Step-Brother's Greedy Cock

Two months ago when my mom called to say Rhys was coming home for Thanksgiving I'd said great, cool, can't wait in the most convincing voice I owned and then sat on my dorm room floor for twenty minutes doing absolutely nothing.

A year.

Three hundred and sixty five days of distance and silence and pretending that what happened last Thanksgiving was some kind of fever dream I'd successfully moved past.

I had not successfully moved past it. I pulled into the driveway at 4pm. His car was already there. Rhys was always early in everything. You could say, he was the responsible and punctual one.

I sat in my car for longer than necessary.

You're fine. It was a year ago. You're both adults. You made a promise and you kept it and this is just Thanksgiving. He probably would have moved on and forgot it happened.

I grabbed my bag and went inside.

Mom was in the kitchen. David was setting the table. Everything smelled like roasted turkey and cinnamon and the warmth of a house.

"Eli!" Mom pulled me into a hug immediately. "You look thin. Have you been eating at all?"

"I eat constantly mom." I said.

"You look thin." She repeated, because mothers operated on a different logic entirely. She cupped my face and studied me with those warm eyes and I smiled and it was real because I loved her and this house and everything about it except for one specific problem currently located somewhere on the premises.

David clapped me on the shoulder. "Good to have you back son."

Son. It still landed a little soft in my chest. Not bad. Just new. David was a good man. Steady and warm and completely devoted to my mother in a way that made it impossible to dislike him no matter how hard adolescent me had tried.

"Good to be back." I said honestly.

"Rhys is upstairs." Mom said, already turning back to the stove. "Go say hello."

Go say hello.

 Yayyy. Perfect.

His bedroom door was open. He was sitting on the edge of his bed scrolling through his phone when I appeared in the doorway and he looked up and that was it. That was the whole problem right there in one moment. He looked up and his grey eyes found mine and a year of distance collapsed like it had never existed at all.

He hadn't changed. That was deeply unfair. Broader maybe across the shoulders. Hair slightly longer, still that dirty blonde that did something annoying in certain light. He was in a plain black Tee and sweats and he looked relaxed and certain and completely unbothered in the way that had always made me want to bother him.

"Eli." He said.

"Hey." I said. I tried to sound chill. "When'd you get in?"

"This morning." He said.

"Long drive."

"Yeah."

He held my gaze for a beat too long and a knot in my stomach tightened.

"Cool." I said. "Okay. Mom said dinner's almost ready ."

I left before he could say anything else.

Dinner was a different kind of torture.

Mom had made everything. Turkey and stuffing and three different sides and a pie cooling on the counter and she was glowing the way she always did whenever we're all home for the holidays. David kept refilling everyone's water. The conversation moved easily, from school, plans, the neighbors, nothing important.

I focused very hard on my food.

Rhys sat directly across from me. He didn't stare. That would have been easier to deal with. He acted like I didn't exist at the table at all.

But then his knee suddenly found mine under the table twenty minutes in.

My body went still.

The table was round. It could have been an accident. Except it wasn't because he kept it there without moving.

Mom was talking about Christmas plans. Rhys reached for the bread and his forearm brushed mine on the table.

"Sorry." He said quietly. Not looking at me.

He didn't sound sorry. He wasn't sorry at all. Christ, I hate what he's doing to me.

"It's fine." I said. Not looking at him.

David asked me something about my thesis and I answered it and the dinner continued and Rhys and I didn't look at each other directly for the rest of the meal.

I lay in bed at eleven staring at the ceiling.

My room was the same as it always was. Same posters, same desk and same window that looked out onto the backyard where the old oak tree had dropped most of its leaves. Everything was familiar and unchanged except for the fact that Rhys was in the room next door and the wall between us had never felt particularly thick.

I heard him moving around.

I pressed the back of my hand over my eyes and thought very sternly at myself.

You made a promise. Both of you. It was stupid and it was a mistake and it doesn't matter how his knee felt against yours under the table or the way he said your name like he'd been holding it in his mouth all year. You promised.

A year ago I'd meant it.

It happened in the heat of the moment. One stupid argument. One ruined boundary. One night neither of us ever talked about again.

Lying here now with the wall between us made a tiny part of me wish he would push my door open, we’d take off our clothes and go for round two just to get it out of my system.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

A text from a number I'd deleted from my contact list seven months ago like that would help anything. But I still knew the number like the palm of my hand.

"Your silence is too noisy."

I stared at the message. Then at the wall.

Then at the message again. My jaw tightened. What does it even mean.My stupid traitorous heart increased in beat. I put the phone face down and closed my eyes and lay very still in the dark.

The memories of that night began to sip in slowly. How he thrust deep inside of me as I bit into the sheets of my bed so I don't scream out.

My hand slowly slipped through the band of my shorts.