Bewitched by Bella's Brother (8 page)

“When I woke up, someone was touching me, and they liked it, and I liked it, and I came.”

“Asa, that wasn’t your fault.”

“It was all my fault.” Asa nodded, as though trying to

explain it to himself. “I saw her acting erratically, but I couldn’t put the clues together. She
left
Jordan at home alone while she went off and got high, and I didn’t listen to him prattling on long enough to figure out what he was

saying. He used to talk your ear off. But not anymore. She used to hole up in her room for days at a time; by the time the school system got ahold of me at work, it had been going on for a month. He missed weeks of school. It was all my fault.”

“You trust people,” Sebastian said, aching. “You have to trust people. You have a wife who says she’ll take care of what you both love most… it’s not your fault she forgot what she loved most. You pass out on a friend’s couch, you trust that someone’s not going to come along and drop your pants.

It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not my fault I came in a stranger’s mouth?” Asa

asked bitterly. “It’s just so ugly. All of it. I didn’t want… I didn’t want Bella to know. I didn’t want you to know. I… I didn’t know how to tell you, though. That whatever it was you were thinking, when your mouth went into overdrive,

that maybe I was thinking it too.”

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

61

Sebastian wasn’t sure what kind of sound he made, but

whatever it was, Asa risked a look over his shoulder. “I’m not such a catch now, am I?”

“Not true.” Sebastian almost laughed. “My last serious

relationship was with a married man who kept promising to leave his wife. You’re a definite step up.”

Asa struggled with a laugh and scrubbed at his face

instead. “I should go see how Bella and Jordan are doing.”

“Don’t leave,” Sebastian said, feeling bad. “Look. We’re out at the pool. You’ve got the afternoon off. I’ll go get you a beer. We can sit and watch the cows over on the other hill.

We can pretend I never opened my mouth and your ex-wife

never came over and the world is a pretty place. I’m an art history major—trust me. I’m good at it.”

Asa nodded. “Okay. I… I don’t have any better ideas.”

Sebastian nodded, and his stomach—which had turned

cold as soon as he’d seen Deirdre—started to warm up again.

Started to feel hopeful. Well, stomachs could lie, he thought, but his stomach wasn’t listening, and as he rustled through the kitchen, he found some chips and pretzels for the beer.

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

62

SEBASTIAN was good with the casual story—he and Bella

usually told them together now—but he had a sense for

when someone needed to be entertained, and he liked to put that knowledge to work.

With this in mind, he gave Asa his beer, put a bowl of

chips on the patio table, and leaned back in his deck chair so they could both face the sun baking the hills beyond.

There was a cover over the porch, and the sun was at their backs, and with a breeze coming off the pool, the

temperature was not too bad. As the shadows grew longer

and the contrast between bleached grass and green oak trees grew more marked, Sebastian began to see a certain charm to this part of the country, which surprised him. His parents had lived in upstate New York when he’d been a child; he used to think that if the grass wasn’t green, the landscape was obscene.

“So,” he said into what might have been an awkward

silence, “did Bella ever tell you about our roommate,

Sammy?”

Asa managed a small smile. “No,” he said, obviously

seeing the game of “making things lighter” and agreeing to play. “Why don’t you?”

Fortunately for them both (and for Sebastian and Bella’s cachet at parties for the past five years), Sammy was good for hours of fun.

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

63

“So the thing was,” Sebastian was saying a half an hour

later, “that Sammy never saw an animal he could resist. So this one finals week….”

“Oh God!” Bella laughed, her voice carefully pitched.

“No—not the monkey story!”

Sebastian turned to her and caught her eyes, then

darted his own to Jordan. “Absolutely the monkey story.

C’mere, Jordan—you want to hear a story about why

monkeys should never ever ever ever absolutely under any circumstances leave the zoo?”

