Stepbrother Untouchable

by Masters, Colleen

  “Yes,” I whisper back, unsure of what else to do or say.

  “OK, meet you in there in ten minutes,” Nate says simply and walks out. I wait until I can hear him walking up the stairs before I move. I've never heard a father talk to his son like that before, and our old neighborhood wasn't exactly full of model families. And the way Nate's shoulders slumped as Pierce was speaking to him, it was like he agreed with what his father was saying about him.

  I walk up the stairs to my room and change into my sweats, before heading back downstairs to make some popcorn—food always makes me feel better. As soon as it's finished popping, I head into the den to wait for Nate. Should I tell my mom about what Pierce just did? Would she even listen? She seems to have drunk the Pierce Kool-Aid pretty heavily by this point. And now that Pierce has been the victim of false allegations, it will be even harder for her to believe anything bad about him. I glance up, frowning, as Nate walks in and sits down on the couch next to me.

  “I can tell by that expression on your face that you want to talk,” he begins. I smile slightly, he knows me well. “But the stuff with my parents—it's off-limits, OK?”

  But I need to tell him that those things Pierce said aren't true. “Just—”

  “No, Brynn. I really want us to be able to keep hanging out. But if you keep bringing it up…”

  I sigh. “Fine. I won't say anything. In exchange, though…” I walk to the wide bookcases full of DVD options.

  “No romantic comedies!”

  “Big Fish,” I say, pulling out the case.

  “Is that a romantic comedy?” he asks, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

  “Well, not really. There is romance in it, but it's more about a family,” I explain, careful not to mention the predominant father-son themes. “Hey, friendships have to have some compromise,” I add with a smile.

  “OK, fine,” he says, rolling his eyes. He takes a handful of popcorn and leans against one end of the couch as I pop the DVD in. As I make myself comfortable on the other end, he pulls a blanket from the back of the couch and arranges it over my feet, because he knows that they get cold.

  I feel a pang in my chest at the small gesture, but try to push it away. He's not being romantic, just thoughtful. I look up at the large TV screen as the picture comes up. I feel more comfortable around Nate than I do with anyone else in my life right now, so I have to settle for being friends with him. Otherwise I could lose him altogether.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “You and Nate head down there so we don't lose the reservation!” my mom instructs me. She planned a family outing to go rafting on the Potomac, but Pierce is stuck at the office in meetings, even though it's a Saturday. “I'll swing by and get him and meet you there.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, he said he'd only be a little longer,” she assures me.

  “OK,” I reply with a shrug, and walk into the anteroom off the kitchen where Nate is slipping on his sneakers.

  “My mom says they're going to meet us there,” I tell him.

  “Fuck it, let’s make tracks, Sis.” he smirks.

  And off we go in his Wrangler, Nate blasting some god-awful metal music.

  “How do you listen to this shit? It sounds like two cat’s screwing in a trashcan.” I shake my head.

  “What? This is Slayer, they’re classic trash metal, you have to have respect.” He says reverently. “I always listen to Reign in Blood before all of my games.”

  “Lovely.” I screw my face up in mock horror.

  He turns it up louder, nodding his head enthusiastically as the guitar riffs collide into what I assume is his favorite part of the song. It’s strange to see him let loose like this, and even though I think his taste in music is horrifying, I have to admit I like to see him enjoying himself.

  Thankfully, the boathouse is just a little ways down the Potomac in the direction of the city, and I’m only subjected to Slayer for a few more minutes. The temperature on this August day is in the mid-nineties, but my mom was insistent upon doing a family activity outdoors. As we take a left on the dirt road with an old sign pointing the way, I spot an empty parking lot, and figure most people are wisely staying inside with their air-conditioning today.

  After we park, Nate heads over to the wood-slatted structure to secure the boat, and I take the sunscreen out of my bag. As Nate walks back over, he smiles as he sees me struggling to smear it in between the straps of my sports bra.

  “Want some help?' he asks.

