Off Limits: A Stepbrother MMA Romance (32 page)

I missed her. I missed
her pussy, her moans, her soft sighs and her smell. And I missed just
having her around. I missed seeing her cut up strawberries into her
Greek yogurt for breakfast. I missed seeing what kind of ridiculous,
old baggy sweatshirt she chose to wear that day. I sure as hell
missed seeing her do yoga. Once I got her back in my life, maybe she
could teach me a pose or two, the best athletes kept limber as well
as strong. And I would get her back in my life. That wasn’t a
question. She just needed some time and with Jewel, I’d learned to
be patient.

First, I needed to make
sure she was OK. Then I would to talk with her.

I sat in my car, parked
across the street, my eyes trained on the entrance of the center. I
knew it was her right away, that flaming red hair, pulled back into a
low ponytail. She wore a tent dress, of course, billowing around her,
not doing a thing anymore to hide her shape from me, now that I knew
every inch of her.

She walked out with a
tall, slim man. He had brown hair and he rested his hand on her back.
Mike. My eyes narrowed into slits. My hands gripped the steering
wheel.

Together they walked
over to a car I didn’t recognize, not her old beater but a Prius.
Fucking tree-hugging hippie Mike’s car. They stood together close,
speaking to each other. Then she rested her head against his
shoulder, he gave her a brief hug, and they both climbed into his
car. Together.

The blood pounded in my
ears, rage flooding through me as I sat there alone in my car. The
fucking Prius pulled out. I followed, a few cars behind, like a sicko
stalking his girlfriend with her new guy. I stayed with them the
whole drive, about twenty minutes, until they pulled in at an
apartment complex. They got out of the car and went up the stairs
together, disappearing behind the entry door. Into his place.

“Fuck!” I roared
into my empty car, my impotent fury doing nothing to change things. I
was a fucking idiot. All this time I’d been so bent out of shape
over this girl, she’d been into another guy. And now she’d gone
back to him. Easy come easy go. And here I’d thought she was the
one. Talk about a sucker punch.

That night, I tore it
up. Partying like a wild man, no one could slow me down. Instead of
howling in pain, I pounded shots and bought everybody rounds. Then I
brought the whole bar back to my father’s house and told them to go
sick on the place. Who gave a fuck anymore? This was my last hurrah.
What was he going to do to me that he hadn’t already done? What did
I have to lose? Why not throw a fucking rager?

Drunk, girls all up on
me, kissing my neck, going for my junk, I still couldn’t fucking do
it. Even with every reason in the world, with my girl gone and
fucking another guy, I still couldn’t get hard for someone else.
That pissed me off. But everything pissed me off. I guessed that was
the new me. Celibate, drunk and angry. I should have business cards
made up—come party with me!

The last thing I
remembered I was sitting on a big leather chair in the living room. A
couple of girls were over on the couch and I knew they were looking
to hook up, they wanted to party, but all I could think of was how
Jewel and I had played poker on that couch. I’d trade everything
for just one more night with her.

§

The next morning, I
thought I was dreaming. Or still drunk. A wild, raving goddess with
fiery red hair was storming around, kicking beer cans and gesturing
with her hands.

“Jewel?” I mumbled,
wiping my lips. I felt drool there.

“This is disgusting!”
she ranted. It was Jewel. Over on the couch I could see a couple of
people passed out, fast asleep. They didn’t seem to have any
clothes on.

“What time is it?”
I asked, trying to bring my hands to my face to rub it, wake myself
up. My tongue felt thick and fuzzy and somehow my arms were trapped,
pinned down. I opened my eyes wider and noticed I had a couple of
girls on me. They both wore panties, but had their tops off, their
naked breasts out and exposed while they slept.

One of them grunted in
protest as I tried to move.

“You’ve got to be
kidding me!” Jewel exclaimed in disgust.

“Shut that bitch up,”
mumbled one of the topless girls on my lap.

“Don’t worry, I’m
out of here.” Jewel turned and spun out of the living room.

