Big Brother Billionaire (Part One) (5 page)

“I am aware of just how hard you’ve searched,” I shot back. “I’ve seen and heard things no child should.”

“That’s enough, young lady,” Keith cut in, and I rounded on him.

“You’re not my father, and you never will be,” I hissed, making a run for the door.

I was nearly two blocks away from the house before Marcus caught up with me.

“Parker…”

“Just don’t,” I sobbed. “This ruins everything.”

“It sucks; I know it does,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling to make me slow down. “I’m right there with you on this.”

“And so what?” I said, wiping my nose roughly. “You’re just going to sit back and let them ruin our lives? What we have together?”

“They are bound and determined to get married,” he said, shrugging. “We can’t stop that, Parker, but they can’t stop our feelings for each other.”

“We’d be brother and sister,” I said, trying not to gag. “That’s wrong, Marcus. Think of what people would say.”

“I’m not interested in what people say,” he laughed. “I’m interested in what you say, what you think, what you feel. Do you love me any less, now that our parents are getting married?”

“I love you,” I said, “but this complicates everything.”

“That’s all it is, then,” he said, kissing my forehead. “A complication. We just have to get through the rest of the school year with this. They’ll get married, and it will be stupid for a while, but then we’ll both graduate, be eighteen, and be free to do whatever we want.”

“Just because we turn eighteen doesn’t mean we stop being brother and sister,” I pointed out.

“Stepbrother and stepsister,” he clarified. “There’s a big difference, Parker. We might be siblings in some senses, but not in the ones that matter.”

“Not according to Keith,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “He says it’s incest.”

“Sorry about my dad,” Marcus said, sighing. “He’s kind of old school. Your mom … she’s not really his type. It’s surprising, really.”

“Out of everyone she’s ever been with, why did she pick your dad?” I asked, pushing my forehead against Marcus’ shoulder, wishing that his embrace could just make everything disappear. “Why Keith? Why now?”

“We’ll get through this,” he promised. “Just wait. Maybe they won’t even get married until the end of the school year.”

But with my volatile reaction to the entire thing, Patty and Keith were married by a judge the following week. We moved into a bigger house soon after.

“We’ll see each other all the time now,” Marcus joked, trying to allay my trepidation.

Neither of us could lie to the other anymore, though, after the rules that were imposed upon us living as a family. There would be no touching between Marcus and me, no sitting next to each other. The couch was off limits, as were our rooms from each other. When we were in the house, we were watched like hawks by both my mom and Marcus’ dad.

Part of me hoped that the police state we endured at home would lessen our feelings for each other, but it only made us crave each other even more. The fact that he was so close, that I could hear him moving around in his bedroom at night, pacing the floor, I liked to imagine, made me breathless with desire.

Being told I couldn’t have something that I’d already wanted before was the perfect recipe to drive me to want it especially bad.

It reached a fever point, something that was so present I could practically taste it. To this day, I couldn’t say decisively who made the first move that fateful night. I couldn’t remember if I dragged Marcus to my room, or if he entered on his own volition.

Our pajamas fell off almost of their own accord, and our mouths attached to each other, as if it were the only way to get air. His hands were my hands, and we explored every inch of skin, finding what was the same about ourselves, celebrating the glorious differences, feeling and tasting and touching.

The lights were off in the room, the curtains drawn against the orange cast of the streetlights outside, and we were made for each other. There wasn’t a single person other than Marcus that I was meant for. This was the end all and be all moment of our lives.

When he finally fit himself into my panting, shaking body, it was as if everything that was wrong with the world was suddenly made right. We loved each other. This was the dance we were meant to do, the way we were meant to be together. We shared one body, one heart, one mind, and we could never be kept apart again. We were too precious to each other. It meant too much. Nothing—no belief, no rule, no mandate—would ever keep us from this, from loving each other.

Each of Marcus’ thrusts awakened something different inside of me. I didn’t know it was possible to love someone as deeply as I loved him when he was above me, covering my nakedness with his own, tasting the sweat that pooled in the dips of my collarbones, nuzzling at my hair with an animal urgency.

I wasn’t aware of anything but this union; I didn’t hear anything beyond our shared heartbeat, the inhales and exhales we granted each other.

I didn’t even hear my mom scream when she and Keith opened the door and turned on the light to my bedroom.

“Get off of my daughter, you little fucker!” she cried, and Marcus’ dad dragged him away from me.

“Stop!” I screamed, not bothering to cover myself, reaching for a struggling Marcus. “I love him! Stop!”

“Did he force himself on you?” my mom demanded, draping a blanket over my shoulders. “You can tell me. Tell me everything. What happened?”

“I love him,” I wept, as Keith shoved Marcus out of my room. I wanted to see Marcus. I could hear their raised voices down the hall, but I couldn’t make out any of the words.

