Forbidden Desire

I got off track. As I was saying, Tyler and I had settled into a semblance of a relationship, not quite siblings, but we’d become friends, sharing similar interests in some things and teaching each other things we liked. I saw him as a cool jock, like the guys that had always been part of the in-crowd in every high school special without the douche factor.

I soon made friends and didn’t find it hard to fit in, and I know I owed it all to him. And by the time school rolled around, I had my own band of friends. We’re only months apart in age with him being a few months older, but we were still in different grades, so I made my own friends as well.

I knew from day one that Tyler was ‘that guy.’ Even though his friends came from wealth, and none of them were bad looking, somehow, he was still able to stand out among his peers. I found an odd sense of pride in that for some reason, not least because everyone knew that we were family and treated me the way they did him.

The few that had tried ostracizing me for whatever reason were soon dealt with when Tyler had a talk with them, and things went much smoother than expected. What I didn’t know, until the school year was well on the way was that my new ‘brother’ was a dog. And I say that in the nicest way possible.

It didn’t take long for the rumors to reach my ears. At home he was the playful, laid-back guy who didn’t mind spending some evenings watching TV with me, joking about the teachers and some of our mutual friends. The guy who didn’t mind me tagging along behind him when he went out with said friends every once in a while. But at school, it was a different story.

He had quite the reputation with the girls, and they were not shy about sharing all the intimate details of what they did together. I don’t know why it started, or how exactly, but one day I overheard a group of girls from his class whispering about his prowess in bed, and for some reason, I got pissed.

I didn’t know why I was pissed, it’s not like the guys from my old school didn’t do the same thing, screwing their way through the cheerleading squad, but for some reason, hearing those stories about Tyler, my Tyler made me see red.

Lora

I became obsessed. I wanted to know every detail but had no way of doing so without giving myself away. There were times I even had to smile and play along as if I wasn’t at all bothered. But after that initial eavesdrop, I found it harder and harder to ignore and increasingly harder to keep up the façade.

I couldn’t tell him, of course, that I was bothered, couldn’t even perceive of ways to bring it up, but it did something to the ease with which we used to get along with each other. I could no longer laugh and play with him the way I’d done just a few short days before. And when he noticed and commented, I’d lashed out.

As any typical teenage boy, he’d just brushed off my odd behavior and hadn’t even had the decency to question me further or to at least try to figure out what had happened to change my attitude towards him, no, instead he’d just gone about life like it was business as usual which only irritated me that much more.

For days and weeks, I kept my hurt and confusion bottled up inside until I thought I would go crazy. Then I convinced myself that he didn’t love those girls; that he didn’t have any feelings for them, not if he was going through them like Kleenex the way the rumors suggested. It was the only way I found to protect my sanity. And still, I couldn’t admit to myself the real reason why I even cared.

I tried telling myself that it was because of our new stepsibling relationship that I was just looking out for him. I happen to know a little about high school girls after all, and as hot as Tyler is, the hearts and minds of girls that age cannot be trusted. A bit hypocritical I know, but at the time I was clutching at straws and trying to find any reason to cling onto so that I wouldn’t have to face the truth.

Our situation was such that I could find no way to settle the unrest in my mind. I lived in an agony that got so bad I came very close to begging mom to let me move back to our hometown just so I could escape, so I wouldn’t have to see and hear about Tyler being with someone else, which seemed to be a regular occurrence.