Stepbrother Wow! (Bad Boy Frat #1) (2 page)

Maybe I should have stuck up for my fellow girls
more; there was something someone said in one of my classes about hegemony and
how thinking that women were all emotional wrecks with stupid interests was
playing into the patriarchy—but the way some of the bunnies who tried to hook
up with the Phi Kappa guys carried on was just crazy. Everyone in the frat was
still talking about the way I’d thrown down at the first party, and some of
them had exaggerated just how many drinks I’d managed to keep down without
getting black-out drunk; partly because I had out-drunk most of the members,
and they wanted to look like they were tougher than they were—and partly
because it made me seem really worthy of the respect they showed me. Even the
truth of the situation was a good enough story that it would be difficult for
me to ever top it.

While the guys were brainstorming the details of the
potential Communist Party, some of the other members started to arrive from
around campus. I barely looked up as Zack came in; he was spending more and
more time with his girlfriend, Evelyn, but because she was cool, no one minded;
he was still hitting up parties and she’d done a good enough job covering the
football and basketball teams in the campus rag that she was given a certain
level of respect. Plus, according to Jeremy, when she and Zack had first
started dating, she’d shown everyone that she wasn’t going to put up with his
shit—he’d cleaned up his act a bit, though he was still a full member of the
frat, willing to get involved in pranks and happy to party it up, even if he
didn’t take girls to his room anymore.

A few others appeared and asked about the game and
the progress on planning the next party. The only one I really took any note of
was Jaxon. He was definitely, as my dad would have said, first among equals: a
big man on campus. He was hot—his legs muscled and his upper body lean—with
short light brown hair kept almost always in a beanie and constant stubble on
his face. He had hazel eyes and a slightly sunburned tan, and walked around in
jeans and tee shirts covered with the logos of different extreme sports events.
He was easily one of the best looking guys on campus, and even if the rest of
the frat—at least the members assembled in the living room—hadn’t greeted him
the moment he walked in, I would have definitely noticed his arrival.

He came into the room after setting down his
backpack and looked around for a place to sit; I tried not to feel too
flattered when he sank down onto the couch next to me, taking a spot someone
had vacated a few minutes before to help unload beers and food into the
communal fridge. “Hey, Mia,” he said, looking at the screen and then at me.

“How’s it going,
Jax
?” I
asked, feeling a little flutter in my chest but telling myself to ignore it.
Jaxon was an upperclassman—a senior, with an established reputation in the frat
of doing whatever he wanted and getting away with it. The fact that he even
knew my name was impressive enough for me.

“Not bad. Who do you have money on?” I looked at the
screen and shrugged.

“Dolphins have been having a bad season, but they
seem to have it together for this one. It’ll be a close game.”

“I
dunno
... Jets are
looking pretty sharp—oh!” The room erupted in a cheer as the Fins completed an
interception. “Okay, maybe I’m wrong.”

“Get used to saying that, Jaxon,” I said, giving him
a little grin. “Put your money where your mouth is, too.”

“Five bucks—Jets will eek something out in the
fourth quarter.” Someone off to the side made a joke about the Jets
eeking
out a few farts and everyone laughed—
me
included.

“Five bucks on my side says Dolphins will end the
game at
least
one touchdown head,
probably two.” Jaxon shook my hand to seal the deal and I felt a little tingle.
The game continued and Jaxon started taunting me as the Dolphins started to
fall apart a little bit, barely holding
themselves
together in the face of the Jets’ offense. I couldn’t help but notice that his
comments—the little teasing barbs and the jokes he made—had a flirting ring to
them. Or that he kept looking at me, paying attention to me, goading me to try
and increase the amount of our bet. I didn’t rise to the bait, but I gave as
good
as I got, earning hoots and howls of respect from the
other guys in the room.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jaxon was flirting
with me, actually going out of his way to do it. He could have dropped the
conversation totally, started talking to one of his brothers at any point in
time. No one said anything about it, and I’d learned long before that the
surest way to end a perfectly good friendship with a guy or a group of guys is
to overthink it when they flirt with you. Most guys didn’t even really think
about it; they see a pair of
boobs
and turn on the
charm, even if they had no intention of trying to get you into bed at the end
of it. It was a reflex, like jumping back when you touch something hot. A
switch flicked on in their brains and flirty little comments started coming out
of their mouth. Way easier by far to just banter with them and keep everything
light to the touch, not assume they meant anything about it and move on with
your life with maybe one or two good comebacks for future reference.

So because I knew nothing at all would come from it,
I flirted back, rolling my eyes and pulling a few girl-tricks I’d managed to
pick up along the way when I’d been in high school. I kept my attention on the
game and didn’t get all flustered when Jaxon implied that he’d convince me to
bet against him again and again until I was broke and had to start betting my
clothes. Instead I suggested that I’d keep him betting and keep winning my bets
until I could not only get him down to his underwear—but require him to run
across campus like that. No one in the room with us seemed to have any thought
that it was at all unusual, and it was fun on top of it; at parties, if I
flirted with a guy, I had to think in the back of my mind about what to do if
he really did want to go through with it—and I didn’t want to. I could handle
myself in a fight, but I didn’t want to be in that position if I didn’t have
to.

By the end of the game, I had managed to collect
thirty dollars on various bets from Jaxon, counting his money with exaggerated
care and telling him playfully that he could come back any time he wanted to
lose money to me. It would come in handy the next time I needed snacks for my
own dorm, or if I needed to use the washing machine on the third floor—I could
load up my ID card and have enough to not only take care of my own clothes but
also do one of my roomies a favor. Jaxon took his loss in good humor, saying
with pretend-sternness that it would be the last time he would ever bet against
a man-woman freak like me but giving me a slap on the shoulder and a grin to
take the sting out of his insult.

