I Accidentally Video-Called My Stepbrother in the Shower

I answered my stepbrother's call in the shower. His face was right there on the screen. I'd been Lachlan Hale's little sister for fourteen years. No blood. No adoption papers.

Just a wedding that moved him and his dad into my mom's house. I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair and talked at him the whole time, wondering what was wrong with him that night.

It never once occurred to me that my camera was on too. He didn't say a word. Red to the tips of his ears. Throat working. Even the hand holding the phone shook.

I actually pushed him. "Lach. Say something." He made a low sound in his throat. His voice came out wrecked. "Sunny Rowe. Don't test your brother like this." The call cut out.

After that night, the daily checkin stopped. He wouldn't pick up a video call for even a second. He knew exactly what he'd seen. I was the last person in that house to find out.

Chapter 1 I was twenty, a junior, and by any honest measure completely brotherwhipped. I lived in the dorms. We talked on the phone every single day.

I had just gotten in the shower when his call came through. I was working shampoo into my hair and answered without thinking.

He clicked his tongue at me, annoyed. "How is it this late and you still haven't—" He stopped midsentence. I squeezed body wash into my palm. "Busy day.

I forgot." "Oh, Lach, I'm using the body wash you bought me right now. The peach one. If you were here I'd make you smell it. It's so good." His breathing picked up. "Lach?

You okay?" Nothing. I figured the signal was bad. So I kept talking. "Hey, let's go to Maui over summer break. I want coconut shrimp and hulihuli chicken." "It's been so hot.

I get that coldpressed green juice by the campus gate every day now, and my roommates say my skin is glowing." "Oh, and I've been working out. My waist feels tighter.

I'm getting actual arms." I went on like that for a while. The guy who normally had a response ready for every word out of my mouth didn't give me one.

I glanced up at the phone on the shelf. His face filled the screen. When did he turn the video on? That was the only question that made it through my head.

I never took the next step and thought about my own camera. Red to the tips of his ears. Eyes darting everywhere. Throat working.

And for some reason his right hand wouldn't stop shaking. I figured he had a bad grip on the phone. Weird.

I wiped the suds off my chest. "Lach, what is wrong with you, say something." He flinched. Hard. That low sound again, torn out of him. "Sunny Rowe!

Don't test your brother like this!" Then he hung up. I stood there with the water running, no idea what had just happened.

My best theory was that he'd taken something that disagreed with him. After my shower I got into bed and opened our chat to say goodnight. It said he was typing.

It kept saying he was typing. Nothing came through. I sent a question mark. A long time later, this landed. Him: [Sunny Rowe. I am your brother.] I sent another question mark.

Me: [Yeah? What else were you hoping to be?] Another long stretch. Then a voice memo.

Him: [Don't say things like that.] His voice was raw, and there was something under it that sounded like pain. Him: [Please don't.

Okay?] Him: [What we're doing isn't right.] Me: [?] What was that even supposed to mean.

Chapter 2 From that day on, the brother who used to check in on me every single day stopped calling. Even when I called him, he'd last a few sentences and rush off the line.

Video calls he killed on sight. Then a mournful little voice memo would land. Him: [Sunny. I'm your brother.] I had no words. What was he, a vampire waiting for me to invite him in?

Like if I didn't say it out loud he couldn't cross the threshold and turn back into a person?

I froze him out for a few days, then decided to be the bigger person and sent him a gym selfie.

Me: [today's ootd] Forty minutes later: Him: [Your brother can't be looking at that.] Underneath it, a photo. The emergency contact form the school sends out.

Relationship to student: Brother. Circled three times in red pen. Me: […] I laughed out loud, and it was not a nice laugh. When break came, Mom said Lach would drive up and get me.

I told her no. The way he'd been dodging me stung. He was the one who promised to wait on me hand and foot for the rest of his life. Call every day.

Check in whenever he felt like it. If I ever let it ring out, he said, he'd come stand under my dorm window until security ran him off. And now this.