Jordan’s face had been a study in pinched misery, but

at the mention of monkeys outside the zoo, he brightened, and within minutes, Sebastian and Bella had them both

laughing about the time Sammy’s boyfriend had smuggled a half-grown chimpanzee into their tiny, two bedroom

apartment. Unfortunately, Sammy’s last rescue had been a box of four flea-infested kittens who had left their obnoxious little passengers behind when they’d been given away.

“So Mr. Pickles takes two steps inside the apartment,”

Sebastian said, chortling, “and it was like one of those cartoons, where a giant pepper shaker just dumps fleas on this poor monkey, and Mr. Pickles lets out a scream….”

“Omigod, it almost broke the windows!” Bella chimed in.

“I thought my ears would bleed!” Sebastian agreed. “And

then he climbs—literally
climbs
Sammy like a tree and grabs hold of the ceiling fan….”

“Which was falling out—the whole thing just dropped six

inches out of the ceiling as soon as the chimp put his weight on it….”

“And then he fills his diaper.” Sebastian shuddered for

effect.

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

64

“He wore a diaper?” Jordan asked, wide-eyed, and

Sebastian and Bella nodded, playing up to him with all their considerable practice and skill.

“But it didn’t matter!” Bella interjected. “Because you

know what monkeys do when they poop and they’re all

excited, right?”

“I’ve seen
Madagascar
!” Jordan told them, nodding.

“They fling poo!”

Sebastian closed his eyes and giggled, and then opened

them and grinned at the little boy, who smiled back.

“Damned straight. The monkeys fling poo—and that’s what

Mr. Pickles did, except he was going around in circles from the ceiling fan, which was hanging from the ceiling by,

literally, a thread!”

“So what did you do?” Jordan asked, hanging on to their

every word.

Bella picked up the thread. “Well, we were going

camping with your cousins that weekend, so we had these

ponchos—the plastic kind that keep the rain off, right? And they were lying on the table waiting to be packed, and

Sebastian puts one on and throws the other one at me; you should have seen it, it was like an action hero throwing a big old gun, right?”

“And Bella caught it like a pro!”

“But he throws his on and takes mine out of my hands,

and then Sammy and I pushed the couch under the ceiling

fan so Sebastian could climb up it….”

“And then you crouched behind it like the cowards that

you are!”

Bella flashed him a wounded look. “
We
didn’t have the poo-poo poncho, remember!”

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

65

“Likely story. Anyway, so I’m wearing the poo-poo

poncho, with the hood
up
, and I climb up on the couch, and when the monkey comes around on his next swing, I catch

him in the other poncho and bind it up like a sack, so there I am, a bag full of monkey, and here comes our apartment

manager, wondering what the all the ruckus was about…”

“And we’re not supposed to have animals in the

apartment
at all
,” Bella explained.

“Not at all, and our manager was the biggest….”

Sebastian rolled his eyes here, because the word he usually used was “tool” or something less polite.

“Meanie,” Bella supplied, and Sebastian nodded his

head.

“Meanie,” Sebastian agreed. “He was a real meanie.

Anyway, so here he comes, and I’m holding this bag full of monkey, and there is monkey poop literally falling off the walls all around us, and the manager demands to know

what in the heck we’re doing, right?”

“Oh, wait—let me tell this part!” Bella’s blue eyes were sparkling, and Sebastian couldn’t help but look at her with all of his affection. “So Sebastian’s holding this bag of monkey, and the apartment’s raining poop, and he says, ‘We keep telling you that, uhm, crap is falling apart around here, and now it’s coming from the ceiling!’”

Asa boomed laughter then, and Jordan giggled, and Asa

leaned over and hugged his son around the shoulders. “So, Jordan, what do you think? Should we go get a monkey of

our very own?”

Jordan shook his head vigorously. “No… no, Dad—I

don’t want any monkey poop in
my
room!”

“Good,” Asa grinned, and his ocean-blue eyes fluttered

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

66

closed and he kissed his son’s temple. “Good. Here—you go wash your hands, and I’ll go in and make us some dinner, and—”

“And Sebastian will help you while Bella sets the table,”

Bella interjected. This time it was Asa who rolled his eyes at her while she stuck out her tongue, and this time, both Asa and Sebastian laughed as they all went into the house.

