A Promise to my Stepbrother (9 page)

I
sat
for a long time on the futon with my head in my hands. I was sad, scared, ashamed, and powerless. How could I tell Katie that she was wrong? How could she possibly believe me? The way Erin was acting made it clear that we were having sex, even if we weren’t “officially” living together.

I wanted to tell her that it was all a mistake. I was an idiot, a loser—weak. Erin was gorgeous, and she wanted
me
. How could I say no to at least going down the path of spending time with her? And the moment I thought that, I knew the answer she would give:
You just say no, Max, because you love me and that love is stronger than your weak male ego.

Shit, even the truth was ridiculously pathetic, words that I could never tell her—“Look, Katie, even as I was sitting with her I was thinking of you. I used her to channel you. Can you not understand that?”

That night I broke up with Erin. She screamed and threw a lamp at me.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I wait all this time to have sex with you out of some kind of bizarre acceptance of your hang-ups, and for my patience and devotion you walk out?”

The thing was, she was right. We had made out and gotten close to having sex, but I always pulled back. She was accepting and sensitive when were in those moments, and that just made things worse. On a certain level I think I
wanted
her to reject me, but her commitment to me was real, and I had to reject her.

So I did, and I felt awful about it. I seemed to mess things up with every woman in my life. I didn’t tell Katie. As we visited the Santa Monica pier and went out for meals the rest of the weekend with Mom and Dad, she glared at me the whole time, barely saying a word.

I could have told her I had broken up with Erin. I wanted to tell her. But she was my best friend, and I knew her better than anyone. I wouldn’t win her love back by pushing away someone else. I would only win her back by pulling her close.

But as I watched Mom and Dad laughing as the wind kept blowing his hat, I knew I couldn’t pull her close yet. I was still afraid that I’d say something or do something to mess it all up.

I hugged her at the airport and whispered in her ear as she pulled away, “I’m sorry.” She turned and walked toward security without replying. She never looked back.

I
stayed
at RISD over that Summer, taking a special invitation-only painting class for advanced students. There were only two students accepted by Professor Neumann: Me and Rob McMillan. Rob was hot in a cute nerdy way. He was tall, but not as tall as Max. He was thin and his angular face was more pretty than rugged. He had brown eyes, which somehow made him look more studious than Max’s pools of grey.

In an odd way, he reminded me of Max when he was little, before he started swimming.

We had nothing better to do as all our friends were gone for the summer, so we hung out. We talked, went to movies, and painted. I trusted him enough to tell him about being cheated on the previous semester. I didn’t tell him it was my brother who cheated on me, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He took my hand and listened.

Oh God, how I needed a listener.

I cried a little bit, and he held me. At one point he wiped my tears away with his thumbs while holding my face in his hands. It was so like how Max would hold me that my heart skipped a beat. I looked up at Rob. He was nice. He was cute. He was fun.

I pushed myself up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

I felt a mixture of excitement and fear. Max was my only love, but I had to move on. This was but a tentative step. To Rob’s credit, he didn’t push things. He kissed me back and then pulled away with a smile.

“That was nice,” he said.

“Yeah, nice,” I replied. And it was. I didn’t feel a yearning desire, but I felt myself being drawn to him. Baby steps, I told myself.

The next day he kissed me goodbye after we went to see a movie. It was just a quick kiss on the lips. There were more kisses and held hands, but neither of us felt pressure to move fast. I appreciated that. A few weeks later my parents came down for a visit, and all four of us went out for dinner. Rob delighted my mom. He was a liberal intellectual, like her, and he said all the right things. Dad was harder to impress, but when Rob started talking about the Patriots, it was over. Rob was Dad’s new best friend.

I walked them down to the car to say goodbye. They were going to leave early the next morning for home and wouldn’t see me again. Mom hugged me hard and then held my arms as she looked at me. “I like your boyfriend, Katie. He’s the kind of young man you deserve.”

I hemmed and hawed, because I hadn’t really thought of him as a boyfriend. He was a friend with affection slowly growing to passion. At least I hoped it was. But did that mean he was my boyfriend?

Dad smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “I like him, too. You should introduce him to Max. I bet they’d get along great.”

“Thanks, Dad. That’s a great idea.” It was a white lie to make Dad happy. I hadn’t talked to Max in a few weeks. Like me he had stayed at school over the summer, and my hope that the distance between us would soothe my hurt and make us closer again proved to be only partially true. I missed him, but I was still mad at him.

As I walked back to my apartment I considered where I was with Rob. The more I considered it, the more I realized he
was
my boyfriend. If that were the case, we were the most boring couple ever. Why hadn’t we even French kissed yet, let alone had sex? He was the perfect guy for me to lose my virginity to—someone I thought was cute and someone I trusted.

