Step F*#K: Part Four (Stepbrother #4) (3 page)

“I never liked them.”

“I even tried drawing them on my face once, in middle school. It didn’t work out as well as I hoped. But people are always saying that, aren’t they? Always wanting what they don’t have. It’s part of the human condition.”

One of the waiters walks by with a tray of champagne, and she deftly snakes an arm out and grabs two, handing me one.
 

“Drink up,” she says.
 

I take a sip. “Thanks.”

“You know, I’d just like to tell you right now, that I’m very happy for your family,” she says. “I’ve actually always wanted a family of my own—which I don’t see happening anytime soon—but I’m so happy I was able to be here and be a part of this. It’s like I can live it vicariously, you know? Maybe that’s the best I’ll be able to do.”

I take a big gulp of champagne. This is probably the last thing I want to be doing—standing around, talking to Jai’s gorgeous date about how she wants a family of her own, presumably with him. I don’t exactly know why that wouldn’t happen anytime soon, but I don’t really want to ask, either.
 

“Well, thanks for coming,” I say finally. “I’m just heading to the bathroom.”

She nods and grabs another champagne flute from a different waiter’s tray. “I’ll see you around then, I hope.”

I don’t know if I share the sentiment, but I nod back. “Uh, yeah, sure.”
 

I take my champagne and go hide in the bathroom for a few minutes. I look at myself in the mirror, my cheeks starting to get flushed from the alcohol, though there’s no way I’ve even had half the amount to drink that Jai’s date has. I don’t look bad, I think, staring at my reflection, but I don’t look anything like
her
. Can I really blame him for being with her? She’s probably one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen, and that actually is saying something, living in L.A. and all.
 

But when I finally leave the bathroom and go back outside, I start to watch her and Jai together, and they don’t actually seem like boyfriend and girlfriend. They seem more like good friends, like pals, and not like there’s this simmering sexual attraction between them.
 

I eat a little more food, drink some more champagne, watch as Mom and Zack cut their four-tiered cake. There is the usual shenanigans, with them smearing it over each other’s faces, fluffy white frosting and butter cream roses everywhere. I have a slice and wash it down with more champagne, which, Jai’s date is right about—the more you drink of it, the more and more it tastes like water. And there’s the novelty of that—that this drink, which you know is
not
water, which just
had
a taste, now tastes like
nothing
and you can drink as much as you want. The thought makes me giggle.
 

“What are you laughing about?” Jessica asks. She’s holding her own champagne glass.

“Have you tried that stuff?”

She nods and takes a sip. “I’ve been trying this stuff all afternoon.”

“Does it taste like water?”

She’s got a mouthful; she swishes it around before swallowing. “You know, now that you mention it . . .”

We both dissolve into giggles.
 

“I’m actually having a pretty good time,” I say. “For a wedding and everything.”

“For our
mother’s
wedding.” Jessica holds up her glass. “And I’m next. Can you believe it? Chris and I will be next. What about
you
, Emma? When will be celebrating
your
wedding? Thank god it’s not with the total douchebag Tom.”

Drunk I might be, but I’m with it enough to realize how loudly my sister is talking, the way several people within earshot have turned to smile at her antics. One of those people—though he is not smiling—is Jai.
 

“Oh, is Emma getting married soon?” he says. “I’m sure that will be quite the event.” He won’t even look at me as he says this, though.
 

“
No
,” Jessica scoffs. “She doesn’t even have a boyfriend. Which is hard to believe, right? I mean, look at her—she’s fucking gorgeous! Any man would be lucky to have her, yet here she is, spending half of her dating life with a total asshole, and then . . . nothing.” And then, to my horror, my lovely wonderful sister stands up on her chair, waving her arms, sloshing champagne everywhere. “IS THERE NO MAN HERE WHO WILL DATE MY SISTER?” she shrieks.
 

“Jessica!” I hiss. Around us, people are cracking up. I shoot a glance at Jai, and it’s hard to tell if he’s trying to hold back a smile or not.
 

“I’ll take her!” Jai’s date says.
 

“I’d like to see that!” some guy shouts.
 

There is a part of me that is registering that I should be embarrassed, or angry, but the alcohol has rendered that part of me pleasantly numb, and it’s like I’m watching this from a distance, or like it’s happening to someone else.
 

