"I'm afraid to have any more fun." I twisted the ring on my finger, "I don't think I can afford any more fun."
As we got up and began clearing out table, my phone rang. Kyle's number showed in the caller ID. I did not have time for this bullshit. I clicked the button to decline the call and send it straight to voicemail.
"Who was it?" Lisa asked as we headed for the shops.
"My stupid stepbrother."
"The super hot stud that you never told me about till he showed up at the wedding yesterday?"
"No. The arrogant prick who hasn't acknowledged my presence since our parents got married when I was a senior in high school."
"Sounds like True Love. " Lisa's voice was back to its mocking tone. She was really having too much fun at my expense, "What does he want?"
"Fuck if I know." I shoved the phone deep in the bottom of my bag, "Let's go shopping, I almost feel normal again."
"Shopping? Feeling normal in Vegas isn't normal-- let's start drinking!" I thought she was kidding, but she dragged me across the hall to one of those adult slushie bars and ordered a yard long plastic cup that looked like a trumpet filled with a mixture of pina colada and blue raspberry with extra rum in it.
Apparently I turned a convincing shade of green when she thrust it in my direction because although her eyebrows shot up impressively high on her forehead, she didn't force the issue.
We began walking through the mall, "So, what's the scoop on your step-hottie, anyway?"
I groaned inwardly, I knew she wasn't going to let it rest.
"Kyle." I said flatly, I could feel my headache threatening to resurface. "His name is Kyle. He's Tammy's older brother."
"Mmm-hmm" Lisa made a slurping noise with the straw in her drink then winced with the tell tale look of someone suffering excruciating brain freeze. I tried not to bask in her suffering.
"Mom married David when I was a senior. Tammy was a sophomore, Kyle's two years older than me, he was already in college."
"Was he as gorgeous then as he is now?"
"Uh, yeah." There. I admitted it. Kyle was gorgeous. He was when I first met him when I was only 17 and if anything, he'd gotten even better looking in the last 7 years since.
Lisa's eyebrows were perched at the top of her forehead again as she peered at me sideways while chewing her straw, "So did you ever...you know?"
"Lees, please. He's my brother now." I realized I didn't sound very convincing. Unfortunately, Lisa noticed it too.
"OK girl! Spill!" She grabbed my arm and pulled me down on a bench near a big planter.
"There's nothing to spill, Lisa, let's go to Gucci." I tried to get up but she had me pinned.
Lisa turned and gave me a look that only a best friend can give you. She wasn't going to let me off the hook. I prepared myself for the long story and eyed Lisa's rum-soaked slushie with serious consideration.
"Maybe I had a little crush on Kyle when we first met." I admitted, defeated, and leaned back against the bench.
I watched people passing by wrapped up in their conversations, and waited for Lisa to chide me about Kyle. Instead she sat quietly, sipping her drink and waiting patiently. A good friend can tell when its time to shut up.
"OK. A big crush." I closed my eyes. I had never really told the whole story to anyone and I certainly never thought I'd be confessing it all in the bowels of a Las Vegas casino. It must have been the stress from not being able to remember what I'd been doing last night. That was the only excuse. Or maybe I was buying into the whole "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" line.
"He was some sort of brainiac prodigy in high school and he got a full ride to Stanford right out of high school. I didn't even meet him till just before the wedding when David made him come home for family photos."
I paused for a second to bask in my memory of the young man who'd walked into the house. The messy hair and the friendly smile, the broad shoulders and toned physique.
Kyle hadn't been what I was expecting. Everything I'd heard about him made me think he was going to be one of those pasty nerds, hunched over from hours at the computer, wearing corduroy pants and no-brand sneakers from the drug store. Either completely uninterested in girls, or desperate for female attention.
The guy who showed up to the family dinner looked like he belonged on the cover of Outside magazine. He was around 6'2" with dark brown hair that managed to look perfect with just a hand combed tossle. His eyes were brown, that deep, soulful puppy dog brown that melted my heart and my knees at the same time. He was slim, but not skinny, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms and legs that were on full display in his simple t-shirt and cargo shorts. He looked like a bicyclist or a runner.
Turns out, both. Terrible at traditional team sports, Kyle was an avid outdoorsy type, excelling at most non-competitive sports.
We'd hit it off instantly. He had a great sense of humor and for a bona fide mega-genius, he was surprisingly easy to talk to.
He was only home for a couple of weeks before going back to school but that was all it had taken to win my heart.
"So, how far did you go with him?" Lisa was not known for her tact.
I glared at her, "His father was marrying my mother," I said it slowly, distinctly pronouncing each syllable, "I did not "go" with him at all."
"Oh. Well that's not very interesting." She sounded disappointed and went back to slurping her melting drink through the long straw, "So why didn't you ever mention him? What's he doing these days? Is he married? I didn't see a ring on his finger? He didn't have a date at the wedding, is he available?"
