Stepbrother With Benefits 17 (Third Season) (15 page)

Calm down! One thing at a time, alright?

First thing's first, which is...

Ethan comes back with our food, which is definitely way more than we thought. It's two large paper bags, and it looks like they're completely stuffed. He looks at me, still laying on my stomach on his bed, then he looks at the bags.

"Princess, I have no fucking clue what we're going to do with all of this," he says.

"I have an idea," I tell him. I do, too. I think it's a nice one. Maybe it'll help fix one of our problems.

"
C
aleb
, shut the fuck up and sit down next to Scarlet."

I don't mean to be an asshole here, but seriously, how fucking hard is it to just sit the fuck down and shut up? Not to mention it's Caleb who needs to sit down and shut up, and he should be sitting down and shutting up next to Scarlet, who he has a major crush on.

I shouldn't have to explain to him the benefits of sitting down next to a girl he likes, especially when we're fitting everyone onto a couch that's too small for the four of us. And... yeah... there's four of us. When the fuck did take-out food dinner plans with Ashley turn into a group event? It's Ashley's plan, so I'm blaming all of this on her.

"Be nice," Ashley says to me, sitting down next to me and cuddling up.

I put my arm around her shoulder and squeeze her tight against me before kissing her on the cheek. She turns quick and kisses me back, our lips touching. It's nothing crazy, but I kind of want to make it into something crazy.

Unfortunately that's not going to happen. Besides the fact that Caleb and Scarlet are here, we're all in my dorm floor's common room, so anyone and their mother could walk past and see us. I'm not in the habit of making out with Ashley in front of everyone. I mean, I'd consider doing it if I really wanted to, but it's never come up, and I'm not sure now's the best time to start.

Caleb eventually sits down. We have our seating arrangements. This is good. It shouldn't be a huge fucking issue, but Caleb and Scarlet are being weird. It's their own damn fault, though. This is what happens when you decide to make a fucking sex tape together.

I have no fucking clue how they're going to pull that one off. Caleb hasn't even asked her out on a date yet and he's already planning to have sex with her. I'm not sure if I should shake my head at him and sigh, or congratulate him with a high five. Yeah, that's how fucking complicated this is.

So... let's recap for a second. Scarlet's way on the left, sitting close to Caleb who's in the middle, with me on Caleb's right, and Ashley on the other end of the couch right next to me. To be fair, it's more like Ashley has her legs in my lap, cuddled up close, so we're not taking up two individual seats or anything. I don't even think this couch has that many spots to sit. It's more like a loveseat?

I'm not going to say that to Caleb. He'd fucking die. Loveseat? That sort of implies love, and while I know he's head over heels for his co-actress pornstar over there, I think he's going to deny it for the rest of his life.

Oh well. Why is that my problem? It's not.

"This is nice, isn't it?" Ashley asks.

"You guys got crab rangoon, right?" Scarlet asks. "Fuck, I can smell it. I'm starving. Can we eat now?"

"Hey, calm the fuck down," I tell her. Why am I the one telling everyone to calm the fuck down lately? I don't like this.

"It's really nice of you to invite us like this," Caleb says. "It looks amazing."

"Fuck you," I tell him. Just because. I don't need a reason.

"Hey, shut the fuck up," Scarlet says, defending Caleb. "Caleb was being nice to you, asshole!"

This starts a visual war where Scarlet and I glare at each other, with Caleb in between us. Scarlet takes this moment to get even closer to Caleb, under the guise of glaring at me and telling me to fuck off. Eventually she's practically in his lap, just like Ashley's in mine, and, uh... yeah...

Caleb's nice, but he's kind of clueless. Let's just leave it at that.

"Can we fucking eat already?" I say, turning away from Scarlet.

She jerks her chin up, acting like she's taller than five-foot-two or something. Yeah, we've got a short, skinny badass over here. She puts her arm around Caleb's shoulder and leaves one leg in his lap, cuddling close to him.

"Uh... what are you doing?" Caleb asks her. Please note that he's got his arm around her waist, too. This isn't just Scarlet being weird.

"It's called method acting, Caleb," she says to him. "It'll be easier to act as girlfriend and boyfriend in my art movie if we get comfortable with each other and pretend we're dating now."

"Oh! This can be like a double date!" Ashley says, almost squealing in excitement.

"I really don't give a fuck what it is, but can we eat some food already?" I ask. "I'm starving."

