The Neglected Son, Ch. 1: Chet and Mindy
Mindy was as pretty as I remembered her. Prettier, even. Just looking at her made my chest tighten and my throat close up. For a second there, I thought I was going to have an asthma attack.
She was with a group of girls from her sorority, or so I guessed. The way they all stood so chummily close together, laughing and tossing their heads and posing whenever they spotted a likely guy strolling by. None of them were ugly, but Mindy was far and away the hottest of the bunch.
Her dark hair was pixie-cut around her impish face, framing vivid turquoise eyes so gorgeous that they looked like contacts. I knew they were natural. Aunt Paula had eyes the same color. She and Mindy had always had a sort of Snow White and the Wicked Queen relationship, even when Mindy had been a kid.
It had been six years since I'd seen any of them, but I still didn't have any trouble recognizing Mindy. I saw her in my sleep sometimes.
Laughing at me.
Teasing me.
That was Mindy, all right. She hadn't grown up much, still being on the short side, but she'd sure grown out in all the right places. Her body was walking talking dynamite, toned and trim but curved and bouncy. She was packed into a strapless white dress that glowed in the club's dim lighting.
Seeing her was like a strange kind of emotional time travel. I felt the years being stripped away, and the changes they'd made in me being erased. All at once, I was the skinny loser again, peering at the world through thick glasses.
No!
Everything was different now. I wasn't like that any more.
And, weirdly, I had Dad to thank for it. He'd been the one to pressure my mother into sending me to boarding school when I was fourteen. Better that than have me underfoot over the summers and on holidays. He hadn't wanted me around when he had his new family to occupy his time.
Mom hadn't argued much. She wanted me to get a good education, and couldn't afford to send me to private school on her own. Not even with the child support Dad sent. When he'd offered to pay the tuition, and set aside a hefty chunk of cash for college, she hadn't been able to resist.
Thinking of Mom, and looking at Mindy, made my fists clench. It wasn't right, the way things had worked out. Dad had used her, made a fool of her, and abandoned her at the earliest opportunity. And then, to make matters worse, he'd turned around and married her sister. Mindy and Renee were my half-sisters as well as my cousins, and it had been plain from the moment they'd been born which of his kids Dad favored.
He may have held on to some hopes for me during the first few years of my life. Hopes that his son and firstborn might follow in his glory-filled footsteps. But when I turned out scrawny, weak, and clumsy, he gave up on me.
Well, I'd proved him wrong. The boarding school, and prep school after, had given me the chance I needed to make something of myself.
I hadn't bothered to stay in touch with the rest of the family. Not after the way they'd treated Mom. The only one I ever heard from was Dad's doddering old auntie. She gleaned family gossip like a squirrel storing nuts, and doled it out each December in a photocopied holiday letter.
That was how I'd found out that Mindy was starting college. She'd spent a year at a pricey finishing school, then enrolled at the same university I attended.
Mom, learning of this, had suggested I look Mindy up. She thought it would be funny to see how the rest of them reacted to the 'new me.'
So, here I was. But I didn't feel like the new me anymore. I had a sinking certainty that when Mindy turned and saw me, she would snicker, and point, and my zipper would be down or something, and all the other girls would scream with laughter. Like at the slumber parties she'd held as a teenager.
A sheer, living hell.
I steeled myself. I wasn't that skinny loser any more. I'd taken up swimming, crew, and tennis. I was ten inches taller and forty muscular pounds heavier than the last time she'd seen me. I wasn't the sort of brother she should be ashamed to introduce to her friends.
As I approached, I saw one of the girls in Mindy's group notice me. She bumped her shoulder against Mindy's, and motioned with her chin in my direction.
Mindy turned. Her eyes glided over me.
She smiled, perfect white teeth brilliant against her glorious bronze tan.
I swallowed, feeling stupid and nervous, waiting for the moment when she'd cry out my hated childhood nickname. "Winnie-the-pooh," she would crow, and screech her banshee's laugh.
Blame my parents for naming me after great-grandfather Winchester. Winchester Sherman Hollister, that was the moniker with which I'd been cursed.
But she didn't. She only smiled that playful little smile, and tilted her head and lowered her eye lashes, and it struck me like a blow from a mallet that she was giving me a come-hither look.
She didn't recognize me!
She had no idea who I was.
I didn't know whether I should be relieved or offended. I must have looked like the world's biggest dope, standing there, my jaw hanging open.
Mindy took it as a compliment. She detached herself from the gaggle of sorority girls and swayed her way to where I was.
"Well, hi," she said.
Up close, she was even more of a knockout. Those turquoise eyes glittered amusedly up at me. I hastily dropped my gaze, but that was no good, because now I was staring at the lack of tan lines on her shoulders and the upper slopes of her breasts. The white strapless dress fit her like she'd been poured into it.
"Mindy –" I said, dragging the word out of my frozen throat.
Her smile widened. "You know my name. I'm flattered."
She touched my arm in a companionable, intimate gesture.
Flirting. I could hardly believe it, but there it was. She was flirting with me. The voice, a sultry sort of purr. The eyes, darting slyly at me from beneath those long dusky lashes. The way she leaned toward me, affording me a spectacular view of her cleavage.
She didn't know who I was. She thought I was a stranger, some guy trying to pick up on her in this trendy off-campus club.