“You can’t love him,” she said, seizing my face in her hands and making me look at her. “You can’t love him because you’re related now. It’s disgusting. It’s vile, Parker. You will have to live with this for the rest of your life—knowing that you and your brother committed an act of incest under your father’s and my roof.”

“Keith isn’t my father,” I muttered. “Marcus is only my stepbrother. That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course that matters,” my mom snapped. “You’re lots of things, Parker, but I didn’t think stupid was one of them. By law, Marcus is your brother. It’s incestuous that you want to have a romantic relationship with him. It’s wrong. You’re wrong.”

I cried myself to sleep, and in the morning, Keith and Marcus weren’t there.

“They’re staying at a hotel until this gets figured out,” my mom told me.

But when they finally did apparently get it figured out, Keith returned home alone. Marcus wasn’t in tow.

“I’ve sent him to the same military boarding school I went to,” I overheard Keith tell my mom. “It’ll straighten him out.”

“I wish there was a place like that for Parker,” I heard my mom grouse.

How could life go from so amazing to so terrible in such a short span of time? I never thought that I would have to live apart from Marcus, not for a second. I drifted through school, feeling like it was all a bad dream. I didn’t even know where the love of my life was. I had to endure the sight of my mom and Keith enjoying each other’s company, and I had no idea where Marcus was. He never called. He never wrote. He could be dead for all I knew.

Maybe my mom thought it would be good for me to shake off my moping, but she triumphantly showed me a photograph of Marcus.

“Look here,” she said, pointing at the picture I held. “Your brother at one of the formal dances his academy holds. That’s his uniform. Doesn’t she look darling in that dress? What a cute couple.”

Marcus and the unnamed girl were dutifully holding hands. She was smiling, her hair coiffed into a beehive, but his mouth was set in a straight line, serious. I noticed that his hair had been buzzed short—much shorter than I had ever seen it.

My heart went out to him. He was following the path he didn’t want to follow—his father’s footsteps.

“See?” my mom persisted, taking the photo back from me. “Marcus is moving on from that debacle a couple of months ago. You should, too. I know for a fact there are plenty of eligible young men at school for you to date.”

I didn’t believe that Marcus had moved on, or that he had forgotten about what we had. That would be forever stamped on my heart. I wouldn’t be able to move on, even if I wanted to.

Nothing was going according to plan. My studies suffered. I stayed out later and later, just walking the streets.

Then, one day, without even thinking about it, wearing only the clothes on my back, with only my bag filled with school supplies, I simply got on a bus, paid the fare, and rode it to the end of the line.

I got off then got on another bus. Then another. And another, until I didn’t know where I was.

I followed people, got off where they did, walked, boarded another bus.

I didn’t want to recognize places, but there was a mural Marcus and I had discovered. Even as I tried to lose myself in Los Angeles, I was still a part of it. Marcus and I had explored it too thoroughly. My memories of our time together had been woven into the fabric of my home, and now I couldn’t escape it.

I found myself at the Greyhound station. I counted the money in my wallet, bought a ticket for the next bus, and just left, not even bothering to look at the board to see where I was headed. Anywhere but here. Anything was better than being in L.A. without Marcus.

Dear Parker,

Hope is reignited inside of me, but there’s almost an equal amount of despair. This letter will probably never be mailed, and I again question my sanity for writing it. Something has to be done. My pen is useless, completely impotent, but when there’s nothing else I feel that I can do, it’s still here. It’s become my closest confidante in all of this. You would normally fill that void, but you’re gone.

The parents were keeping the letters from you. I know that now. I hope that, if they ever somehow fall into your hands, you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I had so many doubts, so many excuses, so much self-loathing that I was cutting out my heart for your examination and approval and never so much as hearing a single thing from you.

My love for you was constant, even if my fears intruded.

My greatest fear now, though, is your safety. Where could you have gone? What are you doing? Are you all right? Are you suffering?

I know that you had to have suffered greatly here alone—probably even more than I did away at school. Wherever you are, whatever life you find for yourself away from the parents, I’ll follow you there. I just need to know where you are. Let me know where you are.

I love you. Now more than ever.

It hadn’t been my intention to run away from home. The truth was that I simply couldn’t stay there any longer. I couldn’t pass by the room Marcus used to occupy. I couldn’t sleep in the bed where we’d joined our bodies and become one person.

I couldn’t keep existing, knowing that he was out there, going to school formals with other girls, living a life apart from me while I was stuck back home.

He might’ve been following the path he didn’t want, but that didn’t mean I had to follow my most hated path—remaining in one place.

