Quarterback Bait (6 page)

“Hey! Don't fret,” my mother said, beginning to wipe at the
mess on my legs. I must have been burned by the sauce splatter, but to this day
I can't recall feeling any pain. “The whole point of today was just to
introduce you to your new stepbrother, anyways.” Then Anya peeled the rag from
my face, forcing my gaze up. He was still standing there, looking uncomfortable
and freaked out in a white t-shirt and the same starched jeans his Dad wore. I
noted a light gloss of grease in his hair. And the fact that he was so much
more handsome than my memories had made him. Cartoonishly so.

Landon Sterling.

My new stepbrother.

Fuck, fuck,
fuck.

Chapter Eight

Landon

July 12
^th

“Now I know she didn't want me to tell anyone,” Ms. Bennett
growled, through a mouth full of pizza. “But at midnight tonight, my baby turns
eighteen.”

The old man nodded in a way that told me he already knew,
then smiled a half-assed smile at...Ashleigh. It was frickin weird to say her
name. She'd been Doll in my mind, and for so many weeks it was like she'd lived
exclusively in my head. The whole freaky evening felt like having dinner with a
dream.

Ash blushed fire-engine red, before dipping her fingers into
her water glass and flicking them in the direction of her mother. Anya ducked
and giggled like a child while her daughter's eyebrows met in the center of her
forehead. Their dynamic was the exact opposite of me and my old man's—Anya was
like the talkative, giddy teenager, and Ash was like the harried Mom. She'd
been the one to order the pizzas. And she'd paid for them (despite very minimal
protest from the Pastor) out of a little cloth cashier's bag I’d watched her
pull from the freezer. While she hadn't said a word to me since the lasagna
incident, I was enjoying watching the expressions moving across her face. I
wondered if Doll was some kind of actress. I wondered a lot of things, on
realizing that I didn't actually know anything about this girl except what her
mouth tasted like, and how she operated in my Spank Bank.

Her hair was the same ebony rat's nest, except the streaks
were a different color—a kind of acid blue, like cartoon rain. Twice, I caught
her laughing. These were laughs directed at her Mom, but they came out kind—it
was the sort of sweet laughter that lets you know the person is making fun of
herself, too.

I watched her eyes lots, as they'd had been so hard to pin
down color-wise during our one crazy night. In the living room light, they
looked bluish grey. They matched her streaks. I thought I could sometimes
glimpse in her eyes this well of sadness and smarts, a whole gamut of feelings
a teenage girl wasn't supposed to have. They kind of scared me, her eyes. They
made me think of me how complicated everything was about to get, between her,
me, our parents.

...But she also looked fly as hell in this tube top that
showed off her tits. Twice, she bent low over the coffee table to get another
slice of cheese pizza, and both times I had to look away for fear of a stirring
in my pants. And Lord knew that in those bounce-a-quarter jeans Pop insisted I
wear for “company,” there would be no hiding a boner.

“
Eight-friggin-teen.
I can't believe my baby's a
woman now,” Anya was saying, moving her glittering hands around the room. She
directed all of her words to the Pastor, who smiled a little more than usual
but said his typical amount of nothing. It was funny—for a Pastor, my Pop was a
pretty anti-social guy. He basically only spoke to his congregation, God, and
me—and the latter only when I did something wrong.

“I don't think people just turn into women the day they're
eighteen, Anya,” Doll—I mean,
Ash
—grumbled back. She had this habit of
flicking her hair behind her ears when she was annoyed. It was a gesture I
recognized from the rooftop, and the memory's reappearance made me bite my lip
to keep a stupid grin from cracking across my face.

“You're right, baby. It takes a village.” Anya nodded her
head several times. I was shocked to see her concede to backtalk so quick. That
kind of shit never flew in my house.

 “She means under the eyes of the law, young lady.” To
my shock, this proclamation had been Pop's. He leaned forward in the
armchair—just the way he did at home—and turned his flinty gaze on his
girlfriend's daughter. He looked the way he did when he was about to deliver me
a fable or a parable, whatever warning would precede a physical lesson—all thin
lips and furrowed brow. I hated to see him echoing that shit in a stranger's
house, even if Ash had mouthed off. I mean, she wasn't
his
daughter.