  “…Sure,” I reply, though I'm anything but. The idea of Nate's hands on me, when I know nothing else is going to happen, sounds like torture. I might actually prefer getting a first-degree sunburn, but he's already taken the bottle from me and squeezing some of it out into his palm.

  “Um, just pull the back of your shirt up,” he instructs me. I do as he says, pulling it up to my hairline. I feel his greased-up hands slipping under the straps of my bra, and am glad he can't see the blush that immediately spreads across my face. I take a deep breath, trying to keep my raging hormones at bay, as his fingers slide around the side of my ribcage.

  “Now you do me,” he says, as I release my shirt.

  “That's what she said,” I mutter.

  “Ha!” Nate barks, a short, joyful shout of laughter. “I didn’t know you were funny Brynn,” he says, grinning wide at me.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I say, daring to meet his gaze for a brief moment.

  I clear my throat and take the bottle of sunscreen from him, willing myself to keep my thoughts clean. He pauses, then turns around and pulls off his shirt. I groan inwardly at the sight of his wide, muscular back.

  Where are our parents? I need some kind of buffer between us. But there are no signs of any cars pulling into the parking lot anytime soon, so I dutifully squeeze some lotion onto my fingers and then begin to spread it across his back. I carefully press it all the way up to his neck, across his shoulder blades—feeling the sinewy ropes of muscle there, down his back, and finally down to the top of his athletic shorts, my fingers venturing just inside his waistband. I hear him suck in a small bit of air, and see the slight throbbing of his member in his shorts. He’s trying hard to hold back, I can tell.

  “OK, all done!” I say overly cheerily, as I hand him the bottle. Nate tosses his shirt into the back of his Jeep and begins to spread sunscreen across his chest. I keep my eyes trained on the hazy river.

  “They say how long they were going to be?”

  “Nope, my mom just said—” I break off as I hear my phone start to ring in my purse on the front seat. “I bet that's her now. Hey, Mom,” I greet her as I accept the call.

  “Hey, honey.”

  “What's wrong?” I ask, immediately hearing stress in her voice.

  “Oh, it's nothing, but Pierce won't be able to get out of the office long enough to go kayaking today. I'm just going to drive down to the office now, so at least he and I can have lunch together.”

  “OK, should we—”

  “No, you two go kayaking and have fun, alright? We'll see you tonight for dinner.”

  “Oh, alright, if you're sure,” I reply, wincing as I catch Nate watching me, his muscular torso gleaming in the sun. “Your dad got caught up in work stuff, and my mom's going to go meet him at the office for lunch, so they're not coming. They said we should still go if we want,” I explain as I hang up.

  “Since we're here,” Nate says with a shrug. “You ever been kayaking here before?”

  “Never been kayaking at all.”

  “Well, you'll love it,” he replies, locking up his car.

  “Says the captain of the UVA crew team.” I smile.

  In short order, we're pushing off the dock in a tandem kayak. With Nate's powerful oar strokes, we quickly clear the shallow, muddy water and head toward the open water. “You'll get the hang of it,” Nate encourages me, and I turn around to smile sheepishly at him.

  “I think I'm just holding you back, here,
” I laugh, trying to get the feeling of how to dip the oar in the water at the right time.

  “Well, I have a lot more experience than you in a boat,” he says. “We used to train for crew on the Potomac in high school, but we were a lot closer in to the city. We'd pass Georgetown, the Kennedy Center…You'd be amazed at the wildlife you can see out here, though,” he tells me as he steers us upriver and into the current.

  “I feel so far away from everything,” I observe as the sounds of traffic are quickly covered up by the trees rising on either side of us.

  “This land used to belong to a Native American tribe called the—”

  “Piscataway,” I finish reflexively.

  “Damn, I keep forgetting my stepsister is a nerd,” he says, and I can hear from his voice that he’s grinning. “I won’t even try to impress you with my passion for local history, then.”

  “No, come on, impress me,” I tease him.

  “I can’t hold a candle,” he feigns defeat. “You get better grades than me.”

