Dirty Stepbrother - A Firefighter Romance (The Maxwell Family)

by Alycia Taylor

  “True,” I said. “And it’s only for tomorrow. I doubt he’ll be expecting much.”

  Chapter Four

  Tristan

  I thought I did another great job that night, but I was restless as hell after the show. I went back to the bus after turning down about five offers to go out and party; what the hell do people think being clean and sober means? I didn’t feel like going out, anyways. What I wanted to do was go and talk to Elly. I wanted to make her listen to me and make her believe that I didn’t fuck that skank Brooke. I knew that she wasn’t going to listen at that point, and I didn’t want to just go over there to her bus and fight with her, so I didn’t do that either. I thought about calling her, but I didn’t want to fight on the phone. Fuck! I finally settled on doing the one thing that I actually needed to do, and that was writing another song for the record. I had a few of them finished. If I disciplined myself, I could have the twelve that the fuckers wanted so that I could get my money when we finish the tour. Then I was going to tell Jake and his little, fat minion Tony to go fuck themselves.

  I took out my guitar and notebook. I lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I strummed a few notes on the guitar and wrote them down, and then I scratched them off again. I started strumming the guitar again, and as I did, I tried to put words to it. I surprised myself when I started singing about Elly and me. I guess what was in my head just came out and before I knew it, I was writing a song about losing someone. It had a good beat to it so it wasn’t overly depressing, but it talked about having feelings for someone that you hadn’t intended to care so much about and the chorus said,

  Why did you leave me standing speechless in the rain?

  Come back to me baby, let’s get this thing right,

  Come back to me baby, I want to hold you tonight.

  I worked on it until the sound was just right and then I put it away with the other ones and lay there staring at the ceiling again, wondering what I’d do on our day off the next day. If Elly wasn’t pissed off at me, we could hang out: or better yet, spend the day in bed.

  Chapter Five

  Elly

  I woke up with the same knot in my stomach that I’d gone to bed with the night before. Something was telling me that hanging out with Cole was not going to be my best idea ever. The whole time I was in a shower I told thought about cancelling on him. What I really wanted to do was explore on my own, or hang out with some of the girls. They were going to the fair that was being held in the town we were in. I hadn’t been to a fair in a really long time. By the time I was dressed, I’d decided to at least see if Cole wanted to hang out at the fair. I got his text around ten.

  Hey! Are we still hanging out today?

  Sure, as long as you want to go to the fair.

  That’s cool. Want me to pick you up?

  Sure.

  I told him where to go and then I grabbed my bag and walked out to the front of the lot. He said he was staying at a hotel nearby and would be there in less than ten minutes. After about fifteen minutes, I saw a red Camaro drive up. I thought surely that couldn’t be him; who rents a Camaro anyways? It was Cole, and it was also obvious that he thought he was as cool as ever. That was one reason we’d become such good friends back in high school: I’d seen right through his cool guy façade and told him he was full of shit. For some reason, he’d appreciated that.

  He stopped the car alongside me and the passenger side window slid down. He grinned at me. I’d almost forgotten how good looking he was. He was the polar opposite of Tristan. He had blonde hair and he always kept it cut short and perfectly styled. His parents were well off, so he always dressed in designer clothes. He was buff, too; even when he was drinking heavily, he never missed a day at the gym. He had been the football star at our high school. Back then, he didn’t put anything in his body that wasn’t healthy. He had green eyes and these really deep dimples on either side of his mouth that he knew how to use when the moment called for it.

  “Hey good-looking; need a lift?” he said.

  “Hey, Cole,” I said, opening the door. “As smooth as ever with the ladies, I see.”

  I slid in and he said, “It’s true; I’m a lady killer,” he said, with another grin. He was really a dork, but a dork with good self-esteem. “Wow, Elly. You’re looking even finer than I remember you, and that’s no line.”

