Page 4 of Longing for the Minotaur
VALENTINA
What the fuck is my stepbrother doing at my door? He should be heading to bed too, not wanting to chitchat. We got our chitchatting out in the car, or so I thought.
I quickly hop off the bed, shrug my pants back on, and crack the door just a few inches. I peer out to find Banon there, his muzzle lowered and his cute ears pinned back.
“What is it?” I ask through the small opening.
He tilts his head. “Are you… naked in there?”
“No! I just don’t know why you’re here at bedtime.”
“I wanted to, um, talk about what you said. Tonight.”
Great. Just what I wanted—to get raked over the coals again for saying something I thought was obvious to all of us. Banon’s never cared about academics, just football. He was open about it in high school.
“Ugh.” I widen the gap in the door. “Fine. Say what you have to say.”
“Can I come in, please?”
His ears are still down, and I think he’s nervous about whatever he wants to tell me. Sighing with annoyance, I take a step back so he can come in. Banon squeezes his big, towering body through the doorway and then, to my surprise, closes the door behind him.
Being alone in my bedroom with Banon with the door closed is something that hasn’t happened since I was fifteen and he gave me my first drink of alcohol. Back when he was still living at home, he’d been partying with his college friends earlier and brought back a six-pack to share with me. All it took was two bottles of Smirnoff Ice to do me in. I vaguely remember how, after a few hours of being drunker than a skunk, Banon tucked me into bed and turned off the light before he left with the empty bottles.
Sitting down on my bed, I cross my arms, trying to appear irritated by his unannounced visit rather than elated. If things were different, if our parents weren’t married to each other, this would be a much more exciting proposition. As it is, I have to rein myself in and try to play it cool, just like I did my entire adolescent life.
“What’s up?” I finally ask when Banon remains standing there, not looking at me.
“Do you really think I phoned it in? In college?”
I resist rolling my eyes. He seems sincere, almost hurt. “Yeah, I do. You got Bs and Cs in school. All you ever seemed to care about was football and women. I don’t think we talked about academics once all four years you went to college.”
He frowns. “Just because I didn’t talk about it doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing the work.”
What does he want from me? An apology? An acknowledgment that he cared a little bit about school but not enough to ever bring it up?
“Okay, fine. You did the work, enough to get passing grades. Good job.”
Banon’s brows crease, and he lifts his head to look at me for the first time since he showed up at my door.
“Why do you hate me, Tina?”
The question hits me right in the face. Where’s this coming from?
“Who says I hate you?” I ask.
“It seems like you do. All the time. Like right now.” He nods at how I’m sitting on the bed. “Your face certainly looks like you ate something gross.”
I’m mystified. Of course I don’t hate him. I’ve never hated him. In fact, what I’ve felt since I was a pre-teen is anythingbuthate. Which has always irritated me more, given how he treats me.
“Hmm,” I say sarcastically, “I wonder what could have done that? Maybe when you let your friends make fun of me endlessly. Maybe it’s the fact you never once defended me. You just stood there and let them. Remember Tiny Tina? The nerdy girl who wasn’t worth the time of day?” My voice is rising the longer I talk, and Banon’s blue eyes are getting wider. “Can’t imagine why Tiny Tina would hate you, when you were instrumental to theworst four years of my life.”
I enunciate the last part very clearly. These are all words I’ve said in my head but never out loud. If he’s going to ask me point-blank how I feel about him, I’ll give him a point-blank answer.
Banon doesn’t speak when I finish. No, he simply stares at me where he stands in the middle of my bedroom, surrounded by posters of my favorite anime characters—the very ones his friends mocked me for drawing during class my freshman year in high school.
“Wow,” he says at last. “You’ve been holding that in all this time? I didn’t know you had so much resentment bottled up inside.”
“What do you expect? You treated me like dirt, Banon. When you kick a dog, eventually it’ll bite you.”
