them, all of them horrifying to me.

He finally rolled in at one o’clock. I refused to do to him what he did to me, so I just stayed in my room and read. He knocked softly on the door.

“Come in.”

He walked in, and my heart couldn’t help but skip a beat. He looked so rugged and handsome, in jeans and a khaki shirt. He ran his hand through his hair and looked up at me from a bowed head. “Got time to talk?”

I pulled myself up into a sitting position and patted the bed. He sat down and sighed.

“Holly not what you expected?” I asked, trying to create an image of concern while being clear that I knew exactly what was expected in such a situation.

“Yes and no.” He put his hands on his head and fell back onto my bed. “What’s wrong with me, Katie? I try to do the right thing to all the people I care about, and now I do the same thing with the new people I am seeing, and all I do is just alienate them.”

“What happened? Did you make her mad?” At this point I was kind of happy that the date clearly didn’t go well, but I was also nervous over how Max was speaking. No one was closer to him than me, and I knew that he would rather kill himself than reveal his deepest emotions, even to me. That’s part of what made him so maddening. But here he was doing just that. What did Holly do to him?”

“I just wanted to have a nice time, Katie. Really.” I slid myself closer to him. He was really hurting. “You know I think she’s pretty, right?”

It pained me to answer, but I did. “Yeah, she’s kind of sad, but she’s definitely pretty.”

“Yeah, that’s just it. She’s sad. I picked her up, and she immediately leaned over and gave me this big kiss. Then in the car she put her hand on my thigh, and she kept stroking my leg. And at the movie theater she actually took my arm and put it around her shoulder, and while I was okay with that she kept not-so-subtly tugging my hand down to rest on her breasts.” I had to smile at that point. Breasts, not tits. That was so totally Max.

“Look, I don’t think I need all the dirty details. She was really horny. I get it.”

“That’s the thing, Katie. I don’t think it was that at all. I think she just wanted someone to be physically close to her. At no point was there any real passion behind her actions. I think she just wanted me to want her.”

I looked at Max. His eyes were closed, and his profile was this combination of unbelievable sexiness and deep sadness. “Was that the problem? You wanted her to want you?”

His head jerked up, and perhaps for the first time in my life his face didn’t have the cold Max veneer. He looked alarmed and seemed almost out-of-control. “No! I’m just trying to describe to you how it was this really sad thing.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

“So the movie ends, and she says we should go hang out at a Denny’s, which is cool. I thought it would be good to talk to her.” He looked at me, and his eyes pierced me in with their intensity. “She is
nothing
like you. All she wanted to talk about was Instagram and school and the popular kids and how cool it must be to be on the swim team. It was like two hours of desperation, Katie. Can you imagine that?”

“Well, I have you, so thankfully I guess not.”

“Exactly! It was like two hours of soul sucking. I’m not trying to be a gross, but it was like I had become her host. She was outlining to me how her life would be so much better by being attached to me.”

“That
is
gross,” I replied, smiling. Max smiled a bit at that.

“But then it got weird.”

“Oh, this I have to hear.” I couldn’t believe how much Max was opening up to me. We were the closest of friends, but I never knew him before he was eleven, and in the previous five years we shared all of our dreams and interests, but one thing Max had trouble sharing was his pain and weaknesses, so this was new to me. In an odd way I felt like this was a deepening of a relationship I didn’t think could go any deeper.

“Well, I went to drive her home, and when I went to open her car door—”

“Always the gentlemen,” to which he nodded with a smile.

“—She grabbed my arm and pulled me down and kissed me. I kind of smiled and was trying to think of a way to say that I appreciated her affection even as I thought it was a little creepy when she grabbed my crotch with her hand.”

By now I knew Max’s mindset, and it wasn’t horniness, so I decided to tease him. “Sounds more like an opportunity than weirdness.” He glared at me. “Hey, you’re the one who said she was pretty.”

“Anyway, I grabbed her hand and kind of laughed it off, saying something like there was plenty of time for that later.”

“Oh that was a mistake.”

“Wait, why do you say that?” He looked at me, his face full of confusion.

