by S. Celi
“Wanna get some dinner?”
“Dinner? Sure.”
“Good.” She stood and tapped me on the leg. “Come on. I know a spot.”
“HERE YOU GO.” She smiled and handed me a warm hot dog wrapped in a foil bag. “Mustard, ketchup and relish are already on it.”
“Thanks.” I took it from her, and the large cup of Diet Coke she also held out to me on a cardboard cup holder tray. “I could have gotten it for us.”
“Nah.” She slid into the empty red plastic seat next to me. “I wanted to.”
“Still can’t believe this is your idea of dinner,” I said, turning my attention back to the game. Second inning. Great American Ballpark. Cincinnati Reds vs. Houston Astros. Home team leading by two runs.
“Well, we’re just getting started on that.”
“Good.” I winked at her. “Because this game isn’t a game until we have a couple of pretzels, some peanuts, a few more Cokes and ice cream.”
“I haven’t been to a game in probably two years.” She unwrapped her own messy hot dog and took a large bite.
“And we haven’t been to one together since . . .” I broke off and tried to think. “When? I think I was fifteen? Maybe sixteen?”
She laughed. “My thirteenth birthday. Remember? Our parents rented that box?”
“Yep. And I thought the whole thing was hell. I did not want to be there, even if it was for you.”
“Aww. Poor Spencer.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Poor Spencer.”
“Who wants to hang out with a bunch of teenage girls anyway?”
“Not me,” I said. “They were thirteen. Barely teenagers. Now, if they had been eighteen, well, that would have been a totally different story.”
She flashed me a thousand-watt smile, and when she turned her attention back to the game, my focus stayed on her. By then, I had once again noticed so many little things about her. Her hair fell in small waves underneath a red plaid baseball cap with a large C in the center. The tank top she’d changed into after she’d convinced me to eat dinner with her accented the deep V of her cleavage, while the distressed pair of jeans she wore made her butt perkier. Damn, she was so hot. Even while eating a hot dog.
Especially while eating a hot dog.
“This is great,” she said once she’d swallowed the last bite of her dinner. I still had half of mine to eat. “So much fun.”
“Yeah. It is. Perfect night for a game, too.”
We’d bought a pair of cheap seats in the top section from the ticket counter right when we walked up to GABP. They cost almost nothing and I would have paid for better ones, but she wouldn’t consider that. Avery wanted seats high above all the action because she said it would be ‘more fun’ that way. As we walked to the seats with the rest of the weeknight crowd, she had an expression on her face that reminded me of her on her eight-year-old birthday, the year her mom gave her a birthday party at Madison Bowl and she threw two strikes over an afternoon of three games. Unbridled and unfiltered happiness. That’s what Avery did best.
God, I loved her that way.
As the second inning turned into the third and then the fifth, I let myself have fun, too. Reds games always did that to people. The smell of overcooked popcorn, screaming concession stand workers, a breeze from the Ohio River, calliope music piped through the speakers and the occasional crack of the bat mixed up something I never found anywhere else in the city.
If I hadn’t been there with Avery, I would have had a fun night. With Avery, though . . .
Absolute heaven.
“We should do this more,” I said at the bottom of the sixth inning. By then, the Reds led 3–1 and the family in front of us had consumed three bags of cotton candy. The kids looked like they might explode from the sugar high, and they danced and cheered as much as they could, trying to get on the Jumbotron.
“What? Hang out?” Avery said.
“Yeah.” I grinned at her. “Hang out. Come to stuff like this. Be normal.”
She nodded and sipped some more of her third soda. In front of us, the kids started dancing again as the music in between pitching changes crescendoed throughout the stadium. I’d never seen kids more determined to be seen by whoever ran the closed-circuit TV in the ballpark.
“I won’t be living with our parents much longer,” she said, then chewed on some of the ice from her drink. “Well, not if I can help it.”
“What?” I straightened in the seat, and the ballgame faded into the background. “You’re moving?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I talked to Mom about it before they left for Italy. I’ll probably get an apartment at the end of the year. Maybe some place downtown or near UC.”
“Are you sure?”
Smiling at me, she put her drink in the cup holder on the back of the chair in front of us. “I mean, it’s time. I’ve lived there way too long.”
“I know, but . . .”
“What?” She reached for the popcorn bag I had forgotten I held in my hand. “You can’t tell me you aren’t thinking about moving, too.”
“Sure, but . . . well . . . I just thought I would be the one to move out for good first?”
“Right.” She ate a few yellow kernels of popcorn. “Since you’re the one set to climb the ladder of the company.”
“Come on, is that fair? I mean . . .” The animated kids in front of us broke into a frenzy, right along with their parents.
“We made it! Look! We made it!” they screamed in a collective wave of enthusiasm that jarred me so much I looked at the monitor myself.
What I saw made me choke.
We’d all made the huge monitors across the stadium, but not in the way the kids, nor I, expected. This wasn’t the usual dance cam or general showcase of fans.
Oh, no.
This was the Kiss Cam. And right in the center of the shot sat Avery and me.
