Meeting His Family

She was in the shower when Kenny got back from his run. He tried the door, wanting to get in the shower with her, but it was locked. That was weird. Brynn didn't usually lock the door at home. When the water turned off, he knocked on the door.

"Hey, everything ok?" He asked, listening carefully for the response.

"Kenny?" She replied with a question. Who else would it be?

"Yeah, are you ok?" She opened the door a crack, steam seemed to be filling the entire bathroom and billowing out the door through the open space. She peeked out at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You wanna get in the shower?" She offered, opening the door wide. Her eyes looked red and puffy like she had been crying. Kenny narrowed his eyes at her, frowning.

"I don't believe you," he told her flatly. She tightened her towel around her chest and brushed past him out of the bathroom.

"I'm fine, Kenny. Go take your shower. We need to pack up and check out and go to that brunch with your family." He followed her out of the bathroom with his eyes, watching her grab a pair of panties out of her suitcase and pull them on underneath the towel.

"We don't have to go to this brunch, we can cut out, if you want to," he offered. He had a feeling that whatever was bothering her, had to do with his family.

"I will think about it," her voice was quiet. He watched her for a moment longer before getting into the shower.

Someone said something to her. It was either in the time that he was out for a run or it was something that happened last night and with the drinking and the long day, it didn't really land until she was alone this morning. Shit, this is why he didn't want to bring her to this thing in the first place! He ran through the possible family members who may have stopped by looking for him this morning and what they might have said. It could have been any of them. Maybe not Abby, but anyone else.

She sat on the bed, her legs crossed underneath her dress, her bag packed and ready to go next to her, looking at something on her phone, when he got out of the bathroom. She didn't look up, concentrated on looking and scrolling.

"Let's go home, ok?" Kenny offered, rubbing a hand towel over his head to dry his hair.

"Yeah," she agreed softly, nodding.

He didn't think he had ever seen Brynn this quiet and withdrawn before. He packed, while Brynn remained absorbed in her phone, and once they cleared the hotel lobby without running into any of his family, he texted Abby letting her know that something came up and they weren't going to make it to brunch. He apologized and congratulated her again and wished her a good time on her honeymoon in Italy.

Brynn wasn't very talkative in the car on the way back either. She tipped her head back against the headrest of the seat and closed her eyes, trying to sleep, though Kenny was fairly certain that she didn't succeed. As they drew closer to home, Brynn sighed repeatedly. Once they had crossed over into Brooklyn she opened her eyes, staring at him for a long time before speaking.

"Kenny, I think we need to stop seeing each other." Her voice was soft, almost apologetic, as if she felt it was something she had to do rather than wanted to do.

"I really don't think that's something we need to do." He kept his eyes on the road. She drew in a breath.

"I am not the right kind of person for you," Kenny allowed himself to glance over at her before returning his eyes to the road. She was biting the corner of her lip. "You should be with someone more normal. Someone who'd... fit in better."

"Bullshit." He called her out on it without hesitation. He was upset. This wasn't coming from Brynn. There was no way that she came to this decision on her own.

"Who said what to you?"

"It doesn't matter," she shook her head. "It wasn't any one thing. It's a lot of little things that made me realize that I'm... wrong for you. There are so many things about me that are just..." she sighed, shaking her head. "Can you imagine telling anyone in your family about the trouble my little brother gets into and that time I had to bring him into your office? Or the fact that my parents were 18 and not even dating anymore by the time I was born? Your dad frowned upon the fact that my dad works for the MTA, but for us," she placed a hand on her chest, "that has always been such an accomplishment! He had a kid while in high school and still went to college and he is an electrical engineer and it's a fairly well-paying, salaried career with benefits and everything." She breathed out. "I'm just going to be a constant hindrance, just another reason for your parents' disappointment, if we stay together, and I don't want to be that, Kenny."

"God, Brynn! It doesn't matter what they think! It's not up to them! I don't need their approval! I love you! I want to be with you!" It all came out in a gush. He'd never said this to her before, but he definitely meant it. He glanced over at her, blocks away from her apartment, stopped at the red light. She was biting her lip and shaking her head.

