DEVIL: A Stepbrother Romance (3 page)

“
T
hanks for the movie tonight
,” Sam said. “I had a lot of fun.”

“I had a lot of fun with you too,” I replied, reaching my hand out and grabbing Sam’s.

We were both sitting in my new, bronze-colored Toyota Corolla, staring in each other’s eyes. Technically, the car was used, a 1996 model, but it felt new to me. I had never owned a car, but my parent’s decided to splurge on a congratulations gift for bumping my grades up during the first semester of my senior year in high school. It had started to look like my grades wouldn’t afford to get me into a decent college, and they promised if I focused and tried harder they would get me a set of wheels.

That night was the first night out in my new ride, and I had decided to take my girlfriend out for dinner and a movie. We had burger and fries at a local diner and saw “Dawn of the Dead” at the local $1 theater. The night was going great, and I could tell that Sam was happy that I finally had a car. I’d be able to see her more often and take her to all the hip places around town.

Sam leaned over, placing her lips gently onto mine, and I inhaled her scent. Her face smelled like honey and her lips tasted like caramel. I closed my eyes and basked in the feeling of her femininity. I wasn’t a virgin, but even after 7 months, Sam and I hadn’t had sex, nor had I ever had sex with a girl of her caliber. Her long, flowing hair and young slender body–My mind raced in anticipation that perhaps that night would be our special night.

I placed my free palm on Sam’s cheek, and she exhaled a purr into mouth, slowly parting her lips and allowing me the slightest bit of access. My tongue darted inside, finding the tip of hers which quickly reciprocated the pressure. The taste of her was heavenly, and for a moment, I got a bit ahead of myself, forcing my tongue all the way in her mouth, trying to absorb as much as possible.

“Easy there, tiger,” Sam chided me as she pulled away and wiped her lips off with the sleeve of her shirt.

My face was flushed with frustration, and I could feel the pent up aggression hardening in my pants. “Tonight?” I asked, trying my best not to appear overly anxious.

Sam lightly shook her head and pressed her lips together tightly. “Not here Mitch…”

I sighed and shifted my eyes. “When are you going to be ready Sam? It’s been–“

“I’m ready Mitch,” Sam interrupted. “I just want it to be somewhere special. Not inside of a parked car a block away from my parent’s house.”

I chuckled and nodded in understanding. “Yeah, I guess it’s not the ideal spot, huh?”

“Tell you what… Why don’t you pick me up tomorrow after school? We can head over to Leslie Grant’s house. Her parents aren’t home until way late at night and she won’t mind if we spend some time alone in one of the spare bedrooms.”

A grin crept across my face. “Really?”

Sam nodded and gave me a sly grin.

I tried to hide my excitement and play it cool, giving a slight nod of my own before starting up my car. “Sounds like a date.”

A few minutes later, I was in Sam’s driveway, and she leaned over one last time to give me a final kiss on the cheek. “Text me when you get home, okay? I love you.”

“I… uh…um…”

Sam rolled her eyes and hopped out of the car. “I know… I know… It’s hard for you to say.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll text you when I get home.”

I probably loved the girl. In fact, I was pretty sure I did. But there was something weird to me about saying the words. I had never told a girl that I loved her, and I wanted it to mean something when I finally did. It just wasn’t the kind of word that I wanted to throw around.

I glanced at myself in the rear view mirror before pulling out the driveway. I had a decent cut on my dark brown hair, and everyone always complimented my ocean blue eyes, but for the most part, I felt incredibly average. I wasn’t nearly as buff as the other guys on the team, and I wasn’t even that great of a player; most games I was stuck warming the bench. Nor was I the smartest guy or the most handsome. I couldn’t help but wonder if I deserved the incredible lucky run that I was having with Sam.

I made a mental note as I pulled off of the main street and on to the freeway: This year I going to work-out more and convince Coach to start me a few games. No more bullshit–I’d make it to the Seahawks someday. I was feeling on top of the world with my new car, beautiful girlfriend, and a sexual invitation for the next day. My lions burned with excitement, and my foot slowly eased into the acceleration pedal. My free hand toyed with the radio, finally settling on a popular, power rock station with music that synchronized with my increasing speed.

My car hurdled past traffic as the music roared, going slower than the slow-lane cars, but not as fast as the speed demons in the fast lane. My friends told me to never go more than 10 MPH over the speed limit to avoid getting pulled over, and I was trying to heed their advice. I slapped the dashboard of the car and tried to think of a name that I’d give ‘er. The Toyota already felt like my baby, even having drove it for less than a day.

I quickly pulled off the freeway and onto a busy street that lead to a 4-way intersection. The light was green, and I was still obeying my “no more than 10 MPH over” rule as I drove through to make a left turn.

An attempted left turn, that is.

The last thing I remember was seeing a pair of headlights rushing towards me at an impossible-to-avoid speed and something that sounded like an explosion. My head snapped forward, the breath was forced out of my lungs, and then everything went black.

A
nurse rushed
into Mitch’s room and began checking his vitals. After seeing his condition and making sure that all the wires and tubes were still attached to him, she began pressing buttons on a pager that was attached to her waist and then rushed out into the hall. Within seconds, she returned to the room followed by the doctor and two additional nurses.

Doctor Wallace was panting as if he had been running when he made it to Mitch’s side, and he went about performing the same checks as the nurse. “Yep, no vitals. Time to call the code. Susan, go ahead and start CPR. Mary, prepare the defibrillator.”

