STEPBROTHER
WHERE ART THOU?
by
Aya Fukunishi
Copyright © 2015 by Aya Fukunishi
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing, 2015
A Bangkok Nights Publication
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Aya
xxx
They say love and hate are just two sides of the same coin; two poles of the exact same emotion. They say a lot of stuff – whoever they are – and it's mostly grade A bullshit, but on this point they're bang on the money. The distance between cold, icy hatred and burning, head-over-heels, yell-it-from-the-rooftops love is but the thickness of a shadow, and you wouldn't believe how easy it is to switch from one to the other.
Even – especially – when you really don't want to.
Sophia and Ryan couldn't possibly have been any more different than each other, nor come from more different worlds. Sophia, a third generation Sicilian immigrant, had been raised in poverty. Her family hailed from a small farming community towards the south of the island, close to Syracuse on the road to Mount Etna. Her grandmother had abandoned the island following the death of her husband, after the bank had repossessed their land, and she left with almost nothing. When she arrived in New York, heavily pregnant with Sophia's mother and speaking not a word of English, she carried nothing but the clothes on her back, a handful of great recipes and fingertips stained from a lifetime of picking blood oranges.
Things hadn't really changed for the better over the years. Sophia's grandmother always struggled with the language, and with a small child in tow and no family to help out she never got the chance to pull herself out of poverty. She raised Sophia's mother, Isabel, in a tiny basement apartment in Queens, sleeping in the living room while another family of four – immigrants from somewhere in Eastern Europe – crammed into the single bedroom. She scraped a living mending clothes, and there was rarely enough food on the table.
Isabel had grown into a real beauty, and throughout her youth she dreamed of becoming a famous model, earning a fortune and moving her mother into a big house in the countryside. She had the looks for the catwalk, certainly, but lacked any degree of common sense and good judgment. At 18, despite the strong objections of her mother, she married her high school sweetheart, a man who quickly proved himself unworthy of anyone's love. He became an abusive alcoholic, and by the time Isabel reached her early twenties her dreams were long abandoned. She stopped going outside for fear that the neighbors would see the bruises from the regular beatings she received, and when, at the age of 25, she fell pregnant with Sophia she was a nervous, depressed shell of a woman.
Sophia's father died young, predictably, in a late night drunken car accident. His last act on this earth was to plow his rusted wreck through the window of a convenience store in Brooklyn, the front seat of his car filled with empty beer cans. Sophia was four years old at the time, and while she didn't really remember much about her father – her mother had done all she could to protect her from his drunken violence – she clearly remembered the conflicted relief in her mother's eyes in the days and weeks after his death.
After her grandmother died, Sophia and her mother became their own little team. Just the two of them against a world that didn't care a bit about them. Sophia took care of her mother, still traumatized by the abuse she'd suffered, and her mother in return made sure that Sophia had everything she could possibly need, despite that fact that there was rarely enough money to put food on the table.
Sophia eventually grew from a happy, precocious child into a quiet, shy but beautiful young woman, blessed with the smooth olive skin and thick, dark hair of her mother, offset by striking blue eyes that were the only positive legacy left behind by her father. She was also smart as a whip, and at the age of 16 she was invited to complete her studies at the Mitford Academy, an exclusive private school in Manhattan, on a full scholarship.
That's where she met Ryan.
Ryan was... well, he was everything Sophia wasn't. His father was a self-made millionaire, a twice-divorced property magnate who'd built his empire from a single apartment building in Queens to a string of properties in Manhattan. His business acumen, self belief and confidence had made him his first million by the age of 30, and with each passing year his golden touch saw his fortune grow ever greater.
The apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. Ryan was the most confident kid you could ever hope to meet, and he had the abilities to back up his self-assuredness. By the time Sophia arrived at Mitford, a nervous and withdrawn teen, Ryan was the undisputed king of the school. He was the star quarterback of the football team, and after a growth spurt the previous summer he was heavily tipped as the next captain of the basketball team.
But it wasn't just his athletic prowess that set Ryan apart from his peers. With his tall, muscular frame, strong jaw, easy smile and tousled brown hair, every guy at school wanted to be him, and you'd better believe every girl wanted to be with him. He went through girls like most people go through sticks of gum, and even though they all knew that it would end badly – Ryan never stuck with one girl more than a few weeks, and there was rarely a gap between them – all the girls he dated seemed to be happy just to have the opportunity to be with him for a while.
