Oops, I've Fallen

“I know, Carly. This isn’t about last night. I respect your privacy until you’re ready to talk about it.”

Now that makes my eyebrows climb clean to my hairline. Stella Page is a pusher, a meddler, a busy-fucking-body. She’s not the stay-out-of-it type, and she never will be. Something else is happening. I just don’t know what.

“Sal and I have something to tell the two of you.”

Ryan and I share a glance, wondering if maybe Sal said something to Stella about his suspicions. In a way, I’m kind of hoping he did. It would at least break a little bit of the thickest ice when it comes to broaching the conversation of Ryan and me engaging in a relationship with each other.

“Mom…” I start slowly, leaning forward in my chair.

Suddenly, though, she jolts in her seat and shoves a hand out in front of her, declaring, “We’re engaged!”

I’m sorry…you’re what now?

My blink is repetitive and slow as I try like hell to get my bearings. I’m normally really good at math, but something here is not adding up. Seventy plus seventy-five plus engagement plus screwing my mom’s fiancé’s son equals oh-shit-fuck-me-son-of-a-bitch.

Oh. Shit. Fuck. Me. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Ryan finds his voice first. I don’t know if it’s because he’s not busy making fucked-up equations in his head or if he’s just better at it, but damn, the ability to speak right now is seriously impressive.

“You’re engaged? Like, to each other?”

Sal snorts. “Shit, son. Yes, each other. You think I went out and found some other broad to marry, and Stella would be this excited about it?”

“We’re going to be family!” my mom shouts, throwing her arms up and into the air. “Isn’t that exciting?”

“Family,” I repeat woodenly with a nod.

My mom squeals. “Isn’t it so great?” She reaches across the table and grabs Ryan’s chin, shaking it back and forth, not one, not two, but three times. His eyes retreat to the corners and stare me down as she suggests, “And there’s no pressure at all, but oh, sweetheart, I’d be absolutely thrilled if you wanted to call me Momma!”

WHAT?

Oh my God. My heart beats so hard in my chest, it threatens to jump right out and flop on the table in front of me. The coffee and Denny’s breakfast and the muffins roil in my stomach, and I look to Ryan in a panic.

We can’t tell them now. We can’t.

I’m mean…what am I supposed to say?

Oops, I’ve fallen…for my brother?

I turn hard eyes to Ryan, and like it or not, what I find there is a reflection of the same. He’s freaking out, the same as me, and we don’t even have to talk to agree.

We cannot…and I mean cannot…tell our parents that we’re together now.

Ryan

There’s something particularly disturbing about watching a woman voraciously eat a corn dog while prompting you for the one-thousandth time that day to call her “Momma.”

Combine that with the fact that you’ve also been sexually intimate—repeatedly—with the woman who could actually call your future stepmother by that moniker without any irony at all, and the awkward dials up to a fifty on a ten-point scale.

Nevertheless, neither Carly nor I had the heart to tell Sal and Stella that their momentous news came with quite the sour note for us. Nor that the trip to the street vendors by the beach to celebrate didn’t sound like such a good idea on our queasy stomachs or that for every time they told another human that they’re getting married and we’re all going to be one big, happy family, another million of my sperm and a couple of Carly’s eggs die.

They’re elated, and who can blame them. To find a second chance at true love at their age must be exhilarating.

But what about you getting your first chance at it?

I shake off the thought as quickly as it appears and plaster a smile on my face while the lovebirds pose for pictures in a small photo booth in a shop we stumbled upon by the pier. Carly’s gone to the bathroom—an excuse I imagine is designed to keep herself from having to be alone with me for too prolonged a period of time—and I’m holding Stella’s purse.

And every second I’m alone with my thoughts takes me an inch deeper into the well of hysteria.

I cannot fucking believe Carly Page is going to be my sister. Stepsister, really, but I have to admit, right now, that doesn’t seem like the biggest of distinctions.

I’ve had my tongue, my dick, and my fingers inside her, and I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve shown her all the parts of myself I normally keep reserved, even admitted how strongly I feel about her, and I know she feels the same for me.

But this is the kind of complication that, as much as I’d like to, I’m having a hell of a time overlooking. Dating a sibling—any kind of sibling—isn’t something I would ever do.