“Because now she’s probably thinking that you’re inviting her to a hotel room or something for a big finale.”

“Omigosh, that’s pretty much exactly how she reacted.”

“Rumor has it that I’m a girl and that I know girl things.”

“So she says to me, with this really desperate whisper, ‘I could start you here and we could finish somewhere more intimate later,’ and then I swear to God she winked at me and grabbed my zipper with her hand.”

“So what’s it like to get a blowjob?” I asked, smiling sweetly.

“Shut up, you jerk.” He was smiling when he said it, so I knew that we were totally attuned to each other on the mood of the conversation. “I told her that it was too early to talk about stuff like that.”

“You sound like an altar boy.”

“That’s what she said!”

I shoved my shoulder against his. “Girl. Knowing girl things.”

“Yeah, well anyway. I’m driving her home, and she’s
still
running her hand up and down my thigh, and before you say anything, no, it was not sexy or arousing.”

“Noted.”

“I walk her up to her house, and I figure that I should at least kiss her goodnight, so I lean down to kiss her, and she grabs my hair and smashes her face against mine. She was running her tongue against my lips trying to get it in my mouth, but I just clamped them shut and pulled back. I don’t know who was more embarrassed, her or me. I kind of muttered a goodbye, and as I walked away I was wiping her saliva off my lips and chin with my sleeve, and I glanced back
and she was watching me
.”

“Oh man, that’s bad.”

“Yeah, her last sight of me after our date is me furiously wiping her kiss off my lips.”

“Well, look at the bright side, you still have my promise,” and the moment I said it, all the air got sucked out of the room. We had not talked about the promise since we made it, and I had assumed that Max was glad of that. I was his sister, and he didn’t think of me that way. Sure, stepsister, but still. His cold reaction to everything had been clear enough. But now I brought it all up again. I wanted to just disappear.

“Oh,” he replied. He looked at me, and there was something different in his eyes. Not the cold analysis I expected, but something warmer. “I just thought that with you and Jeremy…” His voice trailed off.

“Me and Jeremy?” It took a moment, and then I added, “Oh my gosh, no. We haven’t done more than just kiss on the lips.”

“I thought you two were pretty close.” That look in his eyes again.

“Actually, he doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to break up with him.” Up until that moment I hadn’t decided to do that, but something was changing, and the awkwardness and anger of my not kissing him with the passion he wanted suddenly became a deal breaker for me.

I looked at Max. He was smiling and shook the fringe of his hair out of his eyes. Yes. It was only too clear. I was going to wait until our eighteenth birthday, and then I was going to kiss him like he’d never been kissed before. For the first time I had an inkling he felt the same way. It was nothing more than the aftermath of a bad date, but it was something.

I
didn’t want
to ruin it, so I played it cool. When Katie mentioned the promise I changed the subject to her and Jeremy, but inside I was a mess of emotions. I could never get my mind of Katie. She was the most beautiful girl in school. No, I had to agree with Jeremy on this one—she was hot. And she was my best friend. It was the kind of combination that wasn’t supposed to exist, but it not only existed, it was my life.

The only trouble was that I didn’t think Katie felt the same way. I was her brother, and as every year went by we became more and more family. Was family, best friend, and girlfriend a thing? It didn’t seem so, and that kind of freaked me out. Of course, I assumed the family part ruined it for Katie, but maybe it didn’t. Maybe the family thing wasn’t really a problem for us.

It would be a problem for Mom and Dad.

The thing was, Katie’s opening the door made me think that perhaps our parents would be okay with it. They had found each other in difficult circumstances and got married. Maybe they wouldn’t worry about Katie and I dating. I decided to ask my dad.

Every Saturday we would go out and run errands. They ran the gamut from trips to Home Depot to Dick’s Sporting Good to Central Market. If something was needed around the home, we both took care of it as a team on Saturdays. The time together in the car was a great opportunity for us to chat about dad/son things. Dad was pretty open and liberal, and he wasn’t afraid to talk about personal things like sex or dating.