I was ill prepared and hungry when the bus finally stopped in Miami—the end of the line. The Atlantic Ocean was a beast I didn’t understand, utterly different from the waves of the Pacific, and everything seemed foreign. I was dirty, exhausted, but free for the first time in my life.

I had left everything behind—the life I couldn’t live anymore, the sorrow of losing my one true love. I needed something new because I couldn’t stomach the past anymore. The past was gone. If I was going to survive my future, I needed to be able to own it.

I stayed in homeless shelters, slept on benches when those were full, and camped on the beach. I met people, so many people, and stayed on couches and on the floor of a crowded apartment. I waitressed, I worked retail, and I said yes to every job that came my way until I could finally afford a tiny economy apartment.

I was so busy that I hardly thought about Marcus, which was a relief. It was a relief to have to rely on myself, to not be able to afford to wallow in sadness. I had to get out, work, and earn money to survive. I couldn’t have regrets anymore. Regrets would kill me. They would keep me from being able to live here or anywhere else.

I built a slow, cautious network of friends—usually girls I’d worked with in my travels from the food industry to the retail industry and back and forth, as many times as it took to get rent every month. It wasn’t easy.

“If you need money, you should consider dancing,” one of my friends suggested, looking me up and down in a way that made me feel like I was completely naked. I had to resist the urge to cover my private parts—even though they were safely encased in my clothes.

“What do you mean, dancing?” I asked, my mind helplessly traveling to tutus and ballet shoes. “I don’t think I’m very graceful.” Extracurricular activities had never been a priority for my mom to make me do, so I’d never participated.

“It’s not about grace, stupid,” the girl said, laughing. “It’s about sex. You have a nice body. You’re young. You’d have to invest at first in makeup, costumes, shoes, definitely, and there’s kind of a learning curve. But once you get good at it, it’s a really nice way to make money.”

My head was adding up all of the things she was listing, begging for my friend to still be talking about ballet or something equally as innocent, but it just wasn’t computing.

“You mean stripping,” I clarified.

She shrugged. “You’re not offended, are you?”

“No.” I frowned. Should I have been?

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it, I’ve always said,” my friend continued. “Do your hair, do your makeup, and with a bit of sparkle, you’d be fine.”

“Have you done it before?” I asked, curious but still taken aback.

“Once or twice,” she said. “My boyfriends always make me stop. Bastards.”

That was something to consider. What would Marcus think if I ever started taking my clothes off for money? It had been so long since I’d allowed myself to give him a good mull in my mind. Would he be upset with me for showing the world things that only he had seen?

Then again—had he ever really seen them? We’d been interrupted in our first real night together. Could he still picture the way I looked naked? If I tried hard enough, I could still remember the way he felt inside of my body—a thought potent enough to make me shudder with desire.

I hadn’t had the urge to seek out anything sexual since I’d wound up in Miami anyway, like a piece of driftwood washing ashore. There hadn’t been time or inclination.

And yet there I was, thinking about Marcus, about what I’d left behind when I’d left my home in Los Angeles.

My mother and Marcus’ father had been careful to never reveal to me where Marcus had been sent to school. I was sure that he had graduated by now; I would’ve graduated high school by now, too, had I remained in the city where I’d been raised.

How quickly things changed. My life—my existence as I understood it—had been turned on its head faster than I’d been able to grasp. How had I gone from Parker and Patty, two beautiful broads, to absolutely in love with Marcus, to self-exiled in Miami? It made my head spin, and I wasn’t sure I understood anything anymore.

It was late one night, and I was alone in my shoebox of an apartment, listening to the ebb and flow of the sounds my neighbors made in the dark. Everything about the apartment complex was cheap—crumbling sidewalks, paint flaking off the building’s eaves, and paper-thin walls and floors. I sometimes wondered what was keeping the place from collapsing on itself. It seemed like a stiff breeze would send it all crashing down.

The people above me seemed to like to move furniture in the dead of night. I’d gotten used to the scraping of heavy objects just over my head, but it took a lot of effort not to want to dash outside and hide myself from what I sometimes woke up to fearing was an earthquake.

The woman who shared my bedroom wall spent more nights sobbing than she did laughing. I couldn’t really be sure though. Maybe her laughter simply sounded like crying. But it went on and on, the edges of her voice becoming more and more ragged, which made me suspect that she wasn’t just laughing along to a comedy performance on her TV.

The family that shared my kitchen wall had a little girl in elementary school who was developing a fondness for the recorder. She played the shrill instrument at what seemed like all hours of the morning and evening, working her painstaking way through chords and octaves. She might as well have developed a passion for drums, or a trumpet. The recorder was an ideal instrument for children, as it was cheap, but it was grating on my nerves. I almost preferred the sobbing of my bedroom neighbor to the loud, halting renditions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as I tried to make myself scrambled eggs or tea.

