There are two things I learn about my brand spanking new family on the first day in the new house.
One, Travis McCall is completely fucking gorgeous.
Two, Travis McCall is completely fucking insane.
I can’t decide which I like more.
To be fair, Dad gave me some advance warning. At ten o’clock that morning, just a few hours before we packed up and drove up to Lakewood, he sat me down for a Serious Talk.
“Garen, I want you to understand some things about the situation with Evelyn, Bree, and Travis before we head over to the new house, alright?” he asks. I nod, but I’m not sure if he sees. He could be as completely focused on something else as I am. But to tell the truth, I care a whole hell of a lot more about whether or not my guitar is in tune than I care about the family dynamic of my new would-be steps.
“You will notice that Evelyn is a bit… over protective of her son,” Dad continues. I snort.
“Well I do so love a momma’s boy,” I say.
“It isn’t like that, Garen. A year ago, Travis had an accident.”
I look up at that. “What kind of accident?”
“He overdosed on sleeping pills in a suicide attempt,” Dad says. I stare at him.
“Yeah, Dad, that’s definitely what an accident is,” I say. He shakes his head and goes on for another half hour, telling me how Travis is in therapy now and he takes antidepressants to help with his “tendencies” and how I should just watch what I say around him so that I won’t set him off. The entire conversation is completely pointless. I’ve never even met the guy and I can tell already that there’s not a single switch in his body that’ll have anything to do with me if it gets turned on. It’s obvious Evelyn is the one who set him off. She’s come over for dinner a few times before, and God. If I had to live with that obsessive-compulsive, overbearing freak for a mom, I’d try and fucking kill myself too. Of course, my mom’s probably not much of a better option. But if the choice is between a crazy stalker mom like Ev and one who forgets your name half the time like mine, I’d take the one who’ll leave me alone.
“Garen? Is that clear? I don’t want you to try to be as… controversial as usual,” Dad concludes.
“I don’t try to be controversial, Dad.”
He gives me The Look, and I don’t blame him. How many times did he get calls from one of the sergeants at school saying I was being an asshat?
“Mr. Anderson, we found several empty alcohol bottles in your son’s room. When we asked him about it, he insisted he wasn’t breaking any rules because there was no alcohol left in the bottles when we found them…”
“Mr. Anderson, we’ve had complaints from several students that your son continually interrupts history class in order to make suggestive comments to his teacher… Mr. Cunningham…”
“Mr. Anderson, your son set fire to the supply shed behind the building last night…”
If you listen to my side, that last one was an accident, but I really doubt Dad is willing to take my side about much of anything anymore. Now, he just shakes his head and tells me to make sure my car is packed, because it’s time to go. The car is definitely packed. I spent three hours this morning loading everything meticulously so I wouldn’t have to worry about my dad’s half-assed packing job at last minute, and therefore wouldn’t have to worry about killing him if he scratched my car. Unfortunately, my car is just one of the many things in this world that I like better than people.
The house Dad bought is basically the exact same size and layout as our old one. There are only three differences as far as I can tell.
One, there are two more rooms in New House than there were in Old House.
Two, every single room in New House has a door, and in Old House, only the bathrooms and bedrooms did.
And three, the Old House is in Ohio, and this one is in the Ass of Nowhere, Connecticut.
Other than that, though, the houses are identical. So I know exactly where the rooms are upstairs, and I know exactly which one I’m claiming as mine. Top of the stairs, first room on the left, just like before. I bring everything of mine upstairs and into my room. It only takes me two hours to set it all up, and after that, I come back downstairs and sit down, right in the middle of the entrance hall. I consider it my sort of retaliation, because honestly, I never wanted to come here. I liked Ohio just fine, thanks. When Dad said we were moving here, the only reason I was even okay with it was because I never spend much time at home anyway. Patton Military Academy is in southern New York, and I spent ten months out of the year there. That’s probably why Dad took so many business trips to other states; he didn’t have to worry about being home to make sure I didn’t blow anything up. And since one of those business trips is where he met Ev, I guess it’s sort of my fault that we moved. I was fine with it, I really was, until he told me that I had to get to know my new housemates by staying Lakewood permanently, meaning no more Patton. I didn’t speak to him for a week after that, not like he cared. It was my own personal retaliation to be as much of a pain in the ass as possible, since that’s what got me sent to military school in the first place.
