When Mom finally reached the altar, the priest smiled and looked at us. “Friends, family…welcome. Today we are gathered here to celebrate the wonderful union of…”
He started the whole spiel, and in what felt like just a few seconds, it was done, and my Mom was kissing her brand new husband. I finally dared another glance at Jace, and I saw that the half-smile was gone from his face now. His expression was stony, and I wondered what he was thinking. Was he angry at his father for putting him through yet another wedding ceremony? Or was he thinking about me and wishing we hadn’t just become legally bound as siblings?
Either way, it didn’t matter. Our parents were officially married now, so whatever Jace and I had shared during those brief encounters of ours…it was really over.
Over for good.
***
Most of the people at the reception were posh, uptight people from the upper class world that Gerald inhabited, and I’d made polite yet awkward conversation with a few of them for as long as I could handle it. After a while, I needed a break from it all, so when the food had been served and the liquor was flowing, I sat at a table in one corner, sipping champagne and sneakily reading snippets of the book I’d hidden in my bag.
It was the book Jace had lent me weeks ago—World’s Over. I’d only just had the chance to start reading it, seeing as I’d been so busy with everything else lately, and so far, I loved it. There was a central mystery along with action, romance and other thrilling moments, and I could see why it was one of Jace’s favorites. Reading it made me feel strangely close to him, even though we hadn’t talked in weeks, and funnily enough, it was actually the book that made us finally speak to each other after all this time.
As I sat there reading, I suddenly had the distinct feeling that I was being watched, and I looked up to see Jace standing in front of me, looking handsome as heck in his tux.
“Enjoying the book?” he asked.
My cheeks flushed, partly from seeing him, and partly from being caught out hiding in the corner. “Yeah. It’s great.”
“Reading at a wedding reception, though…being a bit antisocial, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. This party is stiffer than a teenage boy upon seeing his first pair of tits.”
“Should you really be talking about teenage boy’s erections at our parent’s wedding?” I asked, arching a brow.
He grinned. “Oh, shut up.”
I smiled back at him. Despite all the weeks of silence, we’d somehow fallen right back into regular conversation with very little awkwardness.
“So what part are you up to?” he asked, gesturing towards the book.
“The NASA scientists have just figured out where the supposed extraterrestrial signal was coming from, and I think Billy-Joe is about to kiss Lola.”
Jace laughed. “You reckon?”
“Yeah. They end up together, right?”
“You’ll see,” he said softly.
We looked at each other, charged tension thick in the air between us. We’d only been talking about the characters in the book, but for some reason it felt like we were both referring to us.
“Do you want another champagne?” Jace asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
I watched him get up and approach a waiter, and he made polite conversation with him and then headed back over to me a moment later with two full champagne flutes.
“Here.” He handed one to me, and I gratefully accepted it.
“Thanks. Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Well…this is gonna be an awkward question…” I said, my voice trailing off uncertainly.
“I think we already passed the point of awkward when we first hooked up and only realized we were going to be siblings after the fact,” he said with a grin. “Doesn’t get more awkward than that.”
“True. Okay, well, I saw you talking to that waiter just now.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I just noticed that you’re much politer to the wait staff than some of the supposed ‘elite class’ here, who were meant to be raised with all these good manners and so on. That’s who you are—a naturally nice guy. Most of the time, anyway. So why do you feel the need to hide that from certain people?”
He stared at me, his expression impassive. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…you just seem to have so many sides. My friend Liana told me that you’re meant to be this douchebag party animal sex addict—”
He cut me off with a snort of laughter. “Sex addict, huh?”
“Yes. You probably are a sex addict, but you’re not a douchebag. At least not all of the time. When you think no one’s watching, you’re actually pretty cool and nice. So why hide that?”
He sighed. ”You really wanna know? Might be a long story.”
“Of course.”
He shrugged and gestured around us at the rich reception guests, clinking their glasses together as they swanned around in their elegant designer gowns and suits. “See all these people?” he said. “As stiff and annoying as I might find them, I grew up around this posh crap, so I know how to act around them and fit in. I know how to play the role of the polite trust fund kid, basically. But with some of my friends…well, it’s hard to explain.”
“I’ll try to understand.”
“Okay. This will probably sound really whiny, like I’m complaining about all the good fortune I’ve had, but that’s not how I mean it. But anyway, you know how wealthy my Dad is. He’s an asshole most of the time—don’t give me that look, you barely know him. Just wait, you’ll see. Anyway, as I was saying, he can be a prick, but he’s still taken care of me and my mother, financially speaking. I’ve never had to worry about money.”
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“I went to a good school; one of the best in the country. But just because a school is good doesn’t mean all the students are good people.”