  “Yeah, well, put me on two varsity teams and I think those grades might dip a little. I don't know how you do it. My friends Allison and Miriam tell me I spend too much time at the library—I barely have enough time for them. Not to mention, I'm not athletically gifted at all,” I add, nodding to my ineffectual rowing. “So you’ve got me there.”

  “I met Allison on the 4th, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But Miriam?”

  “She's back home in Memphis for the summer. She's my other good friend; she and Allison room together.”

  “Why don't you live with them?” he asks, and I pause to listen to his oars dropping quietly into the water.

  “Mm, I thought about it, but I like living alone. My mom can be…”

  “What?” he prods me.

  “I'm trying to think of a more flattering word for needy.”

  “You can say needy if you want. I won't tell.”

  “OK, she’s really fucking needy,” I reply, feeling like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I hardly ever talk about the more negative aspects of my relationship with my mom. “Honestly, a lot less so since she's met Pierce, though. Sometimes I just feel like I'm—”

  “Her mom,” he finishes for me.

  I turn to face him, raising my eyebrows. “Is it obvious?” I ask worriedly. “I don't mean to sound resentful.”

  “You're allowed to feel however you want about her,” he responds with a kind smile, and I turn back around. “At first I thought you were fragile,” he says after a moment. “Like if I dropped you, you'd break. I think that's why…that's why I wanted to test you a little.”

  “You mean when you felt me up at dinner with our parents sitting across from us?”

  He laughs. “I can't believe I did that, and I don't think I've ever apologized.”

  “No, you didn’t, jerk.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “So, you don't think I'm fragile now?”

  “No. I think you're one of the toughest people I've ever met. Look!” he says suddenly. I glance back toward him and follow where's he's pointing. “A great blue heron,” he explains as I spot the huge bird with its wings spread, perched on a rock in the middle of the river. “That's how they dry their feathers after they dive for fish.”

  He stops rowing for a while as we watch it. Suddenly it pulls its wings in, gathers itself like a coil, and launches into the air. We watch it fly into the distant treetops before we begin paddling up the river again.

  “Why are you interested in history?” I ask him.

  “I like understanding why people behave the way they do,” he explains quietly. I resist the urge to ask how this relates to his own history, trying to respect the boundaries he’s put up.

  “How's Greg?” he asks suddenly. I turn around and narrow my eyes at him.

  “What? That's a friendly question,” he says with a devilish grin.

  “I…I don't want to talk about it,” I reply, a little more huffily than I intend to.

  “OK…so that either means really good or really bad.”

  “It's not really bad,” I protest.

  “Uh-oh.”

  I sigh. “It's just, there's no…you know…”

  “Spark?”

  “Exactly. I have to tell him soon—I don't want him to get hurt. Not that I think I'm breaking his heart or anything—”

  “I saw the way he looks at you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He's falling fast. I'd tell him before he falls any further.”

  “I think you're exaggerating.”

  “Trust me.”

  We fall back into a comfortable silence as I think about his words. The stillness of the river, broken only by a soft wind blowing through the trees, helps to ease my anxiety over the conversation I need to have with Greg. The concept of “problems” seems to fade out here, though perhaps it’s the unrelenting heat, which feels like it's beginning to melt my body into the seat of the kayak. I grab the sweating bottle of water from between my feet and take a long swig.

  “Water?” I ask Nate, turning to offer it to him. He takes it, brushing my fingers with his as he wraps his long fingers around it. My insides clench…speaking of a spark. I spot a house very much like ours up on a hillside in the distance. “Where'd you live before the house now?”

  “Townhouse in Georgetown.” He says. “It was less of a behemoth. Had more character.”

  “The mansion isn't your taste?”

  “It was always big for two people, and it still seems big, even for four. But what I really don't like is that it's got all these fake historical touches about it, and none of them are genuine.”

  “Anathema to a history major.”

  “Exactly. I always pictured myself in a smaller house, maybe a converted barn or something…one that was actually built in the time period it looks like it was built in. Maybe somewhere quieter than DC…it's pretty elitist here…I want my kids to grow up more modestly than I did.”

