Stepbrother Games

by Jessie Valentine

  “You totally are, you literally get any girl you want.”

  “What can I say? It’s a gift.” Zane boasts.

  “Hah, let’s not get carried away, Troy,” Ben interrupts, “he can’t get any girl.”

  “Oh, whatever. You’ve said that shit since freshman year, Ben. Wasn’t true then and it’s still not true now.” Zane doesn’t sound pissed off or anything, just sure of himself.

  “I’m afraid I must agree with our friend Zane here,” Troy pipes in, “might as well be a professional athlete he gets so much pussy.”

  Zane and Troy laugh, but Ben doesn’t.

  “Of course he gets a lot of pussy, but none of it is a real challenge, he gets pussy from easy girls.”

  “Hey! Don’t call them easy.” Zane sounds offended.

  “I’m just saying you might have a harder time with someone who was more out of reach,” Ben’s chuckling. He sounds challenging and intense, like he’s trying to stir up something.

  “What are you purposing?” Troy asks, buying into what Bens saying perfectly.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, pretending to think about it for a few moments.

  I roll my eyes again. Were Troy and Zane really that dense? Ben was clearly playing them; he already had something up his sleeve.

  “I don’t know,” he continues after a second, “I mean, I guess if you really wanted to prove you can get any girl there is one way to do it.”

  Oh, I’m sure that just came to him out of nowhere.

  “Whatever it is, I’ll do it,” Zane announces.

  I sigh softly, what a fool.

  “I pick the girl, and you have a month to get her to sleep with you, and none of that stupid 1st or 2nd base bullshit, you have to actually sleep with her. “

  Troy laughs. “Oh, come on, that’s the stupidest-“

  “Challenge accepted!” Zane cuts Troy off.

  “WHAT?” Troy asks, clearly as shocked as I am by this new development.

  “Great,” Ben says, ignoring Troy. “I’ll pick the girl, and you have a month to get her to sleep with you, and then you have to text her in front of us talking about it so you can prove it actually happened.”

  “And if I do this then you’ll admit once and for all, to anyone, that I can get any girl I want?” Zane asks, an eager tone in his voice I’ve never heard before.

  God, did he care about being the best that much? Was it really that important to be top dog when it came to that type of stuff? It was disgusting if it was, and kind of sad, too.

  “Yes,” Ben agrees. “If you pull it off, I’ll never doubt you again.”

  “This is so stupid,” Troy tries again, but his voice sounds defeated, even to me, like he knows whatever he says is going to be ignored either way. That was another thing I had learned about Zane in my ease dropping days; once he decided on something that was pretty much it. There was no way of talking him out of it. He came off as one of the most stubborn people I had ever met.

  “Deal.” Zane sounds cheerful, like this is the best news he’s gotten in a long time. “I’d get to work thinking about who the lucky girl is. The sooner I can get started the better.”

  “Oh, you can get started right away. I already know just the girl for the job.”

  “Great,” Zane says, all chipper. “Who is she?”

  “Kayla James.”

  I practically choke on the breath I didn’t realize I was holding in.

  I was Kayla James.

  Chapter 3

  Ben was such an asshole. He had planned this. He knew that I was going to be the girl he picked all along. He roped Zane into it only to give him the worst task of all time. This was such a disaster. Ben was crazy, absolutely nuts.

  “You’re fucking crazy, man, you’re absolutely nuts.”

  For once Zane and me are on the same page, and I feel thankful that he jumped inside of my head and stole my thoughts.

  “Hey, you’re the one who said you could make any girl I picked sleep with you, and that’s the girl I pick.”

  “It’s his fucking stepsister,” Troy says, like maybe Ben forgot or something. “He can’t sleep with his stepsister, that’s nasty. You must be in to incest or something. Fucking nasty.”

  “It’s not incest, dumbass, they aren’t really related.”

  “He’s right, we’re not, but I can’t sleep with my stepsister, that’s all kinds of fucked up. We live together and shit, I don’t want to have to see the girl I’m hitting it with all the time, I like my space. You know, do what I have to, then send them on their way.” Zane doesn’t sound as angry as I thought he was. In fact, if you ask me, he should be angrier.

  I mean, Ben was being pretty ridiculous.

  “That’s what makes it the ultimate challenge,” Ben says. “Come on, I can’t make it easy for you. If I made it easy for you then it won’t be for sure. I need to be absolutely positive that you really can get any girl you want.”

  Wow. Listen to him trying to justify his reasons for picking me. He’s such an idiot. Like Zane would ever fall for that.

  “That’s true,” Zane says.

  Wait, what?

  “But still… Kayla? She’s so…”

  “Ugly?” Ben offers up helpfully.

  I feel a little water instantly well up behind my eyes, but I push it back, refusing to allow myself to cry over what’s happening right now. I needed to control myself. One false sound and my cover could be blown.

  “No, not ugly,” Zane says, “just… so… weird.”

  “She’s so weird,” Troy agrees. “She always has her nose in a book, even in the halls, it’s super weird. Like why can’t you just wait a few seconds until you sit down, you know?”