“Yeah, I get that. Some of the biggest assholes I knew back in the States went to the best schools.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I sort of had two main groups of friends back in school. The first group had guys like Tom, who I think you met at the masquerade party—he’s the guy whose house it was at. Nice guy, doesn’t get into trouble. Easy to fit in with as long as you aren’t a serial killer. So yeah, first group was a bunch of guys like him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The second group was more like the ‘cool’ kids. Like some teenagers do, they wanted to grow up too fast, and after a while, I started ditching the first group more often to hang out with the second. I wanted to seem cool; wanted to fit in. So I changed.”
“You changed?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I started drinking and partying on weekends with them, and by the time we started uni, I was in pretty deep, and a lot of us were starting on more serious shit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pills. Weed. Coke. That kinda shit. And I paid for most of it. A lot of the supposed cool kids came from families who either cut them off financially once their parents figured out what they were doing, or they just didn’t have that much. But my Dad never gave a shit what I did. So yeah, I footed the bill a lot, and bought a metric fuck-ton of drugs over the last two years. I guess you could say we all got a bit addicted.”
My eyes widened. “Oh.”
I’d known Jace had a wild past, but I had no idea he’d been that wild. I’d known a few people who’d smoked pot back in high school, and even a guy who’d been hooked on his brother’s ADHD meds for a semester during my first year at college, but I’d never known anyone who was addicted to party drugs. As a result, I wasn’t quite sure what the right thing to say was, but I was glad he was telling me about it. It meant he trusted me with his problems, and the thought made my heart flutter.
“I dropped out of uni in Manchester because I wanted to get away from it all. Went to live in my Mom’s city up in Scotland fo
r a fresh start, but I fell right back into all that kinda shit with another crowd of people. It was even worse. I really fucked things up.”
Something told me I shouldn’t press him for details on what exactly he’d done to fuck things up. If he wanted to tell me, he’d go ahead and do it, and I wouldn’t gain his trust by being invasive and nosy.
“Oh. I’m sorry. So that’s why you came back to London?” I said instead.
“Yeah. Trying to stay out of trouble. Don’t get me wrong, at the time I was more than willing to go along for the ride,” he said. There was no self-pity in his voice at all, just acceptance about what he’d done. “But I lost myself along the way. I guess I started to be a different person to fit into the lifestyle and all, and pretty soon I was like that most of the time. It’s weird; sometimes I think I’m still the normal guy I used to be, but most of the time I think I’ve really become the asshole I started pretending to be when I was eighteen. Like I pretended so much that it became real. Like the mask I put on became my real face.”
I nodded slowly, and Jace arched an eyebrow. “So does that long, boring sob story answer your question?”
“Yes. The douchebag party animal thing is like a mask you originally put on to fit in, and it sort of became part of who you are.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you don’t have to act like that around me,” I said. “I kinda like the original Jace. The nice one.”
“Thanks. And what about you…how are you gonna act around me from now on?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been avoiding me for the last few weeks. But you really don’t need to. I get it; I get why you think we shouldn’t talk. But we can be friends, Rayna. I’m not gonna try and seduce you over the breakfast table every morning,” he said. “Believe it or not, I kinda like the real Rayna too, from what I’ve seen so far, even if we can’t touch each other. So what d’ya say…friends?”
I gave him a tentative half-smile. “You really think we can just be friends, without any of the….you know…the hooking up stuff?”
“Sure. Friends without benefits,” he said with a teasing smile. “If you even want to be friends with me, that is.”
“Yeah, I do. I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you. But on the other hand….well, I hate to sound like a broken record, but a guy I know once told me that it takes two to tango.”
He grinned at that. “Yeah, I know, I haven’t been talking to you either. Honestly, I just figured you needed some space.”
“Well, not anymore. You’re right, we can just be friends,” I said. “After all, we have to live together for god knows how long, so we may as well get along. Just don’t call me ‘sis’.”
Jace chuckled. “All right, I’ll call you ‘bro’ instead.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He grinned, then held up his champagne. “Well, Rayna,” he said. “To friendship without benefits.”
“Friendship without benefits,” I echoed with a smile, holding up my glass to toast his.
Jace was right. If we liked hanging out together and generally got along well, then there was no reason we couldn’t just try to be buddies, like normal stepsiblings usually managed to do. We’d be able to keep things platonic and keep our hands off each other—I could totally manage that, and things would be fine. It couldn’t be that hard, could it?
Yeah, I was totally lying to myself…
Chapter 11
Jace
I lay in my bed later that night, wondering why it had been so damn easy to open up to Rayna. I never discussed my past, not with anyone, yet with her it had been so simple. I’d basically poured my heart out to her at the reception—not the worst parts, but the general story of what had happened to me in the last two years—and let her know exactly who I was and why I’d become this way. It was the truth, and I’d finally admitted it; admitted that I’d become a huge douchebag in the last couple of years. But that didn’t mean I had to like who I’d become.