The couple who lived below me fought constantly. It mystified me that I could hear them bickering so clearly through the linoleum that the developer had seen fit to coat every surface below my feet with, including my bedroom, but that was just the aesthetics, I supposed. I sometimes wished I could go downstairs to counsel the couple. Did they even realize that they kept fighting about the same things, circling each other like animals? I would lay on the sticky floor at night, my ear to the arguments below, anticipating the responses and accusations that would last and last.

All of my immediately adjacent neighbors probably thought I was a ghost.

Aware of how little privacy I was actually afforded by living here, I tiptoed around the apartment. I didn’t run the water or flush the toilet at night. I watched my television with its sound barely at a whisper. I didn’t have guests over—mostly because I didn’t have friends I felt close enough with to invite them into my living space.

It, unfortunately, gave me a lot of time to think, being so quiet all the time in my own home. Maybe if I was fighting loudly with someone or mastering a musical instrument, I wouldn’t have so much time to dwell on the fact that I had no idea where Marcus might be and no clue as to what he could be doing. In those silent hours, serenaded by the ongoing sagas of my neighbors all around me, I imagined Marcus in a variety of scenarios.

He was back in Los Angeles, living with Patty and Keith, the happy, obedient son they’d always wanted.

He was married, married to that girl my mom showed me a picture of, Marcus’ mouth in a straight line, his arms stiff around her. It had been a forced date, at first. Their parents had made them pair up and attend the dance, pose for the awful picture. But then, they’d got to talking about how unfair their parents were. Marcus would tell her about how they sent him away for loving me…she would commiserate, some unrequited love of hers forcing her into this situation. Then, they’d have a common ground, a common interest, and one thing would lead to another and they’d be married, living in a cute little house, a baby on the way.

He finally decided to give up on fighting his destiny, the path that Keith wanted for him, and he was in boot camp, or already abroad, engaged in whatever conflict our country required of him. He’d become a general one day, married to his career, able to immerse himself into the needs of national security and international pursuits, and forget all about the puppy love that had been so damaging to his youth.

I didn’t know which scenario I preferred. None of them. Any of them. Each was more painful than the last, imagining that Marcus had somehow been able to move on with his life without me, succeeded in spite of our separation.

I finally decided that I was finished worrying about it. I had other things to worry about, like getting food in my belly and keeping this thin roof over my head, paying my bills on time, getting to work, and doing the best that I could so I could earn as much money as possible. These were real world problems, not puppy love. I couldn’t waste my life pining over what could’ve been if only our parents hadn’t interfered. I couldn’t keep going like that.

But nor could I simply will myself to stop thinking about the only person I’d ever loved, wondering if he was thinking of me, too. I had to do something; I had to either find some closure, or find a door I could yank open to shed some light on the whole situation.

I knew I couldn’t approach Patty and Keith about the fate of Marcus. They’d never tell me, or they might try to ensnare me, get me back to Los Angeles. I was out of their reach legally at this point, but what they’d done was too hurtful. They’d caused all of this, been the impetus behind my struggles here in Miami. Reaching out to either of them seemed like a horrible idea. No, I was going to be doing this some other way—any other way—than employing either of them in my search.

My first stop was at a library. That was where people got information prior to the advent of the Internet. That was where I was going to figure out how to find Marcus.

The library was nicely furnished and kept much cooler than I dared to keep my tiny apartment, so it became something of a refuge from Miami’s thick heat. It was nice to be physically comfortable, at least, as I dredged through the mental discomfort of having no idea where to start. I wandered the aisles of books aimlessly, wishing there was a big sign somewhere that read, “THIS IS THE TOME YOU’RE LOOKING FOR, PARKER” with a big arrow pointing to the book that contained Marcus’ location.

I found the section on military items of interest easily enough—that is, after scanning all the spines of all the books in every row of the sprawling place. I wished I’d spent a little more time in the library while I was still in school, but it had never been a priority. For definitely not the first time in my life, I felt a surge of anger at my mom. Maybe if she’d been around more, I could’ve had some sense of purpose at school. Maybe I would’ve been more driven to complete my work or to have an interest or a goal or even a dream. The woman who raised me didn’t even teach me how to dream.

It hadn’t been until I met Marcus that I’d even known what it was to dream. I dreamed of being with him, of traveling the world with him, seeing and experiencing everything.

If I wanted to dream again, I had to put forth the effort to find him again.

It ended up being a kindly librarian who saved me from my own haplessness in the library. It was the fifth day in a row that I had shown up to pirate the air conditioning and try to find my lost stepbrother.

“Can I help you with something, dear?” An elderly woman shuffled up to me, as I was reading the titles on the spines of the books arranged on yet another shelf.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’m looking for…someone. I don’t even know how to start.”