I rolled my eyes, "Because we haven't talked since Mom and David's wedding. I think he works for some big pharmaceutical company. Don't know, don't care."
"Wait." Lisa's eyes squinted with another brain freeze, "I thought you said you guys hit it off when you met. What happened?"
All I could do was shrug. "I don't know. I never knew. We were pretty tight for awhile; emailing, texting and stuff. Then he came back for the wedding and things were fine. He even danced with me. Then nothing. He went back to to school and he never even came home for holidays or anything. He wouldn't answer any of my texts or emails, blocked me from his Facebook. Just..." I threw my hands in the air and let them fall back to my lap, "gone."
"Weird."
"Yeah. Well, whatever. I'm glad he made it to Tammy's wedding at least. She would have been heartbroken if he didn't show."
"He didn't even talk to you yesterday? I mean, you were both in the wedding, he must have said something to you while you guys were taking all those pictures and stuff?"
"Not really. Just, you know, small talk here and there, nothing personal."
Lisa frowned as if she were trying to solve some mystery in her head while we headed down the mall to fit in some shopping before I had to head back to the hotel for the big family dinner my baby sister had planned.
A familiar chirping noise came from my purse, I pulled out my phone to check the incoming text expecting it to be Tammy or Mom. The message from Kyle took me by surprise, "See you at dinner."
All those years without so much as a Facebook "like" and suddenly he's blowing up my phone. I threw the phone back in the bottom of the bag and pushed my curiosity to the back of my mind. There'd be plenty of time to find out what he wanted at dinner tonight, in the meantime I tried to piece together the clues of my wild night from the snippets of memory that were coming back to me.
"Hey, Lisa," A though suddenly occurred to me, "Was I dancing with Mike?"
Lisa turned to look at me, a silver shoe hanging from her fingertips, "Yeah. For awhile, but you were also dancing with half the room. What do you think of these?"
I scrunched up my face and shook my head, "Those scream cheap hooker."
Lisa's face lit up with a triumphant grin and she grabbed the box with the other shoe. I should have known "cheap hooker" was what she was going for.
"Look, Dee," she was saying as I followed her through the discount racks,"t
he last time I saw you, you were hanging all over that guy-- whatwashisname-- Tony? You remember? He's somehow related to the groom? Maybe a cousin?"
"Tony," I repeated the name to myself, trying to put a face to the name. "Tall? Kinda blonde?" I asked hopefully. If Tony was the guy I was thinking of, I could have done much worse!
"Yeah. Kinda blonde, I guess." Lisa was paying less attention to me than to the tags on the out-dated dresses. "Seriously, Dee, you know better than to mix booze. You've been like this since college-- I thought you'd have learned by now?"
I rolled my eyes, "I know, but it's my baby sister's wedding," I whined, "I had to have champagne."
"But you didn't have to have rum, or whiskey, or beer."
"Oh God, was I really drinking all that?" No wonder I felt like crap.
"And that was before I left you with Tony. Who knows what you did after that?"
I'd been texting Tammy and my fellow bridesmaids, trying to get more info on who I might have left the reception with. Tammy-- understandably-- hadn't gotten back to me.
Becka wasn't much help, but she confirmed Lisa's Tony suspicions, and Tracy reported that she'd seen me on the Strip with "some guy with brown hair" and that we had looked "pretty friendly."
Beyond that, no one could give me much info.
I remembered most of the reception-- I thought-- dancing with lots of cousins and friends. I remember being intent on taking full advantage of the open bar after getting back from taking photos.
I remembered.... hmmm. Maybe I remembered walking down the Strip. With someone. Someone tall. I think I may have been making out with some guy in the elevator. That must have been on our way up to his room.
Ugh! None of this was helping and when I looked at the time I realized my whole day had slipped away.
"Lees," I went chasing after her and found her in the dressing room, "I have to get back to my room and get ready for dinner tonight. Are you coming?"
I heard the muffled voice of someone with their clothes wrapped around their head from the other side of the dressing room door, "Nah. That's a big fancy dinner for your family. You can catch up with me afterward, I'm gonna get this stuff and hit the casino floor."
I left her to wrestle with her collection of discounted beads and sequins and went back to my room to fix my hair and makeup properly and shimmy into dress I'd brought for the after-wedding family dinner.
I didn't know if I should keep the ring on or not. I didn't want to answer any questions about it, especially since I didn't have the answers. On the other hand, I was kinda afraid to take it off in case it wasn't as costume as I'd initially suspected. In the end, I opted to leave it on. If anyone asked, I'd just say I bought it at one of those carts.
