What if we were the last human beings left alive? Come to think of it, that man in the tractor yesterday is the only other human being I’ve seen apart from my own family in several days. No wonder I feel some kind of attachment to The Donkey.
It must be all in my head though. As soon as I leave here, and we all head back to reality, I’ll realize what a fool I’ve been. You know, with my catalogue collection of every model shoot he’s ever done, my secret scrapbook of newspaper articles, the secret folders on my laptop of pictures. Yeah. Know your enemy, that’s what I say. Get so close to them you can feel their heartbeat, their blood pulse through their extremities.
You can’t blame me really. And after the other day, I just had to know. I had to know if it was swelling for real or he was putting it on. I had to make sure it wasn’t just socks stuffed down there after all. You should have seen his face when I did it. Shock would not go anywhere near to describing it accurately. I never thought I’d see him like that, with a face that gave the impression he had literally been caught with his pants down.
“What?”
Landon looks at me over the dinner table, trying to work out what I’m thinking.
“Nothing.”
It would be weird enough to work. They do say opposites attract after all, yet when I look at Mom and Marvin it’s definitely a case of like for like. If this is what they are like now, only a year after being together, what will they be like in forty years time? They practically finish each other’s sentences off already so perhaps they’ll just turn into one person. A kind of Marvin Rachel morph. A Marvel. If Landon ever tried to finish my sentences off for me, I’d kick him in the balls. Repeatedly.
Of course, I know he’s just fucking around. If I wasn’t his step sister anyway, I wouldn’t let him get anywhere near me. I know what Landon is like. A love them and leave them kind of guy. A quick fuck and an even quicker exit, before anything can go bad. I don’t even need to ask him to know he’s never had a long term relationship, but I’m going to anyway, just to get under his skin.
“So, Landon, have you got a girlfriend?”
His smile is not an adequate answer, and I’m not going to let him get away with it.
“I think I read somewhere you were romantically involved with a La Perla model. Veronica something wasn’t it?”
Veronica Giuliani. I know exactly who it was, and romantically involved is as much a misnomer as can be.
“Yeah, that kind of sort of didn’t work out all that well.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. You two looked perfect for each other in the photos I saw.”
In the one photo I saw of them arguing outside a McDonald’s drive through.
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Sorry, is this making you uncomfortable?”
“No one likes to talk about their exes, Tilly.”
Oh, right, unless it’s everyone talking about mine.
“I haven’t had much luck with women.”
“Maybe it’ll just take you a little bit of time to find the right one. I mean, look at your father, second time was a charm for him.”
Marvin smiles at my mother in a way that sends shivers down my spine. Thank God they’ve managed to refrain from fucking each other so far. Tonight better not be the night they go at it, although by the looks of Marvin he won’t have enough energy even if Mom wanted it.
“Are you alright, Marvin?”
He doesn’t look all that well, and he hasn’t eaten much food, although that’s not all that unlike him to be fair. He’s pretty stick thin as it is.
“Fine, thank you. I was just wondering when my son might find the right woman for him.”
There he goes again, apparently lost in some other task and following the thread of our conversation completely.
“Well, it isn’t for the want of trying is it?”
“Hey now, hold on. Just because I like women doesn’t mean that’s a negative thing.”
“You like them for a day and then you choose another one.”
“Not always, no. I get that more from the women I happen to end up with, actually. That love them and leave them kind of reputation I’ve got? Completely unfair. The papers made that up to sell more copies.”
“No, ok, that would mean you’d have to love them first, right?”
“Some people aren’t looking to settle down, Tilly, not until they find the person they want to do that with.”
“And you haven’t found that person in, what, like, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred-?”
“Sometimes you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs.”
“With long legs, bronzed skin and big tits.”
“Tilly!”
“Not all of them, some of them had small tits, and others even had tits as small as yours.”
“That’s enough about breasts, thank you.”
It makes me laugh that Mom can’t even say it.
“Maybe you’re just looking in the wrong place.”
“Maybe the wrong place is exactly the place I should be looking.”
I am determined not to be the first one to let my eyes drop, but Landon starts pulling faces and I can’t help but laugh. I silently tell him he’s an asshole and he gives me a look that tells me he likes being told so.
Three hundred may be an exaggeration, but it’s got to be somewhere close to that figure. Sometimes two at a time, at least one time up to three, but even though there have been countless stories over the couple of seasons he’s been in the limelight, not a single person has come forward and accused him of cheating. Landon Maddox may be a womanizer, but he’s a chivalrous one at that.
I guess if you don’t do proper relationships, you don’t have anyone to cheat on.
After dinner we sit for a while on the decking, before the drop in temperature pushes us all back inside. We have the same problem as before, too many people for not enough seats. This time I push Landon over and squeeze myself into the sofa next to him. I think he’s surprised, and a little bit pleased that I seem to have gotten over my fear of closing the physical gap between us.