Cut to me, lying on my back on the floor in the entrance hall, right where everyone needs to be walking. When Ev and her kiddies arrive, I don’t get up to greet them. She opens her arms at me like she expects me to leap up and give her a big hug. I shake her hand without getting up, and then go right back to staring at the wall near me. She isn’t pleased with this, but instead of saying anything, she just collects my dad and drags him off to the kitchen to fool around while pretending to make dinner. I hear movement and voices outside, and a few seconds later, Travis McCall elbows the front door open and stumbles across the threshold with a huge box half-obscuring his vision.
Great. The guy announces his presence by tripping over a doorstep and I already want to throw him up against the wall and have my wicked way with him. Anyone who saw him wouldn’t blame me for it either; the guy is pretty much godlike. His hair is light, light brown, almost blonde, and just long enough to fall in some effortlessly messy way he’s probably not even aware of, curling slightly at the ends. Blue-grey eyes, barely tanned skin, and the most lickable dusting of barely-there freckles I have ever seen in my life.
Please, dear God, do not let this boy be straight.
His eyes lock onto mine, but he doesn’t say anything, just ducks his head and carts the box upstairs. On his way back downstairs and outside, he walks as quickly past me as possible, his head turned the other way. It’s sort of funny at first, the way he obviously has as little interest in this family bonding as I do. By his third trip back out, though, it’s old. I retrieve my guitar from upstairs and sit back down in my old spot. If he doesn’t wanna play, I’m not going to force him to be talk to me. He comes back inside with another box and trips on the stairs. I lied. I’m so going to force him to talk to me.
“Do you want help?” I finally ask. I see him sort of tense up, almost like he forgot I was there, which is impossible. He’s walked over me four times. As he starts to turn his head, I quickly look down at the floor. There’s dead silence. Any time now, Travis. Just a word. ‘No thanks’ or ‘Sure, even though you’re a crazy freak who is checking out his future stepbrother.’ Something. Anything. I look at him, and he turns back around and starts dragging the box up again.
“No, I got it,” he says. I watch him head back upstairs. Okay. Maybe I watch a little more closely than necessary. He ignores me again on his way out, and attempts to on his way back in. The box he’s holding rattles loudly, and my guess is kitchenware.
“You’re going to break something. Probably something glass, and then probably your back,” I say. Alright, stupid idea. He looks pissed. I’m contemplating apologizing, but what comes out instead is just more of the usual banter I go with. God I need to learn to associate my brain to my mouth.
The way Ev comes out of the kitchen, just popping into sight with this huge look of glee at just the utter awesomeness of the world, reminds me a lot of those prairie dogs I spent all of ninth grade biology watching videos of. I fucking hated those things, but that’s exactly what Ev reminds me of. A prairie dog. Not a good sign.
She makes the most pointless introductions on the planet. I force a smile through it, say whatever I have to in order to get her to go away. Leave me alone, leave me alone, I’m trying to flirt with your son, leave me alone. It takes her longer to get my mental hints than I’d like, but she eventually retreats to the kitchen with Dad in tow.
“I’m writing a song,” I say to Travis as he passes me. The words are out before I even stop to think about whether or not they even make sense. He ignores me and goes back outside. I strum a chord on the guitar as he comes back in. “It’s called ‘Travis Is A Stubborn Asshole’.”
He looks ready to turn around and punch me in the face, but he just continues up the stairs. I strum the same chord again and hum softly. As he heads back down the stairs, I grin.
“It’s about this guy Garen who has this stepbrother that starts breaking boxes full of stuff because he won’t ask for help carrying them,” I say. He finally looks at me, and I almost want to move backwards because of the intensity in his eyes.
“I am not your brother,” he snaps. That does it. Even faking at being a polite human being is off the table now. Claws out.
“Did I say you were? I said ‘stepbrother’.”
I fucking hate it when I use that voice. You’d think because of that, I’d use it less often, but I don’t. I must say things sharply as often as I say them normally.
