Why Justin Why Ch 01

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Chapter 1

I was going to kill my mother!

Not only does she go ahead and marry some European Vintner, who is a winemaker for the uninitiated like me, after a so-called courtship of just 3 weeks (can you imagine, just 3 weeks!),

but forgets to mention to me that this guy

(well, I better at least start acknowledging him as my Step-father),

has a grown-up son as well.

My new step-father, Big J, as he likes to call himself, is an decent guy.

He is large and beefy, the kind you see as the Russian mobster in movies, but he was a nice guy.

In the little time that I got to know him, he treated Mom right; with the correct combination of love and respect.

Theirs wasn't that middle-aged, lovey-dovey, stars-in-your-eyes kind of foolishness.

It was a mature love, ripened with time and experience but mixed in with the right splash of romance.

It seemed like they accepted each other to be the complements of themselves.

And most importantly, he respected me and my work and left me alone (which to me, was his biggest asset on the credit side).

I did joke with him once regarding his looking like a Russian mobster and he replied with a conspiratorial wink "You never know!"

But his asshole of a son was a different ball game altogether.

Not only did he not do anything

(and I mean any constructive utilization of time),

but to add insult to injury, this waste of space of a son of his was a party-whore, whose only claim to fame was visiting night-clubs in flashy cars with a gaggle of girls beside him and splashing this all over social media, behaving almost as if he were some celebrity.

Ok, so this "Step-Brother" of mine has a name, Justin, but that's all that my Mom tells me.

"I am sure you can dig something out about him from the internet" is her sage comment.

My mother has a boutique shop catering mainly to weddings, which is a minor success. And she has never adapted to the new social media opportunities (one of the reasons, that boutique shop has remained a minor success!) and prefers to do her business the old-fashioned way and thus her comments regarding the internet.

So I start checking out the details.

He is voraciously active on Instagram, Twitter, and all the other social media handles, having a punk-rock-like status complete with his collection of jazzy cars, groupie girls, and holidays in exotic locales.

(of course, his few million in the bank do help fund all of this).

He boasts having about half a million followers on each of these platforms. And I don't know when, if ever, he sleeps; as every day there is a post on some of those rag sites, with him celebrating into the wee hours of the night with a bevy of industry-produced simpering wannabe models, gracing some or the other night-clubs with his presence.

Don't think this Justin guy has ever done a day's honest work in his life.

And this is so, sooooo removed from my world.

I am hard-working, studious, and industrious.

A qualified Surgeon, doing my postdoc in Clinical Psychiatry.

I work about 12 hours a day and my weekends are spent at the medical school researching for my thesis.

I take my work seriously and don't have time for these social media hang-ups.

Whenever I do get a little free time I deposit myself in front of my large 55-inch plasma TV and watch the Hallmark channel.

Those effervescent romances are my best way of letting out all the stress from work.

And now my mother has gone ahead and fixed this "My getting to know my Brother" shit with this guy, without asking me.

And she did do this very craftily, informing me just before her flight took off to some remote island in the Pacific with my new step-father, leaving me pissed about single-handedly dealing with this new "Step-Brother" of mine.

So here I am, checking myself out in front of my mirror, deciding what to wear.

I decide to go with a simple light pink top and beige slacks, topped up with just a hint of lip gloss. Definitely no mascara or eyeliner.

Only the professional working look for this asshole, work-shy "Step-Brother".

I look and admire myself in the mirror in my bedroom upstairs.

I say to myself "Bonnie, you look good!".

A few months shy of my twenty-eighth birthday and at five feet and nine inches, slim and athletic body toned with regular swimming practice at the university gym, I did look good.

My tear-drop shaped 34B tits are one of my best assets along with a tight but rounded ass.

Men and their attention has never been a problem for me; many times more of a pain in the ass.

All of them, including those that I finally decide to go out for a drink with (and it has never progressed beyond that in a long, loooong time), have always complimented me on my turquoise green eyes.

A pale skin with shoulder-length chestnut brown hair parted in the middle completed my ensemble.

Today I decide to tie the hair in a lazy bun (I did say the professional look).

