Quid Pro Quo: A dark stepbrother romance

by Nenia Campbell

  “Are you saying I'm high-maintenance?”

  “No,” he said. “That's why I said no offense.”

  Their drinks came and jay took a long sip of hers. The alcohol hit her like a hammer and she leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “What happened to the rest of our group?”

  “Well—Jordan is dating some hot French guy twice her age who treats her like his little sugar baby when he isn't spiriting her off to the French Riviera or Maui. She posts pictures of her shopping hauls on her blog and I hear she's being sponsored by Escada now.”

  Quentin scrolled through his phone and held up a pic. Jay recognized a slightly older Jordan on the arm of a very attractive-looking guy with silvery hair who looked like a less-grizzled Gerard Butler. “Wow,” said Jay. “He is cute.”

  “Lucky cunt.” Quentin flipped his phone around, earning himself another glare from the woman at the next table. “Let's see. Angie does makeup videos now on YouTube. They're not bad but she's always trying to get people to follow her on Facebook and it comes off as a little thirsty. Clary just finished up at Santa Barbara where she met all the right people, and now she's interning at some ritzy social media website in Los Angeles and seems to spend every weekend clubbing in Malibu.”

  He leaned back in his chair with his drink, slinging an arm over the back. “And then Michael, well, you know—he's working for daddy. Bulldozing fields to develop shit. Malls, probably. I hear he still asks about you. By which I mean, he asked me about you, You're the one who got away. I'm honestly surprised nobody snapped you up.”

  Jay laughed a little nervously. “I'm meeting him for drinks, too.”

  “Drinks-drinks? Or, like, you-and-me drinks?”

  “Which answer will make you pick up the tab?”

  “You shameless flatterer.” Quentin grinned. “I'd date you in a heartbeat. Whatever. Do something about it or don't. I'm just saying, he's still willing and available.”

  “Maybe I should hold out for the hot French millionaire,” Jay deadpanned.

  “Sorry, Jay, but you don't exactly scream trophy wife—unless it's a trophy for trivia night. God, can you imagine. Picture a show where women have to answer Jeopardy questions to date the bachelor. But would that be empowering or exploitative? I'll have to think about that and draft up a proposal.”

  “For a thesis?”

  “No, Jay. For an agent. Academics get jack.”

  Their food came and Quentin immediately started savaging the bacon like it was going out of style. Jay blew on her soup and took a sip. It was good—nutty and sweet, warming her to her toes. They didn't eat much food like this at home. If it couldn't be seared or turned into some kind of pasta, Damon had very little interest in eating it.

  “So what's new with you?” Quentin asked, between bites. “Didn't you just graduate?”

  “Yes, with highest honors from one of the best universities in the entire country—and I still can't get a job anywhere. My last job was working at a comic store as the literal only non-male cashier and creeps kept coming in and asking if I was one of the collectibles. I thought geeks were supposed to be nice. That was why I took the job.” She glanced at Quentin, whose smile became a little subdued. “I don't suppose your dad is hiring anyone at the hotel?”

  “Sorry, babe. You know I'd put in a word for you, but times are tough.”

  “Yeah,” Jay said glumly, taking another sip of her drink. “Tell me about it. I feel like I've applied everywhere in town. I never thought I'd be living at home again after graduation.”

  “At least you live in a mansion,” Quentin pointed out. “Maybe try name-dropping your stepfather some more. He still has most of this town in his pocket—it might help you get a job.”

  No fucking way am I turning to him for help. “Maybe.”

  “How's the rest of your family? I've seen Nick around with his friends. Is he off to school or is he planning to slum around like Dave and peddle designer weed or—?”

  “My mom and stepfather are exactly the same as they were before I left,” said Jay. “Damon and Nick are off on some sexist boys' trip to Vegas and my mother is moping around because she wasn't invited and thinks my stepfather is going to have an affair with a cocktail waitress. And Nick's off to Stanford in the fall but he's been—” Jay hesitated. “He's been acting really strange.”

  Quentin's eyebrows shot up. “Strange how?”

