It was 7 o'clock on the dot, and Angie was at her boyfriend Dean's door in the sexiest clothes she could find, with a bag of groceries in her left hand and knocking on the door with her right. Angie had told Dean that tonight she was going to fix him a good dinner just as soon as they had wild sex as many times as they could stand. As Dean opened the door, the grin on Angie's face fell. He had the look again.
"Heeeey, babe," he said in the voice that always accompanied the look. "I'm sooo sorry, something came up, they need me at work right now."
It was the look that Angie dreaded. The look was what told Angie that Dean was screwing another nameless girl on the side, and either too stupid to try hard enough to hide it from her or too smug to care. She knew
she
was the stupid one for staying with him, but denial had won her over time and time again in the past.
Dean leaned in to kiss Angie's face as he simultaneously let her in the apartment and let himself out.
"I'll be home around ten," he said. "Stay here and we'll have the rest of the night."
She said nothing, and her face was that of a defeated Olympian, but Dean didn't bother to take notice, and waved at her without turning around, letting the door slam.
Angie sank down on Dean's ratty couch and faced the TV, playing
SportsCenter
, without actually watching it.
Why do you put up with it?
she asked herself.
You knew you could do better.
She suddenly was overcome with anger, both at her lying bastard boyfriend and at her own weak actions. She kicked the coffee table and the remote fell noisily to the ground.
Suddenly Bryan, Dean's 18 year-old brother and roommate, appeared in the hallway, alerted by the sound of the remote banging on the wood floor. His hair and body were wet, and a towel was all that covered below his belly button.
"Oh, hey Angie," he said, tousling his dark brown hair. "Dean just went to see some—he went—"
"It's OK, Bryan, I know where he went," Angie sighed. "I guess my days of playing dumb have gone on long enough."
"I'm sorry, Ang," Bryan said. "You're a great person and you deserve better."
Bryan looked down at his feet, feeling sorry for his asshole brother's girlfriend and guilty for not saying anything about it to her earlier. Angie recognized the remorse in his body language and felt warm. She also couldn't help but notice how good Bryan's body looked clad in nothing but a white towel, which happened to complement his package pretty well, too. She had always thought he was cute—he had a lot of physical similarities to Dean, except his face was softer, more boyish; comparable to his personality.
Bryan noticed Angie checking him out and felt both self-conscious and flattered. She let her eyes wander all over his body as she played with her own long, wavy brown hair, the way she did whenever she was getting ready for sex with Dean. True, Angie was 24 and also his brother's girlfriend, but what the hell?
If he's not going to mistreat her and leave her open for me, then why not?
he asked himself.
Angie stood up and walked towards Bryan, completely aware of her intentions to touch the body of her boyfriend's fresh-out-of-high-school younger brother. She bit her lower lip and placed a hand on Bryan's well-defined chest. Bryan shivered from the combination of the now-cold drops of water on his body and Angie's soft, warm hand. His nipples stood erect and he could feel something else was starting to, too.