I knew the answer, and it scared me. Rob just didn’t make me as passionately excited as Max did. Rob was a friend and part of my life, while max was my best friend and part of my soul. These thoughts scared me, because I was worried that I could never be happy with anyone other than the one I couldn’t have—my stepbrother.

I walked in to Rob sitting on the couch. He had put all the dishes away. I went over and sat on his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Thank you for cleaning up.” I pulled his head down to kiss him.

We had kissed more than a few times, but none lasted very long, and the kisses were all attached to other things, like goodbyes, thank yous, and hellos. There were no kisses just to kiss. Until now.

Our lips touched and I stroked his cheek with the back of my fingers as he put his arms around me and pulled me close. He didn’t have the full lips of Max, but they were still soft enough. It felt nice, and I realized I wanted more.

I opened my lips, and slid my tongue against his lips. He opened his mouth and our tongues touched. We continued to French kiss until Rob started running his tongue along the back of my teeth. It wasn’t exactly gross, but it was far from sexy. I tried to use my tongue to dance with his, but he kept just moving his tongue all around the inside of my mouth. I gave up and closed my mouth.

We kissed for a few more moments and then I pulled my mouth away from his. “That was a nice surprise,” Rob said, smiling.

“Yeah, that was nice.”

I stood up and grabbed a mug that Rob had missed. “I’m glad you’re my boyfriend, Rob,” I said as I walked into the kitchen. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as I said the words, as I didn’t know if I believed it. He was a great guy. He was cute. He was smart. He was fun. But kissing him was
nothing
like kissing Max.

Max’s tongue would have danced with mine. His lips would have been soft and sent tingles through me. He would have
consumed
me with something as simple as a brush of his lips against mine.

The thoughts were making me hot, sad, and frustrated. I didn’t know what to do. I really
wanted
to have Rob be the
one
. I mean, he had all the right pieces. He was even an artist. I wouldn’t have to listen to Max’s boring talk about the latest in swimsuit technology with Rob. He was
perfect.

Rob kissed me goodbye later in the evening. It was longer than our previous goodbye kisses. It was
nice
. And that’s when I realized what I needed to do. Rob was too nice. I need to unleash the animal inside him. Max’s rippling muscles and hard angles screamed that he was a predator, even if it was deeply hidden, and he acted like a goofball. Anyone who looked at Max knew that. Shit, the blonde slut knew it right away. She wasn’t an idiot. But Rob, he looked like a professor and acted like one.

I texted Rob.
Hey, come by my place tomorrow and bring your paint eq. We can paint each other.

T
he next day
I gave Rob a long kiss and let him into the apartment. I wasn’t sure how the day was going to progress, but my goal from the moment Rob walked through the door was to lose my virginity.

“Why don’t you paint me first,” I said as I handed him a mug of coffee. “Whatever you have in mind,” I added, hoping that he would get the message that if he wanted to paint me nude I would be up for that.

I guess it was a reach, but I had no experience and pretty much did what I always did: Hoped that instinct and luck would make it work.

“Great. Why don’t you lie down on the couch, and I’ll set up over here.” I lay back on the couch as he set up his easel and canvas. He looked at me as I got comfortable. I pulled a pillow next to the arm of the sofa and lay my head on it. I then dropped my right leg to the floor while my left leg stretched out. I put on hand on my right thigh while my left hand rested on my left breast.

Going through the process of seducing Rob turned out to be awkward and awful. I knew I had a sexy body, and I knew I was pretty. I mean I had the raw materials, right? How hard could it be?

He pulled out a pencil and started doing the preliminary sketch. My hope that he would ask me to take my clothes off was the first indication that this wasn’t going to be a grand seduction.

“Hey, nothing too complicated, I don’t want to sit here all day,” I said after about five minutes. After about ten minutes I noticed he was still sketching. I knew how Rob worked, and he was a fast and excellent sketch artist. He could draw full sketches in a couple minutes. For him to have the rough outline of his painting not done almost immediately meant something was wrong. “Problems?” I asked.

His brow was furrowed, and his glasses had slid down his nose. The intensity of his look was more intellectual than sexy. “I’m trying to capture the real you. I think I know you well enough that I can do more than just paint a hot girl in jeans and a t-shirt.” The moment he said the words he looked up with an alarmed look on his face. The look on his face showed that he felt I caught him thinking something naughty.

I stood up and walked over to see his sketch. It was an excellent representation of my body in jeans and a t-shirt. My face looked kind of thoughtful. There was a kind of understated beauty to my curves. It was really wonderful, but not at all a step toward us taking our relationship to the next level.

