Natural Love

by S. Celi

  “I’m not talking about that,” she said, cutting me off. “I just mean with your dad. He likes things the way he likes them. And when they don’t fit, I think he sometimes has an easier time ignoring that than addressing it. Sending you to the Peace Corps was easy. Trying to fix you was hard.”

  “I ended up liking the Peace Corps. I did.”

  “Really?” She looked me up and down for a minute. “All I remember is how much you didn’t want to go, how you thought it was stupid, and how you blamed everyone else but yourself for what you did. You really have changed.”

  I scoffed. “That’s what Henry says, too.”

  “Well, we know better than to argue with Henry,” she said. “He knows everything.”

  And he did. Henry did know everything about what happened inside the walls of Chadwick Gardens.

  Everything except . . .

  “I wish you’d stop thinking about it,” she suddenly said. “I try to forget about it. Things are easier that way.” Then she looked at the floor. “Okay, maybe that’s not true. When you were gone, I managed to forget about it. But now that you’re back, I want to talk about it again. Well, part of me does. I want to talk about it with you.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “No one said we ever had to talk about it again. I promised you that we wouldn’t.”

  She rubbed her hand over her face as if she wanted to clear something away. “You started drinking so much after it happened.”

  I shrugged and looked at my own glass on the table in front of the couch. Diet Coke. Spiked with bourbon. Well, more like divided by bourbon. But she didn’t need to know that.

  “It went from normal to not.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” I lied. “And the drinking wasn’t that bad. Dad overreacted.”

  “Spencer, you blew a .18.”

  “That’s what the cops said.” Our eyes met again. “Liars.”

  “You shouldn’t have been drinking and driving.”

  “Well, yeah. I won’t do that again. But I can handle alcohol just fine, AJ.”

  She shut her eyes. “Damn it. Why can’t you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “What you’re doing do yourself. What you’re doing to me.”

  I tossed the binder on the table and it landed with a large slap that echoed through the library. So much for a quiet night of studying and scheming my way toward my rightful future. “Alright, AJ. You want to talk about it? Fine. We can talk about it. But we have to talk about all of it.”

  “Ever since you came home, I’ve been worried about you.” She popped her chin in the direction of my drink. “And is that just Coke?”

  “Yeah. It’s just a Diet Coke.”

  “Bullshit.” She narrowed her eyes at me, as if she knew she’d just trapped me. “I can smell it.”

  “Smell what?”

  “I’m not a kid anymore, dear stepbrother.” She pointed at the drink. “I know what hard liquor smells like. And I’d bet your drink is half bourbon. Am I right?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me try it.”

  She stood up from the couch with her hand out and took a step toward the table, but my hand wrapped around her forearm to stop her. I stood before I knew what I had done, and my body was pressed against hers. She had on that expensive perfume of hers again. Whatever it was, I smelled it in her hair. If only I could tell her what it did to me.

  “What are you doing?” she said, sounding pissed

  “Don’t do this, Avery. Don’t think about doing this. Just don’t.”

  “I want you to stop drinking,” she said in between hard, ragged, fast breaths.

  “And I want you to forgive yourself for what happened,” I whispered. “When I know you’ve forgiven yourself, maybe I’ll stop.”

  She pulled her arm from my grip. “That’s not fair.”

  “Why not? Of course it’s fair.”

  “You can’t put parameters on me like that,” she said after a long pause. “What happened . . . happened to me. It’s my problem. My secret. And that’s it.”

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and stormed out of the library. I watched her leave, one eye on her ass, unable to stop myself from admiring how tight and perky it looked it in those stupid yoga pants. More than once since I’d come home, I’d wondered if she wore stuff like that just to tease me, to taunt me with what I knew I could never have. She had to sense that things had escalated since I returned, that our relationship had changed from just close family to something more dangerous and . . . . sexier. She had to.

  Stop it, Spencer. Stop thinking like that; stop thinking like that.

  Stop.

  Still standing by the couch, I didn’t move until several minutes after she’d gone, and my section of the house became quiet again. For a moment I thought about following her, trying to talk to her, but I didn’t do that either. Instead I grabbed the binder and threw it. Then I swallowed the rest of the bourbon and Diet Coke.

  And that felt good. Too good.

  AVERY AND I didn’t talk the next morning at all.

  She showed up for breakfast and drank a green kale smoothie along with her coffee, then made small talk with Henry about her upcoming social schedule and work at the boutique. She didn’t look at me once, as if I didn’t exist as I sat there at the breakfast bar with a glass of grapefruit juice and a plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs. She and Henry laughed at a few inside jokes, and then she left, spinning out of the room as fast as she came. Seconds later I heard her car engine rumble awake as she drove out of the driveway.

  “Linda emailed a list of reminders for the annual Fourth of July party,” Henry said as he rinsed out Avery’s smoothie glass in the sink attached to the breakfast bar.

  “Wow. Even on their vacation she can’t turn it off, can she?”

  “Just a few things. Loose ends.”