“Oh shit,” I said without thinking. The TV camera caught that, too. In fact, it showed no sign of leaving until we kissed, and I understood why. Here were two people of about the same age, sitting by themselves. Anyone who didn’t know us might have assumed that a night at the Reds game counted as a date for Avery and me.
If she hadn’t been my stepsister.
“They want us to kiss,” Avery said. She smiled for the camera, trying to play it off, but I heard nervousness in her voice, nervousness I felt, too.
“Yeah,” I said. The kids still cheered and screamed, and by then the rest of the crowd around us had joined in. We had no choice. No choice at all. So I did the only thing that made sense in front of a crowd of twenty-five thousand people.
I kissed her. On the cheek.
Just a small kiss, but one that brought me yet another whiff of her perfume, and a brush against her skin, two things that promised something I knew I could not ever have. It was torture. Sweet, fantastic, sexy torture. God, I wanted her so much.
But I had known that long ago.
“On the lips!” yelled one of the kids, and another one standing next to him joined in on the chant. “On the lips! On the lips!”
“That’s okay,” I said and then waved my hand at the monitors in the distance. They looked over and let out a collective groan. The Kiss Cam’s attention had moved elsewhere. Fame had been fleeting.
The knot in my stomach, though, hadn’t been fleeting at all. In the course of thirty seconds it had coiled and tightened. Damn. I was going to have to take a cold shower.
Again.
BY THE TIME we walked to the car, Avery had fifteen text messages on her phone. The latest one included a screen shot of us on the monitor, shot from some place above centerfield in better seats than the ones we had. She found this so very funny, and laughed every time one of her friends sent her another funny message about our time on the Kiss Cam. Most of their texts showed they found it all hilarious, too.
I did not feel the same way.
“Check this out,” she said as I unlocked the Volvo with my key fob. She held ou
t her phone to me and I saw what looked like a newer Instagram shot of our kiss. With a fancy filter and effects, the sight of it stopped me from opening the car door. The way my lips touched her cheek revealed everything. Too gleeful. Too hopeful.
Too interested in my stepsister.
“Whose account is that?”
“Oh, just Julie Preston’s,” Avery said, then laughed again. “I guess she was at the game, too.”
“Was the whole city at the game?”
She looked up from her phone and frowned at me. “What’s wrong? We were on the Kiss Cam. It was funny. Kiss Cams are funny.”
“Kiss Cams are funny when you’re with someone you’re dating.” I walked over to the passenger side of the car. “We’re not dating, Avery. Not even close. We’re stepbrother and stepsister.”
Her face fell. “I know.”
“What?” I grabbed the door handle for the car and jerked it open, then waited for her to slide inside. “It was awkward. And really weird.”
“Thanks,” she said, and got in.
I couldn’t look at her, not right then, so I just shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side. If I had looked at her, I would have lost focus and done something really stupid, like tell her right then and there how much I wished we weren’t related at all so that we could be together. That would have been bad, very bad.
And there was no sense in giving the parking lot crowd a show like that.
“Come on.” I said as I slid into the driver’s seat. “Let’s go. Traffic’s going to be horrible.”
As soon as the engine clicked into gear I turned up the volume on the radio. Mindless pop music. That’s what this moment needed. Nothing busted tension like a Kanye West feature performance on the latest Jay-Z single. Shit, how badly I needed that to work.
“You don’t have to be so mad,” she said once we pulled out of the lot and into the downtown traffic. It didn’t move fast because so many people wearing Reds jerseys and baseball caps held up the cars as they walked away from the Great American Ballpark. I peered at the crowd through the windshield, still not allowing myself to look at Avery. The pedestrians reminded me of red jellybeans, and they all had blissful grins on their faces from a night of expensive snacks and a 5–3 win by the home team.
Part of me envied them. Why couldn’t I have a simple life like that? Why couldn’t Avery? Why did this have to be us?
“I’m not mad, I said.”
“Give me a break.” She turned down the radio. “That’s total bullshit.”
“Whatever,” I said, and then I accelerated the car as soon as the light changed. Within half a minute we turned onto I-71 and traveled away from the center of the city once again.
“This was supposed to be fun,” she said, and I heard the disappointment in her voice. “Just a fun night out like we used to have when we were kids.”
“When things were simpler?”
“Yeah.” She put her hand on my shoulder. When I let myself look at her, I saw the sadness all over her face. “Simpler. But we can’t get that back, can we?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think we can.”
“That’s the worst part. That’s what hurts the most.”
“I spent a lot of time in South Africa just thinking. A lot of time. And what I want for you, Avery, is happiness. I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.” But then she sighed and her expression fell. “Most of the time. I’m happy most of the time.”
“I know that.” I flipped the turn signal on the Volvo and merged into another lane on the highway. “But that’s just it. I want you to find a way to be happy like you used to be.”
“And how did I used to be?”
“Back before the . . . Back when . . .” I struggled to find the words. “You didn’t worry about anything.”
“Well,” she said, “I think you should know something.”
“What?” I turned down the radio, because something in her voice told me whatever she said next would be important. We didn’t need interference from Kanye or Jay-Z.