“They’re not married,” Travis replies. I can tell he’s trying to keep calm, and I can also tell it’s not working at all. It’s then that I remember I’m supposed to watch what I say so that I won’t trigger another suicide attempt. I’m about to start nodding and telling him he’s right, but then I realize I can’t just let the conversation hang like that.
“They will be eventually. You think Evelyn would’ve agreed to move in if she didn’t think she’d get a rock out of it?” I ask.
“Shut up,” he snaps as he goes for the next box. The second he straightens up with it, the look of complete venom is gone, replaced by the obvious thought that he so cannot handle that. “Shit. I think I found my sister’s TV,” he pants.
I like that breathy little gasp he makes a lot more than I should.
I shake my head to clear it and stand up quickly. He’s about a second from smashing that thing through the floor, and if he does, I’ll somehow get blamed. I steady the box and slide my hands down onto his. He spreads his fingers apart so our hands are interlocked on the box.
Oh yeah. He’s definitely not straight.
Not with the way he’s pointedly staring at the box, not with the way his fingers keep shifting because they’re shaking so much. God, I’m fucking straighter than that.
“They’re not getting married,” he says. It comes out a little softer and lower than his voice sounded before, and I have to consciously try not to grin like a moron.
“So? They might as well, since they’re already playing one big happy family. You’re so deep in denial that it’s actually sort of cute,” I say. His face remains perfectly neutral except the slight stain of red creeping into his cheeks.
“And you’re cool with that?” he asks. I know exactly what he’s talking about, and I know exactly what he’s ignoring. So of course, I know exactly what I’m going to keep talking about.
“You being cute? Well, I’ll admit that those funny tingly feelings in my stomach are kind of creepy now that they’re in relation to my pseudo-stepbrother, but I’m willing to move past it if you are,” I say. He presses the box against me, hard. He thinks I’m fucking with him just for the fun of it, and I sort of am. I’m also more serious than I have been about just about anything else in my life. I swallow hard and hope he’s about to say something equally flirtatious.
“Fuck you. You know what I was talking about,” he says. Or, you know, he could just snap obscenities at me. Same thing. And not at all completely frustrating.
“I know, they might get married, you’re a whiney bitch, blah, blah, blah. And I really don’t care what Dad does. He and my mom got divorced when I was fourteen, right after they sent me to PMA, so it’s not like I have big issues about him moving on too fast. ’Sides, my mom’s a bitch anyway,” I say. And hey, about half of that is actually true. Maybe. They got divorced when I was fourteen, but I saw it coming since I was nine. It was after they sent me to PMA, but it was actually probably why they sent me to PMA. So they didn’t have to pretend around me anymore. And I don’t have big issues about him moving on too fast. I just have issues about him moving on with the mother of a guy I seriously would give anything to bed right now.
“What’s PMA?” Travis asks.
Loaded question, and I don’t know how much of a loaded answer to give. The bane of my existence for the past three and a half years. The worst and best place on the planet. Where my best friend still is without me. Where I lost my virginity. Way too many answers to give, so I disregard all of them.
“Patton Military Academy. All-boys military school. I went there for three years. Just got pulled last week,” I say finally. We finally reach his sister’s room, and I try to initiate some small talk about his cross-country team. As he tells me he’s the only junior on varsity, he pushes his hair off his forehead. His face is flushed, and my brain is suddenly unobjectionably full of mental images of him right after a track meet, pulling the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face. God. I need to start taking more cold showers.
“Star player. Well, aren’t you cute,” I say quickly, and I head for the door. I’m going to go back down to the hall, and sit there in the way, and play my guitar, and go back to ignoring him instead of picturing him all shirtless and sweaty after a track meet. Oh fuck, because that’s definitely working.
“Can you stop doing that?” he asks suddenly. Stop picturing you shirtless? I would if I could, but-- okay, so that’s probably really not what he was talking about, since he’s not a mind reader (hopefully). I turn back to face him quickly.
“Stop doing what?” I ask.
“Calling me cute. That’s twice in ten minutes,” he replies. Maybe I should reevaluate my decision that he was definitely not straight. I glance at the floor just so I won’t have to look him in the eye, then after a second, I look back up.
“And it bothers you, I take it?” I say.
“I didn’t say that,” he says as he heads back downstairs, pressing up against me as he moves through the doorway. This boy is going to be the death of me.