I can feel his leg twitch nervously next to mine, before he rearranges himself to try and give me a little room, then changes his mind and opens his legs fully again, squashing me into the armrest.
“Landon.”
“You’d be more comfortable sitting up on the arm.”
“I’d be more comfortable if you moved up a bit.”
“Why don’t you just sit on the floor like you’ve done up until now. I know you want to be close to me, but this is pushing it a little too far.”
Sat next to him like this, and looking at our two bodies together, I realize for the first time how big he is. I’m a petite girl anyway, but Landon is like twice the size of a normal person. I don’t mean he’s fat either, or all that muscly, or even all that tall, but the combination of all those things, and perhaps the illusion of a smaller than average sofa, makes him look enormous. Naturally, I can’t help but think about his dick and immediately start to go red.
“It’s hot in here, isn’t it?”
Landon gives me the side eye.
“No.”
Any more tightly packed in and that T-shirt would rip. With arms like that around me I couldn’t fail to sleep well. You know, right after.
“Are you feeling alright, Tilly, you’ve gone quite red.”
Trust Mom to pick up on it.
“Fine, just a bit hot, that’s all, you know, squashed into the corner here I can hardly breath.”
Landon makes a token effort to move to the side, but to be fair there isn’t much else he can do.
“Why don’t you take a cold shower, that ought to cool you off.”
I need to stop thinking about him like I am, you know, in that way that will never happen. I guess it must be because of the close proximity, and the several months of detailed study of every aspect of his persona. Then there’s the subtext of course, and the looks he gives me, and the things he says to me
in passing, and the outrageous flirting masked as something else entirely. Unless I’m just seeing things I want to see that is, but that would be ridiculous. No one gets Landon Maddox for keeps, I know that. Especially not his step sister. Especially not the girl that hates him more than anyone else in the whole world. I mean, why would I want him anyway?
I hate his sexy face, his thick arms, his perfect smile and his big, swinging dick more than anything. I hate that I can’t have him, and I hate that he thinks I want him in the first place.
Why did I have to end up with God’s gift to women squeezing me out of space on my vacation sofa, and making me sleep underneath a dining table in the living room on a mattress as thin as a roll of toilet paper? What did I do to have to put up with the way he makes my body gooey, my panties soaking wet and my pussy throb? That wasn’t in the script at all.
I was supposed to hate him, not the other way round. Oh, fuck, is this what this is? This ridiculous fucking sensation that feels like it’s crippling me, either when he’s here or when he’s not? Is that what this is?
If it is, what the hell do we do? Ignore it, is the best advice I can give myself. Ignore it and it’ll go away. I must be sick or confused from lack of sleep. It, this, it can’t be real.
Thank God he’s sworn off it, thank God we’re step siblings, and more than anything else, thank God we aren’t here on our own. God knows what would happen if the matching bird-watching nerds weren’t around to keep an eye on our every move. I might even be tempted to jump in that jacuzzi, bathing costume or not.
“I think I’m going to be a little sick.”
“Dad?”
Marvin politely excuses himself from the small cluster of confined space that makes up the living room, takes the short journey across to the bathroom, never seemingly in a hurry, before emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl in systematic fashion.
Landon and I look at each other. I look at Mom. Mom looks at Marvin.
“Mom?”
“Marvin?”
Yeah, alright, he looked a little bit peaky at dinner time, but I didn’t expect this. Not the first session, nor the three that come after it. When he’s finally done, he returns to the living room as slowly as he left it and takes his place again in his armchair. It must be half a minute before he speaks again.
“Sorry, it must have been something I ate.”
No shit.
When the shock has finally melted away, Mom swings into action. Tylenol are found, offered and refused, paracetamol too. Marvin accepts a glass of water, but refuses to go to bed. He insists he is ok, but Mom, Landon and I are all concerned. It’s come out of nowhere.
“You’re going green”, Landon says, standing above him.
“You are a bit green, Marvin”, Mom agrees.
“I’m fine. It must have been what we ate at lunch. Maybe the eggs.”
“I ate eggs and I’m fine.”
“Maybe the tuna then.”
“It could be the sun.”
“It could be the sun, it has been hot today and we were out for quite a while in it.”
“Why don’t you go to bed, you’ll feel better in bed.”
Marvin checks his watch. He holds it up for us all to see. The time, quite clearly, is not the time he usually goes to bed. It’s barely nine o’clock.
“I’ll go to bed at nine thirty. I’m fine, really, I’m better now.”
This seems like the most Marvin has said all week.
“That was some effort back there. I hope you’ve left that sucker clean.”
“I hope it wasn’t the tuna.”
Mom goes instantly to check it, throwing out what remains just in case.
“Well, that was a bit exciting, wasn’t it? Who needs TV with Dad painting the bathroom with his barely digested food.”
