DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!)

by Stephanie Brother

  Isabella: I don’t want to marry you.

  Philip: We’ll see.

  Philip’s father, Pieter: Philip. Put those goddamn apples down before they spoil.

  Philip would usually be juggling fruit or doing tricks on his bike or turning spit into bubbles just to impress her. He’d walk the bags of groceries to the huge house that they lived in at the edge of park slope just to spend as much time with her as he could. When she started school, Philip was the one who volunteered to show her around, introduce her to his friends and make her feel safe.

  Isabella wasn’t ungrateful for what he did for her, and even though she didn’t show it anywhere near as much as Philip did, partly because she liked teasing him and partly because her mother had always told her to be careful of boys and to never give them what they wanted, over the years of their friendship, she began to feel the same way. Philip used to tell her it was because he’d worn her down over the years, and the result of her falling in love with him was inevitable. Isabella used to just smile sweetly and tell him it was because there was no-one else left on the shelf when her time came around to pick.

  They were best friends at eight years old, even though Isabella would have denied it to the death if someone had asked her, boyfriend and girlfriend in secret before they got to middle school, and boyfriend and girlfriend for real, when they left it. They shared their first kiss on a bench in prospect park at eleven, and were pretty much inseparable from then on in.

  There were bad times, of course. There were times that they weren’t together romantically, but even throughout these times, when Philip’s mother died suddenly of an aneurysm, and Isabella’s father lost her job, when Isabella was getting bullied at school, and decided to run away from home, even throughout these times, even if they weren’t together officially, they were there for each other. They were in love, and they were always meant to be, and there was no way that Philip was going to let her slip out of his fingers, now that he had finally got her firmly in his sights.

  Philip Mandrake De Vries came from a family of greengrocers, and a greengrocer was what his father expected him to be. They were Dutch immigrant farmers who’d been in the United States of America for over three hundred years and they had a proud tradition of toiling the land that was expected to be upheld. Isabella didn’t care what Philip was or wanted to be, as long as he was happy and he brought that happiness home to her. Philip, however, had other plans. He hadn’t lied to Isabella when he told her he wanted to buy her a big house overlooking the park. He hadn’t lied to her either when he told her he planned to get a big job in the city and bring home a million dollars. He saw his dad working day in day out, up at the crack of dawn and never in bed before midnight, he saw him scrape away at a life that was always two steps in front of him, and he saw the toll that put on his mother, right up until the day she died. There was no indication the two things were connected, but Philip could never put it out of his mind.

  “We’re better than that”, he would tell Isabella. “I’m better than this”, he would tell his father too.

  The problem was, despite being able to dream bigger than anyone else in the state of New York, Philip was not academically gifted. He failed to make his way properly through high school, through a combination of lack of interest and an inability to apply himself, and ended up refusing to work for his father, while taking what he deemed a sabbatical to work on a series of failed business ideas.

  He could have left school at sixteen and begun to earn an honest wage at his father’s shop, but stubbornness saw him carry on with his studies, in name only, just to be with Isabella. His obstinance and unwavering idealism were qualities that had attracted Isabella to him in the first place, but as the end of her school year grew nearer, and the option for her to continue her studies in a number of different universities across the fifty states presented itself, it became much harder to cope with. Not quite, but it almost became impossible.

  Isabella was as studious as she was beautiful, and while Philip was worrying about how he was going to make his first cool million, drooling over the huge houses that lined every park he had ever set foot in and spending every waking hour he wasn’t with his beloved on business plan after business plan, Isabella’s perfect world began to crumble apart.

  At first she thought it was flu. Later she thought it was because she was drinking too much coffee, or staying up too late or not staying up late enough. She thought it was the wine Philip had stolen from his father’s drinks cabinet, or the way they were having sex. She thought it was everything else but what it turned out to be. It took her a long time to admit to herself what was happening, and then a long time after that to admit it to Philip. She was only eighteen after all. They’d just celebrated their ten year anniversary in the city. She was far too young to understand what it all meant. Schizophrenia. She was supposed to be thinking about which University to go to, which career to pursue, not this. Not which medication they were going to put her on to stop the voices she was hearing in her head. Voices, she would finally accept she could never place the origin of. Never say for sure when they really began. Schizophrenia. It was a word big enough to change the small and perfect world she’d created for herself. It was a heavy word that hung in front of her with malice and spite. It smelt bad, it didn’t taste right, it even looked foreign to her, regardless of how delicately she studied it. More importantly, It was a word that wouldn’t go away no matter how fast she ran. Schizophrenia was there to stay.

  “We’ll get through this”, Philip said, hugging her into him.

  “I’m a freak”, Isabella protested, tears wetting both her cheeks and his shoulder.

  “That makes two of us then”, Philip said. “It takes one to know one.”

  “That doesn’t help, darling.”

  “Do you want me to juggle some apples?”

  “No, I don’t want you to juggle some apples. I want this whole thing to go away. I want it to be a fucking dream.”