But then I remembered: she
wasn't exactly a stranger, either. And she would sort of be his daughter, if he
and Crazy had their way. And cue the chunks rising in my throat.

“Excuse me—umm, where is the bathroom?” The shitty pizza
wasn't sitting well in my stomach. Well, the pizza and the images I kept
failing to fend off—images like Ash, sitting in my childhood kitchen, doing her
homework. Or Ash, in my childhood bathroom, in printed pajamas. Or Ash, in my
childhood bed, in nothing at all...

“What'sa matter with you, boy? Your face is like death
warmed over.”
“Nothing, sir. I just have to use the head.”

“We're in the middle of dinner. You sit tight.” Pop shot me
a furious look. I thought I could sense Ash and her Mom exchanging glances over
the Pastor's head, and dared to hope that his rudeness would make a lasting
impression. Maybe, as soon as we left the house, Anya would turn to her
daughter and say, “Phew. Looks like I dodged a bullet there. We'll call the
wedding off, but you should keep in touch with that nice young man.”

But the smart part of my brain understood this was probably
too good to be true. Instead of registering shock that her fiancé had lashed
out at her daughter, Anya simply leaned over the couch and put a bejeweled hand
on Pop's knee. I watched her squeeze his skinny leg, with the kneading gesture
of an old, close friend. Pop immediately softened. The smiles returned. That's
when it occurred to me: they could actually really love each other. In which
case, I was truly doomed.

“Ash will show you the bathroom, sweetheart,” Anya said,
while continuing to rub the Pastor (in an increasingly sexual manner). The
hostess tipped her chin, and I let my gaze return to Doll, who stood, flicked
her hair, and edged past me down a narrow, dark hallway. I tried not to watch
her ass swish as I followed at her heels like a puppy.

The Bennett's condo, if tiny, had a labyrinth's lay-out—the
first hallway t-boned into two branches. I assumed the bedrooms lay to the
left, as Ash took us down a curving path to the right that seemed to lead to a
single door. We weren't far from the living room. I could still hear Pop and
Anya, speaking in dull, sweet tones.

She whirled on me before I could reach for the doorknob,
forcing me to contend with the nubile body I'd been trying so hard not to size
up all evening. Her eyes locked into mine, like keys in a door. Before I could
even think what to say, I had my hands hovering over her waist.

“So. Eighteen, huh?”

Her eyes narrowed. I thought she might rear back and swat
me, like she had on the roof. But instead, oh-so-coolly, she pressed her palms
against my grasping fingers and pushed me away. It was a gentle gesture, but a
final-feeling one. My heart sank.

“We can't do this.
Landy
.” Back in the living room,
Anya let out a ridiculous, high-pitched laugh. I watched Ash's eyes flick in
the direction of the living room. The maternal look had returned to her face.
It was like she was worried about leaving her mother alone, for even a few
minutes. She spoke to me next without making eye contact.

“This is the first time, do you understand me? I'm Ash.
You're Landon. And it's
nice
to
meet
you.”

“I'm not an idiot, you know.”
Her eyes snapped back to me, and I shivered as they seemed to bore through my
skin. Her chest heaved with a sigh, and then she tilted her pretty head back,
so it fell against the flimsy wall with a soft thud. Her lips parted slightly.
If we were anywhere else, I would have pressed myself against her. I would have
sunk my mouth into the white, soft expanse of her exposed neck, like I was
fucking Dracula or something.

“If you're not an idiot, you need to stop drooling.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“
I'm
not an idiot.” She peeled herself off the wall. Though
she was beautiful even in this harried state, I decided I could do without the
whole careworn teenager shtick. Sure, Anya seemed flaky—but I'd seen nothing so
far to suggest that the woman couldn't take care of herself. Why did Ash need
to act so
very
protective? So wise, so holier-than-thou?

“Eighteen means you're still kind of an idiot,” I tried. But
the air had gone out of my flirting tires. She didn't laugh. She didn't even
crack a smile. She just looked mad at me.

