2. Asher
Chapter Two
ASHER
As complicated as it was to put my finger on the moment it all started, the hardest thing was remembering when I first knew I hated Jordan.
It wasn’t the explosive sort of hatred. Instead, I hated him in a slow and steady way.
After all the wrong things he’d said and done, there was neither a murderous tendency toward my big stepbrother nor a wish for any harm.
What I felt for him was a deep longing for him never to have existed.
And this feeling hadn’t caught me off guard.
I once stood on a sandy beach when the tide was coming. Waves licked at my feet. Each time, they reached a little further, and as they receded, sand pulled my feet deeper. Before I knew it, sand had cemented around my ankles.
This was no different. Each time the wave that was Jordan’s contempt for me came, it pulled me deeper into my dislike for him.
And whenever he came to me late at night — my eyes shut and my hand playing his role — I ignored the nastiness I felt for him, only for it to roar back to life twice as strong once I was done.
The night he told me I was nothing to him should have sealed it for me.
But it didn’t. The oddest thing happened.
All the terrible encounters that had piled up between us had already made me look at him as more of an enemy than a friend, let alone as part of my family.
Hearing the words from his lips vindicated me.
Not a shred of guilt remained in me for having used him so freely in my fantasies.
In the vacuum of his absence, I discovered how much I wished he had never entered my life.
Not that I could blame Mom and George for any of it.
They hadn’t realized what it would mean to bring a guy like Jordan into my life.
They hadn’t known what effects a tall, well-shaped, clever, and witty young man would have on someone as impressionable as me.
Had they expected me to fall in love with Jordan, I doubted they would have risked it.
Fall in love. What a crazy idea. Jordan wasn’t someone you fell in love with. He was like a sunset; gorgeous to look at but incapable of feeling anything for you. You were nothing to him. The best you could ever do was admire him from a distance.
When a boy excelled at everything he touched, you couldn’t find a way to connect. You resorted to the next best thing. Resentment.
When Jordan’s freshman year ended, he announced he would spend his summer break with Beckett Partridge and his uncle, Nate, rather than join us at the lake house.
I wouldn’t have expected to feel a thing.
Except, as we finished our dinner, and George told us, blood drained from my face.
He can’t even visit? I demanded internally, my grip tightening on my fork and knife. Do we mean so little to him?
“May I be excused?” I asked dryly after another bite of meatloaf.
“Of course, honey,” Mom said.
“Are you alright, champ?” George asked.
Prickles rose along my neck. “I’m fine.” I set my plate by the sink, wiped my lips with a paper towel, and stalked off to my room.
That fucker. I hadn’t realized I had hoped to see him until I knew I wouldn’t.
I hadn’t known what my expectations had been until they were taken away.
But now I knew. I knew by the emptiness they had left in my mind.
Another quiet afternoon by the lake; Jordan diving, emerging from the clear blue water, shaking his head, and spraying the water in every direction.
Not gonna happen. Had I hoped for Jordan to see me after half a year of absence and realize, at long last, that I was more than just his kid stepbrother?
I wasn’t a kid anymore. I had spent my time well, focusing on hockey and conditioning, pushing my grades up, preparing for my final year, and hoping to get the same scholarship as Jordan.
Of course, I hoped he would see that. I hoped it would make him realize that there was more to me than he had ever cared to notice.
The three weeks we spent in the lake house that summer were depressing.
There wasn’t a gym within a ten-mile radius, so I needed to swim every morning to stay in shape.
At the height of summer, ice was a distant memory, and a proper rink was a pipe dream.
I had an abundance of free time. Absolutely nothing kept me busy or distracted.
One evening, close to the sweet and merciful release from the cage that this summer vacation had turned into, I sat down in the living room and surfed through channels.
Mom and George were washing the dishes together.
I paused on some figure skating competition and got absorbed in the solo performance of a young man who did such wonders on the ice.
He swirled around and performed acrobatics that I hadn’t dreamed of.
His lithe body appeared even thinner in his tight clothes.
He spun and moved like the laws of physics didn’t apply to him.
I didn’t hear George until he spoke, and then I realized he was sitting on the back of the sofa, looking at the screen.
“Wonderful,” he murmured. “I didn’t realize you liked figure skating.
