by Joey Bush
I shrugged, glancing around me to see how the other guys were reacting. I had a sudden fear; how much had Jaxon actually told them? Who had he told—and who knew about the “situation” just because it was impossible for the frat to keep anything a secret? Did they all know that Jaxon and I had had sex—or was it just that there was something “up” between us, and nothing more? If I went to talk to Jaxon alone, would it be a situation where the moment I left the room they’d be talking about me just like any of the other girls who caught feelings for one of the brothers and came around long after they were no longer welcome?
I couldn’t really imagine them treating me like any other hang-around girl. I mean, Jeremy had invited me, and obviously long before Jaxon had gotten home they’d all known something was up, but they had acted like nothing at all had changed. Until they’d reacted to Jaxon showing up, I hadn’t even known that anyone other than Jeremy knew about it. I was safe. I had a reputation among the guys that had already been in place before Jaxon and I had had anything to do with each other. I took another breath.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, tossing my cup into the nearby trash bin. I stood up on shaky legs, telling myself firmly to stay calm, cool, and composed. If I acted like it wasn’t a big deal, then no one else would feel the need to talk about it.
I noticed as I stepped closer to Jaxon and let him lead the way up the stairs that the room had gone quiet—and then everyone started talking like before. If it’s going to be like this every time Jaxon shows up, what’s the point? I shook my head. If Jaxon and I could sort things out, it would go back to completely normal soon enough.
Jaxon led me through the hall and down to his room, opening the door and throwing his book bag across the floor to land next to his closet before he walked over to the desk and sat down. I almost climbed up onto his bed, the same as I had always done when we’d just been friends, when he’d been tutoring me and nothing was weird between us; but then in a flash I realized that being in or on his bed was the worst possible idea—it wasn’t like either of us needed any encouragement to be attracted or turned on by the other. I leaned against the chest of drawers, feeling uncomfortable and awkward.
In spite of the fact that Jaxon was dressed in regular clothes, in spite of the fact that he was definitely not going down a practice slope, I could feel all the tingling, anticipating feelings I’d had earlier. This was bad. This was a horrible idea. I licked my lips as the silence dragged on between us, feeling my heart beating faster with a mixture of fear and attraction. God, I thought, Jaxon was too hot—I couldn’t resist looking at him, even though I knew it was a terrible idea. I remembered all in a flash what he looked like naked: the rippling muscle under his skin, the way his cock looked, long and heavy and thick, the way his eyes darkened when he looked at me. It wasn’t fair. “So,” I said, clearing my throat to try and get rid of the tight, dry feeling, “you wanted to talk.” I swallowed. It was no good—I could feel my body heating up, I could feel my nipples starting to harden at the memory of Jaxon teasing me, fingering me, licking and sucking me and thrusting hard and fast inside of me. Just the thought of it was enough to make me wet. I had to get this over with.
“I want you,” Jaxon said, blurting it out all at once. He looked at me levelly, his voice flat, only the faintest trace of a smile on his face. “I know it’s fucked up and I shouldn’t, but I do.”
“I know,” I said, clenching my teeth, trying to push down the rising feeling of need that threatened to overwhelm me. “I want you too. Fuck—you have no idea! But we can’t, Jaxon.”
“We could,” he said. “No one here knows about our parents. I’m definitely not going to tell anyone about that stupid shit—are you?” I shrugged. I didn’t really think I would. It was just too weird. “So we could see each other while we’re here on campus. No one’s going to care.” I shook my head.
“We can’t, Jax. I mean, it was hard enough to be around you at Bob’s house and we hadn’t had sex in weeks—we weren’t able to go more than a couple of days without screwing!” I shook my head again. “Imagine how much harder it would be for both of us to have to pretend like everything is fine and dandy and normal and we don’t even see each other that way if we’re seeing each other here.” Jaxon pressed his lips together, looking down at his feet.
“My dad’s oblivious anyway,” he said, smiling hopefully. “And as long as we just give each other space at home…”
“No. Jaxon—if we pulled it off, do you know how it would go? They’d make us spend time alone together and we wouldn’t be able to help ourselves. And then they’d catch us again, and then it would be a big ugly mess again. We can’t do it. You know we can’t.”
“What do you want to do?” Jaxon combed his fingers through his hair, slipping his beanie completely off of his head. It was impossible for me not to notice how good he looked, his hair all mussed. I swallowed and took a deep breath.
“We just have to let it pass,” I said finally. “If we just…if we give each other some space, and time, it’ll go away.” It felt like a lie; but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t deal with having Jaxon as both a brother and a boyfriend—it would just be too much. Too weird. Jaxon looked like he was about to continue arguing; I steeled myself, knowing that it would be hard. That I might have to tell him over and over again and he still might not get it. But the next moment he sighed and groaned, cradling his head in his hands and looking down at the floor for what seemed like five minutes.
“If that’s the way you need it to be—if you think it will work—let’s do it.” He looked up at me, closing his eyes a moment and then opening them again. “You’re right. We can’t do it both ways. At least… at least this way we can still be around each other and our parents won’t flip out.” I laughed.
