He left. I watched him duck out like a thief. Without warning, without reason. He left me.
I wasn’t sure how to feel. I mean, this wasn’t the first time he left me without any notice or reason. And, by both our agreements, we were nothing more than business partners with a sexual relationship. I shouldn’t have expected him to wait around for my class to finish or to get a late night dinner with me in the cafeteria. Those were boyfriend requirements. We were far, far from being together.
Still, I couldn’t help but see his face shining down at me as I gave my rebuttal. He was proud. He was impressed. He was feeling me from a deeper, more personal level. I knew when he grabbed my hand that something shifted in us.
But now we were back at square one. And I was left alone, holding my backpack and optimistically waiting for a sign that he was just around the corner waiting for me or back at his car taking a quick break. Of course, Lana spotted me. She was in the same class as me, but she was always rushing off afterwards to meet with the guy of the week. Night classes cramped her style.
“Oh my god, Kylie! That was amazing! I mean, I knew you were a good debater and everything, but you blew the other group out of the water and made the rest of your team look like amateurs.” Lana held her arms outstretched, bringing me in for a warm hug.
I pressed back slightly, not wanting to acknowledge her very public proclamation in front of the rest of my classmates. I wasn’t one to brag let alone agree that I was better than everyone else as those same people listened in. “Thanks, Lana. You’re way too – erm – kind.” I couldn’t help it. My eyes were darting across the room hoping to get a glimpse or clue as to where Wilder had gone.
Lana pressed onto my shoulders, forcing me to come back to her attention. “What are you looking for? Was it that guy you were holding hands with before class?” She smiled at me suspiciously. “It’s that guy who punched the security guard in the face, right? That boyfriend of yours from your new job!”
She was practically jumping now. I suspected because this was really the first thing we could actually bond over. Normally when we talked, I was the one listening to Lana gush over this guy or that or to give her advice on who was treating her right or who she should just dump. I wanted to laugh, to nod my head furiously, to even give her a knowing wink, but I was lost. She used that word: boyfriend. And he wasn’t. He was just a guy from my work who took me to class. She didn’t need to know the rest, let alone find out that he's actually my stepbrother.
I huffed a bit, finally landing on the right words. “Yeah, that was the guy. But he’s not my boyfriend. It’s just a casual thing.”
“Kylie? Are you serious?” She looked as if she was about to slap me back to my senses. “No casual guy sits in on a girl’s class just to get more action. That’s tame. If he were someone you were sleeping with only, he’d nail you once or twice and then ditch you. Or, he’d only use you for a late night call. Trust me on this.”
How could I not? She was the expert at men. She could read them before they even knew what they were thinking. I wanted to ask her a million things, but I just couldn’t bring them out. Instead, I tamed it down, “Okay, I get you. But we agreed to be just casual. And then he wanted to come check out my class but left halfway through. What the hell does that mean?”
Lana began walking out the door, me following behind her. She loved this new position of power. She was always a fixer, in her own way, and she was thrilled to be able to combine her two best skills to help me. As she placed a pair of oversized, rounded sunglasses onto her face, she said, “Here’s the thing, honey. He’s a guy. He gets scared, especially of powerful, smart women like you. And if you haven’t really established your relationship fully, he probably didn’t understand what he had until he saw you in your natural habitat. It’s like that guy I was seeing a few months ago…Jerome or Tyler. I don’t remember…Anyway, he was so into me until he saw me waiting tables at the club, talking to celebrities and stuff. Then he was turned off by how I was this different person, this better person.”
“So, I’m the better person?” I was getting what she was saying, but I just couldn’t see it.
“Kylie, you’re always the better person. You’re a saint. A complete angel. No one can touch you in brains or morality.”
I couldn’t help it – I scoffed. I had yet to tell her my new job was as a porn star and producer. I’m pretty sure she’d personally take away my virgin queen card if she knew that I spent my free time screwing my stepbrother on camera so I could pay my tuition and help my mother out back home.
She didn’t miss a beat, though. Her own words were too mesmerizing to pay attention to my dissent. “My advice, if you choose to take it: keep being the Kylie you were before he saw you in action. That other you, the one in the classroom, is part of who you are. And now that he has seen it, he can either accept it or let you go. But if he dumps you for being smarter and more ambitious, then he’s a complete asshole unworthy of your love or attention. Got it?”
Love? She said it – that word I avoided anytime I thought of his smell, his embrace, our kiss…Hearing her say it in the context of him was jarring, a timer on an explosion turning on. I couldn’t even reply to that. Instead, I shook my head and said, “I understand. Thanks, Lana.”
“Listen, why don’t you take tonight off? I know you’ve been working so hard on preparing for this debate, and now it's over. Plus, you don’t work on Monday nights, so you have no excuse. Just stay in, paint your nails, and watch some bad TV. I think there’s an old bottle of wine somewhere in the dorm, as well. Have a glass or two on me.” Lana fished for her keys in the depths of her large black purse. As she yanked them out, she gave me a final warning, “And whatever you do, Kylie, don’t call him.”
“Why can’t I call him?” I wouldn’t call him if I could. I had his number, but I only used it for business since I begged him to forgive me about failing to tell him I knew our connection.
“Just don’t. Whenever you get heated, you tend to stay stupid things you will regret. And when you have feelings for a guy, the last thing you wanna do is make yourself vulnerable. Hide your phone. Turn it off. Lock it in a safe or something. I’d take it away myself, but I’m going out tonight. Jace is in town and he wants to meet!” She squealed in delight.
“Basketball player?”
“Baseball. New York Mets. He was at the club last night.”