Asa stopped him at the door, and they let Bella chase

Jordan up the stairs, squealing with laughter as she

threatened him with phantom monkey poop.

“Thank you,” he said softly, and Sebastian stopped

short and almost ran into him, since he’d been bringing up the rear.

Sebastian shrugged. “It’s an old story.”

“No—thank you. You made… you made what could have

been a really horrible day… well, less horrible. Maybe when Jordan remembers this day later, he’ll remember you and

Bella, and not….” He didn’t need to finish that sentence.

“Anyway—thank you. You guys… you’re great. You’re family.

You have really brought Bella out of her shell, I think, and…

well. I’m grateful. Thank you.”

Sebastian shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Don’t

thank me—just don’t let me cook. I burn water. But that’s another….”

“Story,” Asa finished for him, and this time, when they

met eyes, the look caught and held for a minute, and as they walked into the house, Sebastian’s stomach held more

butterflies than hope.

“Hey, Sebastian,” Asa said thoughtfully as they entered

the kitchen and he started rooting around the refrigerator.

“What in the hell was Sammy’s boyfriend doing with a

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

67

monkey?”

Sebastian laughed. “Well, see, the thing is, Sammy’s

boyfriend is a biology major, and Mr. Pickles was supposed to be an experiment, but Chad read the experiment

wrong….”

And by the time Asa had produced omelets and

Sebastian had produced, well, a couple of pieces of toast with butter, the story of Mr. Pickles, the monkey who was never neutered in
spite
of what Chad’s worst fears had been, had Asa laughing all over again.

Together, they made it through the day, and by the time

they put Jordan to bed that night, the boy didn’t mention his mother at all.

“He’ll think about her,” Bella predicted. “He may even

ask about her. And that’s never going to go away. But as long as she doesn’t come back to mess with him, I think he should be all right for now—but I’d invest in a shrink, Asa, that was pretty brutal.”

Asa grunted and changed the channel. They were all

downstairs, watching television. Sebastian hadn’t even

attempted to get his computer out; he knew for a fact that Bella would need him as her own personal pillow this night, and she didn’t prove him wrong. He sat in the corner of the couch with one leg up and the other on the ground, and she lay on top of him, like a lover—or a sister—and rested her head on his chest.

“I just wish we could go back to the place where I could pretend none of it happened,” Asa growled, and Bella slanted a look at Sebastian full of questions and slyness.

“We all have our damage, Asa,” was what she said. “You

just need to stop beating yourself up for yours.”

Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
Amy Lan
e

68

Asa darted her a disgruntled look. “I could say the same to you, Isabella, you know that, right?”

“Conversation over,” Bella snapped, and Sebastian

looked down at her and grinned.

“What?” she demanded.

Sebastian lifted a shoulder. “It’s just funny to see him get the better of you, that’s all. It doesn’t happen often.”

She stuck an elbow in his ribs and said, “Hey—do you

want
me to get up?”

“No, no no…,” Sebastian said hastily—the back door

and all of the windows were open, and it was actually a little bit chilly in the room, after the oppressive heat of the foothills during the day. She was keeping him warm, and he was softening her fall. It’s what they did for each other.

Sebastian looked at Asa sprawled out in his chair and

watching
Burn Notice
with the concentration of a fanatic. His slightly crossed blue eyes were scowling over that fine

Roman nose, and his lean mouth was compressed with his

attention to the television. His long body, chiseled on

construction sites and honed by the runs Sebastian knew he took most mornings, was balanced somewhere between

intellectual attention and physical at-ease, and that shower of brown-gold hair was up in a heavy queue on the crown of his head. Sebastian had seen Bella do that when she wanted her own hair off her neck, and Sebastian’s fingers just itched to pull the band out and feel the coarse, smooth lot of it ribbon across his hands.