Escape: A Stepbrother Romance (14 page)

I considered telling her, but decided against it. She would have questions and I wouldn’t be able to answer them. How would that conversation even go? “His name is Caiden, and he’s not exactly the university type. We spent a wild night having sex, but now he’s screwing other women. Oh and Dad is getting married to another woman, and Caiden is her son.”

I told a few minor lies and said that I was exchanging a few emails with someone at Cambridge, but that we weren’t officially dating. At least that way I would be able to talk to her about Caiden indirectly.

Mum laughed even though I could tell she was tired. She thought it was weird that young people today started seeing each other via email instead of in person and she scolded me for using the Americanism ‘dating.’ Had that slipped in from spending too much time with Caiden?

I could only speak to Mum for an hour at a time because she got tired. We’d already been talking for fifty minutes and I hadn’t told her about Dad getting remarried. I didn’t think she’d care, in fact I’m sure she wouldn’t, but that didn’t make the conversation any easier.

No daughter wanted to be the one to tell their mother that the father had moved on and was in a happy relationship with someone else. Gemma offered to have the conversation with Mum instead, but it felt like something that should come from me. If it were up to Dad, Mum would probably never find out.

My Auntie came on the line after an hour and insisted that we wrap up the call. I usually pleaded for another ten or fifteen minutes, but that had been a tough conversation and both Mum and I were exhausted.

Mum’s voice generally lacked emotion these days, but I’m sure I heard sadness in her voice when she said goodbye. Maybe I was just projecting my own feelings onto her. Next time I would make sure the conversation was more upbeat. Before I spoke to her again, I planned to have designed a couple of recipes and recorded them on my blog. Screw the Mandarin lessons.

Caiden and Gemma had both encouraged me to live my own life, and the conversation with Mum tipped me over the edge. She didn’t say anything about cooking, but speaking to her when she was in this state was a stark reminder that life is short and sometimes you need to live for the moment.

The Mandarin lessons were to start tonight for the introductions and it would then be full-time five days a week plus additional studying at home until the end of the summer. The course was described as an ‘intensive program designed to impart rudimentary language skills on its students upon completion.’ Perhaps if I’d had a holiday to China booked or some other motivation to learn the language I wouldn’t have been so dismissive, but everything about the course reminded me of my father and how he dictated every moment of my life.

I went straight from the park to the secondary school classroom that was used for adult education in the evenings. I arrived a little early and probably looked enthusiastic, but I had a plan to get me out of the course.

I’d reviewed the materials provided and looked at the payment information. Dad would be billed for the classes after my initial attendance. After that there were no refunds and as far as I could tell no one bothered to track attendance. That meant all I had to do was attend this introduction, sign my name down somewhere, and then never show up again. Dad would be wasting his money, but what did I care?

The course made it clear that because Mandarin was such a difficult language I wouldn’t be able to learn much in just a few months; that meant Dad could hardly expect me to hold a conversation in the language at the end of the summer. I planned to learn a few basic phrases in case he asked me to say anything, but other than that I would just use my nervousness and anxiety to avoid speaking it in front of him.

When the next summer rolled around I planned to put my foot down and tell him where he could shove his Mandarin lessons. I had a year to grow a backbone and speak up to my father. It was probably nowhere near enough time, but I’d changed a lot in the last couple of weeks and hopefully university would change me even more.

The few hours of introductory Mandarin had been a heck of a lot more interesting than I’d anticipated, and it was fun trying to construct all the different tones that were essential to communicating anything in Mandarin. Apparently there were only a few hundred words in the language, but when you changed the tone and combined the words you made new ones.

It all sounded thoroughly confusing, but the teacher was enthusiastic and friendly and a couple of times I almost forgot I didn’t intend to come back. If Dad hadn’t been so insistent on me doing the course full-time I might have actually stuck it out. Even though I enjoyed the class, I knew I’d rather spend my summer developing recipes and trying to build a food blog.

Just before I got in the car to drive home, a message came through on my phone from Sophie, one of the girls from the boarding school I’d just left. Sophie told me she was in the area with some other friends, a few of whom I was vaguely acquainted with, and insisted that I joined the group in the pub. I replied to say that I was too tired, but Sophie wouldn’t accept the excuse.

She pointed out that the pub was so close to my home that I could just pop by for one drink and then leave. I knew full well she wouldn’t let me leave after one drink, but she knew where I lived and the last thing I wanted was her popping round to my house after a few drinks and bumping into Caiden who might be back from London now.

The pub was quiet when I walked in, or at least it would have been if the girls were not there. Other than Sophie, Kathryn, Jane, and a few others I didn’t know, the only people in the pub were three men sat separately at the bar quietly drinking by themselves. Not exactly a busy evening, but the girls were drinking enough to keep the barman vaguely busy.

“Do you know the barman?” Sophie asked, before I had even introduced myself to the others.

“No, I don’t recognize him,” I replied. “He must be new.”

“Damn. I wouldn’t mind getting to know him a little better if you get my meaning.”