"You like the idea of doing your own thing," her voice was so soft, so nonconfrontational. "Of not conforming to their demands. I just can't be the reason for driving the wedge in deeper, I'm not comfortable with that."

Kenny didn't answer right away. In a way, he had been preparing for this since he had seen Brynn's eyes after the shower, but he couldn't just lay down and give up and not fight this! He pulled the car into an illegal spot in front of the fire hydrant down the block from Brynn's building. He put it in park, engine still idling.

"Brynn, please don't do this," he turned to her, pleading, "I see my family once a year at Christmas. I can handle their bullshit and their 'disappointment.' I've been doing it for over a decade now. They shouldn't be the reason that we stop seeing each other."

"I can't." She looked like she was about to cry. "There is too much about me that would... give them ammunition. Things I don't want to have dragged out and used against me. Things I don't want to have thrown in my face as more proof that I'm just not good enough. I can't handle it, Kenny, not even once a year." She unlocked the car door and moved to get out.

"What can I do? To change how you feel about this?" She stepped out, closing her door, then opened the back door to pull out her bag.

"I don't know. I can't think of anything right now, I'm sorry." She answered him through the back door. "There is a lot that happened that I need to process and I haven't figured out yet whether there's anything you can do about it. As I see it right now, no." She stood at the open back door, holding her bag, she looked away from him for a moment then bent her head down to look back inside the car. "I'll see you around, Kenny." She closed it.

Kenny sat at the wheel of the rental car, watching Brynn walk away in the rearview mirror. There was a lot that happened that she needed to process. He replayed her words in his head again and again. What happened? When? She was not in this state when he left that morning. They just had amazing sex, as great as it always was between them. She seemed content and tired, but she smiled. And joked with him. What happened after he left?

He sat in the car for a long time, not sure of what to do next. Going home and seeing his roommates seemed like it would invite a lot of questions about how the wedding went and why he was back so early. He didn't want to admit to the breakup yet. He hoped to fix it somehow before having to make this declaration to anyone else.

By the next day, after a largely sleepless night of trying to figure out how to fix things, he was desperate. He had arrived at work early, having given up on sleep, and sat completely alone in the entire office, scrolling through the contacts on his phone. He had texted Brynn last night, asking her how she was doing and whether she thought they could talk it out, but she never replied to him. He tapped a finger on his brother's name and pressed to call.

"What's up?" Billy answered a couple of rings in. They were similar in that they were largely morning people, once they were out of their teenage years. Billy usually worked out in the morning, before work, and by now, he was probably at work too.

"Random question for you. Did you talk to Brynn yesterday morning, before we left?" There was silence on the other end of the line. Kenny sat forward in his desk chair. Fuck! He wasn't sure if this was better or worse than if it were one of his parents. "What the hell did you say to her?!"

"What did she tell you?" Was his response.

"She didn't tell me anything! She broke up with me!" He stood up from the chair, running his fingers through his hair.

"Shit. But what did she say?" Billy actually seemed concerned. His voice didn't sound light and carefree.

"Things about not being good enough, not fitting in with my family." He shook his head. It was painful, constricting. Kenny attempted to pace the tiny, windowless office, but there was hardly room to take three strides before having to turn around. "What did you say to her, Bill!" He demanded.

"I said nothing to her about that, man, I swear. I went to talk to her about the Brandy thing." Kenny stopped, taking a deep breath, trying to steady his brain.

"You went to apologize to her for calling her the wrong name?" Kenny arched an eyebrow. This was incredibly uncharacteristic of Billy.

"No," he was quick to respond. "I wasn't wrong! She just didn't remember the night of the wedding, but she totally went by Brandy back then."

"And she remembered when you talked to her?"

"Yep," Billy's voice suddenly sounded smug on that word.

"So, what was it? Where did you know her from?" This was crazy. The coincidence was dumbfounding.

"I don't know if I should say. I am not sure she wants you to know." Billy sounded serious again.