  Philip separated himself from Isabella so he could brush the tears away from her face with the yolk of his thumb and look her in the eyes.

  “Look, you were there when mom died, I’m not going anywhere, I promise. We are in this together, like always.”

  Isabella managed a smile.

  “I’m going to be different”, she said. “Bitchy, demanding, moody.”

  “I thought you said you were going to be different?” Philip joked, and then hugged Isabella tightly so she couldn’t slap him.

  “I have to take fucking medication, Philip. I hate taking medication.”

  “If it makes you better.”

  “I’ve read what it does. It numbs everything. It’s going to take away what makes me me.”

  “Honey, I’ve known you for ten years, you can’t take away what makes you you. That would be impossible.”

  “I hope you’re right”, Isabella said. “Jesus, I hope you’re right.”

  “Whatever happens, it happens to us, right? It doesn’t just happen to you. Got it?”

  “Got it”, Isabella said, even though she was thinking ‘I’m the one with Schizophrenia, not you.’

  Chapter 18

  With some money from her parents, and a little bit that Philip had someone managed to cobble together from one of his money making schemes, they found a cheap flat in Coney Island, thinking that being close to the beach would be better for Isabella, packed up their items and were moved, with a little help from Philip’s dad, the summer they both turned nineteen.

  It had been a turbulent year. Isabella had changed medication three times, finally settling on something that seemed best at controlling her mood swings. At times, she seemed like a completely different person, while at others, she seemed as normal and as lucid as she always had.

  Upon advice from her medical team, and despite being offered scholarships to two Ivy league universities, Isabella reluctantly decided to defer until she was in a better place mentally to be able to cope with the strains of moving away
from home and taking on a four year course. This affected her much more than she initially thought it would, and unable to both continue her studies or work, she found herself sitting at home and slowly going mad again through boredom.

  “I’m rotting here”, she would complain to her parents, who were doing everything they could to support her. “And you don’t give a damn.”

  The initial medication made her fat and angry. When it was finally changed she did nothing but spend all day crying and smashing up everything that she owned. She threw plates, kicked a hole in her television and broke her window with a shelf full of school books, she had someone managed to wrench off the wall.

  Through all of this Philip stood beside her. She would hurl insults at him and tell him they were finished. She would cry all night and blame him for her illness. She told him she hated him a hundred times and on a particularly bad night held razor blades against her wrists and told him she would kill herself.

  After Christmas she spent a week in a psychiatric hospital for rehabilitation, during which time she was put on her third different series of medication and which finally gave her some much needed stability. The mood swings stopped, but they were replaced by the numbness she had spent so long trying to avoid, and an apathy that, albeit infrequently, resulted in bouts of depression that would leave her bed bound for days at a time. Philip wanted her put on a different medication again, but Isabella and her parents refused. She could take the depression and the apathy, the lack of appetite and the slovenliness as long as she felt mentally stable. As long as she wasn’t violent or angry or lying in bed crying. As long as the voices stopped.

  She didn’t feel herself, but Isabella had long since forgotten what that really meant anyway. Philip was worried that he was losing her completely, but the doctors said she was showing signs of improvement, and they promised that although the bouts of depression that she was experiencing wouldn’t ever go away completely, they could be certain that over time, and with proper attention, they could be reduced significantly. According to Isabella, it was a satisfactory price to pay, even though Philip wasn’t completely convinced.

  With all this going on, Philip was yet to find a job. It was a source of constant worry for Isabella, especially after they had moved in together. As far as she was concerned, her illness, which was what she called it, having never been in favour of the word ‘condition’, or of simply using the word schizophrenia, was under control. It was being treated in the best way it could be, she felt better than she had done in months and she wanted to think about her future, and their future together, which was why she agreed to move in with Philip in the first place.

  “I told you so.” Philip said, the boxes and bags not even unpacked.

  “What did you tell me?”

  “I told you we’d move in together.”

  Isabella flopped down onto the couch. It was balmy so close to the water, and it was making her tired.

  “You told me you’d buy me a house overlooking the park”, she said sarcastically.

  “Gotta start somewhere”, Philip mused.

  “Honey, sit down for a moment”, Isabella said, her tone changing.

  Philip moved like a shot to the couch. He knew that tone and knew it was best to give Isabella his undivided attention. Isabella took Philip’s hand in hers.

  “Promise me you’ll look for a proper job now.”

  “Honey”, Philip groaned. “Do we have to talk about this now? We haven’t even moved in yet. Little by little, no?”

  Isabella pulled her hand away from Philip’s. She might have been less irascible now under different medication, but Isabella had always had a potent temper and sometimes Philip struggled to work out who was really responsible.

  “I don’t know why you’re so set on not getting a real job. How do you think we are going to continue to pay for this flat if you don’t? My parents said they’d help us out for a while, but only until you get yourself sorted. It’s not like I can, not yet anyway. Look, I don’t care about the big house overlooking the park, I never did. All I want is to get through this and concentrate on the future.”

