Trigger Warning: Implied sexual assault off-page
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I'm not good with people, I never have been. I don't like small talk. I don't like when people ask too many questions. I don't like... well, let's be honest here--I don't like
people
. All of this, though, does not apply to him.
Andrew.
God, Andrew.
Not Andy. Not Drew. He hates when people try to give him a nickname. And when we first met that's all I did.
Our parents met when we were seven. They worked together, and they dated in secret for a while before finally slowly integrating one into the other's lives. I didn't like Scott at first for no other reason than he wasn't my dad--who'd taken off a few years prior. At that age I was still certain my dad would come back.
He didn't.
But Scott stayed. And he was a good man. He treated my mom sweetly and respectfully, he talked to me like I wasn't just a dumb kid, and despite my aggression and coldness toward him he never faltered.
When they realized their relationship was getting more serious, they introduced us kids to each other.
Andrew was a skinny, shy, nervous kid a few months younger than myself. A mop of dark waves, pretty hazel eyes, tan skin. His mom, who'd died when Andrew was three, was a Latina, and I'd been intrigued when Scott and Andrew spoke softly to one another in Spanish as Scott tried to calm Andrew's nerves. But I couldn't let them think I was interested in them sticking around, so I was as cold to Andrew as I was to his dad. He didn't seem that interested in me, either, and stuck close to his dad. Days spent together were arranged, the four of us all went out together to museums and amusement parks, we started meeting for dinner at one another's houses, all so we could get used to being around each other.
I couldn't wait for Scott and Mom to get bored so it could go back to just being her and I.
They didn't get bored. They got married just after I turned nine.
And suddenly we were a family.
I lashed out a lot. Yelled and picked fights. Insisted Scott would
never
be my dad. Shouted that I hated Andrew. Now, as an adult, I know this wasn't fair and it was just plain cruel. I probably knew this back then, too, but I was angry. Angry that my dad left. Angry that I suddenly had to share my safe space. Angry my mom was giving Andrew attention that should've been all mine. I was selfish.
I still remember the exact moment everything changed.
I was ten years old, and I'd been climbing the tree in the backyard. I loved that tree, and Mom was always shouting from the kitchen window to be careful. I loved seeing how far I could climb until the branches couldn't take my weight anymore, and I'd sit up there for hours, hiding from Scott and Andrew, hiding from my mom, hiding from the empty mailbox that failed to deliver me anything from my dad despite the fact that I kept sending him letters.
It had been windy that day, and it'd rained the night before, making the branches slick. I'd nearly made it to the top when my foot slipped and I fell eleven feet, landing on my arm wrong. The pain had been instantaneous and excruciating and I'd screamed louder than I ever had in my life. Andrew, who'd been sitting on the back porch silently watching me, jumped to his feet and screamed for his dad. Scott and Mom ran outside, and it was Scott who reached me first and cradled my arm, wrapped me up in his jacket, and soothed that I was okay and we were going to the hospital. He didn't let go of me once, cradled in his arms like a baby as I sobbed, Mom driving, Andrew in tears in the backseat. Scott called me "baby girl," smoothed back my hair, and kissed my head. And for the first time since my father left I felt like I had a dad.
My arm was broken, and after X-rays and medication I was still crying until Andrew crawled up into the hospital bed with me and curled up in my side, holding my uninjured hand, and I fell asleep.
Something changed that day. Scott's pure, paternal concern for me, Andrew's quiet comfort--my stupidity had bonded us.
I became softer with Scott and Andrew. I didn't treat them like invaders, I treated them like friends, and eventually like family. I helped Scott cook, he let Andrew and I sit with him and ask questions when he was working on his project car, I curled up with him during movie nights. I welcomed Andrew to play with me, taught him how to climb the tree when my arm healed, and when kids at school picked on him for his shyness and his small size I had his back.
Mom told me years later that the first time I called Scott "Dad" he'd cried that night.
