Page 101 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Well, well, well,” came his smooth, amused voice. “And I thought I wouldn’t hear from you until your bro’s weekend was over.”
God, I’d forgotten I’d described it that way to him. The guilt in my stomach doubled, and shame was slathered on top,leaving a nasty taste. I needed to start thinking about the shit that came out of my mouth. I was reaching the point in life where I regretted the things I said because it was all too often backing me into corners I had to fight my way out of later.
“Sorry,” I said, cringing and suddenly realizing how cold it was. It was safe to say that the thrill and enjoyment of the run were utterly ruined. I needed to head back anyway. I’d been gone almost two hours, much longer, and I would have Eli texting me to make sure I hadn’t ended up in the ER.
Which was rude since I’d call him if that happened...if I was conscious. Not that he and anyone else didn’t already know that, but he was the only person who worried about me like that, so I wouldn’t gettooannoyed. That he was usually justified in his worry didn’t matter; it was just...Eli.
“What the hell do you have to be sorry about?” Raf wondered with a snort. “You told me way ahead of time that you were going offline for the weekend. Obviously, that nice dinner you had was an exception, but?—”
“Well, I suppose I should be sorry about that,” I muttered as my feet crunched along an untouched patch of thin ice. There were other things to be sorry about regarding Raf, but I wasnotready to handle those yet. Eli and I had set up the weekend to fully enjoy some wild spending on a credit card before we inevitably had to face the bill. “Since that was technically a lie.”
“Jesus,” Raf laughed softly. “You literally get most of your money from doing crap on TikTok and Insta, why the hell would I be mad because you were doing your job?
Because it definitely looked like a date night...which it had been. “I guess you’ve got a point.”
“I gotta say, it’s not like you to act all, I don’t know, guilty,” he said, and I could picture his mouth puckering when he was bothered by something. “I’d ask if you were cheating on me, butthat’s not exactly a question that works in our relationship. Did you kill someone?”
“What?” I asked in surprise at the sudden and weird shift.
He laughed again. “I don’t know. This sounds like a breakup call.”
“Really, Raf? That’s what you’re going with? Murder to break up? That covers a lot of ground.”
“There’s just not much I could picture you calling me to sound guilty about. I mean, there probably is stuff in between all that, but still.”
“Fucking...no, this is not a murder confession or a breakup call,” I protested with a roll of my eyes. “If I were going to break up with you, I wouldn’t do it over the phone.”
“That sounds more like you. You’ve always been....direct.”
“Thanks. That sounds exactly like the kind of backhanded compliment my mom would give me when she’s trying to avoid saying something mean, but doesn’t want to lie.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a backhanded compliment; that’s just being tactful.”
“Fine, then you sound like my mother when she’s trying to be tactful and avoid saying something mean.”
His chuckle rolled through the phone. “Well, you are. I wasn’t trying to make it out to be a bad thing.”
“Thenwhydid you hesitate before saying it?”
“Probably because it’s mostly true for you.”
“Mostly true?”
“Look. Most of the time, people who are ‘honest’ or ‘direct’ or ‘straightforward’ aremostlylike that. You can’t always be honest; otherwise, you’re being an asshole, same thing with being direct or straightforward. And even honest people have reasons to hide shit, direct people have reasons to swerve around things, same thing for straightforward people.”
I couldn’t help but smile, freezing when my foot slipped as I reached the sidewalk leading out of the park and then straightening as images of the amused look on Eli’s face as he stood next to my hospital bed flashed through my mind. It disappeared when I regained my footing, and for a moment, I was able to savor that I’d stolen the joy of an ‘I told you so’ from Eli. “Is this going to be one of your accurate insights into human nature by way of bartending?”
I could hear the grin in his voice. “Maybe, do you want to be the judge of it?”
“Sure, hit me with it.”
“Well, all I was going to say is, even if someone is usually direct or honest while avoiding being that way all the time so they don’t stomp all over someone else’s feelings, there are still other reasons to lie and hide things.”
“Lie and hide,” I repeated, the words bitter and sour in my mouth. That was, after all, precisely what Eli and I were doing, me most of all.
No...I was definitely doing more than he was.
“Look, I know lying and hiding the truth get a really bad rep with people.”
