The Stepbrother (Red's Tavern 5)

“You bring new meaning to TMI, Mom,” I said. “How long is the road trip going to be?”

“Just under three weeks,” Mom said.

“I’ll have to check with Red,” I told her, cradling the phone against my ear. “I haven’t really taken a day off in three years.”

“We’re stopping for a few days in San Francisco, you know,” Mom said.

Now Mom was bringing out the big guns. I’d wanted to go to San Francisco ever since I was a little kid, watching Full House. The only big cities I’d ever been to were St. Louis—which didn’t really count to me as a big city—and Chicago, once, when I was nine and I’d had the chicken pox the whole time.

San Francisco was something else entirely. I could imagine dancing the night away in one of the zillions of gay clubs there. Walking along the Golden Gate Bridge. Feeling like I really, truly belonged somewhere, for the first time.

My heart felt like it was being wrung out. I realized I might actually say yes to something I’d always hated. The idea of being cooped up in an RV on a long road trip and camping on most of the nights had always sounded like hell to me.

But fr once, the timing was right. There was nothing tying me here other than my job, and I had a small mountain of time off saved up. I looked out onto this same street in front of Red’s Tavern every night, feeling lonelier than I’d ever been.

This place felt empty. I felt empty—and not just because I hadn’t had a cock inside me for over a week.

Maybe, after a little time on the road, I might feel whole again.

“Fine,” I said through my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut. “I’ll do it. I can’t believe I’m agreeing to an RV trip, but I’ll do it.”

My mom let out a whoop, and I heard the sound of her clapping like a damn contestant on The Price is Right.

“Hey—hey hun, you still there?”

“Of course.”

“I tossed the phone on the couch I was so happy,” she said. “Fuck the fuckboys. You’re comin’ on a road trip, baby.”

A small smile spread over my face. “It’ll give me a lot of good pictures for my Instagram, at the very least.”

“The RV is in the best shape it’s ever been,” Mom said, talking like the Energizer bunny. “And actually, you’ll have plenty of options to choose when it comes to RVs. Aunt Laura and Uncle Jim are coming along in theirs. Logan will be with them. We’re bringing Cocoa, of course, and we’re going to make a pit stops in Denver and Vegas and L.A.”

“That actually sounds pretty damn cool,” I admitted.

“Holy shit, sweetie, and you’ll never believe it. Guess who Greg convinced to come along?”

“One of his work friends?”

My stepdad ran a contracting company in a nearby town, and he had about a billion friends, all of whom seemed to be named Dave.

“Fox is coming,” Mom said. “Your stepbrother’s finally gracing us with his presence again.”

I paused.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“I couldn’t believe it, either.”

I sat down on the nearby bench, hanging my head as a wave of regret washed over me. “I actually forgot I have a huge commitment, Mom. Definitely can’t come on the road trip.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said. “Just because you and Fox were high school rivals doesn’t mean you won’t get along now.”

“High school rivals?” I said. “He was a prick.”

Mom chuckled. “You were a prick to him, too, if I remember correctly,” Mom said.

She wasn’t exactly wrong.

Mom had married my stepdad, Greg Fox, the summer right before high school. I’d always liked Greg. Greg was fine. I was certainly incredibly happy for Mom, finally finding a man after my dad cheated on her and bolted when I was a kid.

Greg’s son, Nicholas Fox, had been the problem.

A cocky, pompous, impossible problem, all underneath that stupid mop of perfectly styled dark brown hair.

Nicholas Fox was the stepbrother from hell.

He never went by Nicholas, first of all. Not even Nick. He insisted that everyone call him by his last name, because it made him feel cool. Fox. So cool. So classy. He was two years older than me, already a junior in high school when I entered as a freshman, and I was still awkward with a face full of pimples.

When Greg and Fox moved in with us, it was a chaotic two years of sparring with Fox at school and us mutually ignoring each other as much as we could at home. In high school, I was in as many art classes and plays as I could fit myself into. But even back then, Fox already considered himself some sort of New York city slicker before he’d even graduated high school.

He wanted nothing to do with me. He would look right past me in the hallways. He’d talked on his cell phone like some mini CEO-in-training, even if he was just ordering a pizza. And then he finally left for college, studying finance in New York City, far, far away.