A guy a year ahead of me in high school happened to go to school in the same city. He said yes right away to driving me home.

The next morning Beckett Ward was waiting at the campus gate. I waved. "Beck!

Thanks for this." "It's nothing." I had just started hauling my suitcase toward his trunk when a mintgreen sports car came in sideways between us like the driver had no particular interest in living.

It left Beck eating exhaust. A pair of very long legs in tailored suit trousers swung out of the driver's side. Every head in the lot turned.

Something like despair crossed Lachlan's cold, unfairly handsome face. His lips trembled. "Sunny Rowe. You're getting a new brother. So what happens to the old one?

Do I get thrown out?" He looked about ready to lay himself facedown on the hood of that brandnew car, so I dropped the suitcase and threw both arms around him. "Lach!

Don't do anything crazy! We can talk about this, just don't hurt that mintgreen limitededition Aston Martin!" He said it through his teeth. "Sunny Rowe.

Do you have a heart in there at all?" I went to check whether the car I'd been drooling over for months had taken so much as a scratch. It hadn't. So I patted his arm. "Sure I do.

It's all you in there." His hand clamped over my mouth. His whole face twisted. "Don't say that!" "You're twenty.

You don't understand how any of this works." "Have you thought about what happens after? How your mom is going to look at me?

What people are going to say about us?" His expression kept shifting. From hesitation, to grief, to something like guilt, and then to a terrible kind of calm. "Never mind.

If you've really made up your mind…" I apologized to Beck hard, took the keys out of Lach's hand, and got in the driver's seat. "Whatever you're mumbling about, let me drive." His jaw stayed locked the entire way home.

I assumed it was about Beck. "Relax, big brother. You're the only brother I'm ever going to have.

We're going to be brother and sister for life." He stopped moving. "…Just brother and sister?" Oh, come on. A grown man, this clingy.

I got a little embarrassed for him. "I mean, family for life, obviously. The kind you get without sharing any blood." The color drained out of his face.

Something behind his eyes came apart. "So you've… thought it through." He was being weirdly attractive today. "Yeah? What's there to think through.

That's just what we are." He smiled. It was worse than crying. "Good.

As long as you're sure." The last part he had to dig out of his own throat. "Your brother… thinks so too." Chapter 3 The second we got home I melted into the couch.

Then I remembered the laundry bag I'd stuffed full after my shower that afternoon. I nudged Lachlan with my foot. "Lach. Wash my clothes." We had a housekeeper.

We'd always had a housekeeper. But ever since my stepdad moved into my mom's house, he'd insisted on washing her clothes himself, by hand. Lach picked up the habit.

Every piece of clothing I'd owned since I was six, he'd washed by hand. This time he looked into the bag and turned his head away. "You're grown now.

And we're just brother and sister. Your brother will do your shirts and your jeans. You'll wash your underthings yourself. Okay?" He'd spoiled me since I was six.

I did not react well to sentences like that. "No!" "So now I'm gross to you?" "If you won't wash them, I'm never speaking to you again." He gave in, the way he always did.

Then he picked up that bag like it weighed forty pounds and carried it out to the balcony. I walked past a few minutes later. He was standing over the pile, staring at it.

Then he leaned down and breathed the peach off them. Something moved in his throat. The red climbed his ears. He looked furious. Red in the face, seeing red.

So he really was disgusted with me. I found out later that it wasn't anger at all. I thought about the way he'd been backing off from me all week. The strange things he kept saying.

Something in me gave out. I ran over and shoved him away from the sink. "Forget it. Don't wash them.

I'll do it myself." He came back to himself, arms stiff at his sides. "I'm sorry. I—" "Lachlan Hale, I hate you. You never have to wash my clothes again." He was quiet for a moment.

Then he nodded. "Okay," he said softly. That made it worse. He really didn't want to take care of me anymore. Tell the man he's off laundry duty and he looks relieved.