I may not be a Runway model, but definitely, I am no pushover.

So here I am, waiting in my downstairs TV room, which Mom has always called the living room, just flipping channels randomly on the TV to calm myself down and failing miserably at it.

I just press the mute button and get up, not even bothering to check which channel I am at and just start roaming around the house, touching and feeling various objects around the house and trying to recollect memories and stories associated with them.

This touch-based association has always had a calming effect on me and it didn't fail me now.

After their honeymoon, many of my Mom's customers brought back small trinkets from various exotic locales they had been to, as a token of appreciation.

She always treasured those, more than the money she made by selling those wedding gowns to the brides and the bridesmaids.

So my quaint two-level, turn-of-the-century house in Essex County, New York, a place I had lived in all my life, looked more like a souvenir store than a residential dwelling.

It had a lot of bric-and-brac just thrown around the house and I have seen many a visitor (mostly Mom's clients) cast a troubled look at the ordered tardiness around the rooms.

But Mom wouldn't change anything and now that I am the only one living here, neither would I.

Realizing that I needed to fortify myself for my sure-to-be feisty encounter with my "Step-Brother" (that's how I always thought of him, with quotes and never in the first person, someone always distant and far-far removed from my world), I treated myself to a glass of Chardonnay.

The one Big J had brought me.

Yup, this one tasted good, slightly acidic with a kind of peach flavor. I savored the wine lazily. It calmed me down. Perhaps this was the only good memory I would have of this evening.

I checked my watch, he was already late.

Well, what else could be expected out of these party-hopping, pill-popping types?

He hadn't called me after his flight landed (I had refused to pick him up at the airport and drive back with him. I wouldn't be caught dead with druggie types like him, thank you very much).

I had to call up the airline and confirm with them that yes, Justin Jacques had indeed been a passenger on the London-Boston flight and it had landed at Logan International about five and a half hours ago.

I did have his European contact number, but as he had not bothered to call me up I didn't want to do him any favors by displaying even a hint of concern about him.

Intending to do something to while away the time before he got here (that is, if he did finally get here) I started scrolling through his posts on social media.

And they were all variations of the same image.

Spiked black hair on pale skin with heavily painted over-hanging brows. The most remarkable, or in this case, un-remarkable features were his dull and dead eyes.

A firm chin with promisingly good cheekbones but disfigured with a lip piercing and a scraggly beard.

Dark eye shadow, numerous ear piercings, and a spiked dog-collar with various death-metal tattoos on his bare chest and shoulders along with chain-mail armlets completed his I-want-to-desperately-portray-that-I-am-Goth look.

So help me God!

But giving credit where credit is due, I had to agree though, if it were not him, I could surely see myself admiring his compactly wired musculature.

Scrolling through an online article in Celebrity News

(Gawd! When the fuck did this attention-whore become a celebrity!!)

I always did stop and pause at one of his not-so-recent pics which had always intrigued me.

This particular camera angle was not flattering.

It seemed to have been taken by a telephoto lens from quite a distance and the resolution was not too good (must have been some newbie pap trying to jump ahead of the curve in terms of proving his street creds)

It still captured enough of his desperate goth look though. He still had the spiked hair but the most important difference was the eyes.

The eyes in this pic were different.

While in all of his subsequent pics, he wore a wide range of colored lenses starting from brown and going all shades to finally black, in this one, it was bluish-green, turquoise, almost like mine.

In this pic, his eyes were alive, not dull and dead. And his eyes were angry as if the pap who snapped this had somehow invaded his privacy.

But those eyes showed promise. Those eyes showed a person as yet not committed to the Gothic-grunge lifestyle, as if he was tethering on the balance, before finally taking the plunge.

The doctor in me always exhaled a deep sigh whenever I came across this pic. At the promise of what could have been.

The tinkling of the bell rudely brought me back to the present and incorrectly equating this rather timid sound to the impending doom of my "Step-Brother" arriving, I was more than a little flustered, and in haste, I rushed to the door.