Next Chapter
One, Travis McCall is completely fucking gorgeous.
Two, Travis McCall is completely fucking insane.
I can’t decide which I like more.
To be fair, Dad gave me some advance warning. At ten o’clock that morning, just a few hours before we packed up and drove up to Lakewood, he sat me down for a Serious Talk.
“Garen, I want you to understand some things about the situation with Evelyn, Bree, and Travis before we head over to the new house, alright?” he asks. I nod, but I’m not sure if he sees. He could be as completely focused on something else as I am. But to tell the truth, I care a whole hell of a lot more about whether or not my guitar is in tune than I care about the family dynamic of my new would-be steps.
“You will notice that Evelyn is a bit… over protective of her son,” Dad continues. I snort.
“Well I do so love a momma’s boy,” I say.
“It isn’t like that, Garen. A year ago, Travis had an accident.”
I look up at that. “What kind of accident?”
“He overdosed on sleeping pills in a suicide attempt,” Dad says. I stare at him.
“Yeah, Dad, that’s definitely what an accident is,” I say. He shakes his head and goes on for another half hour, telling me how Travis is in therapy now and he takes antidepressants to help with his “tendencies” and how I should just watch what I say around him so that I won’t set him off. The entire conversation is completely pointless. I’ve never even met the guy and I can tell already that there’s not a single switch in his body that’ll have anything to do with me if it gets turned on. It’s obvious Evelyn is the one who set him off. She’s come over for dinner a few times before, and God. If I had to live with that obsessive-compulsive, overbearing freak for a mom, I’d try and fucking kill myself too. Of course, my mom’s probably not much of a better option. But if the choice is between a crazy stalker mom like Ev and one who forgets your name half the time like mine, I’d take the one who’ll leave me alone.
“Garen? Is that clear? I don’t want you to try to be as… controversial as usual,” Dad concludes.
“I don’t try to be controversial, Dad.”
He gives me The Look, and I don’t blame him. How many times did he get calls from one of the sergeants at school saying I was being an asshat?
“Mr. Anderson, we found several empty alcohol bottles in your son’s room. When we asked him about it, he insisted he wasn’t breaking any rules because there was no alcohol left in the bottles when we found them…”
“Mr. Anderson, we’ve had complaints from several students that your son continually interrupts history class in order to make suggestive comments to his teacher… Mr. Cunningham…”
“Mr. Anderson, your son set fire to the supply shed behind the building last night…”
If you listen to my side, that last one was an accident, but I really doubt Dad is willing to take my side about much of anything anymore. Now, he just shakes his head and tells me to make sure my car is packed, because it’s time to go. The car is definitely packed. I spent three hours this morning loading everything meticulously so I wouldn’t have to worry about my dad’s half-assed packing job at last minute, and therefore wouldn’t have to worry about killing him if he scratched my car. Unfortunately, my car is just one of the many things in this world that I like better than people.
The house Dad bought is basically the exact same size and layout as our old one. There are only three differences as far as I can tell.
One, there are two more rooms in New House than there were in Old House.
Two, every single room in New House has a door, and in Old House, only the bathrooms and bedrooms did.
And three, the Old House is in Ohio, and this one is in the Ass of Nowhere, Connecticut.
Other than that, though, the houses are identical. So I know exactly where the rooms are upstairs, and I know exactly which one I’m claiming as mine. Top of the stairs, first room on the left, just like before. I bring everything of mine upstairs and into my room. It only takes me two hours to set it all up, and after that, I come back downstairs and sit down, right in the middle of the entrance hall. I consider it my sort of retaliation, because honestly, I never wanted to come here. I liked Ohio just fine, thanks. When Dad said we were moving here, the only reason I was even okay with it was because I never spend much time at home anyway. Patton Military Academy is in southern New York, and I spent ten months out of the year there. That’s probably why Dad took so many business trips to other states; he didn’t have to worry about being home to make sure I didn’t blow anything up. And since one of those business trips is where he met Ev, I guess it’s sort of my fault that we moved. I was fine with it, I really was, until he told me that I had to get to know my new housemates by staying Lakewood permanently, meaning no more Patton. I didn’t speak to him for a week after that, not like he cared. It was my own personal retaliation to be as much of a pain in the ass as possible, since that’s what got me sent to military school in the first place.
