Chapter 2 Jessie #2
“Aren’t they something?” says my dad.
“Mm, they’re something, alright.”
“I know it’s a different dynamic to what we’re used to.
Honestly, it took me a while to adjust. They ran rings around me in the beginning.
” He laughs. “I’m sure it will take a while for you, too, but you’re going to love them, Jess.
You’ll see. Once you get to know them, you’re going to love them like crazy. ”
Over my dead fucking body.
He looks at me with the same sense of wonder he usually reserves for Rachel and Luke. “Can’t believe you’re here. Hardly feels real.”
I do things with my eyebrows to suggest that I, too, am finding it hard to accept this strange version of reality.
Rachel gets out of the pool and goes inside to get started on lunch. My dad trails behind her, dragged along by the invisible choke collar and leash that make it physically impossible for him to be more than fifty feet away from her.
I open my book and page back a few pages.
My mind’s foggy from jet lag and I can’t remember what happened in the last chapter.
Luke gets out of the pool and comes hurtling over.
He’s dripping wet. His dirty blond hair looks almost brunet.
When he gets close, he stops so suddenly it looks like he’s run into a large pane of glass.
He stands at the foot of my lounger, directly in front of the sun, casting a long shadow over me, allowing me to open my eyes fully without squinting.
“Your nipples are pierced.”
It’s not a question, it’s a statement, but the look on his face makes it feel like he requires an answer.
“No shit,” I say, carefully arranging my lips into a smile.
He plops down on the lounger closest to me, despite the fact the cushion is wet from my dad sitting there previously, and there are several others available that are dry. I open my book and make a point of looking engrossed.
“When did you get it done?”
“When did I get what done?” I know exactly what he means, but as my mom always says, if I was an animal, I’d be a cat; I’d be the kind of thing that likes to play with its food.
I feel his eyes on my chest. They wander from left to right. “Your nipples.” His voice hitches almost imperceptibly. “When did you get them pierced?”
“I had them done last year when I turned nineteen. A birthday present from me, to me.”
“Oh,” he nods sagely. His eyes are still on my chest and his fingers have found their way to one of his own dusty pink pebbles of flesh. He flicks it absently. “Did it hurt?”
I sigh loudly and look at him pointedly enough that he drops his hand down and makes eye contact with me. “I had two metal bars driven through my skin. Yes, Einstein, it hurt.”
“Oh,” he says again and then he’s mercifully quiet for almost fifteen minutes.
By evening, I’ve hit a wall. I feel deranged and uncoordinated from exhaustion. My dad gets the burgers done by five thirty, so I can get an early night. Still, I’m weaving on my feet by the time dinner is over.
“Here you go, Jessie,” says Rachel, handing me a lime green kid’s school lunch box, “in case you wake up feeling hungry. Eating something might help you get back to sleep.”
“Thanks. This is great.” I look at Luke and add pointedly, “I’ll keep it in my room, so I won’t disturb Luke by getting up to go to the kitchen.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, make yourself comfortable. He sleeps like the dead. You could drop a bomb next to him and he probably wouldn’t hear it.”
Lady, don’t tempt me.
I let myself into the guest house and let out a loud sigh.
Fuck, it feels nice to be alone. It feels so nice, I drop down on the sofa and relish the peace.
I open the snack box and find protein balls, dried fruit, nuts and jerky, all packed with such care I’m pretty sure this snack box would be an instant hit amongst helicopter moms all over Pinterest. As soon as I’ve settled, my limbs feel so leaden I start to worry about how I’m going to get up and get myself to bed.
Turns out I don’t have to worry about that for long.
Luke swings the door open, knocking it against the wall loudly enough to startle me.
“Thought I’d get an early night, too. Don’t want to wake you by turning in later.”
I manage the smallest of up-nods.
He sits down on the sofa, curling one leg under himself and turns his body to face me.
He looks at me intently. I stare him down.
Or, I try to. I’m not at my best and the way he’s looking at me is throwing me.