The only thing Ryan seemed to be missing, in fact, was any sort of discipline when it came to his school work. His grades were nothing to write home about, but at Mitford it didn't seem to matter all that much. The school had more than enough brainiacs – Sophia was just one of many – but they didn't have all that many star athletes. It had been made crystal clear to Ryan from an early age that his teachers didn't mind if he slacked off in class so long as he delivered on the court and field, and he was more than happy to take advantage of that leeway. His grade point average was a joke, but he still managed to scrape through his classes thanks to regular slips of the grading pen. It's so easy for a teacher to accidentally write a 'B-' when they meant to write an 'F'.
From the moment Sophia first laid eyes on Ryan she disliked him. There was just something about the guy that nobody else seemed to see, and it infuriated her. It wasn't just that he seemed to coast through life on his money, good looks and athletic skills – though if she was being honest she'd have to admit that she was more than a little jealous that the guy had been handed the world on a plate, while Sophia could barely afford the plate itself.
No, the reason she disliked Ryan was that she could see through his charm. She could see that it was all a smokescreen. It was fake. Even the teachers seemed besotted with him, and the girls would walk through fire to spend a few weeks basking in his reflected glory, but it wasn't real. She knew from his reputation that he'd professed his undying love for a dozen girls in his class, and each of them had ended up single the moment he'd fucked them.
That's the thing that really made her mad: the girls themselves didn't seem all that upset. Sure, they'd cry for a couple of days after he dumped them, but soon enough they'd go right bac
k to trailing after him. Laughing at his jokes, hitting him playfully on the arm, fighting each other for the right to sit beside him in the cafeteria. Sophia just couldn't figure out why they didn't hate him after he dumped them. She couldn't figure out why they didn't despise the guy when they saw him walking the halls hand in hand with his latest girl; why they didn't yell at him in the halls, and try to warn girls away from him. She just didn't get it. It made no sense.
Over the course of the two years she shared Mitford with the golden boy, king of the school and heir apparent to New York city, Sophia took it upon herself to quietly hate Ryan on behalf of all the girls he'd fucked and dropped. She was the founder and sole member of the 'Ryan Sucks' club. She held regular meetings in her head, whenever she saw yet another poor fool follow him through the halls with puppy dog eyes, desperate for his attention. She always tried to blank him whenever he walked by, and if he spoke to her she'd only reply with the briefest of words. She even did her best to keep hating him when he slipped into her fantasies against her will. She never asked for him to pop into her head while she was playing with herself, but whenever he made an appearance she always made sure to imagine herself turning him down, because fuck that guy.
And so, for a while, life ran along as normal. Sophia studied her ass off day and night, desperate to graduate towards the top of her class, win a scholarship and make something of her life, while Ryan coasted through life on his countless blessings, worshiped by all and assured of a free ride to a great college, either on his father's dime or a free ride on a football scholarship.
When graduation day finally came around there were few surprises. Sophia got the grades she needed, along with a partial scholarship for a comparative literature degree at NYU, while Ryan scraped through by the skin of his teeth, which was more than enough to earn a spot at Notre Dame. Sophia returned home to spend the summer helping her mother, Ryan started a summer-long victory lap of the city in an effort to screw everything that moved, and it seemed as if Sophia could finally be free of that irritating, shallow jackass with his annoying good looks and endless charm.
It seemed that way, at least, until her mom told her she'd been dating Ryan's father.
*
“I... I love him, honey. Aren't you happy for me?”
Sophia sat in the middle of the threadbare couch, staring into space with an open mouth. She'd barely spoken a word in the last five minutes.
Her mom looked down to Sophia's arm. “Umm, honey, what are you doing?”
Sophia spoke slowly, as if distracted. “I'm pinching myself, mom. Sometimes it helps me wake up from these weird dreams.”
“Oh, baby girl, stop doing that,” her mom replied, tugging her hand away. “You know this isn't a dream, right?”
Sophia met her mom's eyes for the first time, squinting with disbelief. “Are you sure you're not dreaming, mom? I mean, it doesn't make any sense! How can you be dating Mr Berenger? How did you even meet him? It's not like you guys share the same grocery store.”
Her mom smiled. “Actually, it's all thanks to you, honey. I met him at that parent teacher conference last September. You remember the one, right? They put out that nice little buffet for the parents, and Jack and I reached for the last crab puff at the same time. Well, it kinda went from there, really. We got talking about you kids and... well, you know, I was telling Jack that you seemed to be buried in your books all the time, and I was worried you weren't making any friends. He told me his son was the opposite, and I should count my blessings. It was... it was just fun.” She grinned as her eyes glazed over, remembering the evening. “After that we started meeting up for coffee every week, and it just went from there. It was so nice to find someone my age to talk to, you know?”
Sophia shook her head, trying to block out the words. “But mom, why the hell did you keep it a secret? Why are you telling me now?”