“Yeah, that’s a silver lining at least.” I fidgeted, picking at something on my shirt sleeve. I hated how I felt, even if I couldn’t really define it. Part of me wanted—so much—to go along with Jaxon’s idea. But it was too easy to see how it would play out. More and more ugliness, more and more stress. It was just better to do it this way. “It’ll be okay,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “You’ll find some sorority hottie and be like ‘Mia who?’ in like, a couple of weeks.”
Jaxon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. I’m all about dating sorority hotties.” He snorted. “I don’t like it—I’m not going to lie. But I know we can’t keep doing this. If this is the answer, that’s what we have to do.” I nodded slowly. I didn’t like it any more than he did—but it was one way, maybe the only way, out of the situation we were in. “Go on downstairs before they come up to find out if we’re trashing the room fighting.”
I rolled my eyes. “Game like the one that was just on? I’m sure they’re all way too busy trashing the teams and not worrying about us. But yeah…I’ll see you around, I guess.”
Jaxon shrugged. “I’ll be around. You know. Can’t be a hermit or whatever.”
“I’ll be around, too.” I wanted to leave but I couldn’t quite make myself do it for a long moment. I decided the only thing to do was to force myself to turn around and just walk out of the room. It felt like someone was hammering nails into my feet, but I turned to the door and I put one foot in front of the other, and in a few seconds, I was out of the room and on my way down the stairs.
Chapter Six
When I went back into the living room, I expected it to be awkward; but I made myself just walk in as if nothing had happened, and asked no one in particular, “What’d I miss?” and everything was—shockingly—completely normal. One of the guys was ragging another about his team, the TV was showing the highlights from a wrestling competition earlier in the day, and someone put another beer in my hands. After the conversation with Jaxon, I needed it.
I kept waiting for the awkward moment to happen—for Jaxon to come down from upstairs and everyone to go quiet again, and the whole situation to unravel. But by the time Jaxon did finally make an appearance—just fo
r a second, to ask what was on while he made his way to the kitchen for a beer—I’d relaxed enough that it didn’t even phase me. I was just happy to be with my friends, happy to have the conversation behind me, happy not to be thinking about the whole stupid mess for a few minutes out of the day.
Jaxon disappeared just as quickly as he showed up, and I had to wonder why he was making such a big deal about giving me space. We’d managed to be in a room—in his bedroom, no less—alone together, without tearing each other’s clothes off, and in spite of the fact that we both knew we were into each other, we’d come to the conclusion to just be brother and sister. We’d done really well; why was Jaxon hiding?
I could still feel the low, thrumming hum of arousal that had started the moment Jaxon had closed the door behind us in his bedroom. I almost wished—though I knew it was a stupid thought—that I was attracted to any of the guys in the frat other than Jaxon. They were all good looking enough, and another time I might have suggested to one of them that we screw around and then forget about it. But I couldn’t even think about having sex with anyone, much less one of Jaxon’s frat brothers, without feeling sick to my stomach. I would have to just deal with the fact that I was going to be single for a while. It wasn’t the first time, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last time in my life that I had to deal with it.
I managed to have a good time in spite of worrying about Jaxon in the back of my mind. It was easier with him up in his room; everyone relaxed, and no one asked me any questions. By the time Jeremy walked me back to the dorms at the end of the night, I felt like it would be easy—or at least easier—to go back to my normal routine of hanging around, shooting the shit, talking to the guys. They knew something was up, but maybe they’d just assume that Jaxon and I had figured our shit out, and that things were just a matter of waiting out the awkwardness between us. I hoped that’s what they thought, anyway.
***
By the next day I felt a little bit better; it was good to have some kind of solution, even if it wasn’t exactly the best. Even if it hurt. It was the only way, I told myself again and again. Jaxon and I definitely couldn’t keep living the way we had been—either avoiding each other or screwing each other’s brains out. I told myself that it would get easier. It would be less awkward. I would eventually stop thinking about Jaxon’s body pressed against mine, his lips, his tongue, and his hands wandering over me.
At first, it seemed hopeless; every time I saw Jaxon passing through campus, or caught a glance of him in the frat house, I felt a shiver go through me. I tried to play it off as best as I could, and none of the guys in the frat asked any questions. They honestly didn’t want to know, I think. Jaxon and I didn’t say anything about what we were to each other—on either count—and it was better for us that way. Even if we’d decided to act as brother and sister, there would be just way too many questions.
The first time Jaxon and I actually hung out in the same group, it went from being awkward and weird to being a lot of fun within about fifteen minutes. Good, I thought. The worst part of it is over. Over the course of a few days, things started to feel almost normal; Jaxon walked me to class sometimes, but not always. He and I could be in the same room without either trying to flirt or feeling miserable. He tutored me again, but never alone in his room—even as back-to-normal as things had gotten, we both knew, though we didn’t talk about it, that it would be tempting fate. Instead, he and I sat in the frat kitchen or in my common room and he taught me the material that my professor, a very nice but difficult to understand Pakistani woman, just couldn’t seem to help me make sense of.