  “Well . . .” Jay took another sip of her drink. “I think . . . he might . . . have a crush on me.”

  “Nick does?” Quentin choked on his drink, thumping his chest. “Your stepbrother, Nick? Isn't he half your age?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Jay hissed, taking another bracing sip of her lemon drop. “Half my age would be eleven, which would not only be disgusting, but also illegal, you freak. Nick's only four years younger, but it's still not a great look. He's still practically a kid and I don't know what to do about it.”

  “Well, there's one thing you can do about it,” Quentin said dryly.

  “I'm serious,” Jay said, glaring. “It is freaking me out. I've been hiding in my room.”

  “I bet you're the first girl who's ever run away from Nicholas Beaucroft. You remember how girls were always throwing themselves at him back in high school. People used to take bets on who he'd finally date.”

  Do you really hate me, Jay?

  “I remember.”

  “Don't sweat it, Jay. It's probably just an innocent crush.”

  Jay pressed her face into her hands. Remembering how she'd been cornered between him and his father and the hot brush of his skin against her arm. Remembering the way he'd looked at her when he'd taken her photograph and said, that's the look. “I don't think so.”

  “Well, it's not like it's incest,” said Quentin. “There's no law that says you can't fuck him.”

  One of the coiffed ladies summoned a waiter. “Excuse me, can we be seated at another table?” Jay heard their leader say, before dropping her voice confidingly and pointing at Quentin.

  The water turned. “Excuse me,” he said gravely, “but I'm going to have to ask you both to finish up and leave.”

  “Oh,” said Quentin. “Sure, no problem.” The waiter left and Quentin tilted his head towards the smug-looking coiffed woman. “Ms. Yates, is that you? You check in all the time at the Bayview with your twenty-year-old son—I'd recognize you anywhere. I just think it's so sweet when kids stay close to their parents as adults. So many of them aren't attentive to their parents.”

  He dropped his napkin on his plate, strolling out of Accia, arm-in-arm with Jay. When she looked over her shoulder, she thought “Ms. Yates” looked rather flushed and defensive.

  “Let me guess,” said Jay. “She doesn't have a twenty-year-old son.”

  “Never seen her before in my life,” Quentin said cheerily. “But I heard her introduce herself to the waiter when she decided to rat us out, and what goes around comes around, my sweet, Jay-Jay, and now all of her snooty friends think she's getting pounded by her boy-toy at my hotel.”

  “I can't believe you got us kicked out of Accia,” Jay sighed. “What am I going to do?”

  “Find a new restaurant. Oh, you meant about your stepbrother? Don't fuck him. It's too weird.”

  “Thanks, Quentin,” she said flatly. “Where would I be without you?”

  “Probably still inside the restaurant, pondering your future as a quasi-incestuous cougar.”

  Jay hit him on the arm.

  “Lawsuit,” said Quentin.

  “I hate you so much.”

  “Everyone does.” Quentin stroked her arm. “Except you, baby cakes. Come on, let's grab coffee.”

  ▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

  His father had apparently paid for two hours, so Nick was able to end the session with a leisurely blowjob. “Come back and see me sometime,” Ivy said in a low voice, right as he was buckling his pants. Even though he was satisfied, it sent a pleasant current rippling through him.

  “Maybe,” he said
noncommittally, not wanting to seem too eager. The sex had been good, but thoughts kept intruding—that the color of her light eyes was too flat, that her perfume was too sweet, that her voice had too much fry in it. That none of this was enough.

  Suddenly, he felt very ready to leave.

  Straightening his clothes, Nick walked down that tiled hall to the reception area, which was now empty except for the man at the desk. He peered out through the one-way glass at the parking lot, but Vlad was standing outside the empty car, smoking. Apparently, his father had also decided to indulge.

  Nick found himself wondering whether his father had ever been to this place before and whether he'd ever fucked Ivy. The thought made him feel a little sick, although he supposed Ivy probably fucked a lot of men. Maybe even thousands.

  He wondered how many guys Jay had fucked.

