Page 3 of Strictly Curious
“Oh, are those the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?” Tyler asked as he followed behind us.
Mom nodded, holding up the plate. He ran over and grabbed two, shoving one into his mouth. I laughed as crumbs gathered at the corners of his mouth and his cheeks poofed out while he chewed. He loved it when my mom made these cookies. His dad didn’t cook much and the few babysitters and nannies that he’d had until my mom came around hadn’t made much of an effort either.
“Slow down, Tyler.” Mom laughed, setting the plate down and then grabbing another glass from the cupboard to pour him a glass of milk. As she pulled the carton from the fridge and poured the milk, Tyler began coughing around a mouthful of cookies.
I ran to his side and patted his back. He quickly grabbed the glass when Mom put it down in front of him and chugged a large gulp. I stared in awe at the way his throat moved while he drank. Was watching people drink like that normal? My hand still rested on his back while he turned to smile at me, placing the cup on the counter.
“Thanks, Garrett. Got ahead of myself. I love these dang cookies.” It was so simple and sweet. Everyone around us seemed to stop and stare, so I quickly dropped my hand.
“Just, eat more slowly,” Mom scolded before going back to telling the girls about the time I peed on the side of a tree in a public park. I guess my biological dad had tried to teach me to do that when I was potty training in our backyard and I didn’t know the difference in public. It wasn’t often that Mom talked about him, but I always wished she wouldn’t when she did.
Not long after all of our friends went home. Maisy tried to hang out a little longer, sitting really close to Tyler on the couch when we’d all gone back to the living room to watch a movie. Something about the way she kept watching him bothered me. Did she have a crush on him? But girls were still such a mystery to me. Hell, my feelings about boys were a mystery to me.
When Tyler and I went to bed that night I stared at the space between our two beds. Mom and Dad were talking about getting me my own room soon. The thought of being separated from Tyler made me feel like I was suffocating. I’d hid it well within those first few days as brothers, but I was every bit as freaked out as he was about how much our lives had suddenly changed. We had grown to be a comfort for each other as we grew closer like I was safe around him and breathed just a little bit easier.
“You just going to stand there all night?” he asked as he brushed past me, pulling his shirt over his head. He tossed it into the hamper in the corner and then fished in his dresser for something to sleep in.
I stared at his bare back and then shook my head before grabbing a pair of loose pajama pants from the dresser myself. I didn’t bother with a shirt. Tyler raised a brow at my choice, but I just shrugged. Chances were pretty high that I was going to crawl into his bed again and Tyler was like a furnace sometimes.
I turned away from him to change. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen him in all sorts of stages of undress at this point, having shared a room over the last couple of years, but with the way things were getting to me today, something told me to keep turned away from him.
When I heard him move against his sheets, I knew it was safe to turn around. I sat on the edge of my bed and watched as he got comfortable before switching off the lamp on the table between us.
His soft, unsure voice wafted across the room as I crawled beneath my own covers. “Is everything okay?”
I sighed heavily, flopping onto my back and staring at the ceiling. “Yeah, It’s fine. It was just a weird day.”
Tyler stayed quiet, hopefully buying it that everything was in fact alright. It wasn’t.
I didn’t end up crawling into his bed that night, no matter how much I wanted to, and a week later Mom and Dad officially moved me into the room across the hall. It was so strange to not share a room with Tyler anymore. It was like a part of me was suddenly missing.
Tyler - Age Nineteen
Summervacationjuststarted.I couldn’t believe we were done with high school finally. Maybe it was odd that we were just graduating at nineteen, but since Garrett and I both had September birthdays we’d had to wait an extra year to start school.
“Yo! Ty! Toby and I are going to be shooting some hoops. Want to join us?” My shoulders bunched to my ears as he called out to me. I appreciated that Garrett tried to include me with his friends, but they were more annoying than anything.
The last few years had been weird. Our friends always got a kick out of how our parents met while at a work conference in Vegas and had some sort of whirlwind romance and got married while they were there. I was convinced it was a drunken decision, but they were still happily married.
He wouldn’t talk to me about what happened with his dad, but Tabitha had told me once that he’d walked out on them when he was little. I often wondered if he ended up in my bed because of some weird misplaced abandonment issues.
Maybe it was weird that even at nineteen Garrett still crawled into my bed sometimes. It had become second nature over the last nine years, so much that I didn’t even bother questioning it. Even when he’d wrap an arm around me and pull me against him. We were really close, maybe closer than normal.
“Nah, you guys have fun. I’m going to go try to watch some of that show everyone has been talking about. You know, in the air conditioning,” I teased.
Garrett rolled his eyes as Toby tried to hook an arm over his shoulders. Garrett was tall. At over six feet, he even outdid me by a couple of inches. Toby was an interesting friend. He wasn’t the typical jock that my stepbrother normally hung around.
I was pretty sure Toby was gay, not that there was anything wrong with that. His little shorts and spunky attitude didn’t lend to the tough-guy persona that normally surrounded Garrett. I was glad he had variety in friends, though. Besides, Toby was nicer than some of the girlfriends Garrett brought around.
Garrett mussed Toby’s blond curls. We shared the same hair color, but mine was straight… It was funny that they both had curly hair going for them, though.
I’d had a couple of girlfriends over the years. Nothing seemed to stick because they all thought my relationship with my stepbrother was weird. I didn’t get it. Who cared that we were really close?
We did everything together. Most of our classes had been together through school, but we somehow still maintained a different friend group. Garrett naturally drew in more people with his outgoing personality, while I was quieter and kept to myself, only having a few close friends.
Wherever I went, Garrett went as well. It wasn’t odd for him to throw an arm around my shoulder or for him to pull me to his side while we watched movies on the couch. My ex-girlfriend mentioned it was weird, but I never minded it. He was my best friend.
The blast of cool air as I walked into the house was welcome. It was so freaking hot this summer and I was second-guessing the sweatpants I’d chosen to wear today, but they were comfy. My T-shirt stuck to me as I climbed the stairs to my room and I pulled it away from my skin, collapsing onto my bed and flipping on my TV.