  “That’s not what I mean, asshole. I just mean that she’s in her own world. She barely even pays me any mind. Like I don’t even feel like she lives here sometimes, she’s too busy avoiding me, it would be a little hard to seduce someone I never see.”

  Zane’s right. I do avoid him, but it’s because he makes me extremely uncomfortable. I feel like I want to grab him and rip his clothes off every time I see him. Why would I want to put myself through that when I can never have him? I wasn’t stupid; I knew what he thought of me. I knew Zane’s type, and I definitely wasn’t it.

  ‘That’s true,” Troy’s saying, “I noticed that she’s barely ever around when I’m over, and I never see her with any friends so…”

  I had friends! And yeah, you never see me because I’m too busy spying on you and your friends, idiot.

  “Well, then I’d get started if I was you, Zane. I mean, you’re the one who said you could get any girl to sleep with you, but if you can’t just say that…” Ben trails off, like he could care less if Zane actually goes through with it or not, when in reality he’s hoping that Zane will say he won’t do it so he can win.

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it,” Zane ponders. “I’m just trying to decide if it’s worth the effort or not. I mean, dude, it’s like, my stepsister,”

  “Well, if you don’t think you can do it, just say it.”

  “Oh, I can do it.”

  “Okay, so you’re going to do it then?” Ben challenges.

  “Of course he’s not going to do it,” Troy says. “Some challenges aren’t worth the risk.”

  “I’ll do it,” Zane announces. “And I’ll probably do it in way less than a month. Come on, she lives with me, once I get her to stop avoiding me the opportunity will be constant.”

  “So, we have a bet?” Ben asks.

  “No!” Troy says.

  “Yes!” Zane says.

  The sound of Zane and Troy shaking on it follows.

  It’s only then in the darkness of my tiny surroundings that I finally let the first tear escape from my eye and drip down my cheek.

  I hated him.

  ***

  “It was the most humiliating thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life,” I hiss into my cell phone, cracking the door of my room and peekin
g down the hallway to make sure Zane is nowhere in sight. I had been hiding in my room the entire afternoon and night, telling my mom I had too much homework to eat dinner with them. Which is code for me crying like a fool in my bedroom for hours. I hated him, I couldn’t believe he would agree to do that to any girl, especially one he lived with.

  “Well, duh, they’re complete assholes, Kay. Like they honestly are so heartless sometimes, it’s one of the reasons I had to get away from them,” my friend Emily says from the other line of the phone. “I really can’t believe Zane would do that though, like, that’s super low, even for him. Of all people I would have thought he would have stood up to Ben.”

  I had called Emily right away; super nervous about what the hell had just went down in the basement. I knew I could trust Emily, we had only become friends a year earlier, but we literally told each other everything. She even knew about how I would spy on Zane and his friends. She always knew exactly what I was talking about when I told her what I had over heard. That’s because Emily used to be one of them. One of the popular kids, that is.

  Up until about a year ago it was completely normal for Emily to be hanging out with Zane and his friends on the weekends. She was accepted and loved by them, but Emily made the decision to leave most of them behind. She still talked to a select few, but not like she did. She told me seeing the way they treated people and how awful they could be really started to get to her. She found herself starting to think that it was okay, or normal. She told herself she never wanted to be like that, and so had better get out, and fast.

  And that’s just what she did.

  I was in one of her art classes. She sat next to me, and the rest is kind of history. What Troy had said wasn’t true; I did have friends, but I could understand why he would think I didn’t. I had a small group of girls I talked to and so did Emily, but for the most part we clung to one another.

  The truth was that after my dad died I had kind of shut down for a while. By the time I was ready to talk or hang out with my friends again it just felt like we were all in different places. Like maybe we had out grown one another or something. Emily was the first friend I had made after my father died. It felt nice developing a friendship with someone who liked me for who I was now, now who I was then.

  “Well, he didn’t! “ I hiss. “He seemed all too happy to make a bet on weather his pathetic ugly stepsister would have sex with him or not!”

  “Stop that,” Emily reassures me. “You aren’t pathetic or ugly at all! They’re the pathetic ones! Look what they have to do to make themselves feel good about themselves, it’s horrifying.”

  “It’s just embarrassing,” I say. “It’s like they wanted to find the ugliest loser in school and I was the first person that popped into their head.”

  “That’s not true, Kay, Ben’s all about games. The only reason he picked you is because you’re Zane’s stepsister. Trust me, I used to date the kid, I know how he works.”

  I shutter at the thought. “I can’t believe you ever saw anything in him!”

  “Hey, I was a freshman, alright? I didn’t know any better,” she says, like this should totally justify everything.

  “Well, whatever, I hate him, and I hate Zane.”

  “That goes without saying,” she laughs. “What are you going to do about it, though?”

  I sigh. “I’m going to deal with it head on. Tell him I know about his plan and he can just forget it. Then I’m going to tell him exactly what I think about him and what a complete monster he is!”

  I’m answered with silence on the other side of the phone.

  “Emily?”

  “That’s one way to go about it…”

  “That’s the only way to go about it! What’s the alternative? Let Zane run around trying to seduce me for a month?”

  “Exactly.”

  Wait, what?

  “Wait, what? I ask.