Mom was standing as close as possible to Alex’s body, and the nurses were navigating around her. The third nurse that was assisting the doctor turned towards our family and told us that we needed to get out of the room while they worked.

We obeyed… sort of. We moved to the hall-like entrance of the room and watched from afar as they continued their attempt to save Mitch’s life. All three of us were sobbing as we watched one of the nurses pressing viciously on Mitch’s chest and squeezing a pump into his mouth, but we tried our best to keep our noise down so that we didn’t interrupt them any further.

“He’s going to die…” I whispered, just loud enough that Dad could her.

He pressed a strong hand on my shoulder and leaned down towards me, holding back his tears enough that he spoke with a straight voice. “Don’t say that Annie. He’s not gone yet. Don’t give up on faith.”

“Clear!” the doctor yelled out, and suddenly a loud shocking noise rang out in the room and Mitch’s body leapt out of his bed.

Mom turned her head and let out of a particularly loud sob. She put her hand up against the wall and was crouching slightly as if her legs were barely holding her up. Dad wrapped his arms around her and tried to whisper something to her to calm her nerves, but he seemed just as bad off.

“Clear!” rang out again. By then, I also had my head facing the wall and wasn’t sure what was happening behind me. The doctors and nurses were talking in strange medical talk, spewing numbers and phrases that sounded like another language to me.

The resuscitation attempts continued for the next 15 minutes with Dad, Mom, and I waiting patiently by the door. Eventually, the doctor said calmly, “That’s a wrap,” and walked towards us. He had been so focused on his work that he didn’t notice we were standing in the room the whole time. When he turned to where we were waiting, he jumped a bit when he saw us.

“I’m sorry…” he said softly as he began to shake his head. “We did everything we could.”

“Oh god,” Mom sobbed again and put her hand up to her mouth, trying to hold everything in.

Dad had since stopped crying, and his face was completely blank. “Is it okay if we have a little bit of time with him?”

The doctor protested for a moment, “Well… we usually don’t ‘til–“

“Please…” my Mom interrupted and threw a hand out towards the doctor’s shoulders.

“Alright. We can give you a bit of time.” The doctor twisted back towards the nurses who were arranging equipment around Mitch and writing on clipboards. “Let’s go head and clear out of here for 15 minutes or so. The family would like some time with the deceased.”

“Deceased?” It was such a foreign word to me. My grandmother was 96 years old, and I figured she would be the first person of my family to die and probably from natural causes. Not Mitch. Less than 24 hours prior, I watched as he ran out of the house and awed at his new car. It never even crossed my mind that in such a short span he would be dead..

I was dazed, confused and in denial. I loved Mitch… He had always been a good brother. He didn’t deserve to die so soon. I kept waiting for the moment that I would wake up from whatever nightmare it was that I was experiencing.

The nurses peeled out, and we all walked over to my brother’s lifeless body. The heart monitor in the background was still squealing the flat, lifeless sound, reinforcing the the fact that my brother was dead. I reached my hand out and touched him for the first time since we had been in the hospital room.

Cold.

Mom and Dad were on the other side of the bed, and Mom held Mitch’s hand with her head bent down. Dad had his hands in a prayer position with his head parallel to my mom’s. I wasn’t sure if they were praying. Our family had never been all that religious, but it looked like they were.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I simply closed my eyes and prayed as well. I wasn’t praying to a God or anything in particular. I was just wishing, or talking to Mitch, or hoping that any greater power would hear me out and listen to my words. I had never prayed before, so I just whispered the thoughts that were on my mind.

“Alex, you’ve been a great brother and a good friend. I am so, so sorry that we haven’t been close these last few years, and if I could go back I would do anything to change that. I don’t want you to go… I really don’t. I want you to be here and give me a chance to make things the way that they should’ve been from the start.

“I… I just never imagined that you would leave us soon. And wherever you are now, if there is another life, or another planet, or heaven, or whatever there is out there. I hope you have the best experience possible and know that I loved you. I will always love you and always remember you. I would do anything to have you back.”

I moved my hand into his and squeezed on to his cold, stiff fingers. I had never imagined that a body could be so cold, and it felt so strange and foreign. I lifted his hand up in mine and place it against my cheek, still wet with my tears. I’m not sure why I did that; maybe I was trying to warm him up or maybe I was trying to remember exactly how his hands felt on such a sensitive part of my body.

My eyes cracked open, and I saw my Mom and Dad staring at me. Their tears had stopped for the most part, and they both seemed to have accepted the sad fact that death had took their only son.

And then it happened.

A slight twitch.

For a moment I thought I had imagined it, and then I looked down and noticed another twitch in my brother’s pinky. My brow creased in confusion, and I wondered if it was some strange reaction of his nervous system. I had heard on a crime documentary that sometimes bodies would still randomly convulse after death. But then a third twitch in his hand made me seriously start to question things.

“Mom…” I howled as my eyes grew wider.

Suddenly, there was a beep on the heart monitor. A single beep. And then another single beep.

“Mitch?” Dad asked. “Mitch!?” He rose to his feet and then turned towards the monitor and then back to Mitch... “Oh my god, Melissa. Get the doctor fast!”

Mom ran from the room, and the chirps of the heart monitor suddenly picked up. Within seconds, it sounded like a normal, beating heart. I looked down to the Mitch’s hand and I could feel the heat returning, slowly but surely.

And then I felt his grip. A strong, powerful grip, squeezing onto my hand with enough force that it scared the hell out of me.