” I saw him grin from the corner of my eye.
“Or is it just a ‘skating’ thing? Too long since you were on the ice?”
I chuckled. “It’s a ‘cute boy’ thing,” I said in a cheerful voice, then realized I’d admitted it to him for the first time.
“He sure is cute,” George mused. He placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Excuse me?” Mom called, wiping her hands on a kitchen cloth.
George winked at me playfully and the strongest sense of kinship connected us. He was my ally. And until this moment, I hadn’t realized I needed one. Not that Mom was my enemy. Her surprise was hard to read. “Oh, um,” I stammered. “I think…”
“Honey, it’s alright,” Mom said. “You simply caught me unprepared.”
My brows knitted slightly. Was I supposed to prepare her for it? It didn’t seem fair. “I didn’t think you’d…”
“Eileen,” George said at the same time, but that was when the last thing I wanted happened. The door of the house opened and my big stepbrother entered with a wide grin on his face. “Am I too late for dinner?”
“Jordan!” Mother clasped her hands together and pressed them against her face.
“Son?” George’s eyebrows shot all the way to his short-cropped hair. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t not visit, could I?” Jordan dropped his duffel on the floor and crossed the large area at the entrance of the house to hug my mother, then his father, and clasped my hand lightly for the briefest of moments.
Not a hug. Not even a proper handshake. “‘Sup?” He took his hand back before I could feel his warmth.
A light trace of cool sweat remained on my fingers.
I wished I could bring it to my lips without anyone noticing.
I bit my lip. Anger warred with joy. He was as tall as ever and his shoulders were somehow even broader than last winter when I had seen him for the holidays. And he had just stolen my moment. I had only just said those words aloud, no matter how unplanned it had been, and Jordan stole my thunder.
“I’m returning to Northwood on Wednesday to spend some time with the guys before Murray starts drilling us for the season,” Jordan said as if there had been no conversation without him in this house. “But I wanted to surprise you before you go back to civilization.” He laughed by himself.
“You sure surprised us, Son,” George said, but he was visibly happy. “Wednesday? That’s perfect. We are leaving on Thursday morning.”
I knew that George had to go back to work on Friday. A client, an older woman, wanted to build additional rooms on one side of her house, and George had agreed to come out and assess the job before the week’s end.
“This night is full of surprises,” Mom said.
“Eileen,” George repeated just as Jordan asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, your brother just decided to tell us he likes boys,” Mom said conversationally.
“Mom,” I huffed, heat rising to my face.
“What? Jordan is family. Do you think he’ll think any less of you? Nonsense, Asher.” Mom folded her arms in the middle of her torso and shook her head at me for having such a low opinion of my stepbrother.
As if he thought anything of me…
“That’s cool, man,” Jordan said, his jaw stiff. Oh, it bothered him to be called my brother. Before the words were out of his mouth, Jordan’s attention drifted to the TV. “He’s good. I think he has a good chance to qualify for the Olympics.”
I could tell that this new information made no difference at all to him. I was still just some guy occupying space on the sofa. I would have bet that Jordan wouldn’t react if I had said he was my crush, my only type, my sole desire. He’d shrug and move on just the same.
“See? Asher, you’re almost eighteen. Honestly, you shouldn’t have kept it a secret,” Mom said.
“I wasn’t keeping it a secret,” I said sullenly.
“I just didn’t think it was important.” And I hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of it.
I had known which team I was on since I was eleven.
I had never pretended otherwise, but it had never seemed like something I needed to announce.
My friends from school had same-sex parents; I had a lesbian English teacher; three of my friends were queer, and a dozen friends admitted they were bi-curious.
I had a straight teammate who was always trying to kiss guys ‘jokingly.’ No one cared. It was as simple as that.
If, long ago, I had had some concerns about it, my mom’s gay friends dispelled those. She wasn’t a bigot.
“But all the talks we had,” Mom said like it was important.
I shrugged. She had vaguely taught me about the birds and the bees. I had been uncomfortable with seeing my mom put a condom on a banana that I’d had no desire to tell her about my sexuality for weeks after that. “It’s fine, Mom. I already know what I need to know.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Mom said sternly and gave a determined nod.