  “I said exactly,” she continues, “how great would it be to beat them at their own game? Make him chase you around for nothing. You can make him do all these crazy things and then when the time is almost up you can tell him you knew the entire time! It would be epic!”

  Was she crazy? There was no way I could do that. I could barely get out a full sentence around Zane as it was. How the hell was I supposed to play along with his sick game for a full month?

  “Hello! I can’t even talk to him! How the heck could I ever pretend that I was actually getting seduced by him?”

  “I could help you!” She sounds excited now, like this is actually a good idea and not the worst thing she could have come up with. “I know that group in and out. It would be a cake walk getting him to think that you actually believed in what he was saying with me by your side!”

  “But doesn’t that make us no better than them?” I ask. “Trying to beat them at their own sick game?”

  “No,” she says slowly. “It makes us way better than them, we’re taking karma into our own hands.”

  I don’t say anything,

  “If you don’t do it because of how awful they are or because they have it coming, do it for yourself, and for every other girl they even think of pulling something like this on. I guarantee that they will think twice before they ever consider doing this kind of thing to anyone ever again, if they even consider it.” She’s breathing kind of heavy now, like the thought of us taking matters into our own hands and reversing things on them is overwhelming her.

  It’s not until I feel my heart beating faster in my chest that I realize it’s overwhelming me too.

  “I don’t think I would be able to pull it off,” I tell her honestly.

  “I’ll help you,” she assures me.

  “It’s not that simple, I-“ the door to my bedroom swings open and Zane stands there looking down at me like it’s not a big deal that’s he’s here in my room, looking at me.

  I freeze, completely shocked and unaware of what the hell I’m supposed to do now.

  “Kayla? Kayla? Hello?” I can hear Emily saying loudly from the other side of the receiver, but it fades away. Almost like background noise and I hit the end button on the call. I would have to explain later.

  Zane looks effortlessly sexy, like always. He’s wearing a pair of sweatpants and a gray t-shirt that shows off his toned arms and tight stomach in all the right places. I let my eyes travel up his body and find myself short on breath. This is what I meant when I said I had trouble getting a sentence out around him.

  His dark hair is wet, like he just got out of the shower.

  His blue eyes search mine and he raises his eyebrows. “Who was that?”

  His eyes travel around my room, taking in the pink walls and girly bedspread. I realize that he’s never actually been inside my room before. He’s looked in through the doorway before if he needed to call me to dinner, or something, but he’s never actually come in to hang out, or anything, before. It makes me uncomfortable and I immediately curse myself for forgetting to lock the door after I peeked outside of the door looking for him moments earlier.

  I look down at my phone like I’m just now realizing I was even having a conversation. “That… that was… that was…”

  “A guy?” Zane walks inside my room now, taking in the surroundings. I feel my face start to turn red as his eyes graze over a few of my bras and underwear that are hanging on the handle of my closet door. This was so humiliating.

  “Yeah,” I say, paying more attention to where his eyes are than to his question.

  “Yeah?” He raises his eyebrows at me.

  Shit, what had he even asked me? I hadn’t been paying attention.

  “Yes. I mean no. I mean, what do you want?”

  Zane smirks the same cocky smile I’ve seen him smirk so many times before. Only this time I was watching it up close and not from afar. This time it was directed toward me, not some random girl I didn’t really know. “What? I need an excuse to come and see what’s up with my sister.”

  I cringe when he calls me that. It
had always been super weird to me, but knowing about the bet somehow made it just down right creepy. Who goes around calling someone their sister when they plan on trying to have sex with them in the future? Zane was all kinds of fucked up.

  “I’m not your sister,” I point out. I find myself crossing and uncrossing my legs in an attempt to get comfortable, like that’s even possible.

  Zane notices and amusement creeps into his eyes. “Nervous?”

  I uncross my legs one last time and sit up straight. “No. Why would I be?”

  He moves closer to the bed and sits down next to me, his leg grazes mine when he does, and I feel a shot of electricity travel through my body. Zane turns his body so he’s facing me, not making any effort to move his leg from practically on top of mine. I’m sitting straight ahead, facing the door, trying to not let my body overheat from the contact.

  I can feel his eyes searching my face, taking in every inch of my skin. I refuse to look back at him. I feel extremely uncomfortable, so I can only imagine how uncomfortable I must look. I want to move away from him, I want to break contact with him, but I’m stuck there, unable to move.

  I’m trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to find the right words to let him know that I know exactly what he’s doing and he can stop. To let him know that no matter what happens I’m not going to have sex with him. To let him know that this was one bet he was going to lose; no matter how hard he tried to win.

  I know I need to gather my courage up and just do it, but it’s hard. I hated the person I turned into around him; all weak and mushy. Like he had this power over me when in reality he had nothing on me. No power, no control, nothing. But why did I get so tongue tied and helpless when I was around him? Because you want him the voice in the back of my mind informs me, but, as always, I choose to ignore it.

  You need to tell him, you need to stand up for yourself. You can do this. Just find the words. Just find the words. I’m giving myself a pep talk when I look up and see my mom standing in the doorway of my bedroom, looking in curiously on Zane and me.