“Sweetie, I think you should get down before you fall and hurt yourself.” Chris, my sister’s fiancée, is there by her side, helping her down from the chair, but not before she can implore the crowd once more for someone to take pity on her poor sister.
 

“I think I’m going to barf,” she says once she’s got both feet back on the ground.
 

“Let’s go inside for a minute,” Chris says, and she gives me a big shit-eating grin and then grabs his arm and lets him lead her inside. Everyone else goes back to whatever conversations they were having before. Everyone except Jai, that is. He’s finally looking at me, but it’s not with amusement or desire—he’s looking at me as though he can barely stand the sight of me.
 

A waiter passes with a tray of champagne and I snatch another glass. By the time I’ve downed it and put the empty flute back on the table, Jai has disappeared.
 

So maybe I’m a little drunk and maybe that’s not the best time to make decisions about anything that actually matter—or maybe it’s the perfect time. Maybe what I needed was for my inhibitions to be lowered a little, because now that they are, I realize that Jai was right all along—who cares what other people think? And it doesn’t even matter if he was looking at me as though he couldn’t stand me—I’m positively certain the opposite is true. We were meant for each other. I’m not sleeping with other people—I’m sleeping with him. Or
was
sleeping with him, and would like to be doing it again. The champagne makes me feel lightheaded and giggly, and also horny as hell, but it’s not just anyone that I want to sleep with. I want him. Perhaps it was hearing the wedding vows, or just the atmosphere of undeniable love that’s everywhere, but all I want is Jai. And he looked so handsome, and I don’t even care about that date of his, whoever she is.
 

But as I look around, I realize I still don’t see him. He’s not on the makeshift dance floor, he’s not sitting at one of the tables, or milling about by the pool. I see my sister and her fiancée, Mom and Zack, still dancing like fools, I see a few Hollywood actors whose names I should probably remember but don’t, guzzling champagne and laughing too loudly. No Jai, though. I drain the rest of my own champagne and leave the empty flute on the table. I walk into the house, where everything has this wonderful blurred, fuzzy quality. Everything is fabulous. I smile at the caterers I pass in the kitchen, who are scraping plates into a large trash can and bringing out more bottles of champagne.
 

“Jai?” I call. I loiter downstairs for a little bit, but when I still don’t see him, I go up, wondering if maybe he’s in his bedroom. I go through my room, glancing at the bed as I go past. Ah, it’d be fun to fuck on that right now. I step into the bathroom, and I see
 

a strip of light from under the bathroom door. Bingo. I smile. I can hear him moving around in there. I go over and quietly open the door, imagining the way his face will light up when he sees me, the way it will feel when his arms go around me, his hand—

The door is open and I’m walking into the room toward him before I can fully process what I’m seeing, which is him, and he’s lowering that beautiful woman, his date, onto the bed. She’s in her underwear. She’s in her underwear, and without the pants and the shirt on, I can see that she really does have the most amazing body I have ever seen, slender and voluptuous in all the right places. She’s laughing and she’s got an arm around his neck and if I’m not mistaken it looks like they’re about to kiss. Apparently everything I thought earlier, about them seeming more like friends than anything else, was dead fucking wrong.
 

He sees me and a startled look crosses his face. “Emma!” he says. “Emma—”

“Wow,” I say. My face suddenly feels like it’s boiling, although whether that’s from all the champagne or the fact that I am enraged, I can’t tell. “Um, I almost can’t believe my eyes, except I have to because I’m standing right here seeing this.”

“Emma, this isn’t what it—”

“I just came up here to tell you that I realized you were right about us, and that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you and I really
don’t
care what other people think, but apparently you can’t even go twenty-four hours before you start sleeping—or how is it you’d phrase it?
Shagging?
—someone else.”

“That’s not what’s happening!” he says. He disentangles himself and stands up. His date lies there on the bed, stretching like a cat, a totally satisfied expression on her face. She looks over at me.
 

