The Bride

by S Doyle

  “What were you even doing in my room?”

  I looked at him then. It wasn’t an accusation. Like, how dare you, what the fuck were you doing in my room, but I could hear the surprise in Jake’s voice.

  We’d lived in the same house together since last January, and I had never been in his room. Because I wanted him to know he had his privacy. Because I was afraid if I walked in there it would no longer smell like my dad, and that would make me sad.

  It didn’t smell like my dad. It smelled like Jake. It was a little sad.

  “You said you wanted me to pick up cotton swabs. I shopped today and went to put them in your vanity. Then I saw how dark the corners of your shower were. I have this stuff that will take it off, but you have to give it twenty-four hours to sit.”

  “Okay. You have extra towels in your bathroom?”

  “Yes, I put one up there for you. The green one. Do not use my blue one or I will kill you.”

  “That seems a little extreme over a towel.”

  “I’m very particular about my towels, and I don’t want your man parts touching the blue one.”

  He shook his head, but didn’t argue and left. A couple minutes later I heard the water turn on overhead and went back to chopping garlic. I was running the knife over what I had already cut to make it even finer, and I slipped and caught my thumb with the knife.

  Instantly the blood started to gush, and I quickly set it under water before it ruined the work I had already done. Only the damn thing kept bleeding. I wrapped a towel around it and that helped, but if I was going to finish cooking I needed a band aid. I listened for it and I could hear the water was off upstairs. Jake was finished with his shower. Hopefully back in his room already.

  I jogged up the stairs and froze.

  I froze because as I was rounding the steps Jake was leaving my bathroom with a towel around his waist, and as he took a step the towel came loose and I saw it.

  His penis.

  I saw his naked penis.

  “Ellie, what the hell?” he said as he gathered the towel around him.

  “I’m cut. I need a band aid.”

  I could see it then. The indecision of wanting to see how bad the cut was, but not wanting to get any closer. Because he was naked except for a towel. More naked than anyone I had ever seen.

  Chest, legs, and penis. Only the penis was now covered.

  I hoped to hell he couldn’t see me blushing as I headed toward the bathroom. “I’m fine. I needed a band aid and I thought you were done.”

  I closed the door and gave him the opportunity to return to his room without worrying about another towel-slipping incident. The mirrors were fogged up, which was good because I didn’t want to see my face.

  I didn’t want to see how red and blotchy it was because I saw my first human male penis.

  And it was Jake’s.

  It was no big deal. I shook my head and decided I was being stupid. We lived together. It had been bound to happen at some point. We were family. Family sometimes had to see shit. That’s the way it was.

  I grabbed the band aid and worked it over the cut until it was secure, and then I went downstairs to finish the meal.

  Ten minutes later I had steak cooking in the skillet and Jake came in dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. The universal uniform of cattle ranchers everywhere.

  “Should be ready in another few minutes,” I said as casually as possible over my shoulder. As casually as possible for someone who had just seen her first penis, that is.

  “Ellie,” he said quietly. “Do we need to talk about that?”

  “Nooo,” I said quickly. “It was no big deal. I’ll have the gunk off your shower tomorrow and you’re back to having your privacy. Let’s not make something out of nothing.”

  He waited a bit, then sighed. “Okay.”

  Which is when I started to have all these thoughts in my head. Like I shouldn’t have said it was nothing. No man wants his penis referred to as nothing and no big deal. The truth was, it had actually been pretty big…

  No, no, no, no. I wasn’t thinking about his dick. I wasn’t going to think about the size or the shape or the dark hair around it. He was a man. He had a penis. I knew what it looked like. Story over.

  I served him his steak and mashed potatoes, like he liked them with extra butter and garlic.

  I ate my own steak but didn’t really taste much of it. When I was done I let him clean up and I headed to my room. Normally I would change into my flannel PJ bottoms and my tank top.

  Never once had I thought about it. The tank top had a bra shelf, so it wasn’t like my boobs were flopping in the wind. Still, I was a respectable C-cup. It never occurred to me that it bothered Jake. That I sat every night with him watching TV, not wearing a bra.

  If it had bothered him he would have said something, right? Or he wouldn’t have said anything, because that would be calling attention to something neither one of us wanted to call attention to.

  He wasn’t a man. I wasn’t a woman. We were Jake and Ellie.

  We didn’t think about each other’s parts. That’s not what we were.

  Except I had seen his penis and his hairy chest and his hairy legs, and something inside me shifted.

  Like I wasn’t looking at Jake. Like instead I was looking at a naked hot guy. My very own personal porn.

  And I wanted to touch…

  No, no, no, no. I had to lock down any and all thoughts about that. I would not go there. I could not go there.

  Jake was my older brother. Jake was my way older brother. Jake was MY BROTHER.

  I pounded the thought into my head so that it was louder than all the other ones. I couldn’t go downstairs and hang with him, naturally. I knew enough about myself to know I needed distance. But he would think it weird if I bailed this early for bed.

