Once Upon a Tryst with My Stepbrother

012: A Problem That Boba Cannot Fix

[Faye]

Embyr is angry with me. Actually, no, she’s livid.

Apparently, there are consequences for forgetting about your regular life for a week while cuddling up with your new boyfriend in his empty house.

“What gives, Faye? You ghost me for a week and then dare to show up asking for my notes?” Her glare could burn a hole in the ozone layer. “You couldn’t send a text or anything?”

“Em, I….”

She lifts her chocolate brown hand, her fingernails freshly tipped with watermelon-colored acrylics. “No. Don’t even. Your story had best be good,” You could almost hear her add “muthafucka” at the end of her sentence as she swung her braids over one shoulder, but I could tell she was trying to remain composed. Cracking her knuckles, she takes a long deep sip of her boba, her chocolate brown eyes staring at me down. “Spill.”

I was the first to look away, which is challenging to do with my best friend. She is completely impossible to ignore. At 5’11” tall, she had the body of a supermodel, high cheekbones, perfect honeyed cocoa skin, and a booty from a rapper's wet dream. Her hair, which changes color and shape as quickly as her moods, is currently done up in fine shoulder-length hot pink braids that end with rainbow beads and sound like falling rain every time she moves her head and the plastic beads click against one another. Her current style pairs nicely with her fluorescent chartreuse jumpsuit, violet blouse, and orange sweater in a loudly colorful way. Honestly, she has the fashion sense of a deranged, punk clown.

And with the way she was staring at me, probably one of those scary murder clowns.

Sitting at the window seats in our favorite trendy pop-up café, we listened to vintage 90s tunes blaring from a jukebox that only played No Doubt and Christina Aguilera songs. This place was almost trying too hard to bring back that early century aesthetic. A weird little retro café specializing in brightly colored drinks, “Boba Pop Electric” serves a classy combination of boba, crêpes, and froyo, with a book nook full of soft vampire porn and a few pinball machines in the corner. The crêpes are mediocre, the froyo is edible--but nobody comes here for the food. Everyone knows that it's all about the boba, the best boba in the East Bay made right here in Oakland on the edge of Chinatown, closer to Fruitvale than the lake. Their tapioca pearls are artfully cooked to perfection, paired nicely with sweet and savory add-ins like lycée jelly and sweet red beans to serve the diverse flavor palate of a population where Cantonese and Korean are spoken with more frequency than English.

Moreover, we have yet to see a drink served here that looks bad with one of Embyr’s outfits.

Stepping into this shop made me feel called out and comforted all at the same time. Like an invader but also a welcome guest.

It was in this shop that we first met, two anime fangirls looking for cheap Korean knockoffs of our favorite merch with nothing to do on a Saturday. Our motto as friends has always been honesty, and the idea that there is no problem that boba cannot solve.

I try not to choke on a pearl as I gulp down a drink they call “K-pop Dreams,'' a violently pink, purple, and green concoction that tastes faintly like taro. Embyr is drinking a variegated orange liquid titled “Sunset in San Francisco'' that smells like Thai ice tea but somehow has a sour aftertaste based on the look on her face after each sip. Maybe umeboshi?

“Soooo….”.

“.....what?” I mumble between bites of tapioca, breaking eye contact so that she cannot see my fear. I swallow, trying not to choke under her scrutiny, before taking another deep slurp of my boba.

“Soooooooo….tell me more about what happened!” She clarifies, her nails clacking on the bar, which was made of random 90s paraphernalia trapped in layers of epoxy. You have, exactly, five minutes.”

I blink. “So you know how you abandoned me at that party last weekend? Left me with a drink in my hand to speak awkwardly to some guy I didn’t even know, while you snuck off with the DJ…” Now it’s Embyr’s turn to look away. She remembers. Guilty, ha!

“Yeah…”

“So I ended up drinking WAY more than I should have and started making out with that freshman” my voice drops into a whispered shout. I’m only half pretending to be angry. Sure, it ended up leading to a new relationship, but part of me, the maniacal part, wants to see her squirm before I tell her everything. “Next thing I know, I’m waking up in his bed with my panties hanging from his ceiling fan! They’re still there, by the way…”

Embyr’s eyes sparkle. “Is that so….” she smirks. “And how, pray tell, do you know that precisely?”

I gulp. Busted.

“Okay, so yeah we kinda hooked up, and we…”

“Ha, b***h! I knew I was doing you a favor!” she nods at me sagely, which looks a little ridiculous in her current getup. “Was he any good? Please tell me he was as good as he looked. That boy is hecka fine! Gurl, you should be on your knees thanking me for that one-night stand of the gods''

I blush.

“That good, huh?”

“Yes but…”

“But what?....” She started to look angry again and could see that I was still hiding something.

“It's just that we are still seeing each other. In fact, he’s taking me down to Half Moon Bay this weekend. His family has a beach chalet…”

“Beach chalet? In Half Moon Bay?”