Realizing that my glass of wine was still in my hand I hastily deposited the same on the side table, patted down my hair, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

I opened the door to an unknown face.

"Yes?" I asked rather testily. I was looking over his shoulders, wishing this "Step-Brother" of mine would get here soon.

No reply. Just a warm smile.

"Can I help you?" I was increasingly getting angry.

I caught sight of a seven-year-old model sedan on my sidewalk. Looked like a rental. Why would this guy standing at the door and whom I did not know from Adam, drive a rental to get here?

Still no reply, just a little more turning at the corners of his mouth, maybe a hint of a smirk.

"Listen asshole, I am quite busy right now, so just tell me what is it that you want? I am waiting for someone" I was getting really angry now.

"Me" he replied with a quiet laugh.

"What the hell do you mean? Who the hell are you? I am calling the cops unless you tell....." I directly looked at his face for the first time and the words died in my throat.

The first thing to arrest my attention was his eyes.

Bluish-green, Turquoise.

And if I were a betting woman (which I was not), I could swear that his and my eyes were an exact color match.

Now, where had I seen those eyes before?!! And quite recently, I was sure.

Traveling my gaze downwards, my eyes rested on his jawline, firm cheekbones, and a prominent chin.

A pale face, maybe tanned just a little.

He was about four inches taller than me.

I kept looking closely at his stranger, while in the far reaches of my mind, the cobwebs started untangling.

He was clean-shaven off-course and had neatly combed fair hair.

Looking closely I could see the pricks where all those lip-rings and ear-piercings had been.

My mind had already started cataloging the similarities and differences.

Broad shoulders with none of those ostentatious, bulging biceps (which I hate), just a lithe but robust physique.

A simple light blue button-down shirt with folded sleeves and denim jeans completed the outfit. He was carrying his simple tan jacket folded in his arms.

My jaws reached the floor and my eyes bulged out of their sockets.

"Why... Justin?!" were all the words my lips could whisper.

My ears registered the sounds, but my brain still couldn't process them. For the first time, I had thought of him as Justin and not my Step-Brother.

I still couldn't understand it.

The difference between the man on those social media posts and the man standing in front of me was like the difference between heaven and hell.

As if having a life of their own, my hands drifted to the buttons on his shirt, started making them undone one-by-one. I guess my eyes needed to actually see and confirm those death-metal tattoos were indeed gone.

But there was a part of me, a very tiny part, that hoped those tattoos were still there. That tiny part of my brain wanted me to kiss those tattoos off his chest. I wanted my fingers gouging those tattoos while I rode him like a rodeo steer. Wanted to scratch and leave bleeding wounds on his shoulders.

"Uh...Sis! Can I come inside?" his words brought me up short. Without waiting for my reply he strode inside.

To say that I was embarrassed was the understatement of the decade.

I just couldn't allow myself to turn my body and face him.

My cheeks were aflame and my ears red-hot.

My momentary surrender to my fantasy had my palms madly itching.

I, who was nicknamed 'Queen Mary of Scots' at the hospital where I worked, because I viewed all men with disdain.

I, who had set such high standards when it came to dating men, that it was practically not possible for any man at the hospital to meet them and thus they openly spread rumors about me being a dyke.

I, who had let those rumors be, because that helped me stave off all those lecherous men and their creepy fingers.

That same me was now fantasizing about my step-brother.

That same me had abandoned all reticence like a street whore and a few moments ago was openly pawing the shirt buttons of my step-brother.

That same me now had madly itching palms and an acute tingling in the pit of my stomach, just by the mere thought of wanting to see his tattoos.

I don't know how long I stood rooted to the spot, ashamed to turn around and face him.

I knew I had to, but my burning cheeks and red-hot ears just wouldn't let me.

"Well, well, well... Dad's wine. Now, this is a welcome that I didn't expect!" I heard him say from somewhere behind me.

I finally turned to see him already seated on one of the high-backed chairs around the wood bar-cabinet with a glass of the bubbly already poured out for himself.

Miraculously my half-drunk glass (which till a few moments ago was at my side just near the door) had also appeared there.