Expectation is written all over his face.
His tongue darts out of his mouth and he rubs his lips together, moistening them.
His eyebrows are raised and his eyes are intently focused. Sky-blue and stupid.
Nervous, maybe?
Wait. Is that hope?
An alarm sounds at the back of my mind and a voice deep inside me says get the fuck away from this guy.
“Welp.” His voice is more breathy than usual. “I guess we should probably talk about what happened at the wedding, huh?”
I’m instantly furious. I’m fucking exhausted and this conversation is making me feel triggered.
“Can’t remember the wedding. I remember the ceremony and the photos, and I remember going from table to table collecting dregs and calling the mixture I made a cocktail. I remember puking my guts out the next day and that’s about it.”
His face falls like he’s been punched, he flounders for three or four beats before he corrects and plasters a dumb smile back on his face and gives a dry chuckle. “Yeah, the ‘cocktail’ probably wasn’t the best idea.”
“I’m bushed. Might hit the sack.”
Bushed? Hit the sack?
Oh Jesus. It’s catching.
He gets up and opens the fridge. Leaning over, he grabs a handful of berries and shovels them into his mouth.
“Didn’t you just eat?”
“Yeah, but I gots to eat.”
I smile thinly. I can feel my filter slipping. “Pretty sure you’re not cool enough to pull off gots.”
“You’re probably right.” He laughs as if we’ve shared a joke. As if we’ve formed a connection.
I can’t have that, so I say, “Seriously, what’s with all the eating?”
He shrugs, “Guess I have a high metabolism or something. Work out a lot. Move a lot.” His eyes drop down and then flick back up, meeting mine and if I’m not imagining it, flaring ever so slightly. “Gots to eat, ‘cause I’m hungry.”
His lips move carefully around the last word. He draws it out, dropping his voice all the way down. I must be delirious from exhaustion because when he does it, I feel something only a certifiably crazy person would feel.
By the time I get into bed, I’m aching, my bones and my eyelids are heavy. My head sinks into the pillow and for a second I don’t care that it smells like someone else’s home, that someone else’s mom laundered the linen, or that she sprayed it with a calming lavender mist I don’t entirely hate.
I fall asleep and wake again not long after when Luke moves the chair in his room, scraping timber against timber.
I drift off again, only to jerk awake from the sound of his footsteps in the hallway.
So much for not disturbing me. He’s moving slowly, overly-cautiously, trying his best to be quiet, which seems to be making it worse.
The floorboards groan as my damn fool stepbrother tiptoes to the kitchen with the grace of a fucking cartoon character.
I lie in the dark and wonder if there’s a word for the act of killing your stepbrother. I know there’s patricide, which covers killing your dad, and there’s matricide, which takes care of your mother. But is there a word specific to killing a step sibling?
I’d love it if there was.
When he gets back to his room, he gets into bed. Thank fuck. Let’s just hope he’s down for the night. Let’s hope Rachel was right and he’s going to sleep like the dead and not move until morning.
No such luck. He tosses and turns. His bed is pushed against the wall that separates our bedrooms. Mine is, too.
I can hear everything he does. And I really do mean everything.
Seriously, at one point I’m pretty sure I hear him breathe in.
I hear pages of a book turn and I hear the springs of his mattress compress and release when he moves.
I’m going to have to ask my dad if I can move into the main house.
I can’t live like this. Maybe I can move into the spare room downstairs, so I can be far from him and Rachel, too.
Maybe I can rip the Van Halen poster when I take it down.
And maybe I can drop the stupid fucking New York snow-globe while I’m at it.
I think of glitter and glass all over the floor.
The thought brings me a mild flutter of joy.
My eyelids slide shut again. My eyes are still stinging but the deep ache in my bones starts to release.
A sudden sound jolts me back up. He’s put his book or something down loudly, on the desk or the floor beside his bed. I hear the sound of a drawer slide open. He fumbles around, looking for something.
I’m never going to sleep again, am I?