Love me like you loathe me

"Alright… you're good, right?" My older brother frowned at me, concerned, closing the back of the trunk of his car, which had room for three kids and one on the way. Yeah, I was fine; moving back to my hometown wasn't a big deal, not when I had gotten our parents' house all to myself, Mom and Dad moving to live in Spain… yeah… I looked intently at him, still trying to see if I was okay. My last boyfriend was an asshole, and I had the bruises to prove it. "Mike, really…" I tried to give him a smile, dropping my crossed arms, not wanting to show him how hard it was to leave my old life, my friends, and everything else just to get away from the same guy who I had thought was the one before showing me his real face. "Steph, really…" Mike mocked me back, making me smile more, even though he wasn't playing, more like he couldn't answer me in any other way. He had always done this, and he teased me when we were younger, seeing that he was only two years older. When we were teenagers, he thought I was the worst thing on earth since the plague. Mike made another frown. He still didn't like leaving me alone when I just got here. My small get-away bag was already in my old room upstairs. He needed to get back to that pregnant wife of his who didn't like me, but I didn't care. If he was happy, so was I. "Oh, Alicia wants you over for dinner this weekend. You can do that, right?" I nodded since Mike was already on his phone, only looking up to confirm to that precious wife that I wasn't going to bail on whatever dinner party she was having. "Yeah, sure… It's not like I got much else going on…." I rolled my eyes when he wasn't looking. That i***t, like I wanted to spend time with him and his high school sweetheart. They were the worst. "No… I guess you don't..." he looked up at the house again before giving me another reassuring smile, mostly because he would feel bad about leaving me here when he was living all the way across town since he and Alicia were living on the edge of the city in this big suburban house. I would stay here, down the valley, alone in our parents' aging home. "Just don't… make sure he isn't there, okay?" I was pleading with my older brother, who looked nothing like me. He was tall and handsome, had dark hair like Mom, and had piercing blue eyes, which allowed him to choose whatever girl he wanted, and of course, that had to be Alicia. Alicia was the younger sister of his best friend, Lewis. The last time I saw him, he terrorized me, calling me weird and making fun of my drawings. He always ensured that I knew he thought I was strange and didn't belong with my own family. My stomach burned right into my scowl, and I didn't hide when Mike rolled his eyes like I was being dramatic, since everyone loved Lewis but me. "Just show up, or Allie is going to kill me…" He snorted when I didn't. I just didn't want to come over and be terrified by that older brother of hers, but Mike didn't get it. Nobody did. Lewis was a nice guy. People around him loved him. He had good grades, was good at sports, and always had a girl ready to give herself to him, but not me. I was the only one that he didn't treat right. The way he had treated me over the years…yeah, it still was just as fresh as when I left. I closed my eyes briefly before looking up at Mike, who was still on his phone, and Alicia, who was texting him to return home. I sighed. I guess he had to leave.