Cut to me, lying on my back on the floor in the entrance hall, right where everyone needs to be walking. When Ev and her kiddies arrive, I don’t get up to greet them. She opens her arms at me like she expects me to leap up and give her a big hug. I shake her hand without getting up, and then go right back to staring at the wall near me. She isn’t pleased with this, but instead of saying anything, she just collects my dad and drags him off to the kitchen to fool around while pretending to make dinner. I hear movement and voices outside, and a few seconds later, Travis McCall elbows the front door open and stumbles across the threshold with a huge box half-obscuring his vision.
Great. The guy announces his presence by tripping over a doorstep and I already want to throw him up against the wall and have my wicked way with him. Anyone who saw him wouldn’t blame me for it either; the guy is pretty much godlike. His hair is light, light brown, almost blonde, and just long enough to fall in some effortlessly messy way he’s probably not even aware of, curling slightly at the ends. Blue-grey eyes, barely tanned skin, and the most lickable dusting of barely-there freckles I have ever seen in my life.
Please, dear God, do not let this boy be straight.
His eyes lock onto mine, but he doesn’t say anything, just ducks his head and carts the box upstairs. On his way back downstairs and outside, he walks as quickly past me as possible, his head turned the other way. It’s sort of funny at first, the way he obviously has as little interest in this family bonding as I do. By his third trip back out, though, it’s old. I retrieve my guitar from upstairs and sit back down in my old spot. If he doesn’t wanna play, I’m not going to force him to be talk to me. He comes back inside with another box and trips on the stairs. I lied. I’m so going to force him to talk to me.
“Do you want help?” I finally ask. I see him sort of tense up, almost like he forgot I was there, which is impossible. He’s walked over me four times. As he starts to turn his head, I quickly look down at the floor. There’s dead silence. Any time now, Travis. Just a word. ‘No thanks’ or ‘Sure, even though you’re a crazy freak who is checking out his future stepbrother.’ Something. Anything. I look at him, and he turns back around and starts dragging the box up again.
“No, I got it,” he says. I watch him head back upstairs. Okay. Maybe I watch a little more closely than necessary. He ignores me again on his way out, and attempts to on his way back in. The box he’s holding rattles loudly, and my guess is kitchenware.
“You’re going to break something. Probably something glass, and then probably your back,” I say. Alright, stupid idea. He looks pissed. I’m contemplating apologizing, but what comes out instead is just more of the usual banter I go with. God I need to learn to associate my brain to my mouth.
The way Ev comes out of the kitchen, just popping into sight with this huge look of glee at just the utter awesomeness of the world, reminds me a lot of those prairie dogs I spent all of ninth grade biology watching videos of. I fucking hated those things, but that’s exactly what Ev reminds me of. A prairie dog. Not a good sign.
She makes the most pointless introductions on the planet. I force a smile through it, say whatever I have to in order to get her to go away. Leave me alone, leave me alone, I’m trying to flirt with your son, leave me alone. It takes her longer to get my mental hints than I’d like, but she eventually retreats to the kitchen with Dad in tow.
“I’m writing a song,” I say to Travis as he passes me. The words are out before I even stop to think about whether or not they even make sense. He ignores me and goes back outside. I strum a chord on the guitar as he comes back in. “It’s called ‘Travis Is A Stubborn Asshole’.”
He looks ready to turn around and punch me in the face, but he just continues up the stairs. I strum the same chord again and hum softly. As he heads back down the stairs, I grin.
“It’s about this guy Garen who has this stepbrother that starts breaking boxes full of stuff because he won’t ask for help carrying them,” I say. He finally looks at me, and I almost want to move backwards because of the intensity in his eyes.
“I am not your brother,” he snaps. That does it. Even faking at being a polite human being is off the table now. Claws out.
“Did I say you were? I said ‘stepbrother’.”
I fucking hate it when I use that voice. You’d think because of that, I’d use it less often, but I don’t. I must say things sharply as often as I say them normally.
“They’re not married,” Travis replies. I can tell he’s trying to keep calm, and I can also tell it’s not working at all. It’s then that I remember I’m supposed to watch what I say so that I won’t trigger another suicide attempt. I’m about to start nodding and telling him he’s right, but then I realize I can’t just let the conversation hang like that.