Ashley wrinkles her nose at me and gives me a face like I'm exaggerating or something. Princess, you don't even fucking know. I'm not exaggerating. She shows up and eats half my dinner before, and then tires me the fuck out with crazy sex things, and now she's making me wait to eat while we invite Caleb and Scarlet to eat with us and watch a movie in the common room, and it's just like...

Seriously, how the fuck did this even happen to me? I have a girlfriend or something? I need to be patient and think about other people? What the fuck bullshit is this?

It's cool, though. My Little Miss Perfect Princess is the best girlfriend ever. She slips away from me, sliding out from under my arm, and fixes me a plate. It's got the essentials, and by that I mean it's got everything on it. All the fucking food, a little of everything. She offers it to me with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, and she even gives me a plastic fork.

Holy fuck, she's amazing. I love her.

Don't get me wrong, alright? I love her for a lot of reasons. This is just the most recent one, and I think it's a really good one. I can almost forgive her for making me pay for the food.

Almost.

Fuck you, I'm not completely forgiving her. If I do that we won't get to do kinky sex shit involving supplements to increase volume, and then in and on and all the fuck over her, and pretending that the efficacy of her birth control is in question.

Yeah,
efficacy
. Do you have a fucking problem with that? I know words. If you've forgotten, I wrote a love letter that made a completely different girl want to have sex with me, so I'm real fucking good at this.

I haven't shown the letter to Ashley yet. It's not done. I'll get to it soon. Maybe tomorrow...

Scarlet commandeers the remote for who fucking knows what reason. She starts flipping through channels on the TV. It's just a regular TV, regular channels, so I'm not sure what we're expecting here, but...

"Hey, wait, we should watch this," I say.

She stops and let's the movie play for a little bit. Everyone just gives me a look like I'm crazy or something.

"What? You don't recognize this movie? It's a fucking classic. Who the fuck are you people?"

"Uh... it's
The NeverEnding Story?
" Caleb says, unsure.

"You really want to watch this, Mr. Moneybags?" Scarlet asks, all sassy as fuck. "I'm sure we can find some shitty B horror movie, too. That sounds like more of your thing."

"Listen up," I tell them. I have to explain this. They need to understand. "This movie has a fucking
luckdragon
in it. Falkor ring any bells? Have you guys not seen this movie? It's kind of amazing."

Everyone keeps looking at me. I think they still think I'm crazy.

"If you're all just going to be dicks about it, then I guess we can watch something else," I say, mumbling.

"I really like this movie, actually," Ashley says, giving me a shy look.

Oh, fuck yes. Of course she likes this movie. That's why she's my girlfriend. It makes perfect fucking sense. Stop thinking about it too much and trying to prove me wrong.

"I like it a lot, too," Scarlet says. "The imagery is wonderful for when it was made, and I think the creativity of it all and the message behind it is nice."

Caleb starts to open his mouth to say something, but I stop him. "No one fucking cares what you think, Caleb. It's three against one and now we're watching this movie. Fill a plate up with food, sit back, and enjoy. I don't care if you don't enjoy the movie. Enjoy Scarlet rubbing up against you with her method acting or whatever the fuck. Enjoy something, just don't ruin this for me."

"What!" Caleb says, yelling at me. "I was going to say I like this movie, too. Just... just shut up, Ethan!"

"Do you want me to rub up against you?" Scarlet asks him, pressing her chest into his arm.

Caleb dies. I'm sorry, Caleb. I'll come to your funeral, bro. Don't worry about it.

"Uh... you don't have to," he says. I think this is what he says, but he stammers and barely manages to say half the words, so who the fuck knows?

"What kind of cuddling do you like?" she asks him. "Do you like if it's a little sensual? I need to know, Caleb. It's for the movie, remember? This is research. We should figure this out now before we get too far in."

"Uh... I don't know?" he says.

"Alright, well, let's try a couple different ways, alright?" she says, wrapping her arms around his bicep and cuddling close to him. "I'm going to start the script next week, but it'd be easier if I knew what kinds of situations to put us in for the movie, so that we're both comfortable with everything."

Ashley sneaks close to me and whispers into my ear. "They're pretty cute together, huh?"

"They're pretty fucking weird together," I whisper back to her.

She makes a face at me and then she steals my crab rangoon. Just fucking steals it. Picks it up off my plate, drops it in hers, all while making a face at me.