But Andrew was different. He was my stepbrother, and we were growing up together, but he wasn't my brother. He was just Andrew--my Andrew. We curled up under the covers and whispered late into the night. We comforted one another when the other got in trouble. We were best friends, not siblings, and somehow that made us even closer.
As we grew we began to change, as kids tend to do.
I think I was fourteen when I noticed Andrew's gaze would linger a little too long. I was growing into myself both physically and emotionally: finally gaining breasts all the other girls at school had already seemed to grow, my hips growing, my baby fat slipping away. My sarcasm and bite remained, but I was getting softer. Especially with Andrew. Because he was growing, too, and I started noticing things: the way a cute dimple formed on only one side when he laughed, the way his warm hazel eyes lit up when he spotted me, the way his body was changing. He sprouted up when he was around fifteen, towering well over the rest of us, and he and his friends had started working out. But he was still my sweet, soft Andrew. Still shy. Still quiet. Still emotional. But he was gaining confidence, exchanging witty quips that would have us in stitches and matching my sharp words with ease.
We took care of each other. We knew things about each other no one else knew, not even our own best friends. We knew, in extensive detail, when we'd each lost our virginity. Surprisingly, Andrew had lost his first at the ripe age of eighteen--surprising only because he was so nervous and shy around other girls. I'd lost mine around twenty years old, with my first and only real boyfriend. We knew what the other liked in a relationship and during sex, we knew each other's turnoffs, kinks, and what we looked for in partners.
When Andrew found out his second girlfriend, Lauren, was cheating on him, he cried in my arms all night, and I was moved to tears by his own emotion. He'd been absolutely heartbroken, and I spent the entire night reminding him why Lauren was so fucking stupid. I brushed my fingers through his hair, rubbed his back, and kissed his head. We'd stayed up watching shitty YouTube videos to make him laugh, finally falling asleep around 3am, and when I woke up in the morning Andrew was asleep on my chest, arms wrapped around my middle. I think that was when I realized the feelings I had for him had taken root.
And then there was the time my first and only real relationship had taken a dark turn. Wyatt and I had been having sex after an argument and he was being so rough, but not in the way I liked. He was hurting me, and I begged him to stop. He didn't. He fucked me until I was in tears before leaving me alone in my apartment, and I'd fled to Andrew's place, crying and shaking and in more fear than I'd ever felt in my life. I'd never seen Andrew angry before that moment. Mild irritation, maybe, but not pure rage like the kind I'd seen in his eyes that night. He wrapped me up in his arms, safe and tight, and promised that I was safe and that he had me. He rocked me, whispered to me, and held me until I fell asleep.
Months later, I found out through Andrew's best friend, Ryan, that the next day, long after I'd gone to work, Andrew went to Wyatt's house and punched him right in the face, warning him to never come near me again. I don't know exactly what was said, Ryan wouldn't tell me and I have no idea if Andrew even knows that I know what he did, but whatever he said must have scared Wyatt shitless because he ghosted me and I never heard from him again. He never even asked for his shit back that had slowly accumulated at my place over the three years of our relationship, and Andrew and I had taken great pleasure in tossing his crap out.
I didn't date again after that. I had no desire to. Hookups, yeah, but I'd practically sworn off dating. I spent most of my time with Andrew, and during one quiet night while we were curled up in my bed he quietly asked me if I was afraid to date because of what Wyatt did. I was, at least a little bit, but I told him no. I told him I was happy where I was. Andrew knew that I was lying, because he always does, but he didn't say anything--he just took my hand.
Andrew broke up with his girlfriend, Grace, not long after the Wyatt Incident. He didn't tell me why, but I had a feeling I knew the reason.
Which is how I've ended up here, pacing the hall outside of his apartment at ten in the evening. It's been two years since the Wyatt Incident. Two years of treading lightly, two years of being a little more than friends, but not daring to take anything further.
What am I doing?
I wonder for the fifteenth time, glancing down the hall towards the elevator. I should go. This feels wrong.
But Brielle's voice is in my head again. "Look," she told me last week, sipping on wine. "I said
look
, Eden." She was a little drunk. Maybe more than a little.
