Stuck On My Stepbrother (2 page)

I should really explain.
My real dad died when I was a baby. Mom remarried almost immediately, to a man with who already had a boy of his own - my stepbrother, Adam. At first, apparently, I couldn’t stand him coming near me. I cried when he tried to pick me up when I was a baby, threw tantrums when he tried to change my diaper. Hated being in the car with him and screamed whenever he came into my bedroom.

Adam, as my parents delighted in telling me, wasn’t perturbed in the least. He was extremely patient with me, just like any nice big brother would be, and, eventually, I stopped shrieking when he came within ten meters of me. I even let him pick me up and pacify me, and after a while, I became incredibly fond of him, but I was just very, very shy. Whenever my brother took me in his arms, I’d blush, my cheeks turning crimson red, and my Mom would laugh at me. ‘Looks like someone’s got a crush on their stepbrother!’ she’d laugh, making me redder still.

Although my brother was extremely attentive when he was younger, as he got older, like all teenagers, he got completely caught up in his own life. He stayed out late, sometimes stayed at friends’ houses for days, and we hardly every saw him. He began to rebel too. Like, really rebel. He got a huge tattoo of an eagle across his shoulder blades, and that’s when the string of girls began. Adam never had
girlfriends
. That wasn’t his thing. He just had
girls.
And lots of them.
 

I’d hear him with an endless stream of young, attractive blondes in his bedroom at night, sometimes more than one at the same time. His bedroom happened to be next to mine, separated only by a thin wall, which may as well have been made of cardboard, because I swear, I could make out every squeak of the springs in his bed, and every moan to escape the girls’ lips. But I’d hear other things too. I’d hear the slapping of skin. I’d hear gasps that sounded more like pain than pleasure. I’d hear Adam sending the girls out of his room in the middle of the night, because they hadn’t complied with this or that (no doubt outrageous) request.

Having a big brother like Adam certainly made me feel small. I sometimes felt like he was the only one growing up, and I’d forever be stuck in his shadow, his silly little sister.

Adam finally got his act together eight years ago and got himself a job taking photos for a local magazine (to be honest I think that’s where the attractive young blondes had come from: the models). After a year or so of moderate success in his job, which was a surprise to us all, he’d saved up enough money for a plane ticket to Asia, and we didn’t see him for years. In fact, we weren’t even sure what part of the world he was living in for a while.

At first, I was relieved he’d gone. He’d been so cruel to me as a teenager, that it was nice to get some breathing space, to be with Mom (and my stepdad) on my own for a while. But as the months wore on, I began to miss him. I even missed the sound of the bed squeaking in the room next door. When Adam was around, life was exciting, and it allowed me to live vicariously through him.

Unfortunately, about two years after Adam left, my stepdad died too. It was ridiculous. Two dead dads in one lifetime? My mom was distraught, but it made the connection between us even stronger. It didn’t give Adam any incentive to come back and visit us though. Somehow, though, seven years had gone by without me seeing my stepbrother. To be honest, I’d always assumed he’d just thrown himself off a bridge somewhere or ended up in prison. People don’t just
disappear
like that. But here he was. Right now! My stepbrother, in the same room as me.

Time seemed to slow down as he approached the table. That’s when I got a chance to really study him. Yep, his eyes were still different colors. His left was a piercing, hard blue, clear and bright as the sky in mid-summer; his right was the deep dark brown of autumn leaves, warm and soft and smoky. I’d spent so many nights missing those eyes when I was younger.

Then, just as he was about to walk past, his gaze flicked down and caught mine. I felt my jaw lock, like I wasn’t able to say anything to him. I mean, what do you say to your own stepbrother, when you haven’t seen him in seven years?
Hey, how’s life been for you, bro?
Or,
Hey bro, it’s me: sis
. Ugh. It’s probably for the best that my jaw did lock.

 
Adam seemed to linger on my face for just a moment, and then, suddenly, he looked away.

I turned to Jen.

‘Oh. My. God.’ I said slowly. I felt like all of the wind had been knocked out of me.
 

