Step F*#K: Part Four (Stepbrother #4)

Copyright

Step F *@K Part Four

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

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Copyright © 2015 by Scarlett Ward

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B O O K
 
F O U R
 

The only thing that’s going to give me any peace of mind is a one-way ticket out of this fucking place and back to London, pronto. But seeing as there’s no plausible—or even
semi
-plausible—excuse I can come up to leave before the actual wedding, I’m here for at least another thirty-six hours. My blood is fucking boiling. No, I’m about to have an aneurysm. Or maybe a stroke. Or how about none of the above, because all that happens is this current of raging disbelief continues to course through my veins, like I’m hooked up to an endless I.V. drip of the stuff. I’ve got no choice but to grin and bear it, and that’s exactly what I try to do after I slam the door and am stalking outside. I see Dad approaching from down the hallway, and since I can’t pretend I didn’t actually see him I plaster a grin on my face and prepare to begin bearing whatever it is he’s about to tell me.
 

“There you are,” he says. He claps me on the shoulder. “Everything all right?”
I suspect my grin is closer to a grimace, so I attempt to rearrange my face into an expression of benign joviality.
 

“Couldn’t be better,” I say through gritted teeth.
 

“Well, get ready to test that theory.” He says this with all the vim of a game show host, and I want to slap him. For a moment I am overwhelmed with the urge to slap the ridiculous look off his face, to tell him that just because he’s getting married tomorrow and everything is all hunky dory in his world doesn’t mean that he has any fucking clue what is going to make things in
my
life better. It takes serious will power to keep my mouth shut. His hand remains on my shoulder as he guides me toward the front door. “Your surprise is here.”

I refrain from telling him the only thing that could make me feel even more irritated at this point is whatever fucking surprise it is Dad’s got up his sleeve, but even through my anger, I can see that he’s genuinely excited. That does make me a bit curious, and this curiosity begins to chip away at the anger just a little. I take a deep breath. Then another. At this point, I’m hoping the surprise is a very expensive, very potent bottle of scotch, or something that will numb me enough so I can make it through the next thirty-six hours without putting my hand through the wall.
 

“It’s this way,” Dad says. I follow him outside. I see nothing out of the ordinary. “Just a second. The surprise should be here any moment.”
While we stand there, facing the driveway, I try not to think about Emma, who is probably still in her room, caring way too much about what other people think. I hate losing control like I just did. It wasn’t cool; I wish it hadn’t happened like that, but there is only so much I can take. I have never been one who’s dealt well with the flip-flopping.
Yes, I’m okay with this, wait, now I’m not, oh actually I think I am, no, never mind, I’m really not . . .
The problem with Emma is that she hasn’t been around the block enough times. She hasn’t shagged enough people to know that when something comes along like the connection she and I have, you don’t just walk away from it.
 

“Any second now,” Dad’s saying, and I glance at him. He’s standing there, hands in his pockets, looking toward the driveway. As it becomes more and more clear that the surprise is not a bottle of cognac or moonshine, I start having to resist the urge to tell Dad I don’t give a flying fuck about the surprise and I’m going back inside. Another thirty seconds pass and I’m about to tell him as much when his eyebrows shoot up and a grin spreads across his face.
 

I follow his gaze to the end of the driveway, where some black sports car has appeared and is making its way toward us at a rather rapid pace. An alarmingly rapid pace, for that matter, far faster than anyone should ever actually drive a car down a driveway. I glance at Dad, but he seems completely unbothered by this car careening toward us. The car comes to a screeching halt, but the windows are tinted so dark that I can’t actually see who’s in the driver’s seat. The driver door opens.
 

My jaw drops. It’s Kate. Aw, my good friend, Kate, looking gorgeous as ever—the sculpted cheekbones, those full, pouty lips. She flips her long brown braid over one shoulder and grins.
 

“Surprise,” she says.
 

She comes around the front of the car and I go over and we embrace, both of us laughing. It feels good, this distraction, the way the anger has suddenly dissipated, because here’s a person who understands me without me having to say a single thing, here’s a person that, despite her being undeniably gorgeous, is not someone that I’m going to even think about sleeping with. All pressure’s off. It’s kind of strange how things can shift when sex is off the table. She, more than anyone, really is like a sister, in that I have no sexual attraction to her whatsoever.
 

“What the hell are you doing here?” I say. “I can’t believe it!”

“Well, I wouldn’t miss this guy’s wedding for the world!” she says, going over and giving Dad a big hug. “I needed a little time away, anyway. I need a break.”
 

“Let’s get your stuff inside and you can meet everyone and have something to drink,” Dad says.

Kate grins. “That sounds splendid.”

And I have to agree; a drink (or twelve) doesn’t sound all that bad.
 

I don’t see Emma for the rest of the evening. I’m not even sure where she is, but for now, I think it’s better that I don’t see her. Kate and I spend the better part of the evening sitting down by the lake, drinking beer, catching up on old times.
 

“It’s been a rough year,” she says. “Work-wise things have been great, but not so much in my personal life.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “Well, I mean, not about work. What’s up? Some girl giving you a hard time?”
She tips the bottle of beer back and take a long swig. “Oh, you know. You know what it’s like with girls. Why do we bother, right? They’re so fucking infuriating!”

“Yes, but better than the alternative.”

She grins. “Damn straight.”

“Or not.”

“So this girl, Tara, she’s a grad student and she works at a bookstore, and she’s adorable. For the first six months everything was so great between us. It was fucking awesome. And I’m starting to think, hey now, here’s a girl that I could see myself spending the rest of my life with, here’s someone who just really brings out the best in me, who I truly love to be around. And no sooner do I think that then she starts pulling back. Saying that things are getting too serious, moving too fast, that she’s got to focus on school and our relationship, while it’s been great, has also been a huge distraction.”

“That really sucks. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not the worst of it though. I mean, yeah, that part sucks, but I can accept it, I can understand. It’s that she keeps going back and forth, changing her mind, telling me that she’s never felt this way about someone before and that she actually
does
want to try, and then the next week she’s back to singing the other tune. It is an emotional fucking roller coaster and I finally had to get off. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

I stare out at the lake, the surface of the water smooth as a mirror. It all sounds so familiar.
 

“I don’t understand why people have to go back and forth like that,” I say. “It doesn’t really make sense. It’s kind of fucking infuriating, in fact.”

“Oh, it is,” Kate says. “But it also makes complete sense.”

“How so?”

“Because no one really knows what they want. No one has any fucking clue. Other than we want what makes us feel good, right? And so for Tara, that’s me, at least when we’re together, but we can’t be together all the time, and it’s the time that we’re not together that she starts thinking that things are either moving too fast or getting too serious or that she’s got all this other shit she needs to be doing.”

“You know, I think you’re right.” I finish the last of my beer and then set the bottle down in the grass next to the chair. I don’t want to start talking about Emma right now, even to Kate, because I’m afraid that if I do, I won’t stop, but she’s exactly right. When Emma and I are together, everything is perfectly wonderful. It’s when we’re
not
together that she starts questioning everything. “What is the solution, though? It’s not like you can be with someone twenty-four hours a day. And you shouldn’t have to be.”
“Oh god no.” Kate laughs. “If we
were
together for that long, it would probably be pretty awful! But it’s still frustrating. So . . . I’d just like to have a good time tonight and tomorrow maybe get a little tipsy, and celebrate some people who are
really
in love!” She holds her beer bottle up and I pick up my empty, and we click them together.
 

“To people who are really in love,” I say.