I rolled my eyes as I thought of her flirting with every superstar she could come across with. This was her life, though, and I certainly had no room to judge. “Be safe, Lana. I’ll see you in class.”
She wrapped me up in a hug before heading off to her car. I walked back the opposite direction to my dorm, passing by the place where Wilder’s car was formerly parked. The space was occupied by a less flashy, mostly rusty station wagon. Certainly not Wilder’s style.
As soon as I walked in the door, I dropped my bag at the entryway and scanned our small, cramped place for the wine. Lana always kept her drinks in the cooler, but I spotted the bottle on the desk. It had been uncorked recently. I could tell from the still fresh specks of liquid pooling at its glass mouth. I poured a large glass of the white wine into a plastic red cup and downed it in seconds flat. I was going to do what Lana advised me to do. I was going to take tonight off from everything.
I turned my phone off as I turned on a movie. I removed my button down shirt, my jeans, and my bra. And as I grabbed a pink polish from Lana’s makeup kit, I finally got to sit down and do something so rare for me – turn my mind off.
…
“Kylie? Kylie!” I twisted in my lounge chair, trying to remember where I was or how I got there. I was feet from my bed, my nearly naked body draped over the side of the old, hand-me-down furniture piece. I listened for that voice calling me. It repeated itself more urgently, “Kylie! Come on. Just open up and let me talk to you.”
I panicked. My first thought was that the mystery knocker was Lana. She was constantly losing her keys at her boyfriends’ places. I was accustomed to waking up in the middle of the night. But this voice was different. It was dark, deep, and serious. I know that voice all too well. The voice belonged to Wilder, and by the way he was pleading with me to open the door, I knew he was getting frustrated.
I grabbed my fluffy blue robe and threw it over my naked chest. He had seen me topless countless amounts of time, but never in my own space. I grabbed a quick glance at my messy, uncombed hair before opening the door a crack. He leaned over the doorway, his arm draped high above my head. I saw his muscles flex as he pushed onto the wood paneling. His brown, shaggy hair was softly dancing in the breeze from the air conditioning vent above his head. But it was his blue eyes staring back at me, totally urgent, that were freezing me in place.
He spoke first, taking the pressure off of me. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?” He stared me down as if I have done something wrong. Why would he even need to reach me? I’m not on call for him.
“I turned it off for the night. I’ve had a really long day, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone.” I could play frustrated right back. My voice seethed.
He looked at my annoyed, irritated face with the unsightly wrinkles near my forehead. He instantly lightened up, instead offering, “Listen, I know I woke you up, but I need to talk to you.” He lifted his head, looking for signs of Lana. “Can I come in?”
I was rendered speechless as I stepped away, allowing him to enter.
He surveyed the space, his eyes lingering at my bed and the clothes tossed on the floor. He looked at me again, noticing I wasn't exactly prepared for him. “Okay,” he started, “I know me leaving without telling you was a dick move. I just saw you up there, killing it, and I felt so wrong. I mean, this thing between us is really, really wrong.”
“We’ve gone over this, Wilder. I’m okay with it. You were okay with it. If you’re having second thoughts, we can end this.” I needed to point out to him that I was still letting him make the calls. But I could call his bluff, as well. I wanted a piece of control over this odd, insane situation we put ourselves in. If he could outright question it, so could I.
“I know that, Kylie. And I don’t want to end whatever it is that’s going on between us. But that’s the problem. Now that I’ve seen you do this college thing, all I want is you…now.”
Lana’s words came back to me. He wants me as a friends with benefits situation. Nothing more. A small piece of me cringed when I thought of this being Lana territory.
He continued, lowering his voice so the few girls clearly eavesdropping in on us in the common area couldn’t hear any more, “I wanna fuck you in your dorm room. I wanna fuck you on that lecture stage. Hell, I’d do it in your professor’s office if we could get the key.”
I shut the door tight as he walked towards Lana’s bed and took a seat. I took my moment to steal a quick glance down between his legs. He was hard. Really hard. His tight jeans gave everything away. He did want me, and he wasn’t going to leave until he got me.
Still, the way he sat there, in Lana’s bed opposite of mine, I couldn’t help but remember waking up to him in his own bed back at our family’s home. When I was younger, I would crawl through the scary, dangerous dark to lie next to him. I rested my head on his bare chest to hear the beating of his heart protecting me and keeping me present.
“I’m angry, Wilder. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am.” I crossed my arms in front of me. One hundred thoughts ran in my mind as I imagined falling for his wish to have sex in my dorm room. My childhood flashback rekindled that naughty, forbidden desire I tried to push down every time he managed to turn me on like this. And I’m not sure if I'm upset that he won, had managed to take over every single thought of mine, or if I was upset because he hadn’t ripped my robe off yet and taken me like I knew he wanted to.
“I know you are, and you have every right to be. What I did was totally, completely uncool. I should have at least sent you a text like you asked me to.” He approached me slowly, taking his hands around my shoulders, forcing my arms to softly land at my sides. “But can you forgive me and let us be friends again?”
“We’re not friends. We’re coworkers.” He was the one who kept reminding me what we were merely involved a camera in our space and a crew following our every move in a fake, incomplete bedroom set. I wasn’t sure why I had to keep telling him this.
“We don’t have to be coworkers tonight, Kylie. It can be just you, me, and my phone.”
“Your phone?” My stomach turned over and sideways. I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable with this or upset that we couldn’t just be unattached and simple.
“I want to remember this myself. I want to have this moment when I finally get to fuck a college girl in my own, personal collection.”
I demurely asked him, my hands finding his hips, “You have a private collection? How many other girls are in this collection of yours?”
“None. You’ll be my first, so we need to make it good.”