“No, wait.” I
pushed myself up and off of the leather armchair, both girls whining
as they were disturbed, then deposited back into the chair. Neither
fully woke up. “Wait!” I chased after Jewel as fast as my
barefoot, hung-over body would let me, picking my way through broken
bits of a vase and some fireplace tools strewn across the kitchen
floor. What the fuck had happened here last night?

I caught up with her in
the garage before she could get into her car.

“Please, Jewel, wait.
I want to talk to you.” I grabbed her arm.

“Let me go.” She
pulled from my grip. “I just came to get my things. Now I don’t
even want them anymore.”

“I want to talk to
you,” I kept insisting, a big dumb bear, my brain not working
right.

“About what?” she
spat out. “How many girls you fucked last night?”

“I didn’t.” Fist
up to my hair, I pulled at the roots, trying to wake myself up,
trying to make her understand. “It’s not what you think.”

“You didn’t trash
your father’s house, get shithoused drunk and fuck a couple of
skanks last night?”

“No,” I protested,
shaking my head. “Well, some of that.” And, wait, it came back to
me. Wasn’t I the jilted one? Wasn’t I the one who had something
to yell about?

“What about you?” I
asked. “How about you and your boy toy?”

“What the fuck are
you talking about?” She looked so gorgeous, all pale and flaming
righteous fury. I wanted to pull her to me, claim her, make her mine
again, all mine. But she’d chosen to leave me. Chosen another man.

“Mike,” I spat out,
remembering how she’d rested her head on his chest, how he’d
guided her up the steps of his apartment with a hand at the small of
her back.

“Do you have a
fucking rock for a brain?” Jewel screamed at me. Funny, that’s
what my father had said to me, about a million times.

“Guess I do,” I
spat back. “I trusted you.”

“Get away from me!”
she yelled, opening her car door and climbing in.

I stepped aside. She’d
made her choice. She’d left me, not because of something my father
said or did, but because she didn’t want to be with me. She wanted
to be with someone else, simple as that.

The wheels of her car
burned rubber, squealing as she pulled out into the driveway. She
couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

Jewel

Thanksgiving was right
around the corner and I had a pit in my stomach. The days had grown
cold and dark in Massachusetts, a biting wind bearing down on me as I
walked between classes. I was a far way away from L.A.

I hadn’t heard from
any of them in four months. Not my stepfather or mother. And not
Tuck, not a word from him, the man I’d fallen for so hard. In two
weeks it would be Thanksgiving, a family holiday. Only this year I
had no idea who to spend it with.

I certainly wasn’t
going to spend it with Tuck, no cozy fireside snuggling with the game
on TV, no laughing as we attempted to make homemade cranberry sauce
and failed. Those scenes would stay in my head, or in the Lifetime
made-for-TV movies I seemed to compulsively watch. He hadn’t gotten
in touch with me, no texts, no calls, no late-night romantic
gestures, “I’ve driven all day and all night because I had to see
you.” No, that only happened late at night in my head.

During the day, I kept
myself busy. Working for a professor, waiting tables on the side to
make some money, plus a full load of classes left few idle hours.
Thank God. It was the nights that were hard, making it through all
those long, lonely hours.

It had been easier
being lonely before Tuck. Before him, intimacy had been an abstract
concept. I hadn’t known what I was missing. Now it felt like I’d
lost a limb. I had phantom pain. My heart ached all the time, like it
had been torn in two. I’d lost weight, but that was only to be
expected when everything tasted like cardboard. My already pale skin
turned ghostly white. I wasn’t doing well.

I didn’t know what he
was doing for Thanksgiving. I doubted he was spending it with his
father, not after what Leland had seen and said that night.
Definitely not after Tuck had trashed his house, his skanks and gym
buddies breaking and smashing everything in sight.

I’d sent my mom a
text back at the start of the school year, asking if we could talk.
Nothing in return. In October I’d left her two phone messages. Not
saying much, just please give me a call. She didn’t get back to me.

Funny how I missed her.
She’d always been there in my life, something to rail against,
someone to roll my eyes over and complain about, but she’d always
been there. I’d never gone this long without talking to her.

I kept picturing her
standing there at the bottom of the stairs, so angry but so cold. Had
she really thought I’d been mean to her her whole life? That I’d
looked down on her, thought she was trailer trash? It made me feel
sick.