  “I'm going for a walk down the road,” Nick tossed off over his shoulder at the receptionist. “If my dad asks.” He didn't stick around to see if the man had heard or even listened.

  It was hot and dusty and there wasn't much to see outside. The ground was cracking as if the earth itself was splitting apart beneath his feet like a rotten melon, choked with native weeds and grasses like Indian ricegrass and globemallow. In the distance, he could see a rickety-looking train track and the rusty carcass of an abandoned car missing its wheels and a host of other parts.

  There was trash in the bushes—the usual shit like cigarette butts and plastic bags, but also used condoms. Like maybe people had driven out here to fuck and just couldn't wait. Shaking his head, Nick kept walking. Overhead, he heard the distant cry of some sort of bird—a hawk, maybe, or a vulture. Something that sounded like it belonged in the desert.

  At the end of the road, Nick came to a little shanty of a store with a folding sign outside that said “Rocks and Jems—big Sale.” the misspelling and random capitalization should have put him off, but he was feeling bored and uncaring and the blazing white heat of the sun was relentless.

  He stepped inside and felt the arctic blast of a cheap air conditioner that growled overhead like a rabid dog. There was a strange, sour smell like old, decaying wood, and Nicholas looked around doubtfully, trying to decide if he wanted to leave and head back to the car or not.

  “Hi there,” said a badly sunburned man sitting at the register. “Can I help you?”

  “I'm just looking.”

  There were bins of all kinds of rocks. Semiprecious stones you could scoop into a fraying velvet bag for five bucks. Tiny glass jars filled with gold suspended in liquid solution. Prospecting kits. Kids' stuff, he thought dismissively, moving to examine the things in glass cases. There was something that looked like a cluster of brown barnacles, like one of his dad's expensive sculptures. “What's this?”

  “That's a gypsum rose,” said the man. “A whole lot of it. You'll find it around here if you're lucky. They sell balls of them for about one, two bucks each at most of the stores around here. Rarer to find it in clusters like that.”

  I could get it for Jay. She had a rock collection and Nick was pretty sure that she didn't have anything like this lying around in her room. Studying it, he asked, “How much?”

  “Three-eighty.”

  It had the sound of a man feeling out a price and Nick suspected he could have bargained himself down from the tourist sucker charge, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Fine.”

  His dad was probably done by now, anyway. Wondering where he was. Or else he'd driven off and left him here in the desert. Wouldn't that be a trip to remember.

  Nick paid the man and left the Rock and Jem store, heading back down the road, sweating a little in the heat. His father had taken Vlad's place, who was now sitting at the wheel, and was leaning against the door, smoking a cigar and radiating sexual gratification.

  “I wondered where you went. You didn't run off and leave the girl hanging, did you, Nick?” At the tight, contrary shake of his head, his father nodded, eyes drifting down to the bag in his hand. “What's that you have there?” he asked, blowing out a leisurely smoke ring.

  “A gift for Jay.”

  “Ah. How sweet.” Apparently finished, his father crushed the cigar into the dirt beneath his leather shoe. “I'm sure she'll be appropriately grateful. I need to get that mother of hers something so she doesn't bitch at me. We can check out some of the pawn shops in Vegas.” He glanced at the bag. “I don't suppose they sell jewelry in that store you went to for your sister?”

  Nick thought of the turquoise bracelets and quartz earrings. “Not the kind she'd wear.”

  “Damn. Well, I suppose it'll just have to wait until we make the drive back down. It's on our way home, after all,” he added, with a self-effacing laugh. “I had no idea how quickly that woman would take to the high-life, or that the more I sank into her, the more her personality would worsen. It's really quite a shame.”

  “She's a gold-digger,” said Nick. “What did you expect?”

  Nick thought he might be in trouble for insulting his stepmother—his father was always saying that a man's wife was a pale reflection of himself—but all his father did was lean over and ruffle his hair. “Usually money makes women more biddable—not less.”

  “Right.” Nick turned towards the car but his father didn't seem inclined to go in.

  “You're close to Justine, aren't you, Nicholas?”