  “You want kids?” I ask, surprised.

  “You don't?”

  “No, I do…I'm just surprised. You know that having kids might necessitate being in a relationship with a woman for longer than you're used to.”

  He laughs. “I honestly hadn't thought of that. I always just pictured myself with kids. Is that horrible?”

  “Yes!” I reply, quickly reaching down and flinging water back at him.

  “Hey!” he cries, and grabs the sides of the kayak, beginning to rock it back and forth. “I'll tip this thing over,” he warns me with a grin.

  “Nate!” I protest, grabbing on. He relents, and keeps rowing after a moment.

  “I think your mom picked the hottest day of the year,” he observes.

  “Want to head back?” I ask, hoping he'll say no.

  He pauses. “Guess we should.”

  I nod, feeling disappointed, and dip my oar in the water to help him turn the kayak. Now that we're going with the current, it takes us much less time to make the return trip back to the boat house.

  “How’s your shoulder?” I ask.

  “It’s better, actually,” he says happily, “thanks for asking.”

  I feel a tightening in my throat as we pull into the shallower water. Nate steps onto the dock first, then offers me his hand to help me get out of the unsteady boat.

  “Much shadier under the trees,” he observes, nodding to a hiking trail that cuts through the trees behind the boat house. I look at him questioningly. “Short hike before we go back?”

  I nod and smile, trying not to look too pleased.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You've got good stamina for someone who doesn't do sports,” Nate observes as our “short hike” goes into its second hour.

  “I've been swimming in the pool pretty frequently, maybe that's it,” I reply, though really I think it's that the conversation hasn't stopped. We're high over the Potomac now, on a dirt trail that winds around large boulders. He was righ
t—it is cooler under the trees, but it's still just as humid.

  “Is that it?” I ask, pointing to a three-leaved plant at the base of a tree.

  After telling Nate that I manage to get poison ivy every other year, he’s made it his mission to teach me how to identify the rash-causing the plant.

  “Not red enough. By this time of the summer, it'll be more red and oily-looking. And the edges of the leaves are too jagged,” he says as he bends over to look at it. A pair of female hikers approach us on the trail, headed the opposite direction. I watch them drink in Nate's shirtless, sweaty appearance and giggle to each other. As they pass, they smile flirtatiously at him, but he just politely smiles back before turning to me. “You're good at so many things, but identifying plant species…” he intones in a mock-serious voice as he shakes his head.

  “Hey, if that's my weakness, I'll take it,” I reply with a grin.

  “Yep, poison ivy, that's your kryptonite,” he teases me.

  “What's yours? Intimacy?”

  “Intimacy? How dare you! It's commitment. Very different.”

  “Oh, duh, of course. My apologies,” I reply, glad we can joke about this kind of thing. “Wait, there!” I say, pointing to an ivy crawling up a tree trunk on the river side of the trail.

  “Where? I don't see it,” Nate replies, craning his neck.

  “There!” I repeat, walking off the trail and into the underbrush.

  “Brynn, be careful! And I don't think that's poison ivy, anyway.”

  “No, really! See, it's red—” I break off as I feel the ground beneath me give way. What I thought was solid earth was just an overhang of vegetation. My stomach flies into my throat as I begin to fall, the horizon instantly becoming a blur. I gasp and turn, frantically grabbing onto the dirt and branches nearby.

  “Brynn!” Nate yells, and dives into the brush after me. I feel him grab my hand as I struggle to find a foothold on the steep hill beneath me. My feet frantically search for support and I begin to panic. “It's OK, it's OK, I've got you,” Nate says. The steadiness in his voice causes me to look up at him. He's looking back down at me, his eyes sure and calm. I take a deep breath and reach my other hand up. He grabs it and begins to pull me up. “Under your right foot, there's a rock,” he says, peering over the edge. “Don't look down, just feel for it. Just an inch to your left. Keep looking at me.”