  So I did what smart girls everywhere did when they wanted to get out of an awkward situation. I lied.

  I walked out of my room and called down to Jake from the top of the stairs.

  “Hey, no TV for me tonight. I’ve got a book I’m behind on for English.”

  There was a beat. A moment when he said nothing and I cringed.

  “Okay,” he finally called up to me.

  But that’s when I knew something had changed. I had seen him not as Jake but as a man, and now he knew I was freaked out by it, enough that I needed some distance.

  On a scale of one to ten, this event was definitely a solid eight.

  Eleven

  Ellie

  November

  Wow. Whoa. Holy freak. Eww, gross. Was that even humanly possible?

  You probably want to know what I was doing. Frankly, I was watching porn. That’s right, porn.

  I was a healthy teenager, not having sex, but I had… curiosity. Given that every guy in school had completely frozen me out, thanks to Jake. Because even though he said he didn’t say anything to anyone, I know he must have said something to someone because this was not just retaliation to Bobby being an asshole.

  This was something else.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter. I had already reconciled that cows were my future, but now that I had seen my first penis I was simply curious how it stacked up.

  Hello internet. Google search porn and penises and… Voila.

  All the dick a girl could ever want to see. And no lie, there was some dick I hoped I never saw again.

  I was so focused on what I was seeing that I didn’t hear Jake calling to me as he came through the back door.

  “Ellie didn’t you hear me?”

  “Eeek!”

  Obviously I didn’t hear him or I would have shut off my laptop well in advance of him coming into the kitchen. Instead I made that horribly girly noise and slammed down the lid of the laptop as fast as I could, which immediately made me look suspicious.

  Also my blazing red cheeks.

  Girly noise.

  Slamming laptop lid.

  Red cheeks.

  It all spelled porn su
rfing.

  However, I was a girl. Which meant I might get away with it if Jake didn’t suspect I would ever be doing such a thing.

  “What were you doing?” Nice leading opening salvo by him.

  I looked at him—well, at his left ear. I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Ellie.”

  “Jake.”

  “Do I want to see what you have up on your laptop?”

  “I’m going to go with a solid no on that.”

  He sighed. It was his dad sigh. Something I’m sure his future children would learn to hate.

  For me it ranked with being called kiddo and him ruffling my hair.

  “Ellie, do I need to worry about you getting into some online trouble? You know the internet is dangerous. You have to be careful.”

  Was he kidding me? Did he tell me I had to be careful on the internet?

  It made me angry. Angry enough that I wanted to hurt him.

  “Fine, you want to know what I was doing? I was checking out porn.”

  “Ellie…” I could see him closing his eyes.

  “What? I’m curious. I saw your dick and I thought I would compare it…”

  Then his eyes blasted open. “Compare! Compare? Ellie, for fuck’s sake don’t ever say that to a guy. You never ever say the word compare!”

  Hookay. That was a life lesson. I had never seen him get so freaked out. Now he was pacing back and forth in front of the island, hands on his hips.

  “Geezus. Compare? With porn stars. Those men are professionals, Ellie. What the hell.”

  I’d started out being angry with him for treating me like a child, but this was freaking hysterical.

  He must have seen me trying desperately to hold back my laughter.

  “This is serious. This is not a joke. You don’t… say things like that.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you would freak out like this.”

  “Any guy would freak out.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Any guy.”

  “Got it.”

  “And… porn is for guys. There, I said it. Call me a sexist, call me whatever. But it’s meant for and geared to guys.”

  “You mean guys also like to look at other men’s penises?”

  He winced. “Some guys. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. Just… cool it. And stay away from that crap. It’s not real.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re such a prude, Jake.”

  “I’m not a prude,” he mumbled. “I asked you if we had to talk about what happened and you said no.”

  “Because we didn’t. Why can’t you get it through your head that I’m interested in sex? It’s a highly normal, healthy thing. Stop making me out to be a perv.”

  “I’m not making you out to be a perv. I just don’t—”

  “Want me to have sexual thoughts. I got it. You know why? Because you want to think I’ll be ten forever. Well, I’m not.” I held up my hand. “Five months, Jake. Five months and I’m an adult and this is all mine. When that happens, and I’m no longer under your protection, I hope to hell there’s a line of guys waiting out that door for me because I plan to bang every one of them.”

  His jaw got tight and hard and I knew what was coming next, so I beat him to the punch line.

  “You know what?” I said, grabbing my laptop. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now. You’re on your own for dinner.”

  I left and felt particularly justified in my fury.

  Then once I was in my room, I suddenly felt like shit. I didn’t want to bang every guy in town. I didn’t want to be some slutty girl. I wanted to…

  Be normal.

  But I wasn’t. I was Weird Married Ellie.

  Some days it sucked.

  Jake

  A few days before Thanksgiving

  “Hey, we have to decide what we’re going to do for Thanksgiving,” Ellie told me.

  She was sitting across the kitchen table, cutting her steak, and I thought—I hoped—that things were starting to get back to normal between us. It had been a few chilly days after the whole porn incident.