I smiled and joined in the inappropriate comments about the barman, but I soon realized I didn’t fit in with this group anymore. Just a few years ago, we had all been alike. We joked around about boys a little, but it was always in jest. Now Sophie and her friends were talking about fucking random barman and they clearly weren’t joking.

We didn’t even dress alike anymore. At some point the other girls had started wearing less and less to the point where they now went out in the evenings in skimpy skirts and high heels despite the cold—which they seemed to be immune to. I felt like the grumpy older sister in my light flowery dress and white cardigan.

Sophie had been one of the first girls at boarding school to really start changing the way she acted and dressed. I told myself she was just rebelling, probably against her parents, but she genuinely seemed to be enjoying herself more than I was.

“So, you’re going to Cambridge?” Jane asked, when the conversation turned to where we were all going in September.

“Yes, I was accepted to study PPE.”

“And you’re starting this year? You’re not doing a gap year?”

“I start in September.”

It sounded like a strange question, but it turned out that all the other girls had delayed the start date of university for a year so they could go on gap years and ‘find themselves.’ They all planned to work in poor countries for a few months for charity, before traveling the world and spending their parent’s money which was what they did best.

They were annoyingly pretentious about the charity work considering you had to pay to do it and the locals got little real benefit out of it. The money would be better spent going directly to aid organizations, but then how would rich girls get to pad out their CVs?

“I bet you’re just starting in September so you can hook up with that guy you met on the open day,” Sophie said. “What was his name again? Oliver, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, his name’s Oliver, but he’s not why I’m going to Cambridge.”

“Oh come on,” Sophie teased, “you can tell us. You did have sex with him that night in Cambridge, didn’t you?”

“No, we didn’t have sex. We just hung out.”

“Does that mean you’re still… a virgin,” Jane said, whispering the last words as if they were too rude to voice aloud in the pub. The pub where they’d all been swearing at the top of their voices all evening.

I didn’t know what to say. There didn’t seem to be a good answer. I’d never been ashamed of my virginity and only wanted to lose it to avoid an awkward experience at university, but if I said I wasn’t a virgin then I would have to give details of who I lost it to and when. The other girls had talked about their first times in explicit detail and I would be expected to do the same.

The truth would have made an entertaining story but I still didn’t want to tell it. The other girls had confessed in detail about their first times. They told stories about being in pain ‘down there’ for days and having to wash the bed sheets without their parents noticing. None of them had told a story about fucking three times and coming just as often.

“Oh shit,” Sophie exclaimed. “You are aren’t you? You’re still a virgin.”

I opened my mouth but saw the girls all look behind me before I could speak. I turned around and saw Caiden standing behind me.

“She’s no virgin, ladies,” Caiden said, smiling. “You can take my word on that.”

Sheri had been at the house when I arrived home from London, so I dumped my bags and headed back out again. I could have just locked myself in my room, but even just being in the same house as the happy couple drove me nuts, especially without Vicky around to give me someone else to talk to.  

There wasn’t exactly a lot to do during the day in the part of town Vicky lived and there was even less to do at night. I walked over to the pub and, after taking a few wrong turns, I made it there for what looked like a quiet evening. When I peeked through the window all I could see were a few men sat at the bar staring at the bottom of the glass. It looked a little sad compared to where I had been last night, but it was just what I needed right now.

I walked through the door and my ears were immediately assaulted by the screech of girls barely old enough to drink legally. They’d been tucked away at a large table in the corner and I hadn’t seen them from outside. I considered turning around and going back outside, but then where would I go? There was another pub somewhere, but it would likely be at least a thirty minute walk and right now I just wanted a drink.

I walked towards the bar when I heard a familiar voice.

“Yes, his name’s Oliver, but he’s not why I’m going to Cambridge.”

Vicky. She must be here with friends. I could have snuck over to the bar and sat down without them noticing, but when I tried to order a drink my American accent would no doubt turn a few heads. I could do without the attention of a load of immature, screeching eighteen-year-olds tonight even if one of them was Vicky.

My ears perked up at the word virgin. I caught the gist of the conversation pretty quickly. They were teasing Vicky for being a virgin. Pathetic. The other girls probably considered themselves sophisticated because they’d gotten laid when drunk at a party, but I would bet money that none of them were capable of fucking like Vicky. You’d think they were a little too old to be bullying someone for a perceived lack of sexual activity, but apparently not.

Vicky was in a tough place. If she admitted to being a virgin she would get grief over it and word would probably spread quickly among her group of friends. If she denied being a virgin then the girls would ask for details and someone like Vicky was far too polite to talk about sex in public. She certainly had nothing to be ashamed of, but this was a girl who hardly ever swore out loud so she would hardly tell friends how she came in my face or how she rode my cock with the skill of someone far more experienced.

I made a decision I knew I would regret. I walked over to the girls and told them that Vicky was definitely not a virgin. She turned and looked at me aghast and I worried that I might have done the wrong thing.

“Who are you?” One of the girls asked with lust audible in her voice. She was drooling just looking at me.