“Dad, I have a dating question.” We were driving across town to get buy some special ingredients for a meal that Mom was planning, so we had time for a long conversation.

“Dating question? By now I think you probably have more experience than I have.” He turned and winked at me.

“More like how the family views a potential dating choice of mine.” My Dad glanced over at me, his brows furrowed.

“Dating choice? C’mon, Max. You should know better than that. We don’t care if you date a Black girl, a foreign girl, or anything. Just find yourself someone who will make you happy.”

“No. It’s nothing like that. I was thinking of something more like—” I didn’t know anything that would remotely compare to asking him about dating Katie, and there was no way I was going to drop that bomb without more of an idea how he would respond. I took a deep breath. “Well, how about this. How would you feel if I dated one of my first cousins?”

“You want to ask Julie out?” Julie was beautiful, and she was the daughter of my dad’s brother. I was focused on my dad’s reactions and the sound of his voice. I thought it was interesting that he immediately assumed I meant Julie. Beyond that it was tough to read him, so I just went with his assumption.

“Well, you have to admit she’s pretty.”

“She’s
beautiful
, Max. Inside and out.” I could sense the disapproval growing in his voice. “But she’s
family
.” Dad shook his head, and then sighed. “Look, Max, it’s not that I am ethically opposed to someone dating their first cousin. It’s not a genetic problem, and it’s not illegal. It’s just that it creates a tension that upsets the dynamic of the family. I really like Julie. I love Julie, but I love her as my niece. Can you imagine if you two go through a big break-up? You may be able to avoid those girls that you discard at school, but you won’t be able to do that with family. You’d make Thanksgiving and Christmas miserable for all of us. Aunt Hazel would kill you.”

“Sheesh, Dad. I don’t discard girls.” I looked out the window, wishing I had never brought the subject up. “And it was just something I was thinking about. I wasn’t even serious.”

It was clear my dad didn’t believe me. “That’s the problem, Max. When it comes to girls you don’t think. You chase every pretty girl at school and seem to get bored of them the moment you catch them. You know, I’m glad you brought this up.” Oh no. I had opened the door to lecture time. “Your mom and I are worried about your inability to make a real connection with a girl. Who was that nice girl you brought home at the start of swimming season?”

“Karen?”

“Yes. She was smart and pretty and you seemed to really get along with her. And then three weeks later you were on to someone new. Help me understand, Max. What was wrong with her?”

I didn’t know how to answer the question, as the reality was that Karen was all those things, but she was also very sexual, and when we started making out in the football stands and she asked about going to a hotel room, it freaked me out. All I could picture was the disappointment on Katie’s face. I was rejecting an amazing girlfriend in every sense because it would betray my love for Katie, who was the perfect girlfriend.

Except she wasn’t my girlfriend.

“I don’t know, Dad. She was just kind of crazy in ways that you don’t see in public.”

Dad nodded. “Ah. Well, I’ve dated my share of those.” He reached over and tapped me on the leg with his fist. “Look, Max. I get it. Julie is very attractive, and she is a wonderful girl, but let me illustrate it for you in a way that you’ll better understand. Imagine what it would be like dating your sister.” All the air left me at that moment. I literally could not speak or breathe. All I had done for the past couple years was dream about dating Katie. “Yeah, kind of unsettling, isn’t it?” I didn’t reply. I just listened to what was the absolute worst case scenario unfolding in the seat next to me as my dad spoke. “Katie’s prettier than Julie, but you would never think of her that way, right?” He didn’t wait for me to acknowledge the question. “She’s family, and it would just be flat out wrong.” Dad glanced over at me. “You understand?”

“Yeah, Dad. I get it.”

“So dating Katie would just be weird and wrong and cause nothing but pain, right? Well, I know that a cousin isn’t the same thing as a sister, but the concept isn’t too far off. The same complications would exist. So put that thought out of you head.” He shook his head. “My goodness, Max. Your cousin? I’m starting to think the only pretty girl in this city that’s safe from your attentions is your sister.”

And with that comment, Dad let out a big laugh, and I felt my whole world collapse.