Claim Me, Alpha StepBrothers

~Olive~ Ever being f****d and you pretend like you’re enjoying it? Well, that’s my situation right now. “Ahh—f**k yeah, baby! Take that d**k! Oh s**t, your p***y’s so f*****g wet for me tonight—yeah, just like that!” I’m lying here flat on my back, staring up at that crusty brown water stain on Eric’s ceiling that looks exactly like a sad, limp little d**k with two droopy balls, counting backwards so I don’t yawn right in his sweaty face and ruin his big moment. Ninety-seven. Ninety-six. This dude actually thinks he has the greatest d**k of all time. He’s out here acting like he’s packing a monster when technically he told me it’s “10 inches, baby, I swear.” Trust me, y’all—it’s 4. Four pathetic, average inches of overconfident d**k that he’s been swinging around like it’s a lightsaber since junior year. He even measured it once in front of me with a ruler and everything, squinting like he was doing advanced math, then announced proudly, “See? Almost ten!” Bro, that ruler was clearly in centimeters and you still came up short. But here he is, pounding away like he’s rearranging my organs when all he’s really doing is giving my p***y the world’s most boring high-five. Ninety-five. He throws in that awkward little circular grind he thinks is “pro technique,” moaning louder like he’s winning an Oscar: “Yeahhh… feel that, baby? I’m so deep right now—owning this p***y! You’re mine tonight!” I have to clench my jaw so hard I almost crack a tooth to keep from laughing out loud. Deep? Sweetheart, you’re barely past the entrance. I could probably fit two fingers alongside you and still have room for a snack. Owning it? Please. I forced out a fake moan—“Mmm, yeah, baby, just like that…” “Babe,” Eric pants into my collarbone. “Babe, are you close?” I am so close. I am so close to losing my f*****g mind. “Mm-hm,” I say. “So close, baby.” I am not close. I have never been close. I have, in eleven months of dating Eric Levi, finished exactly twice, and both of those times were because I finished myself in the shower afterward while he was downstairs eating leftover lasagna. Eric is an i***t. Eric is a sweet i***t. I am going to miss him approximately as much as I miss my retainer. Ninety-four. My phone is buzzing on the nightstand. Ninety-thr — My phone is buzzing on the nightstand and I can see the name lighting up the screen and it is MOM in all caps and a little heart emoji because I am eighteen years old and I love my mother more than I love anyone alive and I have a heart next to her name like a girl who hasn’t been disappointed yet. She doesn’t call at ten p.m. She texts at ten p.m. She calls in the morning, with coffee, in the kitchen, in her ugly purple robe. She does not call at ten p.m. “Eric.” I push his shoulder. “Eric, get off.” “Almost — “ “Eric.” He lifts up like a confused Labrador. “Babe, what — “ I am already reaching for the phone. I am already half off the bed. I am already naked and walking toward the bathroom because something in my stomach has gone cold and I have learned in eighteen years on this earth that when your stomach goes cold you answer the phone. “Mom?” “Olive.” Her voice is wrong. Her voice is the voice she had the night Dad died. Bright and terrified all at once, like a bird that’s flown into a window and is pretending it isn’t dying. “Baby. I have to tell you something.” I close the bathroom door. I sit down on the closed toilet lid. I am still naked. There is a small crab-shaped soap on the counter that Eric’s mother bought at a Hallmark store in 2009 and I am going to remember that soap for the rest of my life, I can already tell. “Mom.” I make my voice flat. “What.” “I’m getting married, baby.” I do not say anything. “Olive?” I do not say anything because there is a thing happening in my chest that I do not have a name for. My mother has not dated since my father died. My mother has not looked at a man since my father died. My mother and I have lived in a small yellow house in Connecticut for six years and we have eaten Sunday dinner together every Sunday and she has not so much as held a man’s hand and now she is — “Baby, say something.” “Who,” I say. “What?” “Who, Mom.” “Olive — “ “Mother.” I hear my own voice and it is the voice I use when I am about to make a teacher cry. It is the voice that has gotten me into more detentions than I can count. It is my talking voice and my talking voice has saved my life and ruined it in roughly equal measure. “I am asking you a question. I am sitting on Eric’s mother’s toilet on the night before I leave for college and I am asking you the name of the man you are about to legally bind yourself to. I think I have earned that information.” A long pause. “His name is Richard.” “Richard what, Mom.” Another pause. Longer. “Richard Hayes.” I do not move. I do not move for what feels like a year and is probably eight seconds and in those eight seconds I am twelve years old again and there are two FBI agents on our front step and one of them is taking off his hat and the other is asking my mother if she would like to sit down and my father is dead, my father is dead, my father has been dead for six years and his last case, the case he was working when his brakes failed on I-95, the case he used to talk about at the dinner table when he thought I was too young to understand — The Hayes file. The Hayes file. I am going to throw up. “Olive? Baby? Are you there?” “Mom.” My voice is a coin dropping down a well. “Mom. Mom. Do you — does he know — does he know who Dad was?” “What?” “Does Richard Hayes know that Dad — “ “Olive, what are you talking about? He’s a businessman, baby, he’s in real estate, he — Olive, are you — are you crying? Olive — “ I am not crying. I am laughing. I am sitting on Eric Levi Thompson’s mother’s toilet, naked, with a crab-shaped soap an arm’s length away and the sound of my high school boyfriend pulling on his jeans in the next room, and I am laughing the way my father used to laugh, a sharp barking laugh like a dog that’s been kicked one too many times and decided to bite, and my mother is saying my name on the other end of the phone but I cannot hear her over the sound of my own laughter because the universe — the universe, ladies and gentlemen — has decided that the man my mother is going to marry is the man my father was investigating when he died. The man my father called the worst man in America across the dinner table when I was eleven. Richard Hayes. Richard f*****g Hayes. “Olive, are you laughing?” “No, Mom.” “It sounds like you’re — “ “I’m not laughing, Mom.” “Baby — “ “When.” I wipe my face. There are tears on it. I do not remember crying. “When is the wedding.” “Saturday.” “Saturday?” “Olive, I know it’s fast — “ “Mom, that is three days from now.” “I — I know — Richard wanted — there’s a thing, with the family, with the — “ “With the what, Mom.” “With his sons.” I close my eyes. “His sons,” I repeat. “He has twins. They’re your age. They’re at — they go to Ashford too, baby, isn’t that lucky? Richard says they’re going to be so happy to meet you, he says — “ “Mom.” “— he says the four of you are going to be a real family, he’s so excited, baby, he wants you to come a day early so we can — “ “Mom.” “— so we can all have dinner before the rehearsal, just the five of us, and — “ “Mom, what are their names.” “What?” “The twins. What are their names.” “Oh.” My mother laughs, a bright happy laugh like a girl in love, like a woman who has not been a girl in love in twelve years. “They have these funny names, baby, Richard’s late wife was — they’re called Cassius and Crew, can you believe that, Cassius and Cr—” Fuck. I hang up.