  I smiled to be polite and said, “Thanks.” I’m sure he was waiting for a return compliment; he was a little vain like that. I let the moment pass and then I said, “What are you doing in Colorado?”

  “I have a friend whose family owns a cabin up at Vail. He turned twenty five and had a big party. I was on vacation from work this week so I came up. I went to the party and then I came down here to stay in town. I saw your post on Facebook and decided the concert might be fun. My boys and I went and then they headed back to L. A. this morning. I stuck around…to see you.”

  “Wow, um, thanks. Since I hadn’t heard from you in a year, I didn’t even know we were that close any more.”

  He laughed and said, “I guess we grew apart during all the shit that happened. I could tell that you needed your space. Those were bad times, for all of us. I took your lead a few months later and went to rehab myself. I’ve been clean and sober for nine months now.”

  “Good for you,” I told him, sincerely. Maybe there was hope for us to re-kindle our friendship after all.

  “You still on the wagon?”

  “Yep, almost a year for me now.”

  He nodded, “Good, it’s a better life.”

  “Yes it is,” I agreed.

  “So where’s this fair at?”

  I had it programmed into my GPS so I gave him directions. It was a small town and that meant a small town fair, which sounded like a lot of fun to me. I’d read an article about it in one of the local papers that said they had, “Blended just the right touches of Elvis and mini-mod tractors along with a fair princess and a queen.” It sounded like just the place for me to finally have a day without Tristan on my mind.

  We found the fairgrounds easily and after finding a parking spot we made our way inside. As soon as we were through the gates, I could smell the popcorn and peanuts and deep fried foods from all along the midway. As much as my stomach would complain later, it was growling right then.

  “So, what first?” Cole asked.

  I looked up and saw the Ferris wheel; I pointed at it and said, “That.”

  He laughed and then suddenly turned serious and said, “Aw come on, you’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope, I’m totally serious.”

  “I can’t….I mean, I haven’t since….”

  I laughed and he realized that I was just kidding. The first time Cole and I had hung out right after my boyfriend died; we’d gone to Santa Monica. We went bar-hopping and we were both really drunk. We made the very stupid decision to get on the Ferris wheel on the pier. Cole puked before the ride finally stopped and then I had to have the cab pull over three times so that I could puke on the way home. That night we had collapsed on my bed, drunk off our asses, and fell into a semi-comatose state. The first time we had sex was the next night; we were drunk then, too, but that’s a story for another time.

  “Let’s go play some games on the midway,” I told him.

  We walked along the midway, going from game to game. The first one we played was the one where you shoot water into a clown’s mouth and blow up a balloon. Whoever breaks their balloon first wins. I won the first two games and ended up with a two dollar toy for five dollars’ worth of game. Cole won the next three, and by that time I was down ten bucks.

  We played the duck hunt shooting game next. Cole blew me away on that one, and ended up with a pretty good sized stuffed animal. It was fun, kind of like old times. He wasn’t hitting on me and my mind wasn’t constantly on Tristan, although it liked to flicker over there every so often. We played a few more games and won a few more stupid prizes; then, to my surprise, Cole suggested we go watch the tractor pulls
.

  “Tractor pulls, really?”

  “You forget that I’m a country boy at heart. L.A. wasn’t my home until I was into my late teens, remember? I grew up out in the central valley. I love me some tractor pulls.”

  “I don’t even know what a tractor pull is,” I told him.

  He laughed and said, “It’s exciting stuff. These tractors are modified for power. They have to pull a big heavy sledge…”

  “What’s a sledge?”

  “It’s a sled,” he said.

  “Then why call it a sledge?”

  “Do you want to know about the tractor pulls, or do you want to argue over grammar?”

  I laughed and said, “I’m sorry, please, go on.”

  “Okay, so they pull this sled across a thirty foot wide track. It’s around three hundred feet long and the object is to be the tractor that pulls it the farthest.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “Just hmm?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. That sounds absolutely fascinating,” I lied. I was sarcastic about it so he knew I was lying. It only served to amuse him further.