"She fucking broke up with me, Billy! I don't have her right now. I am trying to understand what the hell happened! Just freaking tell me!" He was pacing again, three steps to the wall, turn, three steps back to the door. Billy hesitated, not launching into it right away.

"Ok, so you know, back in the day, when we were in college, everyone was using chat rooms?" He asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "There were these sites that hosted chat rooms where the girls had a webcam on and would basically... talk dirty and take off their clothes and stuff, and get paid for it." Billy stopped. Of course, Kenny had heard of the webcam sites, but he'd never actually used them. It always seemed too brazen, too indiscreet. He wouldn't claim to have never watched porn, especially back in college, but he had definitely never been to one of those sites. What was Billy insinuating? That Brynn had stripped in a chat room and he had watched her? "She used the name Brandy on the site cause, for obvious reasons, the girls weren't going by their real names," Billy continued after a long pause.

"And she didn't remember that she'd done this, but you reminded her of it?" Kenny stood still, trying to understand.

"Yeah, I guess. It was just one summer and I guess it wasn't actually her webcam. A friend had kinda pulled her into it. But..." Billy hesitated again. Kenny listened, hearing his brother sigh on the other end of the line.

"But what?"

"She did some really serious shit. It wasn't just some topless dirty talk. That's all that it was in the public chat room, but if you actually paid for a private session... there was some really heavy girl-on-girl action." Kenny sat back down.

"And you paid for the private session?"

"A few of my friends and I chipped in a few times. It was really hot."

"Are you sure it was Brynn?"

"Yeah man, she confirmed it." And then she bolted. She was suddenly reminded of some sordid stuff she did in college and decided that she wasn't good enough.

Brynn never struck him as overly self-conscious. She had made the first move when they first met, she was very straightforward about wanting a quickie. Did she think that if Billy had told him about this thing she had done a decade ago that he'd break up with her? And she decided to do it preemptively herself? Or did she think Billy would tell his parents and there would be some kind of a... campaign for Kenny to break up with her? He had a lot to think about now, but at least there was something to grasp onto now, something that made sense as the potential reason for her sudden declaration.

"Ok, thanks." He told his brother, rubbing his forehead.

"Is this actually a deal-breaker for you? That she did that?" Billy's tone was genuinely curious. Kenny only needed a moment to think about it.

"No."

He wondered if she'd be at the gym that night, at her usual time, or whether she'd be avoiding him. He wanted to talk to her and tell her that what she had done ten years ago, experimenting, or whatever that was, it didn't matter now. It didn't bother him and it wasn't something his parents would need to know about. And for Billy to out her to them would also be outing himself, admitting that he had paid for webcam porn. Somehow, things seemed a little bit better now, a little bit more repairable. Having an idea about what had upset her made him more prepared to have a conversation with her.

"Can we talk, please?" He texted her, knowing not to expect an immediate answer. She was already teaching a class and might not check her phone until lunch. He silenced his phone and stuck it in his pocket, resigned to go on with work today and keep his mind off the situation.

"I don't have anything else to say," she texted him back sometime in the late morning. Kenny read the message running his fingers through his hair and biting his lip.

"I talked to Billy this morning. He filled me in on stuff. I really want to talk to you, Brynn. Can we meet up somewhere after work, please?" He typed back.

"Come to my apartment." She wrote sometime around the end of her school day, then followed up with. "It's not a conversation for a public place."

It felt like winning!

At six o'clock he was standing at her door, straight from work, not having gone home to change. He couldn't stand to lose any more time being broken up with Brynn. She let him in quietly, standing back at the door and gesturing for him to come in. It felt weird not giving her a kiss as he entered, or even just a hug. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and made his way into the studio. She followed him in, perching on the arm of the sofa. She looked tired, her eyes still swollen, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore capri length leggings with a long loose t-shirt over them. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