“Oh honey, I just didn't want to tell you until I knew it was serious. I didn't want to bring a new man into our lives, only to have him run off a few months later. You know I only want the best for you, right? I mean, you were so focused on your studies. I didn't want to distract you with my love life.”
Sophia still couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her mom had never kept secrets from her before. “So why tell me now, mom? You've been dating this guy for almost a year. Why now?”
Her mother took a deep breath, and Sophia instantly knew what was coming. She didn't know how, but she knew exactly what was about to come out of her mom's mouth.
“We're getting married!” The words exploded out, as if they'd been building up for months. “Can you believe it? Jack proposed last week! God, I've been bursting to tell you. I don't know how I kept it in this long. I just wanted to wait until you'd graduated so I didn't spoil your big day. Honey, we're going to be a family!”
Sophia struggled to find the right expression, and completely failed to find the right words. Of course she was over the moon for her mother. She'd been alone and unhappy for so long, and now, in her early forties, it had seemed likely that if she was ever going to remarry it would have meant settling for anyone who'd have her. After all, there weren't all that many eligible bachelors on the hunt for a middle aged single mother living in a cramped apartment in Queens.
The fact that she'd managed to bag a millionaire... well, that was just beyond miraculous. Of course her mom was still beautiful – she still drew admiring glances on the street, even dressed in her bargain basement clothes and without a hint of makeup – but it was almost unbelievable that she'd managed to find such a man so far removed from her own social and economic circle. It was a miracle, and if she really loved him Sophia couldn't be happier. She was shocked, but she honestly couldn't be happier.
It was just... Ryan. She'd been so relieved that she'd never have to see that guy again. It's not like she'd obsessed about him, but the thought of him just niggled at her, like a loose tooth she couldn't stop pushing with her tongue. Over the last two years Ryan Berenger had become, in her mind, the embodiment of everything that was wrong with society. He'd become the poster boy for undeserved privilege; the spokesman for the 1%; a God in human form, floating over the skyscrapers of Manhattan with his beauty, money and charm, looking down on people like Sophia and her mom far below, toiling in the dirt. Seeing him every day, strolling through life without a worry in the world, had just reminded Sophia of how hard she'd had to work just to attend the same school he'd been born to attend.
She realized she hadn't spoken for an uncomfortable length of time. Her mom sat beside her, an increasingly worried expression on her face as her daughter stared into space. Finally Sophia moved. She broke out in a forced – but convincing – smile, wrapped her arms around her mom and gave her a hug.
“I'm so happy for you, Mom,” she half-lied. “I'm sorry I was weird, I was just a little surprised, you know? I'm really, really excited for you.”
And the Oscar goes to...
“Oh God, I'm so relieved!” her mom gasped, with tears in her voice. “I thought you were going to be mad at me.” She pulled away from the hug and dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “So listen, I thought it might be a good idea for you to get to know Jack before we start planning all the wedding stuff, and I had an idea. Now I know this might sound a little scary, but just hear me out, OK?”
Sophia's smile faltered a little, and uncertainty crept in.
“See, the lease is up on the apartment next week. You'll be moving into your dorm at the end of the summer, and I'll be moving in with Jack in the city, so I just thought to myself, why not move right in now? It just makes sense, y'know? You'll get to know Jack over the summer, and by the time you head off to college the place will seem like home. So, what do you think?”
Sophia hated the idea, but she covered well. “That... that sounds great, mom! It'll be nice to spend a little time with you guys while I can.”
“That's great! Oh, honey, I'm so glad you like the idea! You'll get to know Jack's son a little be
tter, too.” Her mom patted her on the arm. “Hey, isn't it funny to think you'll be getting a new brother at your age?”
God damn it.
*
Sophia sat on her new bed, surrounded by cardboard boxes and feeling enormously out of place. The moving truck had driven away just an hour earlier, and after a nervous, stilted hug from Jack – all of the nerves coming from Sophia, of course – she'd retired to her new room while her mom and Jack went out for a celebratory dinner. They'd invited her to come along, but Sophia had already been pushed far enough beyond her comfort zone for the day. She didn't think she could take any more weirdness right now.
Jack's place, she had to admit, was really nice. It was a three floor red brick townhouse on Perry Street in the West Village, and while it looked pretty small on the outside it stretched back from the street by four or five rooms. She hadn't explored the house yet, but there were at least six bedrooms, a few living rooms, a library and a kitchen large enough for a dozen chefs. She felt like a total fish out of water, but she couldn't help but wish that her mom had hooked up with Jack when she was younger. To think she'd spent her life in a tiny one bedroom apartment two trains from the city when this place had been here all along. What a waste.
Stepbrother, Where Art Thou? Page 1