  We sat through the tractor pulls and, to my amazement, it was fun. We took bets just between us on who would win. The winner would keep doubling it; at one point I owed him thirty bucks. I proudly came back and he ended up owing me twenty before it was over.

  We caught an Elvis impersonator show and by that time we were both starving. “Why don’t we go out and have a real dinner. I’ll buy,” he said.

  “Not a fan of midway food?” I asked him, teasing.

  “If you thought I was up-chucking after the Ferris wheel….”

  I laughed, “Okay, enough of the night of many pukings. I got it. I feel like my hair smells like the midway though. If we’re going to have a nice sit down dinner, do you mind if I go take a quick shower first?”

  He shrugged and said, “I got nothing else going on tonight. I don’t mind.”

  He drove me back to the back lot and we found our way to my bus. I wasn’t really supposed to bring people in with me but security barely looked at my badge and didn’t say anything to him at all. When we got to the bus, none of the girls were there. I was a little nervous being alone with him so close to a bed. When we first became friends in high school, sex never even came up between us. He would sometimes brag about his conquests but he never treated me like I was someone he’d sleep with. That was okay with me, because I didn’t see him that way, either. Every girl in our senior class was jealous of me because I spent so much time with him. I always thought he was good-looking, but he was just never really my type. After my boyfriend died and we crossed that line, getting high and fucking was the bulk of what we did. We’d stopped talking about anything or even thinking about doing anything fun. It kind of sucked, and when I was sober, it made me sad. We should have been able to comfort each other like adults, but we let the drugs and alcohol get in the way. We had fallen into the old rhythm on that day, though, and it seemed like he at least realized as I did that wasn’t a place we needed to re-visit.

  Chapter Six

  Tristan

  I hung around the bus lot all day on our day off. I wrote some more music and then I had lunch and shot the shit with a few of the guys in the band for a while. They even played some of the new songs I wrote and let me sing through them. It was good to hear them with the band, that way I knew what adjustments I needed to make. All in all, it was a pretty good day. I did run into Tony while I was on my way out of the room the band and I used. It pissed me off just to look at him.

  “Hi Tristan! How are things going?” he asked, like maybe we were old friends.

  “Good,” I said, trying to just brush past the little fucker and go about my business.

  “Hey! I thought maybe we should talk about what happened with Brooke the other night.” I stopped in my tracks. How the hell did he know about that?

  “What about it?” I said, not committing to anything.

  “She was talked to about her behavior and she promised it wouldn’t happen again. She understands that there will be consequences if it does.”

  I nodded and then I asked, “How did you know about it?”

  “Security had to put it in their report. She scratched Brad up pretty good. He had to report it. Clint wanted to just release her from her contract…let her go. But Jake spoke up for her. He’ll only do that once though, so I don’t think she’ll be acting out like that again.”

  I’d heard rumors about Jake and the girls in the production crew. I wondered if he was fucking he singers, too, and that was why he’d stuck up for Brooke. I had a feeling if it came down to me or her, I’d be out of there in a flash. It was good to know that she had the CEO on her side in case she pulled any more crap.

  I nodded at Tony again and then walked away. I’d had a good day until then. I did my best to shake off the irritation he’d stirred up in me. My mind went back to Elly. I’d thought about it all night and finally made up my mind to talk to her. It was crazy; it had gone way too far. I didn’t fuck skanky Brooke and somehow I needed to find a way to prove it to Elly. I procrastinated all day. I wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but I was scared of losing her. I had come to depend on her for so many things, and none of them had anything to do with the fact she’d been basically supporting me for three months. I’d seriously become immune to other women, I think. In the past, when one left another was waiting in the wings. Any port in a storm was my personal motto. All of a sudden, unless it’s Elly’s private port, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

