I show up early to the café, and of course my brother is nowhere to be seen. The waitress seats me at a booth in the very back of the restaurant, and she asks how my day is going and if I’d like something to drink.

I can’t tell her truth, that so far my day has been total shit. First, my somewhat girlfriend walks out on me after a stupid fight, and now I have to meet my douchebag older brother for lunch so he can fill me in on all the lurid details about his affair with our bitchy stepmom.

Yeah. It’s a bullshit day. But I smile at her and tell her that so far, my day is going great, and could I get a glass of iced tea, please?

She leaves me with a menu and I check my phone, almost hoping Park won’t show up. But I couldn’t be that lucky, because yep, there he is. I watch him as he enters the café, smiling broadly at our waitress, examining her up and down as he follows her to the table.

“How’s it going?” Park asks once he’s seated and the server has left.

I keep my gaze focused on the menu, unsure of what to say to him yet.

“You going to be pissed at me forever?”

I glance up to find Park watching me, his eyes filled with amusement. The asshole. There’s nothing about this situation that I find even remotely funny. He flips open his menu, though he’s not looking at it. “I should be,” I tell him. “What you’re doing is fucked up.”

Sighing, he closes the menu and rests his clasped hands on top of it. “He cheats on her too, you know.”

“So that makes it okay?” I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s some fucked up logic you’ve got there.”

“You’re right. But let me explain everything first before you’re so quick to judge,” Park throws back at me.

Second time I’ve been called out for being too judgmental today. I never thought I was, but maybe I am. Maybe I’m a complete asshole, and worse? I don’t even realize it.

“Okay. Explain,” I tell him, leaning back against the booth seat.

The server arrives with our drinks and we both order sandwiches, sending her on her way quickly. I’m impatient and it’s like he is too. I know I shouldn’t want to hear how this whole mess started, but, I’m curious. I want to understand how he could do something so messed up.

“It started about five years ago—”

I interrupt him. “Five years? You’ve been having sex with Diane for five years?”

“Shhh.” He glances around to make sure no one is paying attention. “Off and on, yeah. I have.”

“Holy shit.” I rub my hand over my face, my mind having a difficult time wrapping itself around this revelation. “That’s insane.”

“If you’d stop interrupting me, I could tell you more,” he says irritably.

“Fine, sorry,” I mutter.

“She’s been pretty flirtatious with us ever since we graduated high school. Did you ever notice that?”

The summer after my senior year I was swimming in the pool alone at night, and when I came out she touched my shoulder and told me I’d grown up extra big and strong, her tone appreciative, her eyes full of interest.

It totally skeeved me out, and I did my best to banish that memory from my brain.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Right, well, I started to play along with it after a while. She flirted, I flirted back. She’d touch me, I would touch her back. One night we stay up late, just the two of us in the family room, watching a movie. By then I was almost done with college, and I was home for spring break, wanting to spend time with you guys. But you went out with your friends, and Addie was in bed because it was a school night, and Dad was on a business trip.” He pauses, takes a sip of his beer, and all I can do is watch him.

“And next thing I know, she’s touching my dick. She reaches inside my shorts, pulls it out, goes to her knees and gives me a blowjob, right there in the family room.”

I’d shove that bitch off me so fast if she tried something like that. I know I would.

“Nothing happened for a long time after that. At least another year, maybe almost two. Until the time I stayed in the guesthouse when we were in Maui for Thanksgiving that one year. Remember that?”

Barely. I spent most of the trip in a sunburned, drunken haze.

“You were in the main house with the rest of the family. She offered up the guesthouse to me so I could have privacy, which didn’t make sense. You were the one who brought, like, four friends. You guys needed your space, but I wasn’t going to complain.” He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “She’d come to the guesthouse every night and toy with me. Flirt, touch me, test me, kiss me, then leave me just when shit got good. Drove me insane.” Park drains half his beer and I watch him in silence.

The way he’s talking, it’s like he actually enjoys his sexual relationship with Diane, which is blowing my freaking mind.

“Spare me the details,” I finally say. I don’t need to hear about blowjobs and her teasing him. In fact, that’s the last thing I want to hear. “Are you two currently—seeing each other? Or was that kiss I witnessed just a one-off?”

“We’ve kept up the affair pretty steadily for the last year,” Park says, his voice nonchalant, like his crazy story is no big deal. “It’s not like she’s the only woman I’m seeing, though. There are others. There have always been others.”

“Why are you doing this anyway? Are you trying to get back at Dad for something? Trying to take everything that belongs to him? His wife, his business?” I ask.