“Thank you, Landon. I don’t think we need a reminder.”
“So, what are we doing tomorrow?”
What other excitement have I got to look forward to? Another close encounter with Landon, or a masterclass of his in how to be a douchebag?
“We could try and find a bar or something.”
“Not with Tilly you won’t, she’s not old enough.”
Landon and I catch eyes and smile at each other.
“She can have a coke.”
“Ass-hole.”
“Anyway, we have to see how Marvin is in the morning. That might limit us on what we can do.”
“I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Mom doesn’t look all that convinced, and Marvin isn’t all that convincing.
I take the opportunity to drag my mattress from Landon’s room during the lull in conversation that follows. It takes me a few minutes to ease myself out of the chair, a feat that is complicated because Landon wants to see me struggle, and eventually I have to put my hand on his thigh to lever myself out.
He’s sniggering when I finally manage it, somehow satisfied he’s got me to work for it.
After two days barely sleeping, the last thing I want to do is wrestle through another night here in the living room, especially if Marvin might be passing through to empty himself in the bathroom, no matter how politely he does so, but I’m scared of what might happen if I choose the other option and sleep in the same room as Landon.
“Going to bed already?”
“Thinking about it.”
“At quarter past nine?”
“I don’t know if you have realized this yet, but we are in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing to do after the sun goes down.”
“There is nothing to do when the sun’s up either.”
I take to the armrest like Landon suggested before. It is just as I expected, extremely uncomfortable.
“There is no such thing as boredom, only boring people.”
“Thanks, Mom, for that insight, but if there’s nothing to do, there’s nothing to do.”
“There’s plenty to do! You could read, talk to each other, play games. When we were kids, we used to play board games for hours. The trouble with you lot is that you’re too reliant on your cell phones. That and the internet.”
“How else is anyone meant to communicate with each other?”
“The proper way. That’s probably why you two can’t find proper relationships.”
I have to bite my tongue to not mention my Mom’s first marriage, built on a healthy basis of communication.
“You’re probably right, Rachel.”
I give Landon a weird look for that comment, wondering where he’s going to go with it.
“I mean the internet really is just full of pornography and people pretending to be something their not. Isn’t that right, Tilly?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t know about people pretending to be one way when they’re thinking about exactly the opposite?”
There’s that subtext again, as bright as the sun.
“We never had so much pornography when I was growing up. I mean, we had it obviously, but not like the stuff you get nowadays.”
“Um, how do you know that exactly, Mom?”
“I am aware of what goes on, Tilly. I may be older but I’m not past it just yet.”
Again I have a disconcerting shiver running right down my spine. The last thing I want to think about is my mother searching for big dick pictures on the internet. Maybe that’s what gets her and Marvin off. A cup of coffee, a long walk in a nature reserve and then a four hour session of the finest dick pics the internet can provide.
“Are you alright, Tilly? You’re turning your face up.”
“I’m fine. I’m going to go to bed I think, I’m tired.”
Landon sighs.
“It’s only nine thirty. What is everyone seventy or something?”
“Nine thirty? Well, that’s me then.”
Marvin eases himself out of what might have been a catatonic state, before easing himself out of his chair with just as much aplomb, before, finally, easing his way across the living ro
om floor towards the bedroom. He does not look well at all.
“I guess that’s me too.”
I know Landon’s looking at me even before I turn to him and catch his gaze.
“Well, that’s just me and you then, Sis.”
I point to his door.
“That is you right there, and this is me right here, Bro.”
“I’m not ready to go to bed yet.”
“Tough.”
“Come on, you can get all cozy, I’ll read you a bedtime story.”
“You know how to read?”
“Monopoly?”
“Bed.”
“Poker?”
“Landon!”
“Jeez, alright, I’m going.”
Just four more days to go. Four more days of pretending that I don’t want something and beginning to realize more and more I desperately do.
Landon pisses quietly against the porcelain. He cleans his teeth, washes his face, clicks out the light and disappears into his room.
A paper thin wall separates his bed from mine, and I’ve never felt more strongly that I wished for all the world that it didn’t.
Four.
Tilly
I am asleep for what must be three hours at the very most. When I’m woken, firstly by the noise of Marvin shuffling slowly across the living room floor, and then secondly and unequivocally by the sound of him vomiting fiercely into the toilet bowl, I’m lifted out of a dream about Landon. I’m at one of his games, amongst all of the technical staff at the edge of the field, cheering him on from the sidelines. There is nothing that indicates it, but I know we are married. The whole world knows it too - Landon and I have become a famous couple in the unexplainable confines of dream reality - and not only does the whole world know who we are, they approve of our union. They like us. They know it makes sense that we are together, despite the differences in our personalities and the fact that we are step siblings. We are a power couple.
SWOLLEN: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 16