With Rayna around, I was beginning to think there was another way through life.
If she could like me and accept me for who I really was deep down, then surely others could too. I usually found it difficult, if not impossible, to talk about my feelings and experiences with my friends, and I couldn’t even discuss it with my family. To be honest, that was the reason things had gone so sour with my Mom recently. When I dropped out of uni and moved in with her to try starting afresh a year ago, she couldn’t understand how much I’d changed; how I’d gone from a normal kid to the trashy idiot I’d become. I didn’t understand it either, and I didn’t know how to stop. I fell in with all the wrong people again, and before I knew it, I’d fucked things up irrevocably.
But that was a story for another day.
Anyway, Mom just didn’t know how to cope with all of that, and I didn’t know how to explain my reasons for acting the way I was to her—I couldn’t even explain it to myself until now—so although she never expressly told me to leave, I knew it was for the best. Sometimes things just didn’t need to be vocalized for them to be completely obvious. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her any longer, so I’d left at the first chance I’d gotten and wound up back in London….right here with Rayna.
So the move really had been for the best. With someone as cool and understanding as Rayna to talk to and share my concerns with, I could seriously start to move on and get a real fresh start to my life.
I yawned and closed my eyes, trying to get some much-needed sleep, but my phone rang, delaying that for the time being. I checked the caller ID to see that it was my friend Tom.
“Hey, man,” I said as I answered. “How you doing?”
“Good, good. How’s your new job going?”
“Pretty decent. Typical finance stuff, but it’s all right,” I said.
Truthfully, the job I’d recently scored at my Dad’s friend’s company bored me to tears, but it was still a job, so it was better than nothing. I wasn’t doing anything I really wanted to in life, but I was still lucky to have the sort of connections that could get me jobs. It was more than some people could boast.
“Cool. Oh, and how was the wedding?”
“It was pretty good,” I said, my mind instantly snapping back to the conversation I’d had with Rayna at the reception. We’d agreed to be friends from now on, but deep down, I knew it was simply an excuse to start being around her again without making her feel awkward. There was nothing that could stop me from wanting her, but now that our parents were officially married, there was nothing I could do about that.
“Cool. Anyway, I’m having a Halloween party next Friday night. You in?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Can I bring someone?”
There was only one person I wanted to take as a date, even though it wouldn’t be a real date by any means.
“Of course, the more the merrier. You bringing a girl?”
“Yeah. Just my new stepsister, though,” I replied.
A part of me wanted to claim that Rayna was my girlfriend, just so she would be out of bounds to everyone else at the party, but everyone would soon figure out who she was, so there was no point in doing that.
“So you’ll be single and free to pull all the birds, huh?”
I coughed. “Er….yeah, you know me,” I said. “I’ll be pulling all the chicks who reject you.”
He snorted with laughter. “Yeah, yeah. Sure. Anyway, seeing as it’s a Halloween party, wear a costume.”
“What’s with you and costumes? First you have the mask party last month, and now this. You got some weird sexual fetish we need to talk about?” I asked in a teasing tone.
“Nah, man. Just doing it for your benefit. It’s easier for you to pick up girls when you’re masked or in a costume. That way they can’t see your big ugly mug.”
I chuckled. “Touché. Anyway, I’ll see you at the party.”
“Cheers, man.”
I hung up the phone and closed my eyes again, trying to picture what my life would be like
now that Rayna and I were nothing more than stepsiblings and friends. That’s all we’d be from now on; nothing sexual. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but if being friends with Rayna was all I could have, then I’d take it.
It was better than nothing.
***
I poured myself a glass of orange juice at the breakfast table the next morning, and when Rayna emerged from upstairs, I glanced up at her. “Morning. You look well-rested,” I said, trying to keep a straight face and failing miserably.
Truthfully, she looked like an absolute mess. Her hair was wildly frizzed up, some bridesmaid makeup from the wedding was still smeared around her eyes from where she apparently hadn’t bothered to wash it all off after the reception had finished, and she was wearing a ratty old pair of pajamas.
She was still the hottest girl I’d ever seen, messy or not.
She rolled her eyes, knowing I was teasing her. “Shut up. Not all of us wake up looking like models, like some people around here.”
“Why, thank you.”
She yawned and grabbed the bottle of juice. “Where’s my Mom?” she asked as she poured herself a glass.
I quirked a brow at her. “Are you serious?”
She rubbed her eyes. “Oh, god…I’m so tired I actually forgot they got married yesterday, and I forgot they stayed at the hotel last night.”
“Didn’t get much sleep, huh?”
“Yeah. I think I drank too much champagne at the reception. I kept having weird dreams and waking up all night.”
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