I took his hand with the pencil in mine. “You’re holding back. That’s so unlike you. You are an
amazing
artist, Rob. I took his hand with the pencil and held it against my heart. Paint the me that you see when your eyes are closed. The me that you dream about. The me that you wouldn’t want anyone to see. Because that’s what
I
want to see.” I let his hand go. “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t do that.”

I kissed him on the lips. “Now start over.” If he didn’t get the hint that I was looking for something more I didn’t know what I’d do. He was a maddening combination of cute, clueless, and awkward.

He grabbed a new canvas as I lay back down on the sofa. I stretched my legs out and lay back, watching as Rob worked. He furiously sketched. Every so often he would stop and stare at me for long periods of time. The look on his face as he studied me was different than before. It wasn’t that of analysis. It was of desire. I had seen it before. It had taken me years to realize it, but that look of desire was omnipresent on Max’s face as he looked at me.

He put the pencil down, and I stood up. “Now let’s see what you’ve got.”

“I’d rather not have you see this just yet.” He looked uncomfortable, almost scared.

I soon discovered why. He had sketched me naked, with my left hand holding my left breast and the other laying on my thigh. Rob had an amazing gift, and even though it was just a quick sketch I had to admit that it was extraordinary how well he portrayed my curves without ever having seen them.

Yet it was also weird and disappointing. I suddenly wondered if I was ready for this. I thought I would enjoy being the object of someone else’s desire. I had hoped it would be amazing to finally experience the physical connection of another person at that most primal level. But the reality is that at that moment I didn’t feel any excitement at all.

“This is great, Rob!” I said, with sincere appreciation and some forced enthusiasm.

“It is?” He looked relieved.

“Well, for the most part. You got one thing wrong—”

Before I could even explain that I was jokingly referring to a necklace that my parents had given me and that he wouldn’t have known anything about anyway, he jumped in.

“Well, there’s only one way for me to get it right. You need to get your clothes off.”

I had hoped that he would kiss me, tell me how he looked forward to finding out that his imagined view of my nude body wasn’t nearly as great as the reality, and then ask me about posing for another sketch only with my clothes off. But he not only used the least sexy way possible to get me to take my clothes off, he actually started tugging up the bottom of my shirt.

I stepped back, unsure what to do. Things were just awkward at the moment, but everyone had told me that losing your virginity was awkward and not really all that great. Was that what this was? Rob was looking at me with desire and lust in his eyes. I had hoped that it would be a turn on for me, but it wasn’t.

I tugged my shirt over my head. I was willing to give it another shot. Let him see me nude and sketch me. Then we would see where things went. “Ready?” I asked as I walked toward the couch, dropping my shirt on the floor. I undid my bra, dropping it next to the shirt. I removed my shoes, and then unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them off along with my panties. Rob’s jaw was dropped open.

I lay down on the sofa, once again dropping my right leg to the floor, while I stretched my left leg out. I dropped my right hand down to my thigh, matching his sketch as much as possible. I looked up, and Rob looked like he was in heaven.

He started painting, and as he did I got comfortable being nude in front of a guy. It wasn’t so bad. The time was also positive in that I daydreamed about how later would actually go.

He was
really
cute, and I anticipated that like a lot of artists, his passion was just buried under the surface. Maybe he would put his brush down, walk over, and whisper how I was even more important than his art.

The painting went on. And on. And on. Any hope that Rob would drop the brush to run his hand over my hip or kiss me and tell me that he couldn’t just
watch
me he had to be
with
me were turning out to be a lost cause.

I tried to fantasize about how it would finally go when Rob made his move, but as each minute ticked by my interest in fantasizing about that moment drifted away. I went from tentative anticipation to excited fantasy to impatience to boredom.

I thought boredom would be the worst, but as Rob continued to paint as the minutes ticked by, a worse feeling filled me—a total rejection of Rob and a yearning wish that it was Max in the room with me. I had seen Max naked, and now I wanted him to see me naked. Maybe that would bring us together.

By the time Rob had finished, my mind was consumed with Max and all of our lost opportunities and misunderstandings. He was the hottest, kindest, sexiest guy I’d ever met, and I knew that no one else would ever measure up.

It was at that point that Rob waved me over. “Want to see it?” He didn’t realize that I didn’t really want to see anything. I wanted to
feel
something. I stood up, picked up my clothes, and held them against my body as I walked over.

Rob was beaming as I looked at the painting, and he should have. It was a spectacular piece of an incredibly sexy woman lying on a couch with a vibrant “come hither” look on her face. I could see that Rob had painted his desires into me. The me that was in the painting was clearly begging the viewer to have sex with her.