Duly noted, Dad.
The night Darla left was the first night I snuck into Ryan’s room. It was innocent, of course. I wanted to comfort him, even though he showed no signs of being particularly saddened by his mom’s absence. At first, he stiffened when he felt the bed dip under my weight. But my intuition had been right, because that night, Ryan held me and cried himself to sleep while I rubbed his arm and sniffled quietly. He never cried again, and we never spoke about it, but he still sleeps with me on occasion. Except now, it’s Ryan who sneaks into my room.
And it’s not innocent. Not anymore.
The years passed, as they always do, while Ryan still lives at home, neither my dad nor I want to see him leave. Maybe it’s because Dad is rarely at home. He makes the Las Vegas-Los Angeles route twice a week, and occasionally takes longer trips that have him on the road for weeks at a time, which leaves him very little time for actual parenting. Since sleeping by myself in this rundown house, in this horrific neighborhood is pretty much a death wish, I’m happy to have Ryan by my side. With his tall frame, bulging tattooed muscles, uniform of wifebeater and don’t-fuck-with-me expression plastered to his face, you’d have to be stupid to break into our house.
And it’s not the only reason I am happy to have him around. We need each other. It’s always been us against the world. Not that the world was particularly against us. It just didn’t care.
I start making the sauce for the pasta. Tomato. Basil. Olive oil. A shit-ton of garlic. I read the recipe somewhere on the internet after Ryan and I saw it on some cooking show that aired on one of the few channels we have.
Maybe it will make him crack a goddamn smile for once. He’s always been a bit of a ticking time bomb. The homemade, highly unpredictable type. But lately, I feel like he’s seconds away from exploding.
Tick, tick, tick.
For the rest of the meal prep, I’m on autopilot. I chop, stir, drain, flip, arrange everything on the plates, take out two bottles of Bud Light from the fridge, and set the table. Then I proceed to kick the whiny door and bang my fist against the screen a few times to draw his attention.
“Dinner’s ready,” I yell.
“Two secs.” I hear the clink of heavy tools dropping onto the concrete near the yellow grass he is kneeling on. His bike’s been fucked for two weeks now, and he can’t take it to the shop because he spent his last few bucks on bailing out his best friend, Reed. Not that having a broken-down bike has slowed him down any. The guy is never home anymore.
“Steak’s getting cold. Get your ass inside or I’m eating without you,” I mutter and slam the screen door with a bang.
I wait for him, slouched on my chair in front of our plates, scrolling my thumb along the touch-screen of my phone—one of the three things that my dad makes sure we always budget for: the rent, the food, and my phone. Most kids would be pissed to have an older model, but I’m just happy this thing has internet capabilities. Ryan saunters in and collapses on the chair opposite me, not bothering to wash his dirtied, greasy hands.
I chance a glance at him. Ryan looks like a man. He’s looked that way for a long time now. His arms are ripped—not in the gym rat way, just in the way of a guy who does manual labor—and his body is big, wide, and commanding. Long, dirty blond hair that almost touches his shoulders, brown eyes, cut bone structure—the only good thing he inherited from his deadbeat real dad. Every time we hang outside the house together—which, admittedly, is not often these days—girls I went to school with throw themselves at him. He’s screwed half of them, I know, even though they’re underage. If I’m being honest, it seems to be half the charm about this guy. Other than the fact that he is inked from head-to-toe. It’s that slightly unstable, dangerous vibe he gives off. Every girl wants to be good until a bad boy whisks her off her feet and corrupts her.
And every girl hated the one who stood in their way. That’d be me. At least in their mind. Sure, Ryan would fuck them, but that’s all they ever got. He always stood a little too close to me, stared a little too long. They noticed. And they were ruthless. So, I was deemed the brother fucker. I didn’t really care. Ryan didn’t help matters by forbidding the entire male population of Riverdale to stay far away from me. He was out of high school before I even began, but he’s somewhat of a legend around here. No one in their right mind would willingly cross him.
“How’s the steak?” I ask, keeping my eyes on my own piece of meat as I slice it carefully.
“Juicy.” He laughs, his mouth full. From my peripheral, I see a trail of bloody liquid traveling from the corner of his lip to his chin, but he doesn’t make any move to wipe it. He takes another bite, his eyes honing in on me. “So, when are you going to turn eighteen?”
“You’re my brother,” I grind out. “Shouldn’t you at least pretend to know this kind of crap?”
“I’m a shit brother,” he retorts, his voice as dry as his steak is juicy. “And when asked a question, you fucking answer. It’s really that simple, Rem.”
That’s the part where I should probably mention—he calls me Rem. My name is Remington, and my friends call me Remi, but Ryan, much to my dismay, has been calling me Rem since day one.
“August sixteenth,” I groan. Ryan moves his eyes up and down my body as much as he can with the barrier that’s the table between us.
“What’s two more weeks?” he mumbles as he rubs his lower lip with his thumb, and it’s glistening with the olive oil from the pasta and the juice of the steak.
“Until what?” I ask, playing dumb. He knows I’m not dumb. In fact, he resents the fact that I want more out of life than my high school diploma. But his comments have become increasingly inappropriate over the past few months, and even though it’s flattering, sometimes alarm bells go off in my head.
“Until your big brother can show you just how much he loves you.” Ryan chuckles sinisterly. I let loose a nervous smile. I know Ryan wants to get me into bed, but more than that, he wants to own me. Own my thoughts, my actions, my body. He thinks he already does. In his twisted mind, he calls it love. Why wouldn’t he? It’s not like Ryan has ever seen a good example of it. Hell, neither have I. In his mind, he protects me, takes care of me, and he needs me. In a way, I need him, too. But, I just can’t ever see us happening. This—what we’re doing right this moment—is what the rest of my life would look like. Me cooking dinner, wishing I were anywhere else, and Ryan being perfectly content to work on his bike and get tanked with his shitty friends every night. No, thank you.
It’s not like the attraction is not there. I had a major crush on him when I was younger. I thought he hung the moon and the stars, making everything brighter in my dull universe, and I think I did the same for him. But if he were the one, it wouldn’t feel so freaking wrong every time his throbbing dick “accidentally” presses against my ass at night.
Getting up from my seat, I take our plates to the sink and saunter back with a new beer, cracking it open in front of him. When I do, he snakes one arm around my waist and grabs me in one swift movement so that I’m straddling him on his lap. I can feel the seam of his zipper grinding into my crotch. Not gonna lie—it feels nice.