To do or die

It wasn’t that late yet, but I didn’t really feel any desire to get out of bed yet and luckily it didn’t seem like Charley did either. We lay there under the covers, cuddling and kissing and talking – about her job and my trip and all the things we could do together before then for what seemed like hours, until after a while the combination of our body heat under the covers and the pretty intense sex from earlier started to take its toll.

We both quickly hopped up and got ready for bed as fast as possible. Ten minutes later, finally back under the covers, Charley yawned and leaned over to kiss me quickly before retreating over to her side of the bed.

It all felt so wonderfully normal that in that moment I knew I was right. What we had wasn’t just some unusual stepsiblings-with-benefits situation, it was a real relationship. I looked at her lying beside me, and it was like my heart was going to burst. I didn’t need to wait for some magical, perfect moment. I just knew I couldn’t keep it any longer.

Holy shit. I’m going to do it. I’m actually going to do it.

“Charley…” I began, doing everything in my power to keep the quiver out of my voice.

She rolled over to face me sleepily. “Yeah?”

“I’m falling in love with you.”

Like with everything else over the last few weeks, I had imagined a million ways this conversation could go. Would she look away and blush, quietly replying that she felt the same way? Or maybe she’d throw her arms around my neck, laugh, and say something like ‘it took you long enough, dumbass.’

I wasn’t stupid, though. I’d prepared for the worst – I knew that there was every possibility that she’d tell me she didn’t feel the same way. And even if she did, it wasn’t a guarantee that she’d even want to be with me. This was Charley, after all – her plan was everything to her. I figured she’d look me in the eyes all serious and calmly tell me that she was sorry, but it just couldn’t happen. After all, she’d made it a point to warn me that this wasn’t an option the day we’d decided to try this.

Expect the worst, hope for the best. I’d thought I had covered all the bases, good and bad. But nothing, no amount of picturing or planning, could have prepared me for the way she reacted here in reality.

Any sleepiness she might have been feeling left her in an instant, her eyes widening as she stared back at me and registered what I’d just said. And then she pretty much leaped out of from underneath the covers beside me, grabbing her clothes and rapidly getting dressed with her face scrunched up with what looked like horror.

“No. No no no, no you’re fucking not.”

The moment the words left her mouth, my head started spinning. It was obvious something was wrong, but I was so totally unprepared for this that I could barely even compute what was happening. “Charley … I don’t-”

“Fuck, Luke,” she groaned. “For fuck’s sake, I told you … oh, Jesus Christ.”

My shock was so palpable I almost felt sick. I couldn’t believe I’d been so far off. “I don’t understand …”

“Don’t understand what!? We talked about this! There was absolutely no room for interpretation. We agreed that our thing would never, ever progress past being physical.” She ran her hands through her hair, grimacing. “What the fuck made you think that would ever change?”

I would never try to claim that I hadn’t led a pretty privileged life growing up, but I’d experienced my fair share of painful things too. My parents sitting me down at six years old and telling me they were getting a divorce; twelve years of unrequited love for a girl I knew I could never have; my mum’s complete lack of interest in me since she left.

But none of those things came even remotely close to how I felt in this moment.

Shakily, I started to get dressed as well. “Things have changed. Do you seriously not … I mean, we’ve been seeing each other so much more, we started kissing-”

“That’s where this is coming from? Because we kissed a few times?” Charley scoffed. “God, talk about clutching at straws.”

“No, of course not! It’s just the fucking … feeling, I can’t understand how you haven’t seen that it’s different now. I mean, even this ‘physical’ aspect, you’re talking about – it’s changed so much from when we started this.” I hesitated, not wanting to embarrass myself even further. But I was already too far gone. “It’s not just sex anymore. It’s … making-”

“Making love?” she said, interrupting me again. “Don’t make me laugh.”

I couldn’t believe how unbelievably brutal she was being in shooting me down. I had known she might say no, but Jesus … it felt like she was doing everything she could tear me to pieces. “You’re telling me you don’t feel the same way?” I choked.

She looked away. “Sure, let me get that straight first. I don't feel the way you’re talking about. I love you like family, and that’s it.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “But as a nice little thought experiment, let’s say I did. What the fuck do you think would happen from here? Because there are two options, and they’re both shit. On the one hand, we genuinely keep it a secret for the rest of our lives, having to pretend to all our friends and family that we’re single. That means no house, no marriage, no kids. Ever. Living a lie until one of us croaks.”

She still couldn’t look me in the eye. “Of course, the other option is that we parade our relationship around openly. And then everyone we know, and likely a whole bunch of people we don’t, has the horrific privilege of finding out that we’re in a loving, borderline incestuous relationship. Mum and Dad being the primary victims – or are you under the impression that parents are always thrilled to find out their children are fucking each other?”

“Do you think I haven’t thought about all of this?!” I yelled back, desperately trying to **** back the wave of emotions. “Because I have. It’s all I’ve thought about for weeks. It’s a miserable situation, and I don’t see an easy way out. But seriously, what the hell did you think would happen from here? We would just carry on sleeping together for however long it takes for one of us to find someone else, and then what? Just drop it and never speak about it again? Act like it never even happened?”

She was silent for a few moments, then looked up at me cooly. “Yeah. Precisely.”

Those were the words that defeated me. I had always known that Charley was more rational than me; maybe more rational than anyone. But I had always thought that she was also the most compassionate person I knew, because of how kind she’d been to me and everyone else growing up; and obviously, the fact that the main motivation behind her plan was to help people.

But now, after I was so sure that she felt the same way as me, I watched her as she completely took the emotion out of it, like it meant nothing. And for the first time, I was struck with the feeling that maybe I just didn’t know her as well as I thought I did. I think that was what hurt more than anything.

“What do we do now?” I asked quietly.

She buried her head in her hands and sighed. “I guess … we just stop.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Argh, shit,” she groaned. “Not really, Luke. I was completely fine with the way things were going. But now … yeah, now I really don’t think it’s possible to just pretend you don’t feel the way that you do.”

“So, that’s it?”

“Looks that way.” She looked up and met my eyes again. “This was always a temporary thing. I really wish it didn’t have to end this abruptly and awkwardly, but … maybe that’s just life. We do what we always planned we were going to do once it ended – go back to normal. Back to just being normal stepsiblings.”

“Normal,” I echoed bitterly.

What a fucking mess. She clearly had no idea what she was asking of me – to go back to the unrequited pining, the deep-rooted guilt, the **** attempts to move on and forget. All now likely to be a thousand times worse than ever before.

I silently gathered up my things and walked over to the front door. After all the ups and downs of this Summer, after I’d spent so long excitedly thinking about how this would go down, the whole thing had crashed and burned in less than ten minutes.

Now, I just felt completely empty.

Just before I turned the latch, I hesitated. Maybe in my head I still expected some unrealistic, dumb rom-com moment – Charley would cry ‘Wait!’ and I’d go back to her as she told me she’d just said all that because she was afraid of her feelings, we’d reconcile, and she would tell me she loved me just like I loved her.

But no, this was real life. I didn’t look back, but I could imagine the look on her face; pity in her eyes as she watched me go, frustrated that her dumb, emotionally stunted little stepbrother had ruined what she had thought of as a no-strings-attached couple months of fun.

I left, and it didn’t feel like I’d ever be coming back.