“They will be eventually. You think Evelyn would’ve agreed to move in if she didn’t think she’d get a rock out of it?” I ask.
“Shut up,” he snaps as he goes for the next box. The second he straightens up with it, the look of complete venom is gone, replaced by the obvious thought that he so cannot handle that. “Shit. I think I found my sister’s TV,” he pants.
I like that breathy little gasp he makes a lot more than I should.
I shake my head to clear it and stand up quickly. He’s about a second from smashing that thing through the floor, and if he does, I’ll somehow get blamed. I steady the box and slide my hands down onto his. He spreads his fingers apart so our hands are interlocked on the box.
Oh yeah. He’s definitely not straight.
Not with the way he’s pointedly staring at the box, not with the way his fingers keep shifting because they’re shaking so much. God, I’m fucking straighter than that.
“They’re not getting married,” he says. It comes out a little softer and lower than his voice sounded before, and I have to consciously try not to grin like a moron.
“So? They might as well, since they’re already playing one big happy family. You’re so deep in denial that it’s actually sort of cute,” I say. His face remains perfectly neutral except the slight stain of red creeping into his cheeks.
“And you’re cool with that?” he asks. I know exactly what he’s talking about, and I know exactly what he’s ignoring. So of course, I know exactly what I’m going to keep talking about.
“You being cute? Well, I’ll admit that those funny tingly feelings in my stomach are kind of creepy now that they’re in relation to my pseudo-stepbrother, but I’m willing to move past it if you are,” I say. He presses the box against me, hard. He thinks I’m fucking with him just for the fun of it, and I sort of am. I’m also more serious than I have been about just about anything else in my life. I swallow hard and hope he’s about to say something equally flirtatious.
“Fuck you. You know what I was talking about,” he says. Or, you know, he could just snap obscenities at me. Same thing. And not at all completely frustrating.
“I know, they might get married, you’re a whiney bitch, blah, blah, blah. And I really don’t care what Dad does. He and my mom got divorced when I was fourteen, right after they sent me to PMA, so it’s not like I have big issues about him moving on too fast. ’Sides, my mom’s a bitch anyway,” I say. And hey, about half of that is actually true. Maybe. They got divorced when I was fourteen, but I saw it coming since I was nine. It was after they sent me to PMA, but it was actually probably why they sent me to PMA. So they didn’t have to pretend around me anymore. And I don’t have big issues about him moving on too fast. I just have issues about him moving on with the mother of a guy I seriously would give anything to bed right now.
“What’s PMA?” Travis asks.
Loaded question, and I don’t know how much of a loaded answer to give. The bane of my existence for the past three and a half years. The worst and best place on the planet. Where my best friend still is without me. Where I lost my virginity. Way too many answers to give, so I disregard all of them.
“Patton Military Academy. All-boys military school. I went there for three years. Just got pulled last week,” I say finally. We finally reach his sister’s room, and I try to initiate some small talk about his cross-country team. As he tells me he’s the only junior on varsity, he pushes his hair off his forehead. His face is flushed, and my brain is suddenly unobjectionably full of mental images of him right after a track meet, pulling the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face. God. I need to start taking more cold showers.
“Star player. Well, aren’t you cute,” I say quickly, and I head for the door. I’m going to go back down to the hall, and sit there in the way, and play my guitar, and go back to ignoring him instead of picturing him all shirtless and sweaty after a track meet. Oh fuck, because that’s definitely working.
“Can you stop doing that?” he asks suddenly. Stop picturing you shirtless? I would if I could, but-- okay, so that’s probably really not what he was talking about, since he’s not a mind reader (hopefully). I turn back to face him quickly.
“Stop doing what?” I ask.
“Calling me cute. That’s twice in ten minutes,” he replies. Maybe I should reevaluate my decision that he was definitely not straight. I glance at the floor just so I won’t have to look him in the eye, then after a second, I look back up.
“And it bothers you, I take it?” I say.
“I didn’t say that,” he says as he heads back downstairs, pressing up against me as he moves through the doorway. This boy is going to be the death of me.
Next Chapter