“If this is you playing my older brother, we can just skip
past that noise right now. I'm not looking for a role model, ‘kay? Especially
not some guy who would have fucked me but for an inconvenient peep at my
driver's license.”

“How about you cut it with the lip, Ashleigh? I'm just trying
to make the best of an awkward situation.”

“Where did your Dad even meet her, huh? What is he? Some
cult-leader, who preys on recovering addicts? How much medical debt are we
gonna have to bail you out of?”

“I don't know
what
you're talking about.” I could
feel the nausea returning to my stomach, and transforming itself into rage. She
couldn't talk about Pop like that. Only I was allowed to talk about Pop like
that. “You don't know me. And it's not my fault that your hippie-dippy Mom
wandered into his church. For all I know, she's the one trying to scam
us.”

“Don't you dare talk about my mother that way!”

“Oh, is she your mother? I thought she was your
Anya.
By
the way, what the fuck is that about? Are you some celebrity kid? Who calls
their mother by her first name?”

Her face was beginning to stripe purple, too—she was
becoming blotchy with anger before my eyes. Her eyes darkened, her eyebrows
knit, the rat's nest suddenly struck me as witchy and unkempt. The tube top
suddenly looked like it was trying too hard.
Maybe the spell is lifting
,
I thought to myself. And it must have been a spell to begin with, right? How
else could I have gotten so hung up on some smart-mouthed, punk-ass,
eye-rolling teenage girl? Hadn't they been bad enough the first time around?

“You don't know a single thing about me, jock boy. So why
don't you and Father Hillbilly just fuck back off to your storefront
operation.”

“Ooh, I just love it when jailbait feminists think they know
shit. Whatever absent Daddy made you this twisted, please slap him for me if
you ever find his address.”

By this point, our faces hovered within centimeters of one
another. But her pouty red lips had lost their whole appeal. It was as sudden
to my attraction to her in the first place—in the span of thirty seconds, she'd
become just a yelling ball of evil. No different than the sophomore fan club,
or Zora. One day, I'd have to find out why almost all the girls I was attracted
to were crazy brats.

Ash quivered with rage, and her long, dark lashes seemed hell-bent
on preventing a few shining drops of moisture from falling down her face. I was
breathing through my nose in short, bullish bursts. We stared at one another
for what felt like a long time, before she finally whipped her hair in my face
in her haste to return to the living room. I got a mouthful of cucumber melon
and Virginia Slim—that familiar smell, from the party—and spat it out with a
grumble. I didn't watch her ass as she flounced off that time.

After one of the angrier pisses I've ever taken, I returned
to the living room determined not to look at Ash. I'd eat my pizza, then
shuffle the old man home. I'd find some sneaky way to avoid dinners like these
in the future. And heck, in a few weeks, I'd be back at school—and Ash would
probably be returned to whatever progressive love-in high school she'd wandered
out of. I'd graduate, and in the worst-case scenario, I could avoid her for all
but certain, very special, Christmases.

It will be good for Dad to have a lady. I can't begrudge him
that. But
I’m
not about to put up with the devil's spawn so he can be
happy. I’m a star quarterback. I’m a motherfucking contender.

When I returned to the living room, Anya greeted me with a
manic grin and a plate of stale grocery-store coffee cake. “Your father and I
were just talking, Landon, and we've had the most wonderful idea.” I should
have known enough by then to brace myself. But Anya, to her credit, knew how to
surprise a guy.

“It's getting so late, and we're having such a blast—why
don't you both just sleep over? I can make up the couch for you, and we've got
a whole big box of extra night clothes...then maybe we can all do a big family
brunch in the morning!” Her eyes were wide, appealing. It took concentrated
effort not to pull a face at Ash.

“I think we can have a little sleepover,” Pop said, his tone
as lecherous as it had been a few weeks before, when he'd been sizing up Zora
in the shower. As if this night couldn't be any more nausea-inducing, now I had
to imagine my derelict father getting his D wet for the first time in thirty
years, or whatever it was.