I ignored him on purpose for days. Before, one day of silent treatment and he'd come find me and make peace. This time he was the one who pulled away.

And he'd gotten jumpy about everything. He couldn't sit through a single sentence with washing in it, or showers, or anybody's skin looking good.

Naming a body part out loud set him off. If I hadn't checked the drain myself and come up empty, I'd have started wondering whether he had a string of murders going on the side.

Somebody chopped into a hundred pieces. The cold war lasted until Mom got back from her work trip. My stepdad covered the table in food. The four of us sat down happy.

Lach peeled my shrimp for me without a word. I sniffed and looked away. Don't think this fixes anything. Mom teased him. "Lachie, you spoil that girl.

What's she going to do at her own wedding without you there?" He wasn't all the way in the room.

He set the shrimp on my plate and said, without thinking: "What do you mean, her wedding. If she's not marrying me, who is she marrying?" One full second of silence at that table.

Then it caught up with him. "No. No, wrong, that came out wrong—" "What I meant was, I'll just come along as part of the dowry." My stepdad had reached his limit.

He smacked the back of Lach's head. "What is wrong with you, kid?" Mom laughed and put a hand over my stepdad's. "Enough. Lachie's joking." "Oh, that reminds me.

There's a new Korean spa. Three hundred a head, seafood buffet included. Your dad and I are working. You two should go.

Lachie's already seen—" He was on his feet before she finished, the whole table jumping under his hands. Red from his ears all the way down his neck. "I have NOT!

I have not seen my little sister in the shower!" Mom sat there with her mouth open. "I mean.

I meant, you've already seen how nice it is inside." I had no idea what was happening to him. I dropped my fork and stood up too. "Yeah?

Like I've ever seen YOU in the shower!" Chapter 4 "You didn't even devein my shrimp today. You want me married off this badly.

You're in this much of a hurry to draw a line between us. It's because you don't want to take care of me anymore." "Fine. Not just the laundry.

There is nothing about me you ever have to do again." I turned and ran to my room. I sat in there by myself and hurt about it.

There was a real argument for sticking pins in a Lachlan Hale voodoo doll. He was the one who said he'd wait on me hand and foot for life. He doesn't get to take it back.

I cried under the covers. When my stepdad first brought Lach into our house, I hated it. I was sure he'd take some of my mom away from me.

Then I saw Lachlan's face, and my temper melted like butter. Sixyearold me already knew how to look out for future me.

I grabbed him by the collar, pushed him down onto the couch, and stood over him. "You get two choices. One, be my servant.

Two, be my husband." Lachlan lay there under me, stunned and defenseless. My stepdad stared. "…Well. She's your daughter, all right.

She's got some of you in her." Mom hauled me off him by the back of my shirt, and she was not smiling. "That is your brother. Say hello." He was eleven that year.

I looked at his pretty little face for a long time. Then, still sulking, I said: "If you're going to be my brother you have to wait on me hand and foot for the rest of your life.

Can you do that?" I thought he'd back down. He nodded. "Okay." Mom worked a lot. Lachlan actually took on every part of looking after me.

Small things, like laundry and braiding my hair. Big things, like homework and my college applications. We had a fight when I was fourteen. I called him a shameless stray.

He looked at me for three seconds, then picked me up around the waist.

I panicked and kicked at him. "You hit me and I'll make my mom throw you out!" But all he did was carry me to the bed. He put my shoes on my feet.

Then he sighed. "Don't stand on the floor barefoot. You'll get cold." I was still furious, eyes swimming, so he crouched down close and wiped the tear off the corner of my eye.

He took my hand and set it on top of his head.

His voice was gentle. "Your brother is your dog, Sunny." "Your brother was born to be his little sister's dog." "So don't push your brother away.

Let me hang on to you for the rest of my life. Okay?" I wiped my face and kicked the blanket a few times. Lachlan Hale's whole life was way too short.

I decided I would not speak to him until he came to me first