Stepbrother Dearest(14)

A phone call interrupted my thoughts before I could text him back. It was Bentley. Crap. I wasn’t sure whether to pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Greta.”

“Hi. What’s up?”

“Elec isn’t there, is he?”

“No. Why?”

“You left your jacket in my car the other night. Can I come by and give it to you?”

“Um…sure. I guess that would be okay.”

“Great. I should be there in about twenty minutes.”

I hung up and noticed that Elec had sent several more texts while I had been on the phone with Bentley.



Elec: Actually, my date is a dude.



Elec: A dud! I meant to type my date turned out to be a dud.



Elec: LMAO



Elec: #notadude #elecloves*



Elec: Where the f*ck r u?



Laughing hysterically, I typed.



Greta: Sorry, that was Bentley. He called. I left my jacket in his car the other night and he’s dropping it off.



A couple of seconds later, my phone rang.

“The f*ck he is! You’re not letting that guy into the house.”

“He’s just dropping off a jacket.”

“Call him back and tell him he can leave it on the doorstep.”

“I’m not gonna do that. There’s no reason to. Whatever happened is between you and him.”

The call dropped. No, he hung up!

He had some nerve trying to tell me what to do like that without a good explanation.

Ten minutes later, my feet flew off the couch when the front door opened.

Elec was out of breath. “Did he show up?”

What the heck?

“Not yet. Why are you here?”

“You didn’t sound like you were paying attention to me. So, I had no choice but to come home.”

“If you won’t explain to me why you want me to stay away from Bentley, how do you expect to me listen to you?”

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

The doorbell rang, and Elec beat me to the door and opened it.

Bentley’s face turned white. “What are you doing home? She said you weren’t here.”

Elec swiped my jacket out of Bentley’s hands and slammed the door in his face. Then, he locked it.

“I’m going after him. Get out of my way,” I said.

He crossed his arms in front of the door. “You’ll have to get past me. And can’t you hear his car taking off right now? He’s a f*cking sissy.”

I let out a breath and gave up, deciding to move past it. I didn’t really want to see Bentley but remained annoyed by Elec’s controlling behavior. He didn’t have a right to interfere in my life when he only closed himself off to me in return.

The tension in the air was thick as I walked back over to my plate of food on the coffee table. We didn’t speak for several minutes before I broke the ice. “There’s some takeout Chinese on the counter if you want some.”

Elec still looked irate and didn’t respond. He walked over to the counter, grabbed the container of lo mein and started inhaling it.

“Hungry? Didn’t you eat on your date?”

He slurped a noodle into his mouth. “Nope.”

“Was she upset that you basically abandoned her?”

“No,” he said with his mouth full.

Leaning my elbows against the counter, I asked, “If you didn’t eat, what did you do? Or do I really want to know?”

“Um…Riley wanted to go bowling.”

“I thought you said her name was Kylie.”

He grinned guiltily as he bit into a spring roll. “Whoops.”

Unsure of what to make of that, I rolled my eyes at him and reached for the last spring roll before he inhaled that, too. I took a bite. “I’m getting a movie on Netflix if you want to join.”

He stopped eating for a moment and then just glared at me. “What the f*ck is wrong with you?”

“Excuse me?”

“It doesn’t matter how shitty I treat you…you still try to hang out with me.”

It felt like steam was about to blow out of my ears. “No one asked you to come home tonight! I was actually enjoying having the house to myself.”

“Really? Were you gonna lie on the couch with your vibrator or something?”

My heart dropped. My vibrator.

Shit!

It was in my underwear drawer, too. I had forgotten I’d moved it in there after I cleaned out my bedside table. I hadn’t used it in a while and had totally forgotten about it.

He’d taken that too!

He continued, “Look at your face. You just realized it was missing? How have you been getting off? Either your fingers are sore or you must be in serious need of tension relief.”

My face must have turned a hundred shades of red. “You bastard.”

My eye twitched.

“You’re winking at me again. Sorry, I can’t help you out. Maybe you need to watch…a different kind of movie tonight? That might get you off. I have some if you want to borrow one to—you know—wet your whistle.”

His words from the other night once again replayed in my head. “Have some self-respect.”