  “That’s what I’m doing”, Philip protested.

  “Fucking around on computers all day long?”

  “It’s coding”, Philip said, almost apologetically. “I reckon I’m close to something too.”

  “Why don’t you ask your dad again, I’m sure he’ll take you in, even if just for the weekend.”

  “Honey”, Philip complained.

  “I mean it. I can’t fucking cope with this if we haven’t got money coming in.”

  Isabella was up on her feet now. Suddenly she felt stressed and she didn’t know why. Suddenly she was hotter than she had any right to be. The doctors had said to be careful around change, and there was nothing bigger than moving house, especially for the first time. She could feel an episode coming on, but whenever they came, they were like unstoppable forces. She’d have just as much success reversing the polarity of the earth.

  “Fuck”, she said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  It had been a long time since she’d felt like this. A long time trying to convince herself that nothing was coming even though she knew it was. It was like watching a tunnel waiting for a train to come out of it, knowing that one would definitely come but not knowing at what time.

  “Honey, stop”

  Isabella folded her fingers into her palms and pushed them against her temples. Philip was up quickly to try and calm her down, but he too knew that once it had begun, there was little else he could do but let it run its course. Seeing her like this was the most painful thing he had to go through. It was scary for him, which meant it had to be absolutely terrifying for Isabella. There was no predicting the outbursts, how long they would last or how strong they would be. In the first month she had five. In the next six months just three. This was the first since she had changed her medication and seemed to be finally on the road to stability.

  “Argh”, she screamed. “Fuck. Argh. Fuck. I wish you would just fucking listen for once. Just fucking once in your life stop being so fucking selfish selfish selfish me me me and think about us. Is that too much to ask, huh? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO FUCKING ASK, PHILIP?”

  Isabella punched her fist against her head for every word in her last sentence. She was digging her nails into her palms so fiercely she’d already drawn blood.

  “No honey, that’s not too much to ask. Please calm down, please.”

  Isabella’s breathing was ragged and staccato, as though one of her lungs might have had a hole in it. What terrified Philip the most, however, was the detached look sunk so deep in her eyes. The eyes he knew every single nuance of. In these moments, rare as they had been of late, she wasn’t herself. He didn’t know who she was, but he loved her all the same.

  “It’ll be fine-”, was all Isabella heard of Philip’s final attempts to calm her down, before the rest spiraled away in a dark web of confusion. She remembers nothing of punching him so hard she fractured his rib, kicking holes in every single box he’d spent hours packing and carrying to their new, third floor apartment, telling him she hated him, everything that he had ever been and everything that he was ever going to amount to, collapsing on the ground and sobbing so utterly and so completely that she ended up almost vomiting and then finally, when all of her energy had been sucked from her body, being carried to the bed in which she woke up in, completely confused, several hours later.

  Philip was alongside her when she did, sat propped up against a stack of pillows, the weight shifted onto one side and away from his damaged rib.

  “I want to make a baby”, was the first thing that Isabella said, a wide smile and a shower of tears following it.

  Chapter 19

  It didn’t happen that night, or at any point in the following week, but as soon as Isabella got the idea stuck in her head she couldn’t think of anything else. She was obsessed, blinded by what she thought would be the perfect solution to her rapidly decreasing hea
lth and immediately desperate to conceive and begin a family. After the moving in incident, there was a period of relative calm. It was what Philip would refer to as ‘the eye of the oncoming storm’ to his closest friends, where Isabella seemed placid, focused, finally on the way to stability and happiness even. The truth was, she was far from being any of those things, she just got better at hiding what was really going on.

  Without any way to support the child, Philip thought it was a crazy idea, but he loved Isabella with all his heart and just the idea of having a family of their own seemed to have such a positive effect on her, he was ready to begin much earlier than he had originally imagined. If having a baby was what Isabella needed to get better, than a baby they would have. Philip knew he would spend the rest of his life with Isabella, and a family had always been part of that plan. He may not have had a permanent job, but they had an apartment now, paid up in advance for six months by Isabella’s parents, and the more he thought about it, the less reason he had not to indulge her. Besides which, since Isabella’s diagnosis, they’d rarely been intimate and whenever they had, Isabella hadn’t really enjoyed it. Philip was desperate to change that, and making a baby seemed like the perfect way to begin.

  “I love you”, Philip confessed, while he kissed along the delicate lines of Isabella’s clavicle. It was a sensitive area for her, and one Philip loved to exploit. They’d had the best month in ages. Perhaps the best month in the whole of their ten year relationship. For the first time in what seemed like months, Isabella seemed more like herself. She was up early in the morning, she was going for walks in the park, she was cooking and reading again, she was even thinking of doing a series of short evening courses. It was a complete transformation to what had come before and Philip couldn’t have been happier. She hadn’t fallen pregnant yet, but it wasn’t for the want of trying. They were fucking like rabbits. In that one month, they must have fucked more than they had done in all the time leading up to it. Isabella was insatiable, full of wanton desire and ready at the drop of a hat.