At first, I kept waiting for things to get weird again. I thought to myself over and over again that in spite of the fact that Jaxon and I had agreed to just be brother and sister, to just be friends, something would happen. One of us would lose all self-control and then we’d be right where we’d been during the holiday—groping each other and screwing around in private, presenting a totally different face in public. But somehow we both managed to hold it together.
About a week after Jaxon and I came to the conclusion about how we were going to handle the situation, Mom called me. “Hey Mia baby,” she said when I picked up. “How are classes going?” I was expecting her to be suspicious—I expected her to want to talk about Jaxon, about what she’d seen, and the fight. Instead she just asked about snowboarding, about my grades, all the normal nothings that she’d always asked me about in her phone calls.
The next time she called, she did finally bring up the issue of what had happened during the holiday. I had been waiting for it—even if I didn’t want to bring it up myself, I knew one of us had to say something about it. “I wanted to apologize,” Mom said, after a long chat about what was going on in each of our lives. “I shouldn’t have sprung a new family on you like that as a total surprise.” I told her it was okay.
“I mean,” I said, “you’re a grown woman, you can marry whoever you want. It’s not like you need my permission.”
“I know that, sweetie. But I should have told you before.” I told her that it was all in the past and she was relieved. “I honestly… it’s a small world, isn’t it? I never even really thought about the possibility that Bob’s son would be someone you know.”
I laughed. “It could have been more awkward, but only a little. Imagine if he’d been someone I totally hated.” Mom laughed.
“Well then there’d have been a lot of fighting but maybe it wouldn’t have been…” she stopped short and laughed again. “It’s been weird between Bob and me, but we’ve actually got a better relationship now than we ever had before because of it.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I told her, lying through my teeth. Ever since the fight between Jaxon and his dad, I didn’t fully like or trust Bob; his chatty ways, the way he’d thrown Jaxon under the bus, all of it made me think he was shifty and maybe not good enough for my mom. But I had to wonder how much of that was because I wanted them to break up—so that Jaxon and I could be together again, without having to worry about being technical brother and sister. “So is he just showering you in jewelry?”
Mom laughed again, more easily this time. “I can tell you one thing: Christmas is going to be a blow-out this year.” She started going on and on about Bob and how much they loved each other and I felt like I had to listen; I was relieved that she was talking to me like a normal person again, not trying to avoid things, not acting weirded out by what I’d done. Even though things were going well with Jaxon—we had managed to get to a point where just regular hanging out was comfortable—I didn’t tell her anything about him, or even mention his name. And Mom seemed just as glad not to bring him up. I wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to just forget that it had happened completely or because she still felt a little bad about what we’d heard about him from Bob. Or anything else. But neither of us talked about him, and I was actually a little glad to avoid the topic.
Things were a little strained during winter break; Jaxon and I mostly just stayed out of each other’s way, and I made excuses to mom to stay away from the house and Bob. Christmas was nerve-wracking. Mom’s prediction of it being a blow-out was definitely true—but every minute we were hanging out, drinking eggnog and coffee with brandy, unwrapping presents, I kept waiting for Bob to blow up. He managed not to—but I could feel him and Mom watching us the whole time.
I still felt weird. As practices with the snowboarding team started to ramp up to several times a week during the break, I got to see Jaxon just as much as I always had, and it was impossible not to notice that he was hot, that he was getting better and better at hitting his aerials clean, or landing his flips, or any of the little things he was tightening up for the first competition of the season. But I told myself that it would go away eventually. It had to.
Chapter Seven
Just before winter break, the snowboarding team went to our first competition. I was so excited that it was actually really easy to completely forget my issues with Jax
on; I’d competed before, but there was just something about it being my first competition on this particular team that made it all the more thrilling. When I’d competed in the past it had been in individual events—I’d been on my own. Of course, for the competitions we were going to, we’d all be up on our own, but it was so much more fun to have people on the bus on the way to the games, and to know that I’d have people to talk to who weren’t competition.
We’d discussed strategy as a team in one of the last meetings before we headed out; one of the coaches had talked to each of us individually and had addressed us all as a group. “Stick with tricks that you know you can pull off,” he’d said. “There’s no reason to get injured this early in the season. If you’re squirrely on the landing for something, don’t try it. I know you’re going to be tempted—but if you break an ankle or a wrist or an arm or a leg, you’ll be out for the rest of the season and you won’t even have won this comp.” I could see the wisdom in that; but glancing at Jaxon I could tell that he wasn’t going to take the advice seriously. I knew him well enough to know that Jaxon would go all out. And I knew that I would too.
We got to the mountain where the competition was being held and climbed out of the bus and I was so full of adrenaline that I wanted to jump up and down, run, and scream. Jaxon was playing it cooler; but looking at him, I could tell that he was just as excited. We were all hopped up on coffee, full of donuts from the bus ride. Someone on the team had made breakfast burritos for us to eat later in the morning, and there would be chili, soup, and other hot things to eat for lunch, provided by the competition’s sponsors. It wasn’t a big meet, but it was all part of the bigger series—if we scored solid here, we’d have a good chance of one of us making it to bigger competitions at the end of the season.