  I finally took a shower around four thirty and walked over towards where her bus was. I was almost there when I saw the door open and Elly step into view. Right behind her, some blonde GQ looking guy stepped out. I’ll be a son of a bitch! What the hell was she doing? I stood behind one of the other buses and watched. They were talking and laughing and Elly looked really comfortable with him. I’d never seen the guy around the set. If he was one of the producers, he was new. Was it possible she met someone new that quickly and was already sleeping with him? She did have sex with me the first time we met…in a bathroom of all places…

  They took off and I started following them. It was like I was on auto pilot. I didn’t make a conscious decision to follow them, I just did. I wasn’t a stalker. I wasn’t even one to follow a girl, ever. Usually it was because I didn’t give a shit enough about what someone else was doing to go through that much trouble over it. But there was this question in the back of my mind about why she seemed so familiar with this guy. Here she was not speaking to me because she thought that I’d screwed Brooke yet she was flitting around Colorado with some guy, laughing it up. I followed them out onto the street and watched as they turned left and headed down to the shopping area there. It was in walking distance and there were three or four restaurants. They were still talking and laughing. What the hell could she have so much to talk to this asshole about?

  The sidewalk wasn’t crowded but there were enough people out and about that I could blend in. I saw them step into a nice, expensive looking steakhouse. New boyfriend must have some money, I figured. Feeling like a creeper, but unable to force myself to leave, I sat outside the restaurant and waited for them to come out. I definitely knew where to come if I ever decided that Elly’s pussy wasn’t the only one I wanted. I was sitting right in front of the bar part of the restaurant and I got hit on by pleasantly drunk women at least three times before Elly and Preppy Boy finally came out. Like the creepy stalker I had become, I ducked behind an SUV and watched them. They still looked happy…assholes!

  They started back towards the lot, but then I saw Yuppie boy grab Elly around the waist with both hands. I was standing too far away to see her face, but she didn’t look to be protesting. Then he spun her around and pulled her up against him. I can’t describe the feeling it gave me to watch her kiss him. It was like this sick feeling in my gut that moved up into my chest the more I watched. I honestly don’t think I’d ever experienced jealousy
before. I was glad, because it was a really shitty feeling. When it hit my chest, it turned into rage and I seriously wanted to kick someone’s ass.

  I turned around and left, mostly afraid that I’d do something stupid if I stayed. I wanted to re-arrange his pretty face so badly but I had a feeling if I did that, I’d end up spending some time in a Colorado jail. I walked back over to the lot. My head was spinning, wondering what Elly was trying to do. Was this GQ creep a revenge fuck…or was he something more? The fact that she seemed to know him so well really bugged me. I started to head for my own bus, but I realized that I still needed to get it over with. I wanted her to look me in the eyes and tell me exactly what was going on with him. She’d had the nerve to accuse me of things I hadn’t done; it was time for her to face up to her own actions.

  I went and sat on the step of her bus and waited for her to come back. I had to do some fancy self-talking about the boyfriend. If he came with her and said so much as a word to me, I just wasn’t sure if I’d be able to walk away without punching him in the mouth. Of course then I’d end up in jail and my shot at the million dollars would be blown. Fuck! Life was so much easier when I literally didn’t give a shit about anyone and everyone. I used to fuck a chick in the back room of the bar and not even bat an eye when she was making out with another guy ten minutes later. Shit, I had preferred it that way. Then why the hell was I acting like a creepy, jilted lover, skulking around in the dark?

  I still waited in spite of how creepy I felt. I couldn’t convince myself not to. I had been waiting for about twenty minutes when I saw her coming towards me. She was by herself and I jumped up off the step and stood there waiting for her, both relieved and surprised that the prep school dude wasn’t with her. At least I didn’t have to kick his ass that night. I was confused about why she was there alone, though. From the looks of that kiss, the next stop was going to be bed. Or maybe that was why she was here…to get her things and head over to his place. Who the fuck was this guy anyways?