“I’m all
woman
,
Jax
,” I countered, feeling my cheeks heat up in spite of my
cocky words. “If you ever want proof, find a winning team and convince me to
bet my outfit on them.”

“Oh trust me, I am going to check the stats and find
the perfect team to completely demolish you,”
Jax
told me, his bright hazel eyes flickering with something like interest. I
shrugged off the comments everyone around us made and took my leave of the
frat. Even though I’d eaten snacks there in the past, I was not about to endure
any of the guys’ attempts at home cooking in the kitchen, and besides, it only
made sense to get some value out of the meal plan I had paid for. I wanted down
to the dining hall, still buzzing a bit from the flirtation session with Jaxon
but telling myself again and again that it didn’t mean anything.

Jaxon didn’t just get away with pranks and
parties—he had managed once, or at least I had heard he had—to carry on three
relationships at the same time, with none of the women knowing about it for
months. They all thought they were the one and only girlfriend, they all
cherished the idea that he loved them and only them—and one of them had nearly
set the frat house on fire when she found out that Jaxon was banging two other
girls at the same time. He had natural charm and good looks; of course he would
flirt with the only girl in the room, even if most of the frat didn’t entirely
see me as a girl.

I loaded up my plate in the dining hall, starving
from a volleyball game and the long game I’d sat through at the frat. I’d had a
few handfuls of pretzels and some goldfish crackers stolen from the brothers
around me, but I was definitely more than ready for something substantial. I
found myself thinking of Jaxon and the way that he had flirted with me. At
least, I thought, it was definitely a proof of the fact that I was more than
welcome in their ranks; no one pulled any punches, no one tried to be polite
around me, and Jaxon had flirted with me over a football game. All in all, I
thought as I sat with one of my roommates, it had been a good day. I’d head
back to my dorm and get my homework done for the next day’s classes. If
anything good as going on, I could count on Jeremy or one of the other guys to
shoot me a text to let me know. But on a night like that, in the early part of
the week, with midterms coming up, no one would be partying just yet. It’d be a
day or two yet before anything really interesting was going on, and in the
meantime I might as well make sure my grades wouldn’t get me kicked out of the
school in my first semester.

CHAPTER
2

The next day, I had finished my classes for the
morning and was heading in the direction of my dorm, cutting through the
commons, when I ran into Jaxon.
He had his backpack on and
was going in the opposite direction—towards the Thompson building,
I
thought—and called out when he spotted me. “
Yo
, Mia!”
he said, raising a hand in the air. I grinned and cut off to the side, the
direction he was coming, and met him halfway as he walked towards me. “You
snowboard right?” he asked, taking his backpack off of one shoulder and opening
one of the zipper pockets.

“You’re damn right I do,” I answered. Maybe the guys
were talking about taking a trip during winter break—that’d be a good time, I
was sure.

“Well it’s still early days, but we’ve got a
snowboard team we’re building.” I raised an eyebrow and he pulled a sheet of
paper out of his bag, handing it to me. “Some good boarders, we’re looking to
compete this year again.” The flyer fluttered in my hands from the wind; it
wasn’t cold yet but the wind was already stiff heading into fall. I looked down
at the flyer, holding it as steady as I could. The school had apparently put
together a snowboarding team two years prior, though they didn’t publicize it as
well as they did their other teams—especially the football team. The previous
year they’d managed to go to a few competitions, win a few prizes, and they
were starting to assemble a new team this year.

The flyer went on to explain that there was an off-campus
practice facility where the team met up and included a few phone numbers and
messenger contacts for people to ask questions.
“Sweet!”
I said, glancing up from the paper to look at Jaxon. “Thanks for thinking of
me.” Jaxon shrugged. I looked down again at the pictures of the previous year’s
team in their practice space and at competition. Snowboarding is a winter
sport, so it was a bit early, but training would be important, and having a
team put together before the first snow was a good strategy. Jaxon was saying
something to me but I was barely listening as I took in more of the details.

I’d been snowboarding ever since I had first managed
to convince my parents to buy me a board, sometime when I was thirteen or
fourteen. I’d started competing by myself around the age of 15; while I wasn’t
near a pro-level, I was getting better every year, and being on a team with
other boarders would be great experience. Getting to go to competitions and
show off my skills would be even better. “Hey, I’ve
gotta
go to class,” Jaxon was saying. I looked up from the flyer he’d given me and
nodded.

“Oh, yeah, sorry man,” I said, grinning.
“Just really excited about this.
I’ll definitely be there.”
Jaxon flashed another smile and then parted ways with me, heading off to his
class. I kept the flyer in my hand and kept re-reading it as I made my way back
to the dorms. It would be awesome to make the team; I wanted the experience as
well as the potential friends. The frat was good, but if I saw right on the
page, there were some girls on the team the last year, too—and girl
snowboarders would at least be better than sorority girls or my roommates in
the dorm.

The minute I was back in my room, I went into my
closet and started digging out my gear. I’d brought my board with me since I
had hoped that there might be a trip to the slopes at some point before winter
break; it’d come home with me later for winter break, since I could count on my
mom to finagle a trip to the mountains around Christmas or New Year’s. She’d
started dating some rich guy before I’d gone away to college, and whenever I
talked to her she was bragging about the house he lived in—which she called a
mansion with as much pride as if she had bought it herself—and the places he
took her and all the things they did together. I thought it was a guarantee
that we’d make a trip, but it’d be good to have some practice under my belt
before I got home. It’d be even better if I could maybe get in some competition
time before I went home, have something to show for myself other than good
grades.