  Why did he always call her Justine? Guardedly, Nick said, “Yeah, she's fine. I like her okay.”

  “Yes.” His father drew the word out in a way that made him recall a time that didn't seem so long ago, when he had asked, “What was your sister doing in your room last night?” This conversation had the same feeling of a trap slowly snapping shut. “She's very good at getting people to like her. But I didn't ask if you liked her, Nicholas. I asked if you were close.”

  “Not that well,” he admitted. “Not since she went away to college.”

  “She's a strange girl. Her mother named her after a book by the Marquis de Sade. Have you read it?” Nick shook his head. “It's about a sweet, sanctimonious little girl who invites her own ruination because she never learns how the world really works. It's ironic, almost cruelly so—especially since Danielle never actually read the book. She just liked the name.”

  “Her mother's an idiot,” said Nick, latching on at last to something solid.

  “Yes,” his father said thoughtfully. “But Justine, in her own way, is also an idiot.”

  “No, she isn't,” Nick said, forgetting himself. “She's not like her mother at all. She has a college degree. She speaks fluent Spanish. She volunteers at—”

  “Nicholas.” His father's voice halted his furious torrent of words. “I'm not denying that she has her charms. I'm sure she'll even marry for them someday, and possibly even well. But she's vulnerable in a way that you and I will never be, because you are part of a legacy and she is the daughter of a whore. And yet, she lacks the self-awareness and the gratitude that would allow her to properly overcome her faults. She is arrogant, and willful, and blind, and that,” he said, with something almost like anger, “will be her downfall.”

  It's your job to protect her. Something went cold in Nick's chest. “I'm not sure what you're telling me to do.”

  “Nick.” His father's voice was firm. “I'm not telling you to do anything. I'm merely saying that you have a lot to fall back on and Justine has only herself. If something were to happen to her, she would only have you and I to turn to. Her mother is trash and any kind of investigation would only cause her sordid past to get out. I am merely intimating that a reminder might be beneficial.”

  His father's words haunted him on the drive home, and no matter how loud Nick turned up his music, he couldn't push them from his mind. They kept floating back, because everything his father had said about Jay was true. She was always telling people what they should and shouldn't do, getting her panties in a twist over some perceived injustice. And her words did bother him. Sometimes for weeks because the i
mplications—that he was a burden, that he didn't know what real work was, that he was intolerant, that he was a childish annoyance—filled him with anger that churned like a black and vicious sea, because it all hit a little too close to home.

  And for that, he couldn't quite figure out if he was angrier at himself or at her.

  As he watched her tilt her head up and warmly thank Yelena for dinner, he could feel that uncertainty crystallizing, becoming sharp and deadly.

  Look at me, he thought, filled with desperate want, helpless anger, and countless other emotions too dark and tangled to name. Why don't you ever look at me?

  Jay did look at him and her smile faded. She looked down at her plate, rolling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt to bare her tanned forearms and her hair slid forward to hide her face. “What did you do today?” he asked, and it came out sounding like a challenge.

  “I, um, had drinks with Quentin Ho.” Aware that she was being watched, she glanced around the table uneasily. “He's running the Bayview for his dad,” she added unnecessarily.

  “James Ho is an excellent businessman,” his father said, looking hard at Jay. “His father built the hotel when this was all still mostly orchards to house the money men who came through to buy and sell. He understands what needs to be done to succeed and prosper.”

  “Yeah,” Jay said quietly. “Quentin's great.”

  “How's Courtney?” asked Nick.

  Jay threw him a look of disgust. “Still dating Lance Nguyen.”

  “Hey.” He threw up his hands. “I didn't say I wanted to date her.”

  “So,” Danielle said, drinking her second glass of wine. “Did you have fun in Vegas?”

  “We lost money,” said Damon, sliding a box towards her. “But I got you this, my dear.”

  “Oh,” said Danielle, quickly becoming mollified as she opened the box to reveal a diamond-studded Cartier bracelet. She slid it over her wrist and held up her hand to admire it. “Look, Justine. Isn't this simply gorgeous? I think I saw this very one in Vogue, only in rose gold.”