  “What are our options?” I asked.

  “The Pettys invited us over.”

  “Perfect. Mrs. Petty means good food.”

  I looked up. She was pushing peas around on her plate, biting her lower lip.

  “You don’t want to go to Mrs. Petty?”

  “Well, Chrissy also sort of asked if… I wanted to go to her place. You know, hang out and stuff.”

  It was odd, but something sank in my gut. “You don’t want to spend Thanksgiving together,” I realized.

  It was our first major holiday. Or family holiday. The first real holiday where she would be missing Sam hard. We’d had great Thanksgiving open houses here at Long Valley for years. There was no way this day wasn’t going to back up on her. I needed to be there for her.

  Unless she didn’t want me. Unless she wanted Chrissy.

  “No. I mean... I do. Want to. It’s … I didn’t know if you thought that was important or not. Like maybe you wanted to do something else. With someone else.”

  “Who the hell else would I want to spend Thanksgiving with?”

  I hated this. She had an agenda. I knew she did, but instead of coming right out and saying it she had to girl that shit up.

  That’s right. I said it. Girl that shit up. If that made me a sexist I had to own it.

  “I don’t know. A girlfriend I don’t know about. Maybe that girl you met in Missoula.”

  We were will still talking about Missoula. This was a problem. A potentially big one, but I wasn’t going to let it get that far. Simple and basic. That’s how I liked pretty much everything. Including my Thanksgiving.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend. I want to spend Thanksgiving with you because you’re my family. I want to go to the Pettys because neither of us can put together a decent Thanksgiving meal and we both know it.”

  She beamed at me and I knew I had said the thing she wanted to hear, but I wasn’t sure which part.

  “Okay. I’ll let Mrs. Petty know we’re coming.”

  Later that night, in my bed, I stared up at the ceiling. Sleep eluded me completely.

  Ellie was checking out porn. Ellie was hedging around to find out if I had a girlfriend.

  This was not good. We were not that. We were something else entirely and she had to know that.

  I closed my eyes and thought, I really hope Ellie isn’t thinking about having sex… with me.

  Ellie

  That same night

  So I was thinking about having sex with Jake.

  In my defense, there were a number of valid reasons.

  He was hot.

  He was my best friend.

  He was the one person I trusted most in this world.

  He had a nice penis. I know because I did compare (sorry Jake) and thought his was way better than anyone else’s.

  I liked him.

  I also loved him.

  I was married to him, so I was pretty sure it was legal even though technically I was still under eighteen.

  It was a bad idea. I knew that. I knew how I was supposed to think about him. I knew how he thought of me.

  It was probably a phase. Or a crush or something totally teenager.

  I’m sure I would get over it.

  Soon, I hoped. You know, before he divorced me.

  Twelve

  Jake

  Christmas Eve

  One hundred and eighteen days left.

  It was Christmas Eve and we were at Howard and his wife’s open house party. Ellie had said I should buy a bottle of nice wine, so I did. We walked up the steps together and I rang the doorbell and Mirry, Howard’s wife, opened the door with a big smile.

  A lot of the neighbors were there. Their heads turned toward us. Ellie got the sad smiles. I got the I-did-the-right-thing smiles. These weren’t the people who thought the salacious things about us, because these were the people who had known us our whole lives.

  Howar
d came up and clapped me on the back.

  “How’s the ranch?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “Good to hear. And Ellie? She keeping her grades up along with all the extra ranch work she’s doing?”

  “Three point six. I won’t let her get below it.”

  “You won’t let me,” she said as she joined us after taking off her coat and leaving it on the coat rack near the door. I had braved the cold for the twenty-foot walk to the door. I hated taking my jacket with me where I went, because anytime I did I invariably forgot it and had to go back.

  “Try again. I earned my GPA because I work hard at it. A decision I make.”

  Yeah, but I made sure she had time to study every night. And I made sure she at least thought about college, even though it probably wasn’t an option for her. I couldn’t see her trusting the ranch to anyone she hired after I left, enough to actually move away to college.

  In a few years, after she got some of her mom’s life insurance money and was comfortable with whoever they hired, maybe.

  The point was, I wasn’t really thinking about any of this. Not Christmas, not whether she would like what I got her as a present—I knew she wouldn’t. I had done it intentionally too. I wanted to get her something practical rather than something sentimental that would make her cry. The day was going to be hard enough for her.

  Thanksgiving hadn’t been easy. Christmas would be just as bad.

  I went with a pair of smaller wire cutters I thought she might be able to use to work the fence. I had no doubt she was going to bitch about them all morning because she hated working the fence. Mostly because she didn’t have the hand strength to do it.

  The wire cutters might help.

  Except I wasn’t thinking about any of that. Instead all I could think about was that my life with her was going to be over basically in another four months.

  Four months, which meant we needed to bring someone on soon. We had decided in addition to Javier and Gomez, we would add that potential full time person for calving season. This way we could see how he handled himself over the next few months before making a decision to pull the trigger.