When My Stepbrothers Say Stop

TWO

At 9:30 in the morning, when I walked into the kitchen, they were all there.

The breakfast Cindy had made was still laid out on the island, and the smell of eggs, bacon and coffee mingled in the air, making this house I had not yet fully grown used to feel especially warm. Nathan was sitting at the dining table with a book beside him, as if he had been reading for a long while. Neil came over from the kitchen island, his hair still a little messy, a glass of orange juice in his hand. When he saw me, he smiled.

“Morning, Emma.”

“Morning.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down. Nathan glanced up at me, his eyes quickly falling to the notebook by my hand.

“You said you had a question yesterday, right?”

I had already finished high school back home, but here, college still felt like something locked behind SAT scores, applications, transcripts, and rules I did not yet understand.

“Yes,” I said.

Ever since I had started preparing for the SAT, he had been helping me. Not every day, not in the formal, sit-down-and-teach-me sort of way that made people nervous. More often, whenever I got stuck somewhere, he would take a look.

He never explained too quickly, and he never rushed. Somehow, he always seemed to know exactly what I had failed to understand, even when I could not fully explain the confusion myself.

“If you want, bring it over after breakfast,” he said.

I went upstairs to get my book. By the time I came back to the table, he had already closed his own. Nathan moved his chair a little toward me, took my paper, looked at it for a few seconds, then tapped one line lightly with the pen in his hand.

“Here.”

I lowered my head to look.

“You’re not stuck because you don’t get it,” he said. “You skipped a step earlier.”

I frowned a little. “Where?”

Instead of correcting my answer directly, he rewrote that line, each step clear and steady, without the slightest trace of impatience.

“Look at this part,” he said. “If you don’t get this step right first, everything after it gets messy.”

I followed the tip of his pen, and the place that had been blocked in my mind suddenly loosened. It was a strange feeling, as though a tangled thread had been gently pulled free at one end.

“Try it again,” he said.

I picked up the pen and started over.

The kitchen quieted down. There was only the sound of my pen moving across the paper, and the soft clink of ice in Neil’s glass as he drank. Halfway through, I suddenly heard a laugh beside me.

“You’re seriously doing homework right after breakfast?”

I looked up and found Neil at the edge of the table. I had no idea when he had come over. His gaze landed first on the small distance between Nathan and me before moving to the problem on my page.

“She needs the practice,” Nathan said evenly.

“She also needs fresh air.” Neil pulled out a chair and sat down, leaning back as he looked at me. “Come watch my football practice today. I’ll teach you after.”

I looked instinctively at Nathan, then back at Neil. “You know how?”

The moment the words left my mouth, I realized my notebook was still on Nathan’s side, and that my body had not moved back at all, as if I had already assumed the answer should come from him.

Neil saw it. He did not seem angry. He only smiled.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m just too lazy to teach.”

“Then teach me now.”

He raised an eyebrow, as if he had not expected me to actually push the problem toward him. A few seconds later, he reached over, took the pen from my side, skimmed the question, and spoke with the ease of someone facing a problem that would move out of his way on its own.

“Easy-peasy.”

He wrote out several steps quickly, much faster than Nathan, with almost no pauses.

“Got it?” he asked.

I looked it over and, to my surprise, I really did.

“Then why haven’t you ever helped me before?”

Neil shrugged. “You already had a tutor.”

He said it so naturally, as if it were only a reason he had tossed out without thinking. Nathan took the pen back and said nothing, merely adding beside Neil’s work the step he had skipped.

“Don’t skip this part on the test,” Nathan said. “That’s where you’ll lose points.”

I looked at the line and nodded.

Neil did not interfere again. He went on eating his breakfast. After he finished, he put his plate into the dishwasher, but when he came back, he did not leave. He only leaned against the dining table, drinking from his glass and looking occasionally at my paper.

I lowered my head and started the next problem.

“That was a mistake,” Neil said suddenly.

I froze for a second, looked down, and realized he was right.

“I thought you weren’t teaching.”

“I’m not,” he said, smiling. “I’m supervising.”

I could not help laughing. With his reminder, I wrote the problem again. Nathan lowered his eyes to my steps, waited until I had finished, and then said,

“That’s right.”

He said it softly.

Just then, Cindy came in from the backyard, a towel still in her hand. When she saw all of us gathered around the dining table, she paused for a moment, then smiled.

“Did everyone like breakfast?” she asked, then added, “Eric asked if it was okay. He said if you liked it, he can pick up more stuff next time.”

She tried to sound casual, but I still heard the faint nervousness underneath.

I knew that expression of hers too well. She was not waiting for me to answer her. She was waiting for the other two people in this house to tell her it was all right.

She wanted to make breakfast well, to fill the fridge, to make every morning in this house feel stable, abundant, like a real home. After moving into a new country and a new family, maybe breakfast was one of the few things she could still make certain.

But she did not dare seem as if she was trying too hard, afraid that the moment she did, she would look like an outsider far too eager to belong.

Nathan was the first to look up. He smiled at her.

“It was really good.”

Cindy visibly relaxed.

Neil immediately added, “Way better than our sad microwave breakfasts.”

Cindy laughed. “Good. Neil, I made you a sandwich. It’s in the fridge. Take it to practice.”

“Thanks, Cindy.” Neil said it, then seemed to remember something and turned to me. “Can you make two more, please? Emma and Nathan are coming with me.”

I looked up. “When did I say I was going?”

“You didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t say yes either.”

“Then say yes now.”

Nathan was still looking at my problem and did not even lift his head. “Who said I’m going?”

Neil looked at him. “You need fresh air more than she does.”

Nathan finally looked up. “Only if you stop forcing throws.”

Neil frowned. “It’s called creating opportunities.”

“Coach used to call it forcing the ball.”

Neil looked at him. “How long has it been since you played?”

The sentence fell into the kitchen, and for a brief moment everything went quiet.

Very brief.

So brief it was almost as if no one noticed.

Nathan only lowered his gaze back to my scratch paper, his tone still even. “Doesn’t mean I can’t read the field.”

Neil did not answer. He only picked up his drink and took a sip.

My pen was still paused over the paper. Suddenly, I felt that something in that second had been different. It was not an argument, and it was not quite a cold silence either. It was more like a very thin thread had been brushed by accident, trembling lightly before everyone quickly pretended nothing had happened.

Before I could think it through, Neil smiled again.

“Fine. Former player judging current player. I’ll take it.”

I could not help laughing.

In that moment, the kitchen came alive again. Cindy was at the fridge preparing sandwiches. Neil was still arguing about “reckless passes.” Nathan had lowered his head back to my problem, the corner of his mouth curved faintly.

Everything felt like a normal morning.

So normal that I almost forgot this family had only just begun to become what it was.