Are you fucking serious? Wow, Princess. Wow.

It's fine. There's plenty more where that came from. We eat our Thai food and watch the movie and I guess we're on a double date or something. Who the fuck knows what's going on right now? I sure don't. We've got the common room to ourselves, though, so that's nice. The lights are on in the hall behind us, but they're off in here, so it's easy to forget everything and just kind of lose yourself in the moment.

It's nice. I don't know if I ever would have said something like this was nice before. Last year I probably would have thought it was kind of dumb, because why hang out in the common room if you could go to a bar or a frat house or a club or something? Yeah, I'm too young to drink, but if you show up to a bar early enough you can listen to some nice music and get a burger and just hang out. Most of the ones around here cater to the college crowd and have pool tables or darts, some arcade games, pinball, and everything like that.

But, nah... we're just watching a movie and eating take-out. It's pretty fucking amazing.

"Oh!" Scarlet says, completely out of the blue. "I almost forgot!"

"You almost forgot to shut up because it's getting to a good part in the movie?" I counter.

She just picks up the remote and pauses it. Holy fucking shit, she pauses the movie. What the fuck magic is this?

Nevermind. It's a DVR or something. Scarlet isn't a witch. I mean, she's not a witch for pausing a movie on live TV, or sort of live TV. She's a witch for plenty of other reasons, just not this one.

"Happy?" she asks me, sarcastic as fuck.

"Yeah, actually, I am," I say.

"You're coming tomorrow, right?" she asks. "I just need to talk to DJ Scotch Tape and Ronald about helping me out with some of the behind the scenes work, but everything else should be set. Um... sort of. I need you to help out with some of the art part of it. You'll have to join our team to do that, Ethan. Which means you need to be a part of the event."

"Would you please stop calling him DJ Scotch Tape?" I ask. "And Ron, too? It's Ron, Scarlet. Not Ronald. I'm trying to help these guys out and you're ruining it."

"Who's DJ Scotch Tape?" Ashley asks.

"Jefferson," I tell her. "He's one of Caleb's friends. He's weird."

"I think he's pretty cool," Scarlet says with a shrug. "Anyways, are you in or what? To be a part of the event, you need to come up with an exhibit, so you'll have to paint something or whatever. I guess a drawing would work. That's the only way I can sneak you in backstage to set up the rest of what I have planned."

"Oooh, what do you have planned?" Ashley asks. "What's going on?"

"Oh, it's great!" Scarlet says, excited. She sounds like one of those giggly cheerleader types, and completely not at all like Scarlet. "It was kind of going to be a secret, but now that you're here, well... oh, do you want to come with us, by the way? We're all carpooling down. It's kind of a long drive so we're leaving early tomorrow morning. It's for school, so we aren't missing classes, but... um... I guess Ethan would have to?"

"Huh? I'm not going to skip class," I say.

Everyone looks at me. I don't know why people keep giving me these looks. What the fuck, people?

"I have responsibilities," I say. "I can't just skip class. Yeah, I can probably miss football practice, but I've got to learn things. This is college, guys. I need to get an education."

"Are you serious?" Caleb asks, because he's an asshole.

"You skipped plenty of classes with me last year," Scarlet adds. Again, it's because she's also an asshole.

"You skipped class a lot in high school, too..." Ashley adds.

I can't call my girlfriend an asshole because I'm pretty sure that means I'd never have sex ever again, so I won't be doing that. I'm going to let you decide what she is on your own. Even if you decide she's an asshole, I think she's perfect, so fuck you.

"It's not even that I want you to skip class, but it's kind of a long drive and I don't know how we're going to get there in time if you don't," Scarlet says, trying to be logical. Fuck your logic, Scarlet.

"Listen, I'm not skipping class," I say. "I'm going to class. I kind of like it and Brittany and I were hanging out and learning cool stuff today, so I don't want to miss anything tomorrow."

"Who's Brittany?" Ashley asks.

"She's the head cheerleader," Caleb says. "She's basically the hottest girl in school."

"Ummmmm!"

"Caleb, why the fuck are you doing this to me, man?" I ask him. It's kind of a rhetorical question, but seriously, what the fuck, Caleb?

"It's fine," Scarlet says. "You don't have to worry about anything, Ashley. Brittany is way too cool and good for Ethan. She wouldn't sleep with him. She's really nice."