I faced him and with a slight scorn replied "You surely must have been expecting the groupie-sluts that I had picked for your welcome."

I decided that a sharp biting comeback was the best way out for me from this embarrassing debacle.

Offense was the best defense.

He didn't flinch.

No constriction around his eyes or tightening of his cheekbones or his mouth.

He took the pointed jab like a pro.

Like a man who was sure of his situation and not easily fazed by whatever life threw at him.

The 'Queen Mary of Scots' in me, was thrilled to take on the impending battle of wits.

I was going to get him to a situation as embarrassing as he had put me through, if that was the last thing I did.

I knew that I had to up my game with this one. I was just looking forward to the challenge.

He just indicated with an inclination of his head that I was welcome to sit down. His look showed that he was a man habituated to people obeying his command.

Though that look instantly got my back up, I decided to let that slide.

I took my glass and pulled up another high-backed chair to the bar cabinet.

He raised a toast "To Life! May it always surprise us!"

Before I could formulate a scathing repartee he cut in

"Sis! One request! Can we give this back-and-forth verbal dueling a rest for today?"

"I will be out of your hair in no time. Can we not spend this time, which if I am not wrong, you would like it to be our last, in plain civilized conversation?"

"Ask me whatever you wish, and I will answer. I know you won't afford me the same privileges. That's ok. I will take what I can get!"

He surely could not have failed to see the disappointment writ large on my face when he indicated this meeting to be our last.

Now that I had seen this side of him, I didn't want it to be the last.

Also, I was not going to let him off so easily after embarrassing me so squarely.

I wanted and needed a chance to cause him emotional pain, physical pain if necessary, but pain nonetheless before he could get out of my hair.

At least that is what I told myself.

But, I had to give it to him, he was smart and astute.

In a few minutes, he had summed me up nice and square.

So I repeated what was foremost in my mind and what I had uttered a few minutes ago "Why... Justin?"

Even saying his name aloud was doing things to me deep down. I had never felt anything like this before.

"You mean why the wannabe-Goth in the social media handles and why me here?" he had judged correctly. I just nodded my head.

"For reasons that I cannot go into now, I need to lay low. And as you so profoundly demonstrated, offense is the best form of defense."

The burning of my cheeks and red-hot ears told me he had intuitively divined the reason behind my opening verbal gambit.

"And being the son of a well-known Winemaker is not exactly conducive to laying low" he would have continued further but I steam-rolled in with a half-smirk "You can use the term Vintner with me! We of the colonies are no dumb idiots, you know."

"Hmm...the English-only movement seems to have done wonders here!" he admitted with a smile. And that smile lit up his face. I just couldn't take my eyes off him.

"I can speak French quite fluently. I am passable in German. If English is difficult for you we could try some of the languages of mainland Europe?" I baited him as I wanted to just hear him talk.

Anything to just hear him talk.

"Togda nam sleduyet govorit' po-russki"(We should speak Russian then) he countered.

If he thought he could throw me off-balance, by showing off in Russian then he had underestimated me very much.

"Perestan' khvastat'sya po-russki... eto ne pomozhet"

(Stop bragging in Russian... it won't help) I responded.

He couldn't have known that I had spent a whole summer in St. Petersburg not so many summers ago, and I was rather good at picking up languages.

"Ya podchinyayus"(I surrender) he surrendered with open palms and a wry but disarming smile.

We both were enjoying this back-and-forth light-hearted verbal sparring.

"But why lay low Justin?"

I still couldn't believe that I was saying his name aloud.

"All in Good Time, Sis!" He replied with again a radiant smile. But the same effect as earlier was not there. Something was different.

And then I realized that this time the smile did not reach his eyes. I could read the wariness in his eyes when he said this.

I couldn't understand him, but I let it rest, for now.

Finally, surrendering to the mad itching of my palms, I got up, walked around the table, and stood in front of him in a gesture of supplication.

My thoughts were going into overdrive. I just had to know about those tattoos.

"This time I am asking permission... Please... I just have to know!"

I couldn't bring myself to say the exact words that I needed to say, but he guessed my intentions correctly.