Page 102 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Pretty sure that’s for a good reason.”
“Sure, because it can hurt people and hurt them badly, just like always being direct and honest can hurt someone. But sometimes we hide things or lie because we care about people.”
“That sounds...flimsy.”
“Does it? So when Lulu asked me, miserable and bloated and in her third trimester, if she looked fat in the new maternity dress she didn’t want to wear, should I have told her the truth?”
“Well, no,” I said, picturing his brother’s wife, who I had only met a few times. “But you could have gone with, she looked beautiful.”
“Uh-huh, and do you think anyone would fall for so obvious an evasion?”
“Would she fall for the lie? C’mon, Raf, she was in her last trimester, she knew she was big.”
“Yeah, well, some people know they’re hearing a lie, but that’s what they want to hear. Sometimes, those people are willing to accept the lie because it makes them feel better. She certainly did. Sure, she thanked me, but was smiling and didn’t look like she was about to start crying.”
“Okay, good point, I guess.”
“Better yet. Should I have told my parents when I figured out I was gay?”
That made me grimace. His hyper-religious, narrow-minded, bible beating, ‘anything and anyone who doesn’t fit our hyper-specific and exceptionally narrow view of what is right is undeserving of a speck of kindness and respect’ parents? The sort of people who had lost their minds when they learned their adult son, who was in his thirties, had gotten a tattoo?
“Okay, we both know I’m not going to say that,” I said as I reached the street and waited at the crosswalk with the other people on their commute, bundled up and giving me strange looks considering I was only wearing a light jacket and a hat against the cold.
“Right, sometimes we lie or hide shit because it keeps our sanity intact,” he said with a snort. “So yeah, sometimes even honest or direct people will lie or avoid speaking about things because it’s better for other people, it’s kinder...and sometimes it's to save their own skin.”
“Fine, fine,” I grumbled because what the hell was I supposed to say? That he didn’t have a point? Well, he did. “But that sort of reasoning can get twisted to justify a lot of shit it shouldn’t.”
“Well, yeah,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Lying and obfuscating to save your own skin is allwell and good when you’re say...trying to keep your homophobic parents from knowing the truth about you, or if you’re avoiding dealing with stuff that’s going to hurt you, but everyone knows that kind of shit can bite you in the ass if taken too far or done for the wrong reasons.”
I sighed, we had looped back to the source of my trouble...which was that I was doing exactly what he had just described. I was lying to keep myself safe from the trouble I could get into. Sure, you could argue that I was also lying to keep Eli safe, but like I’d just reminded Raf, that was a trap. It was all too easy to tell myself it was okay to keep the truth from people because it kept Eli from getting in trouble or hurt. While true, it could be abused and used to ignore that I was also doing it to save my own skin.
“I love how I called you to check in and maybe feel a little less bad about neglecting you over the weekend, and somehow we got into an existential conversation about the practical and not immoral uses of lying,” I said as I crossed the last intersection and headed for Eli and my apartment building.
“Sometimes life leads you down some weird paths,” he said with a chuckle. “Plus, it’s nice to have this kind of conversation with someone who listens without needing to be wasted.”
“I suppose that is a plus.”
“And I don’t know what you’re sorry about. Our relationship has always been...laid-back. The whole point of being chill about fucking around with other people worked for us. And as always, if that’s changed on your end, you need to tell me. I said that from the beginning...and you agreed.”
“You did,” I affirmed quickly, maybe a little too quickly, when he was the one who’d caught onto the fact that I was feeling guilty. “And I did agree. I just...well, I guess this is all new to me and I?—”
Well,I thought to myself as I punched in the code to the front door of the lobby, I had plenty of reasons to feel out of sorts and guilty. Yes, what I was doing with Eli was entirely within the bounds of Raf's agreement, but it still sat wrong with me. I was worried that Raf might not be quite as forgiving or understanding when faced with the reality of the loose rules we had put down between us. Especially because, well...as much as Eli and I hadn’t treated each other like stepbrothers for as long as I could remember, that was how other people saw us.
Then again, I was worried about the same man who had made a joke about a threesome with Marshall. It had been a joke, but part of me wondered how much truth there had been in that comment and how much of it was just to get a rise out of me. Honestly, I could accept it if it was just a smidge of the former because hell, the occasional temptation of the taboo was normal so long as he wasn’t genuinely trying to get something done.
Fuck, I wassoover all this shit right now.
“You?” he asked, and I jerked back to reality when I realized I had been standing in the lobby, staring at the bulletin board where the building manager and tenants could post whatever they wanted. Huh...apparently someone was having a birthday party for their cats and it was an open invitation...alright then.
“I don’t even know,” I said. Perhaps the first outright lie in the conversation, and suddenly I was exhausted, heartsick, and desperate to be upstairs with the one person on the planet who could make me feel better right now. “I think I’m just...scattered today. More than usual.”
“Maybe you and Eli need to tone it down a little.”
I jerked guiltily before punching the button to the elevator. “What?”
“Hey, I’ve seen how wild the two of you get when you’re feeding off one another. Now that I think about it, maybe I should have been a little more worried about the two of yougoing unsupervised for the weekend. I’m not going to find out that something crazy happened, right?”
“Nothing crazy,” I said as I stepped into the elevator. Not that there was a way I could think of for him to find out what had actually been going on between Eli and me, but if there was, it wasn’tcrazy. Not normal, kinda weird to most people, and not what he might expect, but not crazy.
