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Why had I lied? It had only soured my mood to feel like that lie had been necessary. God forbid I took a risk once in my life. God forbid I allowed even a sliver of a possibility for him to suspect I felt anything other than what I showed.
My heart thundered in my chest, echos filling my ears and head. It pounded and carried a headache with its drumming.
I crashed on the sofa and stared at the TV’s black screen. I was in no mood to play anything. But I was too upset to lie in my bed and hope to fall asleep.
I didn’t realize I was chewing on my lower lip until I tasted the metallic flavor of blood on my tongue. It stung when I released it, but I knew I deserved it. I had lashed out for no good reason. He was sloppy, sure, but I had lived with that for years. And his sloppiness had never stopped me from wanting him. In fact, it might have contributed.
I’d been on this destructive path for long enough to notice some patterns. Like when Asher was particularly childish or even bratty, the urge to shut him up with my lips against his was the strongest. When he misbehaved the most, resisting the temptation was the hardest. In some fucked up corner of my mind, I discovered a sliver of a belief that my physical attraction to him was a legitimate form of punishment. I dismissed that irrational thought and banished it from most of my consciousness, but its traces never fully vanished.
Why else would I be so hung up on the one single person on this planet I couldn’t have?
Couldn’t or shouldn’t? I had been asking myself that question for too long. And I didn’t want to answer it. Insisting to myself that I couldn’t have him was all the difference between us being a makeshift family and me losing all control and taking him. Clouded by this hopeless attraction, I sometimes wondered if he would welcome it.
And if should and shouldn’t was all that stood in the way, I wondered if I was strong enough to stop myself. That was an all too easy obstacle to overcome. For years, I had been a hair’s width from dropping the pretense of decency and going after him. The reminders that it was not possible — he’ll be disgusted by it; he will tell; he hates you already; what will your dad say? — was all that stopped me.
The house was deafeningly quiet now that I was down here alone. There weren’t other houses for miles around us. There wasn’t another soul nearby.
Why should he be disgusted? We weren’t related. Not really. Even with our parents being married, I had kept my distance since the very first time we met. I couldn’t be a brother to him when he made me feel all this raging, boiling heat. I couldn’t be his friend when his very presence left me flustered and bumbling.
And he wouldn’t tell anyone. For all his childish actions, I knew he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t want to cause discord in the family.
I dismantled the myths in my head, one after another, but there was no way to deny that he hated me. As to what he would say to any sort of an advance, I had no idea. It was a thing you only knew after the fact. And there would be nothing for as long as he had a reason to resent me.
That’s something you can start fixing now. And I knew that my voice of reason was right. I might not be able to wave a magic wand and make him like me, but I could apologize for being so agitated about the damned bathroom floor. So what if it was wet? I wasn’t made of sugar. It took more to melt me than a little puddle of water.
I balled my fists and got up. My steps were heavy and determined. I marched to his door, just next to mine, and paused for a moment. There was some shuffling on the other side. I could hear occasional inhales and exhales, but it was all too muffled to make any sense.
Realizing that I was stalling, I knocked. It was a tad harsher than I had wished, but it did the job.
“Fuck,” he hissed as if to himself. Great. You annoyed him already. “What is it?”
His feet thumped against the hardwood floor. The shifting and the movements of something in the room lasted a few hurried moments. “Can we talk?” I asked.
The shushing sounds ceased and he crossed the room, his bare feet slapping against the floor. He turned the key in the lock, then pulled the door a hand’s width ajar. “About what?”
“Can you let me in?” I asked. I thought I was being polite, but the look on his face was somewhere between frustrated and horrified. I didn’t mean to intrude. I only wanted to apologize.
Asher opened the door a little wider, but most of his body was behind it, and only his head and one side of his torso were visible. The silver beams of moonlight fell through the window, softened by the thin white drapes.
My stepbrother’s voice was strangled and forced when he said, “I guess.” He reluctantly moved away from the door and let me enter.
As I stepped inside, I switched the light on. The air was stuffy and hot but not unpleasant. It carried a faint scent of sweat and musk. I wouldn’t have said anything if it wasn’t for Asher’s flushed face. He was red and almost shiny with perspiration. “Why don’t you have the AC on?” I asked.
“Don’t need it.” He turned his back to me and faced the window.
I meant to gather my thoughts, but Asher drew my attention when he shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. His hips adjusted and leveled and he stuffed his hands deep inside his pockets. His shirt was untucked and crooked. The hair on the back of his head was messy and standing in all sorts of directions like he had been scratching it hard or rubbing it against the pillow. My gaze flew to his pillow and the vague dent in the shape of Asher’s head. “Were you sleeping already?” My pride was stung a little by the idea that he could have fallen asleep after the confrontation. Such things left me upset and awake for hours. Countless times, I had gone to bed and stared at the ceiling in the dark, waiting for the bruises on my heart to mildly heal before I could drift asleep.
Maybe it simply didn’t matter to him. Maybe he had put me out of his mind the moment we parted.
“I wasn’t,” he said dryly. Without facing me, Asher walked to the bed and grabbed the pillow playfully. He fluffed it idly as if to do anything but look at me, plopped onto the edge of the bed, and hugged the pillow.
Was I so intimidating that he instinctively held a shield against me? I couldn’t fathom that. I’d never hurt him. In fact, I had kept my distance for years to avoid hurting him. And even if that wasn’t the entire truth, it was a huge part of it. The rest…well, I had to protect myself, too.
My mouth was dry as I watched his slender fingers sink into the pillow, his torso leaning a little forward, the pillow partially folded in his lap. “Look, I didn’t mean to be a dick.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I lifted my walls in anticipation of Asher snorting, rolling his eyes, and saying something to challenge me. Instead, he lifted his gaze to meet mine, held it, and then nodded. “It’s cool. I should have mopped the floor.” A memory of a pout still remained on his lips.
“Nah,” I said lamely and sat next to him. He scooted away from me, his knees pointing in the opposite direction. I knew enough non-verbal cues to read that one, but I was already sitting, so he would have to suffer through it. “It’s just water, Ash. I made a big deal out of nothing. I don’t know why I keep doing it.”