Park messes with the edge of his napkin, his gaze locked on the table. “I don’t know. It was just…something to do, I guess.”

“Something to do.” My voice is flat, my thoughts going haywire. “So there’s no reason at all? You’re just messing around with dad’s wife because it was something to do? What the actual fuck, Park?”

“I can’t explain why I did it. I’m messed up, okay? After Mom died, I felt lost—”

I interrupt him. “So did I.”

“Yeah, but you were allowed to cry out for your mommy at night. I wasn’t. Dad told me I had to be strong, because I was the oldest. I couldn’t cry.” Park’s gaze grows distant as he stares out the window. “And then Diane came into our lives, Dad treating her like she belonged with us, that she was a part of our family, and I was so confused. I didn’t want her there. She wasn’t our mom. She was a stranger. He just…replaced Mom with Diane.”

I remember feeling the same exact way too. One minute our mother was there, the next she was gone, and then a few minutes later, Diane moved in.

“I’ve always resented him,” Park continues. “Everything he tells me to do, I want to do the opposite. I’ve only been towing the line the last couple of years because I want the company. I want to take over, and he wants to retire early so he can get a few years of travel in with Diane before he kicks the bucket.”

“So you take his wife, his company, his life. Is that your plan?” When Park doesn’t say anything, I keep talking. “Because that’s a messed up plan, Park. It’s not going to work. He finds out you’re banging Diane, he’ll take the company away from you. For good.”

“That’s why he’ll never find out.” Park smiles, then finishes off his beer. “You can’t tell him, Rhett.”

“I won’t,” I say, though honestly, he doesn’t deserve my silence. But he’s my brother. I’m loyal to him, I’ve always been loyal to him. He’s taken care of me since I can remember. Helped me with homework, sometimes even helped me cheat. Gave me girl advice, beat up that kid who tried to bully me in the seventh grade, and he let me crawl into bed and sleep with him for the first three months after Mom died.

So yeah. Park has been there for me as long as I can remember.

But so has Dad.

Our server appears with our sandwiches and we remain quiet as she sets the plates in front of us. Once she’s gone, I start talking again. “What about Diane?”

Park has already started eating. “What about her?” he asks, his mouth full.

“Do you trust her? Do you believe she’ll keep her mouth shut?”

Park sends me an are you kidding look before wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Absolutely. That bitch has it made. She gets to spend all of Dad’s money, travel the world and bang me on the side. She’s not about to ruin that by confessing her love for me or whatever to Dad.”

“Does she love you?” I can’t imagine real emotions playing a part in this weird scheme, but they have been doing this for a while. Could they actually care for each other? “Do you love her?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

He’s not going to give me a straight answer. Maybe that’s because there is no straight answer. The line has blurred between those two, and now that line is so blurry, they don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore.

Am I making excuses for them? Probably.

“Listen, I don’t want to be a part of this—situation,” I tell him. “Don’t ask me to lie for you or hide something for you. I can’t be involved any further than I already am. And I don’t want Diane to know you met me for lunch today. I don’t even want you to mention my name to her, okay?”

“Too late.” The easy smile on Park’s face annoys me so damn bad I want to slap it off him. “I told her last night.”

Exhaling loudly, I rest my elbow on the table and run my hand through my hair. “What the hell, Park? I don’t want to talk to her about any of this.”

“Fine, you won’t talk to her about it. Whatever.” Park digs into the second half of his sandwich.

“You know what you’re doing is messed up, right?” I’m thinking he doesn’t.

Park shrugs, then takes a sip from his beer. “Fucked up things happen every single day, Rhett. You think the world is normal? You’re wrong. It’s not. We’re all out there fucking around, doing forbidden things, excited that we might get caught. Even more excited when we don’t. The thrill of doing something you’re not supposed to is intoxicating stuff, brother.”

His words stick with me after I leave the café and head to my two o’clock class. I hate to admit he’s right, but…he is. It’s exciting to be with someone you shouldn’t be.

Like Jensen.

I think of our earlier fight, and how stupid it was. Though I guess she did have the right to be angry with me. She thought I was trying to tear her down, when really I was hoping she would say, “You’re right! Let me go find another job ASAP.”

That didn’t happen. Her confession that she actually likes her job surprised me. When I first saw her there, before she noticed me, she looked weary. Almost…

Sad.

I hate that she shows her tits to everyone who walks into that place, but do I also like it because I can claim those tits as mine? What kind of asshole does that make me?

The worst kind?