  “Should be a good party,” I said after another bite of eggs. I didn’t have much appetite, but I needed the protein. I’d already done an angry five-mile run that morning and after breakfast, I planned on swimming laps in the pool. Maybe that would help work out my frustration. Or get rid of my hard-on.

  “Should be a very good party. You’re right,” Henry said. “Budget has an extra five grand this year.”

  “It does?”

  “Your dad says it’s been a big year for the company.” Henry turned off the running water and reached for a towel on the counter next to the sink. “Plus you’re back. And Miss Avery graduated from UC.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s not spending the extra money because of me.”

  “You don’t know that.” Henry set the now clean glass down and braced his arms on the counter, staring at me. “He’s missed you more than you think.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ll see.” Henry’s leathery face twisted into a half smile. “And I’ve seen you studying that binder. You want this, don’t you? You’re ready to take your place in the company.”

  “Of course,” I said and peered into my glass. Two large gulps left. “At the very least, I don’t want there to be anything he might ask me about the company or the properties that I won’t know.”

  “Hmm. Is that a challenge?”

  “Try me.” I took a drink from the mug. It had a chip on the handle and Beverly Hills Hotel engraved on the side. Linda took Avery there on a surprise trip to LA for her sixteenth birthday. Of course I remembered shit like that.

  “Okay.” Henry frowned in thought for a few seconds and his forehead cracked like sunbaked clay. “How much rent did the apartment complex in St. Bernard generate last year?”

  “Which one?” I took another stab at the eggs. “The one on Vine Street or the one on Sullivan?”

  “The one on Sullivan.”

  “After the mortgage, we got fifteen grand out of it.” I laughed. “Now, should I ask you how you know about that specific property?”

  “Oh, I never tell my secrets, Mr. Spencer.” He motioned t
o me. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No. And it’s just Spencer, Henry. Just Spencer.” I handed him the plate. “Seriously, how did you know about that spot?”

  “A couple of months ago your dad came in here, ranting and raving about it on the phone. He forgot I was in here, or maybe he didn’t notice. But he kept saying the Sullivan complex shouldn’t be giving him so much trouble with renters.”

  “I guess it had a few vacant apartments early in the year,” I said.

  Henry scraped what remained of the eggs into the sink. “Well, very well. You have been studying.”

  “Yeah. I have.”

  The plate clattered against the sink as he set it down. “Now, I have to ask you something. I hope that’s okay, and that you don’t mind.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said, then took the final gulp of juice. “Ask me anything. You know you can.”

  Henry hesitated. “Okay.”

  “Come on.”

  “Just noticed a little, shall we say, tension between you and Avery this morning?”

  As calmly as I could, I set down my now empty coffee cup. “Tension?”

  “She always seems so happy to see you. Always lights up when you’re around.” Henry wiped his hands once more on the towel. “But not this morning.” He gestured out to the front of the house, in the direction of where she’d disappeared. “You could have walked across tension that tight.”

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t act like it’s nothing,” Henry said. “I can tell.”

  “She’s pissed at me.” I stood and walked around the breakfast bar to the sink. “Really pissed.”

  “Does she have a right to be?”

  “Probably,” I said, then flipped on the water and ran the cup underneath it. “She thinks sometimes that I am self-destructive.”

  “Well, don’t be.”

  I laughed and turned off the water. “It’s not that simple. It’s complicated.”

  Henry took the cup from me. “Listen, it’s not my business, but I’m going to tell you how I see it, even if you don’t want to know what I really think.”

  “Shoot.”

  Everyone in the family knew that once Henry said he wanted to “tell us how he saw it,” whatever he said next would be worth hearing, if only to laugh at him later. This was the man who had a ringside seat to our family’s lives, after all.

  “You can’t just walk away from that,” he said. “You can’t let petty stuff get in the way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He waved his hand. “It’s all petty stuff. All of it. What matters at the end of the day are the people who are there for you, the people who really care for you.” And then he pointed at me. “You just need to realize one thing. She cares about you. And she cares about you in a way that matters.”

  “She’s my stepsister.”

  “So?”

  “So, she has to care about me. We’ve known each other since we were little kids.” I laughed without humor. How ironic for him to tell me this. And how annoying.

  “Just tell me you won’t let whatever is going on get between the two of you,” Henry said. “All you have in life is family. And you’re her family.”

  “I know that. I know how much she needs me.”

  “Are you sure you do?”

  “Yes.” Then I clapped him on the shoulder and hoped he realized that I wanted to end this conversation. “Now. Time for a swim.” I cocked my head at the pool. “It’s too nice of a day to stay inside.”

  WHEN AVERY CAME out to the pool several hours later, I had just started my fifteenth lap of breaststroke. She stood at the end with her toes hanging just off the edge and waited for me to finish the lap. Through my goggles I watched her toes wiggle as I came closer. She’d also changed into her own swimsuit, and a blue knit cover-up. She could have come off of a Hollywood movie set from the 1950s—her hourglass shape seemed tailor-made for that.