“I’m happier now that you’re back, Spencer.”
I glanced over and caught her biting her lip. “Happier. You’re happier now.”
“Yeah.” She smiled at me. “I am. A lot happier.”
“Okay.” I tried to keep my voice steady, and in control. “That’s good.”
“Just don’t—” She broke off and shifted her weight in the passenger seat. We only had one more exit until the one for Chadwick Gardens. I shouldn’t have overreacted. I should have thought this through. We could have gone to a bar, or Ovation, or someplace else. Anything to spend more time with her, time away from that house and the memories I saw everywhere inside of it.
“Just don’t what?”
A few seconds passed before she answered. “Just don’t ever leave me again, okay?”
“Okay.”
I didn’t have to think about my answer. It just fell out of my mouth, automatic and natural. Of course I would never leave her again. Not if I could help it, not if I could control what I wanted to control.
“I won’t leave you again, Avery,” I said. “I won’t.”
“Good.” She smiled at me. “I’m glad we have that settled.”
AS ALWAYS, THE Chadwick name came with obligations. Commitments. The endless stack of invitations on a side table in the kitchen proved that. Charity balls, social invitations, high-level fundraising, and parties just for the thrill of it defined our family’s time away from work. Not a weekend passed without at least one event to attend, especially in spring, summer, and fall. Now that we both had entered our twenties, Dad and Linda expected Avery and me to shoulder some of the social burden and attend parties in their place. I’d managed to avoid it since I came home, but an email that morning from Dad insisted that we attend the latest fundraiser for the arts. We had to be seen with the right people and photographed for the right magazines.
I dreaded this. Avery loved it.
“It’s not going to be that bad,” Avery said a few nights later as I drove the Volvo down the Reading Road exit of I-71 and into downtown Cincinnati for the latest summer charity cocktail party. This time, our $50 tickets would raise money for the education side of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. “I went last year. It’s fun.”
“Symphony’s just not my thing.”
“I know. I thought it was boring, too.” Avery turned down the volume on the radio. “But a lot of people our age go to these parties. You’ll see.”
“I saw the guest list on Facebook.” The stoplight ahead of us turned red so I slowed the car. “Grant says he’s going.”
“You checked Facebook? You hate Facebook.”
“I do,” I said. “But I checked it anyway, just for you.”
“Then you saw that half of the social scene is going.”
“But this is just a cocktail party, right?”
“Yeah, small bites, too. I think it’s a Japanese theme?”
She turned up the volume on the Volvo’s stereo at the same time I did and her hand brushed mine. I felt it all the way to my cock. She gave me a sideways glance, but didn’t acknowledge it any further. Meanwhile, on the radio, Lorde sang about double-edged people and dancing in the world alone. Avery must have liked the song because she started rocking back and forth in her seat.
“Great,” I said, trying to stay focused on driving and failing. “So sushi, then?”
“Probably.” Avery turned to me. “Also, the committee asked us to host a small dinner party later this summer at the house. I wanted to turn them down, but Mom wouldn’t let me.”
I raised my eyebrow at her. “I’m sure they only asked us because they knew it would be a slam dunk. They know people will come to a party at our house.”
“Exactly.” She grinned. “They just want to have a party on the terrace.” She hummed a few more bars of the song.
“Do you blame ‘em?”
“Nope.”
“And
it never bothers you that people sometimes just want us around because we carry the Chadwick name?”
“No. Not really.”
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. It might have been two years since I had been to one of these events around town, but I knew the script hadn’t changed much. We’d see the same people we always did: a crowd of well-dressed new money and long-nosed old, along with a mix of people who wanted influence around town and thought shining up to certain names would get it. Sprinkle in a few romantic subplots, and I’d call it another night in the Queen City.
And another night as Spencer Chadwick.
“Let me check the address.” Avery pulled her phone out of her purse and unlocked the front screen. “It’s over on Race Street. That building with all those condos.”
“Got it.”
The light turned green again and I drove the car through a downtown that was just waking up to a summer Saturday night.
After we made an obligatory appearance at the fundraiser, Avery wanted to stop in at 21c Hotel for a friend’s birthday party at their Metropole restaurant. As usual, she was dressed perfectly for this occasion. In the back of Linda’s closet she’d found a long forgotten silver summer sweater dress that still had the $650 Nordstrom price tag hanging from the Missoni label. She’d told me about this that afternoon while I sat by the pool trying to read Dad’s notes about two-year real-estate price projections in Ohio.
Now that Avery wore the dress, I liked the way the knitted fabric accented her small waist. More than once, I also thought about what she’d look like with that dress off her, the material in a heap on my bedroom floor.
Bad form, Spencer. Very bad form.
I also noticed something else about her. She still wore the wooden bracelet I gave her from South Africa, though it didn’t fit with the dress at all. In fact, thinking about it, I saw her wear that bracelet most days.
Interesting.
“You know, AJ,” I said, “You don’t have to wear that bracelet just to make me feel good.”
She looked at it and fingered a few of the beads. “Yeah I do. I like it.”
“With that dress it looks like something a four-year-old made.”