‘That,’ Jen hissed, assuming I didn’t know the man who had just walked past us, ‘is Adam Cooper. The reclusive, brilliant CEO of Global Media. The man that Time Magazine have rated as the most influential man in the media five years in a row. Probably the richest, most powerful entity in this room.’
 

‘The most influential man in media?’ I gasped, almost adding:
my stepbrother?
But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud. What would people think of me, if they knew he was my brother? How are you like
this
, they’d ask, when he is like
that
?

‘He’s probably a little bit out of your league,’ Jen said, raising her eyebrows.

I felt a fierce blush spread across my cheeks, and then my chest. My stepbrother! Out of my league! Of course he was out of my league. He was my
family
! Thank goodness I was wearing a black dress tonight. If I’d been dressed in red I’d be looking like a tomato about now.

Patrick, who’d been speaking to a busty blonde who worked for one of the national papers, turned and joined in.

‘There’s all sorts of weird rumours about Adam Cooper. Like, seriously weird.’

‘Well, yeah, but no one dares publish anything, because he’s just such a hard man. He can totally ruin careers. Or, you know, make them,’ Jen said.

‘Well,’ began Patrick, ‘I know someone who works at Global, who says that Mr. Cooper has never been – and will never – get married. His tastes are too…
narrow
, shall we say? Apparently, he likes to–’

‘Alright, Patrick, that’s enough,’ snapped Jen. ‘Rose doesn’t need to know all this stuff, for goodness’ sake. She’s only been at the company three weeks. Jesus. She might not even be here in a couple of months.’

My jaw dropped and Patrick raised his eyebrows, then shrugged at me. His gaze motioned towards her empty wine glass, as if to say
she’s drunk
.
 

‘I was just going to say,’ whispered Patrick, as Jen helped herself to more wine, ‘that I’d heard on the grapevine that Adam Cooper is a bit of a–’

Suddenly, with a fanfare, the lights went down, and the awards began.

So, I began to quickly realise that awards ceremonies are seriously boring. There is a lot of talking about ‘the industry’ and ‘the state of print media’ and ‘electronic content’ and ‘the blogosphere’ and lots of other really lame-sounding buzzwords that no-one really understands.

There were awards for ‘Best Opinion Piece On Foreign Policy’ and ‘Best Sports Article’, and they just seemed to keep coming.

Jen and Patrick were loving it, cheering and whooping when certain names got read out, drinking copious amounts of the free alcohol on offer, really going to town on the entertainment. I still felt like a total fraud, nervous and terrified. The thought that started to gnaw away at me was this: What if we actually won? What if we had to head up onto that stage, the three of us, and make a speech, and say thank you, and bow? I wasn’t even sure in my current, panicked state, whether I’d make it up the tiny set of stairs that led onto the stage.

Somehow, I just knew it was going to happen.

‘There’s no fucking way,’ Jen said, slurring the ‘s’ on
there’s
. She leaned over the table, her tits practically falling out of her top. I could see the older guy sitting opposite her getting a nice good view of her, licking his lips, the dirty old pervert.

‘Yeah. They’ll give it to The Post, again. Those fuckers win every year. I swear they steal all our fucking clients. They’ve got no respect for geographical fucking boundaries. It’s like I always say, why bother having…’ And Patrick was off, ranting about internal politics and the poor management of the team.

Then, suddenly, it was time. The chairman of the press society took his place at the rostrum. The words ‘Best Classified Advertising Team’ flashed up on the screen behind him, and he started to talk.

‘Classified advertising is the backbone of the Newspaper industry,’ he said. Honestly, I’m going to spare you the details of his speech, mainly because I was so nervous that I didn’t take any of it in. He was pretty damn boring to begin with, and my stressed-out mental state meant that I might as well have been somewhere else.

Finally, he drew in his breath and said, ‘Which brings us to the award. It goes out to a small team. A focused team. A team that brings tremendous results with limited resources. It goes to...’ A drum roll began to fill the room. I knew with every fibre of my being that we were going to win. I can’t explain why. But when he finally said, ‘The team at The Chronicle, Jen, Patrick and Rose!’ I thought to myself, of course it’s us. Of course we won.