  Why did she have be so gorgeous? Why did she have to be the one I wanted? Why had I fallen for my stepsister? Why me? Why did it fucking have to be me?

  Fuck my life.

  I knew I needed a distraction, a cure, and a way to get her off my mind, but I didn’t want one. I just wanted her. Naked. Underneath me. All mine. Worse, I wanted her more after we had a fight or a misunderstanding. I liked the way she could spark something inside me; no other girl I had ever met did that to me.

  “Nice swim?” she said when I reached the end of the pool.

  “I thought you were ignoring me,” I said as I ripped my goggles off my face.

  “Sort of.” She waved her hand. “I didn’t know you liked to swim laps.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  “You never did it before.”

  “It’s good exercise. Gotta stay healthy.” I moved over to the pool’s entrance ladder and climbed it, shaking the water from my hair. Then I grabbed my towel and cell phone from the pool deck. I made no move to go near her; instead, I choose one of the lounge chairs furthest away. Space. We needed space. Lots of space. Especially after the conversation we’d had the night before. And especially with my threatening hard-on.

  “I should swim more,” she said, rocking back and forth on her feet. “The pool is always here and it’s like I just forget about doing it.” Then she took a few steps toward me and I put up my hand stop her from coming closer. She did.

  Good girl.

  “What?”

  “Look, Avery, I don’t want to talk right now.” I waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t, I just kept speaking. “Not after last night. You made yourself pretty clear.”

  “Did I? I’m not sure I did.”

  “Yeah, you did.” I used my phone as a distraction, logging on to Facebook. I never checked it, but whatever. There had to be something on there that would hold my interest.

  “I don’t like fighting with you, Spencer.”

  She sat on the lounge chair next to mine, crossed her arms in front of her, and pulled off her large black sunglasses. I watched her do this out of the corner of my eye, still trying to focus on the Facebook app. A couple of friends had weekend plans for a Reds game and another had just announced a new job at P&G.

  Boring, really, but something.

  “Come on,” she said, once it became clear I had no intention of talking to her. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t shut me out. You never shut me out.”

  “I’m not shutting you out,” I said, still looking at the phone. More mindless updates about movies, and people bragging about their weekend plans. A couple of people posted a few rants about politics and the Middle East. Plus, I had four pending friend requests from women who knew Grant.

  If Avery only knew how hard it was for me to pay attention my phone and not her . . .

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said what I did.”

  She sighed, then grabbed the phone in my hand, forcing me to look at her. “I just worry about you. I’ve been worried about you.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me. That’s the last thing you need to do. You really should be worried about yourself.” I ripped the phone from her grasp and placed it on the small metal table next to our lounge chairs. “But you clearly want to talk about it. So let’s talk.”

  “Just . . .” She broke off. “Are you okay?”

  “What makes you think I’m not?”

  She studied her toes again. “The way you act. There’s a cloud over you.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “No, there is a cloud. A bigger one than you think.”

  She moved a little bit closer to the edge of the lounge chair and when she did, her boobs threatened to tumble out of the top of her swimsuit. For a breath, that was all I could look at, but then I managed to rip my gaze away. Across the lawn, one of the gardeners started the ride-on lawnmower. There. That was what I needed to look at. The lawnmower, a
nd nothing else. Not her boobs. Not her butt. And definitely not Avery’s face.

  “Do you regret what happened?” I asked.

  “Regret? No. Not regret.” She sucked in one long breath. “Regrets are stupid. I can’t allow myself regrets. Do you?”

  “I don’t know. No. Yes.”

  “I missed you so much,” she said. “Too much. You never came home. You basically never called. Just a few emails. You acted like we all wanted to forget you.”

  “Didn’t you?” I scoffed. “Dad sure did.”

  “Stop it. Don’t say stuff you know isn’t true. I never wanted to forget you.” She sounded sad. “I didn’t want you to leave. You know that. I begged you to stay. Begged you.”

  “But I couldn’t stay. Not if I wanted to have a future in this family. Not if I wanted to please Dad.”

  She sighed, then squinted from the sunlight and pulled her sunglasses down onto her nose. “Jesus. Are we back to that?”

  “Yeah, Avery, we’re back to that.”

  “Just promise me something, okay?” She slumped further in her seat sounded tired. Tired of everything, and maybe everyone. I hated that. Life shouldn’t make Avery tired. Girls like her didn’t deserve that.

  “Promise you what?”

  “That you’ll think. That you’ll realize people care about you. And that you’ll stop blaming yourself. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t blame myself.”

  “If anything, it was my fault.”

  “What?” I grabbed her arm. “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She shut her eyes for a second. “It was. We both know it was.”

  “Stop this,” I said. “Stop it. If you want me to forgive myself, then you have to forgive yourself, too. And if you say you don’t ‘regret’ it, you don’t do yourself any favors when you say it was your fault, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t sound very convincing.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Fine. Have it your way. I’ll stop saying it was my fault.” Then she sighed again. “It’s late, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” The clock on my phone said 6:34. Later than I’d thought.