“Well, it's his dad’s and…”

“Okay, so who did his dad kill to get that land?” She puts her sunglasses on to avoid the sun shining in her eyes, her rhinestone-encrusted cat eyes catching the light as she takes her hands in mine, all my sins forgiven as she lives vicariously through my adventures. “Nobody just has a chalet in Half Moon Bay without old money or mob connections. Also, seriously Faye, what kind of sky p***y do you have? s**t!” I could see that she is as jealous as she is curious about knowing more. “Some rich white boy likes you so much he’s taking you to his dad’s chalet after you’ve been together for a week? You must be riding him raw if he likes you that much…”

Coughing on my boba in mortification, I look around to see if anyone noticed our interaction. Thankfully, the café is mostly empty, the rare sunny winter day calling everyone out of their houses and onto the streets.

“Embyr! …”

“Tell me I’m wrong!”

I pull my lips together tightly. She rolls her eyes.

“OK, ok, that explains where you’ve been,” Embyr admits. “But it doesn’t excuse you going all silent on me. You didn’t text, call, email, message, or anything to me for a whole week, and I'm at home thinking ‘That girl gone got herself picked up by one of those weirdos in a van and I ain’t gonna see her again…’ and then you show up out of nowhere are like ‘can I have your notes from class last week.” Embyr’s fingernails tap against the surface of the bar, her fingers glittering with plastic rings and large acrylic stones shaped like lucky charms. “I’m just trying to grasp this situation by the horns.”

“Something like that.”

“You suck, you know that.”

“Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

“Damn lucky I do,” she admits.

We walk to the train, gossiping about my escapades. She was delighted and horrified by all the ways we used the surfaces of his house, and then the hotel in San Francisco, on the days that followed. But it wasn’t until we were already in a lecture that I let the big news drop.

“Sounds like you two got real close real quick.”

“Yeah, well, we have a lot in common.”

“Like what?”

“Well…” I try to explain this situation carefully, “our parents for one. They’ve been having an affair for the last decade, although I guess it isn’t an affair since both of them are widowed” I pause to take a breath. Seeing Embyr about to interrupt, I continue in a rapid whisper “But they grew up together and are high school sweethearts, and they got married that weekend Arthur had the party and so now…” I pause to catch my breath. “Now we’re technically brother and sister.”

“WHAT?!” She screams. We were sitting in the very back of the lecture hall, but her enthusiastic pitch grabbed the attention of most of the classroom who began to stare.

“Shhh!!!” some nameless classmate whispers angrily.

“You are not leaving me on a cliffhanger, Muthafuka! What the frack, Faye?!”

At that, our professor cleared his throat. Mx Tarry wasn’t having any of our nonsense today and put us on notice with their piercing glare. Embyr quickly clamps her mouth closed but continues to give me an excited side-eye for the next fifteen minutes. We were both Lit majors at the university, and this term we enrolled in a graduate-level medieval mythology course. Our professor, Mx Terry, had spent several years at Oxford and completed a dissertation on feminist themes in early British literature. This course, one of a series of potential classes that could be used to help finish my degree, is titled “Magic and Mayhem: Exploring Spiritual Archetypes from Avalon to Xanadu.” We are just now about to finish off the semester with a 20-page essay examining the connections to myth and morality in Arthurian legends, with a focus on Le Morte d'Arthur.

I put my finger to my lips, encouraging Embyr to stop hissing at me, and then point towards the lectern to signify that I’m trying to hear the professor. She might have been in class and has all the notes, but I missed a week and I NEED to know what to do for our final paper. Her curiosity was just going to have to wait.

“If you don’t already have a topic, I recommend looking at some of the more complex, less discussed characters.” Mx. Terry explained. “Because honestly, unless your take is truly unique, you cannot expect to get better than just passing if you write about Arthur, Merlin, or Queen Guinevere. Try to be a bit more original! Within the various Arthurian stories, there are numerous possibilities. I just cannot fathom reading yet another essay about how Arthur and Guinevere had an open marriage and that they could have all gotten along in a polyamorous relationship with Lancelot. Just no. The polyamory angle has been done, repeatedly.” They pause, as they pull down on their trendy tweed jacket. “I’d like to see an outline of an ORIGINAL topic by the end of the week. Class dismissed.”

“So you’re not a muthafucka, you’re a brothafucka!” is the first thing out of Embyr’s lips.

“We are NOT related! I am not f*****g my actual brother!” A few students gasped at us in open shock as we marched out of the lecture hall and onto the main campus. I lower my voice and continue to explain. “Besides, how could we know this was going to happen? We hadn’t even met before that night. What are the actual chances that something like this could ever happen?”

“But still, after you found out, you spent the whole week banging his brains out…”

“It's more than that, I think, I think I might lo…”

“You’re really crazy about him, aren’t you?” She saves me from a confession I might not be quite ready to admit, even to myself.

“Yeah,” my cheeks burn.

We reach the front of the school. Embyr grabs my arm to stop me suddenly, and I look up at her. “What..?”

“So your guy is about 6’2”, has strawberry-blonde hair, is slender, and drives a black beamer?”

“Yeah….”

“Mega white smile?”

“...and….”

She grabs my chin and rotates my face. It takes me a moment to let what I see sink in.

Arthur is standing next to his car, holding on to a girl with honey-blonde hair, pale white skin, and a perfect, slender figure.

She bends forward to kiss him.

I feel my heart sink.

And my vision goes red.