Jen and Patrick went ballistic, hugging each other, and then as an afterthought, me. I did my best to appear as happy as possible, but let me tell you, it was hard. We began to start the impossibly long walk up to the front of the room, past the people who actually deserved to be there; past the press barons and the journalists and the sports reporters and the editors and the subs and the features writers and everyone else.

I climbed the stage with Jen and Patrick, with our arms linked, in a show of mock unity. Then, something weird happened. Jen looked at me with this kind of drunken intensity. She looked, well she looked evil, her eyes flashing murder at me. Then we were there, at the mic. Jen grabbed it from the hand of the chairman and tapped it twice.

‘Is this thing working?’ she said, forcing a weird laugh out of her mouth. ‘I guess so! Well I just want to say thank you to Patrick and to Rose for all of their hard work this year. I’m sure they won’t mind me saying just how difficult it is to work with two people who are so incompetent. Just kidding!’ she said. There were titters of laughter around the room, but this strange intensity that she was leaking seemed to be making people feel very uneasy.

‘No, seriously, I would just like to say though,’ she said, ‘what a breath of fresh air it has been to have Rose on the team. She’s so naive and inexperienced that it makes me and Patrick seem like geniuses.’

I was starting to feel really uncomfortable. Fuck fuck fuck, I couldn’t believe that Jen was talking about me like this. What was her problem? And how
horrifying
that my own stepbrother was in the room, watching me squirm like this. He was probably loving it. He used to love calling me a jerk when he was a teenager. I bet this was his dream come true.

‘And,’ she continued, ‘we’re really looking forward still to her first sale. We’re all sure it’s going to be a big one.’

What the fuck? That liar! I’d already made sales! I wanted to scream.

Then, she said: ‘Anyway, I heard that she’s not going to pass her probationary period, so we won’t have to put up with her for much longer.’

I didn’t know what to do. I looked around, my face starting to prickle with the hot terror of shame. I felt anger and shame bubbling up inside me. Then, feeling like a child, a pathetic child, I started to cry. As I tried desperately not to make any noise, and with tears stinging my cheeks, I walked off the stage. The room was quiet.

As I walked back to my table, I saw him, looking right at me. Adam Cooper. His eyes were hard slits, and he was scowling. I knew it. My stepbrother hated me.

Why on earth would you hold an awards ceremony on a
weeknight
? A Wednesday night, at that!

I wasn’t in a fit state to
move
the next morning, let alone go to work. I didn’t even think I’d had that much to drink… A couple of glasses of wine over the dinner, then a champagne for the toast. I only had a glass or two of champagne after that, too… It seemed like the polite thing to do. Paul, the fat man who ran Newsbiz, kept refilling our glasses and
literally
patting us on the back – so hard I almost spat out my drink. I swore there’d be a red handprint on my back this morning. But when I got up to pee, I checked myself in the bathroom mirror, and there was nothing there.

I surveyed myself in the mirror for any other damage last night had done. My pale green eyes had dark rings under them, exhausted from only four hours’ sleep. My skin looked a shade lighter, which made my freckles stand out even more than usual, and my brown hair, which I’d spent an hour curling last night, hung down in greasy ropes around my shoulders.

I only had twenty minutes to get ready for work, but I was going to need a shower. Fast. There was no way I could go in like this.

The sound of the shower tap turning on was a relief to my hungover ears. I stood shivering in my en-suite, waiting for the water to get hot. Thank goodness I had my own bathroom. That was something. At least a little privacy on that front. I was totally embarrassed last night though, to have had my mom pick me up at the end of the night. My mom! Twenty-one years old, and my mom acts as my chauffeur. I couldn’t wait to save up enough money to get a place of my own. Unfortunately, I’d done the sums, and with the job I had now, it’d be a year and a half before I could pay off my overdraft and save up enough for a deposit. And that was just to rent somewhere. Ah well, for now, it was the small mercies. And right now, I was glad of my own shower.