Cold Sweat
Chapter 1
It all started when my mom took a “girls’ trip” with her stitch-and-bitch group out to the Bahamas two years ago. Apparently, you add a bunch of previously-demure middle-aged knitters to free-flowing margaritas and you get a mentos and coke debauchery situation. And my sweet, soft-spoken, divorced mom? Well, she stumbled right off the beach and into the arms of a burly beverage distributor by the name of Dan. Less than a year later, they were on the same beach with the same margaritas, getting married to the raucous applause of her fibercrafting friends and moi, in the role of supportive daughter-turned-maid-of-honor.
Honestly, I liked Dan. He was a decent guy and he really made my mom happy, though I kind of wished they were a little less…loud…about that part sometimes. Like now, when I was home from college on a break, folding my guest bed pillow over my ears and trying to drown out the psychological damage of their bedspring soundtrack. It was Dan’s son that I wasn’t a fan of.
Red was the kind of guy that I’d lie about a boyfriend over to avoid at bars, an annoyingly cocky swagger in every step that grated my nerves. He was utterly convinced he was god’s gift to women: in other words, my stepbrother was a complete fuckboy. Unless it was snowing, he rocked the same cut-off blue jeans, the same white sneakers, the same fluttering Hawaiian button-up open over his smooth, rounded stomach every day. On anyone else, it’d look ridiculous, but somehow Red’s nuclear-level confidence made the garish outfit make sense.
He was the reason I was currently holed up in my room despite my mom and stepdad sounding like Canadian Geese in heat on the other side of the wall. I was sure he was lingering around the kitchen, waiting to torment me on one of his rare days off from his under-the-table demolition job. If I timed it wrong, he’d catch me in the hallway or living room when he came home from work, dusted in drywall or crumbled brick mortar, grinning at me like an idiot. I’d taken to staying in my room with a good book as often as possible to duck his weirdly intense, “Well hello there, Jules.”
Okay, so, maybe he didn’t sound like a monster the way I’m telling it, but trust me, he looked at me weird all the time. He always got breathy when he said my name, practically purring it and biting his lower lip afterwards. He said he did it as a joke when I confronted him early on, but if that were the case, why did his eyes always get hooded? And why did he never do it around our parents? No, when mom and Dan were in the room he spoke with a bright, polite tone and practically radiated benign indifference when it came to me. When I tried to bring up his strange behavior privately to mom, she’d just rolled her eyes and told me to try to get along with Red for the sake of family harmony. She even joked it was latent sibling rivalry. As ifI had anything to prove to that weird bastard.
Truthfully, I never knew if Red was actually kidding with me or if all those weirdly erotic Japanese cartoons he watched had rotted his brain or something. That was the other thing, he was always watching them in the living room when mom and Dan were out, like he wanted me to see. And yeah, he always muted or paused it when I walked in, but still. I could tell from the snippets I overheard or spotted on pause that they weren’t the kind of cartoons kids watched. Red even had a laptop, but he said he “preferred a high-quality sound system,” which meant the one attached to the gigantic tv that Dan had brought with him when he and Red moved in.
When the goose-copulation noise through the wall finally died down, I breathed a sigh of relief and pulled my head out from the semi-soundproof pillow-cocoon. A few minutes later, the slam of the front door and the security chime told me that Mom and Dan were going out, as they always did, for some post-coital takeout.
That meant that Red and I once again had the house to ourselves—or rather, Red did. Because I could already hear the high-pitched, rhythmic moans and slaps of whatever cartoon he was watching today, the perv. I shivered, the thin blanket on the bed doing nothing for my goosebumps: why the hell was it so cold in here? Cautiously, I poked my head out of my room and wandered down the hallway. Halfway to the living room, I paused in front of the wall-mounted control of the super-fancy smart home system my tech-obsessed stepfather had just installed.
“60? What the hell?” I frowned at the readout on the dial, twisting it left, then right, to no avail: the numbers stayed stubbornly on 60. I sighed, realizing I wouldn’t be able to adjust it on my own.
“Hey Red! What’s going on with the AC?” I called down the hall. I hated asking the creep for anything, but he’d helped Dan install the system and would probably know how to get it out of goddamn refrigerator mode. The squeak of leather from the couch preceded my stepbrother’s heavy, thumping steps down the hall, along with a deep sloshing sound that echoed off the framed school pictures hanging all around us.
“Hey Jules. Feeling a little chilly?” He grinned, his mouth practically a permanent smirk, eyes drifting down my tank top to flick over my cold-tightened nipples. Jerk.
I scowled and folded my arms over my chest self-consciously, jutting my chin at the control panel. “Duh. It’s fucking freezing in here, why the hell is the temp turned down so low? I can’t make it go back up to a sane level for some reason.”
Red frowned at the dial and twisted it back and forth the same way I had, stepping back with a shrug. “No idea, sorry Jules. Maybe dad can fix it, but he and Tracy went to that taco joint like 45 minutes away, so they’re not gonna be back for awhile. Sorry—there’s a blanket on the couch if you want it?”
He turned to gesture back down the hallway and I gave a non-committal grunt, barely squeezing by his huge stomach as I spun and headed towards the living room. I hid a triumphant grin as a hollow “clunk” sounded behind me, along with more gentle sloshing. I’d caught him off guard and backed him into the wall: he’d apparently expected me to scurry back to my room like a defeated little mouse. Well, I’d had enough of him holding me hostage with his weird cartoons—I needed to reestablish the pecking order while I was home from college or he’d just keep getting under my skin.
The white leather couch glowed with a spot of luminescent scarlet as light from the front door on the far end of the hall passed through my stepbrother. A more quiet series of thuds and clinks told me he’d recently emptied the industrial ice maker in the kitchen directly into his head, and a glance over my shoulder confirmed it: the top of his head was bobbing with enough ice to re-freeze the arctic. Perfectly cool and composed, the fucker had the nerve to wink at me, gesturing towards the blanket folded on the back of the couch. “Well, go on sis, go get cozy. I’ll even let you have the seat right in front of the TV because I’m such a nice brother.”
I huffed peevishly, sinking into the couch with a sullen expression as I imagined his ice-chilled glass skin slowly making the room even colder. I glared at him as he remained standing, looking out the sliding doors to the patio for some reason. “I mean, unless you…no. You probably wouldn’t like it, never mind.”
I paused my tug-of-war with the blanket edge to glance over the back of the couch, raising a brow at him. “Wouldn’t like what, Red?”
He cleared his throat, spinning slowly so as not to splash himself on the beige berber carpeting: the entire house was practically an obstacle course for him. A giant, sentient glass pitcher of cherry Chill-Assist punch, Red was the result of Dan’s torrid affair with a pallet of the drink powder at a drunken office Christmas party many years ago. Life hadn’t been easy for my stepbrother, but I had to begrudgingly admit he carried himself well despite his unusual parentage: he hadn’t so much as stained a throw pillow since he’d moved in and he always smelled amazing, like sweet, juicy fruit.
“Dad gave your mom her anniversary gift yesterday. I think you were taking a nap when they installed it. Anyway, they said we could use it anytime we wanted, and I don’t even think they’ve gotten a chance to use it yet.” He tilted his rim slightly to the right with a slosh, indicating the backyard.
I slid off the couch, wearing the blanket like a cape, and padded over barefoot to peek at the new installation through the slider. A few yards off our back patio sat a tiny little log cabin, a rustic square of a building that could maybe fit three or four people, if they got cozy. “Holy shit, he got mom a sauna? She’s always wanted one!”