David had reserved a private banquet room for the family dinner. Tonight's shin dig was supposed to be a less formal event, with just the family getting together to catch up with the relatives that were scattered around the country and didn't get to visit as often we would all like.
Most of the people here were Tammy's uncles, aunts and cousins from both David's side and Tammy's mom's side. We had long since settled our differences and the families all got along well now but it still felt weird to be in a room full of fawning aunties that knew little to nothing about me.
I sat awkwardly through my meal, not having much in common with my step family, giving me plenty of time to eat quietly and start worrying about last night again.
When I'd finished dinner, I politely passed on dessert and excused myself from the table.
Everyone else was talking and laughing while I ventured outside for some air. I had made it down the steps from the large veranda and was heading down the little walkway that wound through some lovely landscaping dotted with tiny LED lights through the trees when Kyle caught up to me.
"Dee," his voice was a soft caress as he wrapped his arms around me, spinning me around to face him as he pulled me into a lover's embrace. His mouth came down against mine with a soft but firm kiss that suggested the implied consent of a relationship.
For just second, I melted into the warmth of his lips on mine letting the palms of his hands press against the bare skin of my back and shoulders in my strappy little dress. Feeling the heat of his chest hard against my breasts.
But just for a second before I broke free in shocked indignation and stood in front of him, seriously considering slapping him before choosing a stern "What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" as I smoothed the ruffled fabric of my cocktail dress.
Kyle straightened his posture, his face showing first hurt then confusion as he held me in his gaze, "After last night I guess I thought..." His voice faltered slightly as he shrugged apologetically.
Oh shit. The implication settled over me, "Last night?" I barely managed to squeak out.
Kyle smiled slyly, taking a step toward me and placing his hands on my shoulders, "Yeah. Last night."
I couldn't bring myself to look him the eye but I could feel those soft brown eyes peering down at me. Oh shit. I gulped hard, trying to swallow the panic that was threatening to send me running into the night.
"Denise? What's wrong?"
"I, uh, I don't really, um..." How do you tell someone that you don't remember sleeping with them?
"You don't really what?" Kyle's sounded irritated now.
Might as well just get it over with, "I don't remember last night."
I finally tipped my head up to look at his face. Oh my, he really is beautiful. What on earth happened last night? How did we end up.... I blushed in the darkness as I thought of the soreness in my thighs and more delicate places. Oh my, really? Kyle?
I guess I had expected him to be angry so when his brow furrowed in concern, I wasn't prepared for his reaction: "Oh." He said it so softly I almost didn't hear him.
"Well," his voice was like soft velvet draped around me. It suddenly occurred to me that I wished I could remember everything about last night, not for just the obvious reasons but because I was so curious about how we'd managed to hook up? What made him talk to me after all these years? Was he as drunk as I had been?
"I didn't realize you were that far gone." He said matter-of-factly, "I knew you'd been drinking but you were so lucid. Dee, I don't want you to think I took advantage of you."
Advantage? I almost laughed out loud. It seemed absurd. Kyle was gorgeous, personable and-- last I heard-- loaded. The last thing he needed to do for a little female company was take advantage of his drunkass stepsister.
"I doubt that's what happened. I'm sorry, Kyle. I probably seemed fine, I just mixed too much booze, it's been a sure recipe for a blank slate since I was in college."
He nodded in understanding, half a smile tugging at the corners of those beautiful lips.
"But how the hell did we... I mean... why did you... did I?" I shook my head in frustration, "How drunk were you?" I finally spat out, with a little bitterness thrown in for good measure.
"Well, yeah, I mean, I'd been drinking but I sure as hell knew what I was doing." Kyle shot back with understandable defensiveness. "I thought you did too. I guess that means I can't trust anything you said either?"
Oh shit, what did I say?
"I just don't understand how you completely cut me out of your life without any kind of warning or explanation and show up seven years later to hook up?"
"I didn't show up after seven years just to hook up, as you put it." I guess I could understand why his attitude had changed, but I had to admit I liked tender kissing Kyle better, "I came back for my baby sister's wedding, Denise." His tone went quiet suddenly as he added, "Even though I knew you'd be here."
At this point I wasn't sure how I felt anymore, or what I thought. The discovery that I'd been with Kyle last night was enough to deal with. And the way he'd just come up behind me and kissed me like that... like he expected me to kiss back... like we were a couple?
Is that what he thought? Was that what he was expecting? Is that what he meant when he said what we talked about
last night? What could he have said that would have made me forgive seven years of silence without so much as an explanation?
Duh, I scolded myself silently, all he had to do was say "Hey, Dee, wanna get naked?" Especially after I'd had a couple of drinks. I mean, look at him.
And I did. I looked at the man who had been my first grown up crush, standing in the dim light of the little path through the gardens staring at me with expectation and sorrow written on his gorgeous face.
Stepbrother Hangover Page 2