“Oh, hello there darling,” she says, and her voice is garbled and again, I can’t tell if she’s really speaking that way or if I’m just hearing her like that because I’ve had too much champagne. “It’s so nice to get to see you again. You’re pretty.” She giggles. “I wanted to tell you that earlier, you know, when we were talking. About how pretty you are. Do you know that? That you’re extremely pretty. Those freckles! God, I love those freckles. Not that you need them—you’re already pretty enough, but sheesh . . .”

“Not pretty enough,” I say, glaring at Jai. “Not pretty enough to keep you from sleeping with the first attractive woman you happen to come across—”

“That’s
not
what’s happening here!” he says. “For fuck’s sake! You don’t even know who she is—she’s like a sister to me—” He stops, realizing what he’s said. Color flares on his cheeks “I mean—”

“Wait—what was that?” I shout. “What did you just say? That’s a fucking riot!
She’s like a sister
. Well, guess what, asshole? Now I AM your sister, and look at everything you’ve done to me! I cannot believe that I actually listened to you, that I have spent hours being upset about this and thinking about you and deciding that you were actually right, only to walk in and see you about to fuck someone else. Yeah, if this girl is like a
sister
to you, then I bet you’ll be spending the rest of the evening fucking her, right? Fucking her in the ass ”

“Emma—”

“Don’t say my fucking name! I don’t ever want to hear you say my name again, do you understand me? I have NOTHING to say to you! You are so full of shit!” I can feel tears starting to prick the corners of my eyes, and I’m completely powerless to stop them. They start streaming down my face, but I’m still yelling at him, still enraged. “I can’t believe that I actually
believed
you—that you’d say all that shit to me when obviously you didn’t mean a fucking word of it! You’re a fucking asshole, do you know that? You’re no better than any other guy, except maybe you’re actually worse. Because you’re a fucking liar.”

“I’m not lying to you.
Nothing
I have said to you has been a lie. You need to calm down, okay? Calm down and we can talk about this.”

“There is nothing to talk about!” I scream. He flinches, but I don’t care. “We’re done! We’re done.
I’m
done. I have nothing left to say to you.”

I turn and leave but he follows me out, catches me in the hallway. He grabs my arm and spins me around.
 

“Don’t do this,” he says. The look on his face is pleading, bordering on frantic. He frowns, a deep crease between his brows. “Please, Emma. Let me explain. I know how it looks. But don’t run out like this. Don’t do this, please—”

“Don’t do what?” The champagne, which had previously been making me feel light and happy and good about everything, now seems to be magnifying this anger, making it seem like the most unbearable thing in the world. And I can’t bear it for much longer, I know I can’t.
 
I wipe at my face. “Don’t let these tears fool you,” I snap. “I’m not crying because I’m sad—I’m crying because I can’t believe that you’re such a fucking dick, and also because I can’t believe that I’d be so fucking stupid to believe what you’d say to me in the first place.” I take a deep breath. The tears, for the moment, seemed to have stopped. “Jai, I have nothing left to say to you. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve tried to hold it together for my mother for long enough, but I’ve got to get away from this house, away from
you
. I don’t ever want to see you again!”

“That’s going to be kind of difficult, seeing as we’re family now, don’t you think?” he says. “And let me expl—”

“No! There’s nothing to say. Leave me alone. Okay? I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t know how else to make you understand. Just leave me the fuck alone.” I reach out and push him. Not hard enough to make him fall, but hard enough that he has to take a step backward. As he’s doing that, I make my escape.
 

I run, everything a blur, my feet feeling as though they’re not really making contact with the ground, yet somehow I’m moving, getting away from him, away from her, away from
everything
I charge across the hall to the stairs. I hurry down them, and there’s enough people milling about that there’s no way he’s going to chase after me and make some sort of scene. Although from the looks of it, everyone’s so tipsy they probably wouldn’t notice.
 

I go outside, out the front door, because I want to be alone and I don’t know where else to go. Even being out here, hidden in the dark, away from everyone else, it’s not enough. I need to get away.More so than this, I need to get as far away as I possibly can. But not just back to my apartment, not back to my regular old life, I need something more than that. This knowledge descends upon me like a fine mist. Once it settles, it’s taken hold. I need to get out of here, and in a major way. I’ll call Megan, she’ll come get me. The wedding is over, and I don’t think Mom will be that upset if I don’t stick around for the whole party. But first, there’s someone else that I need to talk to.