"Billy told me about the whole Brandy business," Kenny stood opposite her, hands still in pockets. "Brynn, if that's what is really bothering you, if you suddenly remembered this thing that had happened that you had totally put out of your mind and this is what made you feel like my family wouldn't approve, then fuck 'em! It's a non-issue for me. First of all, it's not anything that they need to know about, it's not anything that Billy is gonna go blabbing to our parents about because he comes off like a perv in this and he spent money, probably their money, on this stuff!" She was watching him quietly, biting the corner of her lip. "Secondly, my family has done a whole slew of questionable things that are far worse than... showing your breasts to some anonymous guys over a grainy 90s era webcam." She drew in a breath, possibly getting ready to say something, maybe something about how it wasn't just her breasts, but Kenny put up a finger and continued. "My junior year in high school, I applied for a summer program at Julliard and I was in the city for an open house. So I was going to stay the night at dad's apartment in the city. I had a key, I had let myself in that afternoon, was going through the fridge there in search of something to eat when dad got home, with his arm around some woman. He dropped it as soon as he saw me and made some excuses, getting her to leave, but Brynn, I was seventeen, it's not like I didn't realize right away what was going on." He had been doing all the talking up to that point and Brynn hadn't said anything yet. He wanted her to jump in now, now that he had said his piece. She shifted around, pulling her feet up on the sofa and her hands underneath her thighs.

"It wasn't just breasts." Her voice was quiet.

"Hon, I know it wasn't just breasts, but it doesn't fucking matter! It was ages ago, I didn't know you then, I love you now. You're important to me and I really don't want to lose you!" She kept her eyes on his, biting her lip again. Kenny came a little closer. This was the second time now that he had told her that he loved her and she hadn't acknowledged it in any way.

"My friend Michelle had been doing this thing and I happened to be over one time and..." she looked down. "That chat exploded with offers of tips for me to take my top off and for us to touch each other. So it just took off from there. She kept talking me into it, that it's just fun and largely anonymous and it was good for her ratings." She shook her head. "She shared the profits with me." It didn't bother Kenny in the way that she probably imagined it would. The fact that she made money from taking her clothes off a decade ago wasn't what caused him concern.

"Wait, was this what you referred to as the fling you had one summer?" He narrowed his eyes, his forehead creasing. She nodded.

"I kinda blocked out the part about it being... online, I guess. She just kept telling me to pretend that no one's watching and I guess I convinced myself better than I imagined."

"When you were eighteen?" He felt unsettled again, like the first time she told him about this supposed fling. She nodded. "That doesn't feel right, hon. Someone pressuring you to do this, like you weren't doing it willingly, of your own choice."

She was quiet, looking down, and Kenny made the move to embrace her. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. Brynn still sat on her hands but didn't pull away from him when he held her to his chest. He pulled away, just to arm's length, to look at her a minute later and there were tears running down her face.

"Kenny, I did something really stupid," her words were accompanied by a sob. He pulled her head into his chest.

"Shh, it's ok. It was a long time ago," he stroked her hair, feeling some sort of relief that this was fixable, that maybe he hasn't lost her entirely.

"No, not then. Yesterday." Her tears fell against his shirt.

"I'm sure whatever you did yesterday wasn't stupid. What happened?" His hand moved down to rub her shoulder. She was quiet for a long time, aside from the sobs.

"Just right there, on the spot, when Billy was in the room and everything was flooding back at me, I didn't imagine that you'd react this way to all that stuff. I was so embarrassed and it felt like yet another thing that your family would throw in your face to be disappointed with you for, that you are dating this slut who did porn and I let Billy blackmail me," she sighed, her whole chest heaving "to not tell you about this." The anger and unease were rising up again inside Kenny. "And then he told you about it anyway and I am just the worst at judging people and trusting people." Her head was shaking against his chest.

"What did Billy do?" He was absolutely certain it was sexual. He was replaying in his head coming back into the room that morning, after his run. The locked bathroom door, the long steamy shower, Brynn's red eyes when she stepped out, the way that she checked that it was him before opening the door. "What the fuck did Billy do?!" He demanded in a low growl that surprised even him.

"He said he wanted to see me naked again," her voice was at nearly a whisper, vibrating against his chest and Kenny felt his heart pounding in his ears. He was going to kill his brother. "I was only wearing your dress shirt. He took it off. I just froze. I should have done something, pushed him away, I don't know. I couldn't move."