Nothing like making a
huge fucking mess of your life to learn some humility. I didn’t
think I was better than her, I really didn’t. I figured we were
both human, that’s what it came down to. Each trying to do our
best, and I obviously didn’t have it all figured out.

I made it through my
days, sleepwalking, zombie-like, making my grades, on time for work
shifts, but I wouldn’t call it a life. It resembled a life, but I
was back in hiding, under wraps, a heavy blanket of loss cloaking me.
They said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have
loved at all. I wondered who they were and how they said that shit
with a straight face. This pain I felt, it wasn’t getting any
easier.

I guess that's what you
got when you’d kept yourself in lockdown mode for all of your
teenage years. I hadn’t gone through the typical progression,
swooning over a pretty boy band as a tween, crushing on the dreamy
high school senior quarterback as a freshman, moving up to
spin-the-bottle kisses in the closet to your first real boyfriend
junior year and the big bang at senior prom. Had I done any of that,
I guessed this wouldn’t be so hard now. It wouldn’t take me so
long to scrape myself up off the pavement and start breathing again.
I was sure Tuck had rebounded like a champ, off like an Olympic
sprinter on to the next girl. Hell, I’d already seen him in action
with two topless hos draped over his lap after a big night. The
memory made my stomach turn.

I realized that I
should feel more revulsion, more ‘how could I have done that?’ or
‘I’m such an idiot.’ But even with direct evidence that he
wasn’t who I’d thought, he was still a party boy player and
hadn’t really changed at all, I ached for him. Not a day went by
when I didn’t think about searching for him online, seeing if he’d
made the leap to pro MMA. Or just picking up the phone and calling
him, even if he didn’t want to talk, simply to hear his voice for a
few seconds. And if he did want to talk, I’d tell him Mike was just
a friend, I hadn’t cheated, I would never do that to him.

But then I’d
remember. I’d see Leland’s face, hear the crushing disgust in his
voice that confirmed every horrible thing I’d ever thought about
myself. I’d see Tuck, passed out and hung over, literally covered
with semi-naked girls. Every time I almost broke down, that image
would hold me back. That was probably where he’d be, what he’d be
doing when his phone rang.

It was best to move on,
trust that in time I’d forget all about him. So what that my body
still shivered for him, that I woke up moaning his name? That would
go away. Some day, like when I turned 75.

§

The call came in the
middle of the night, as it always did. She was sobbing and blowing
her nose so I couldn’t understand much of my mom’s words, but I
understood her meaning. Leland had left her. He was filing for
divorce.

Well, that was quick. I
thought it, but at least I didn’t say it out loud. I sat there in
my narrow, long dorm room bed, feeling slightly numb. I counted out
on my fingers, mid-February to mid-November. Nine months. Huh. She’d
certainly had relationships with guys that lasted shorter than that,
but the marriage and divorce thing all within the span of a calendar
year. Hats off.

The next day she
emailed me a plane ticket to join her in Cabo for Thanksgiving break.
I guessed all was forgiven now that her own situation had fallen
apart. We were quite a pair.

She played the part of
the jilted, tortured movie star to perfection, complete with
ginormous black sunglasses that swallowed up her entire face and a
floppy sun hat the size of Texas. She rarely left the shelter of her
poolside cabana and fell asleep early at night, drifting off in a
haze of margaritas, pina coladas and cosmos. There was something
comfortable about both of us being back in our normal roles, her the
drama queen with man trouble, me the long-suffering, mostly silent
daughter tending to her needs.

She didn’t bring up
Tuck and I didn’t either. She moaned a lot about how Leland wasn’t
the man she’d thought he was, and how ridiculously he was,
insisting on sticking to their pre-nuptial agreement. Apparently she
was only getting $10 million. Can you imagine? The insult. How would
she scrape by?

She was super concerned
about the finances, less so about Leland. Thankfully she called him
by his middle name. Hearing her talk about Tuck would have been too
strange. Not that everything about this wasn’t already strange.

I couldn’t say I was
surprised. I’d heard the clock ticking on it from the second they’d
eloped on Valentine’s Day. But it did change things.