Step Wilde: A Stepbrother Romance (2 page)

Josh sighed and cleared his throat, ready as always to deliver his lines. "See, where he comes: so please you, step aside; I'll know his grievance, or be much denied."

Ricardo spoke next, his lines coming easily. "I would thou wert so happy by thy stay, to hear true shrift. Come, madam, let's away."

He took Julie's arm and they walked off the stage.

Josh turned to face me. "Good-morrow, cousin," he said jauntily.

I opened my mouth and felt the lines fly out of my head. "Hello," I replied lamely. A few of the people working on the set laughed. I put my hands up to my eyes and groaned.

Raucous applause clanged out from Diane's hands, her silver hair and dark framed glasses bouncing as she shook her head, a sarcastic smile across her face. She set down her papers and stood up, putting her wrinkled hands to her mouth.

"Encore! Encore!" she called out. This time I groaned internally. When Diane went full sarcasm, it never meant anything good for me. She took her glasses off and put a well-worn stem into her mouth. "I'm telling you, if Shakespeare had simply thought to have his characters just say 'Hello' and to hell with iambic pentameter, he could have saved himself a lot of heartache."

I opened my mouth to apologize but she held up a hand to stop me from speaking. It felt like everyone's eyes were on me. "Nicholas, I've said this before, and I will say it again. If you spent half the time learning your lines as you did on doing your hair, you might actually be worth something." She tucked the stack of curly-edged papers underneath her elbow and marched up the aisle toward the doors of the auditorium. "As it stands you are underwhelming me with your display of mediocrity."

I felt my heart beating wildly in my chest. I knew that I had completely butchered the lines. But the beautiful late spring day was beckoning to me as it had been all day. I hadn't even bothered studying for my spring exams before taking them earlier in the week, much less memorizing my lines to a throwaway play that most of the school wouldn't even bother coming to see. "Oh, Diane," I called out in my most charming voice. I tried to gather my fucking dignity. "You know that you love me."

Diane raised one wrinkled, spot covered hand and waved in standoffish recognition of my words. The metal doors clanged as she made her angry exit. The noise echoed across the perfect acoustics of the auditorium.

I clapped my hands and looked around at my fellow cast mates. "Well," I said with a smile. "Who wants drinks?"

Josh shook his head. "Come on man." Josh had a look of deep concern on his face that I recognized all too well. He'd worn it for most of our friendship, which had started when we were still in diapers. "Don't you think that we need to be taking this a little bit more seriously? I mean, the rest of the cast is working really hard on this. You seem to be the only one who doesn't seem to care. Which is an issue, since you
are
playing Romeo. And he is sort of an important character in the Shakespeare play. Or so I've heard," Josh added sarcastically.

"It's a little bit hard to get into this role when I am not sure who is going to play Juliet," I replied.

Lydia, our stage manager and costume designer came marching across the stage. Her heavy, unlaced combat boots punctuated her obvious anger and irritation. "If you hadn't just fucked and discarded the first Juliet along with her understudy," Lydia said, pushing her purple glasses up her nose and flicking her matching purple hair off of her face, "Maybe I would have more empathy for your situation. I don't think you have a lot of room to criticize the rest of us for what is
once again
your mistake."

I cocked my head to the side and applied what I hoped was the charming grin that had gotten me out of nearly every bad situation in my life. "I never said that I was exclusive with either one of them," I explained cockily, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a stick of gum. I peeled off the silver, soft wrapper and removed a chalky, mint green stick. "Gum?" I asked her.

Lydia rolled her eyes. "I want you to know your lines, Wilder."

I crumpled up the silver wrapper and held it out in my hand. "Do you mind?" I asked her, dropping the silver wrapper and forcing her to dive to catch it. "Thanks so much," I said. "You're a doll." Then I clapped my hands together once more and looked around at the cast. "Drinks! I'm buying so you can't say no."

CHAPTER THREE

WILDER

"Shots!" I called out into the noisy bar. A Whitesnake cover band was playing on the makeshift stage several feet to my left. I pounded my fist onto the bar. "Now where is that gorgeous bartender?" The liquor I'd already downed pulsed through my body. I always loved the warm glow that flooded my body after drinking. I put my hands around my mouth and howled like a coyote into the air.

The bartender wandered over and flashed me a smile. "Shots for everyone?" she asked.

Josh grabbed my arm to get me to stop talking. "He's probably had enough to drink tonight, actually."

I put my arm around Josh and beamed. "This guy right here is my best friend in the entire fucking world. Seriously. He saves me from all of my fuck-ups. But he's being ridiculous right now. Shots for everybody."

"Except for him," Josh said. The bartender laughed and nodded.

"You," I said, poking Josh in the chest with an unsteady finger. "Are no fucking fun, man."

Josh pulled my arm off of him. "I know, man. You remind me all the time." Josh pulled his phone out and looked at the time. "I really think we should head out."

I shook my head. "We only have four weeks left of college. And you are telling me that I need to leave my own party? That I started? Right here? Right now? DUDE!" I felt giggles coming over me. It registered in my mind that I was two drinks past drunk. The next stage was me taking my clothes off and dancing.

Josh was right. But my brain kept egging me on. So I pounded my fist again on the bar and chanted "Drinks! Drinks! Drinks!" Several underclassmen that we had snuck in with the theater department's collective stash of fake IDs joined in with the chanting.

Within a few minutes the bartender had reappeared with large tray of shots. She looked at Josh. "He
is
paying for all of these right?"

Josh nodded. "He won't be happy about it tomorrow but there's no saying no to him when he's like this." Josh put on a fake smile and wrapped his arm around me in a hearty side hug. Josh stood up. "Shots for everybody but Wilder here!" he called out. Then he turned to me. "Get out your wallet. I've got to get you home before you start stripping, man."

I wasn't so far gone that I couldn't hear reason. I pulled out my debit card and hoped that I had enough on it. The bartender swiped it and handed me the receipt. Josh saw the total and his eyes nearly fell out of his head. He turned around. "Hey! Everybody on Wilder's tab needs to pony up for a tip, okay?" He lifted the large glass pickle jar and passed it to the guy next to him. "Everybody throws in at least a five, alright?"

Josh exhaled and lifted me off the barstool. My head was spinning a little, but I knew that the feeling would pass once I was out in the fresh air. It took a lot to get me drunk and sure enough, it wasn't long before my head had cleared some. All I was left with was a nice, heavy buzz that made me feel like I was floating down the sidewalk.

I still leaned on Josh slightly, feeling my way over the concrete. "We probably look like a four-legged monster from far away," I whispered comically, giggling as I said it. Then I turned my face to the sky and screamed. "This was the best fucking night ever!"

"You will not be saying that tomorrow morning," Josh said to me with a grimace, grunting under my weight.

"How is it that
you
are not drunk?" I asked him.

"Because I have a final in approximately six hours," he responded.

"Oh shit, you should have fucking told me that!" I replied, feeling guilty.

"And leave you alone to drink? No way. That’s not how
that
works."

We were close to campus now, within spitting distance of the library. "Actually," Josh said suddenly. "You'll probably feel a lot better in the morning if I can get some caffeine into you now." Josh looked inside the lit-up windows of the coffee shop. The sign said
Sorry, We're Closed
. "Dammit," Josh said, kicking the concrete. "You are going to be a monster in the morning." He shook his head and walked away.

I put my face up to the glass. I thought I saw a shadow of someone moving in the back room. I smiled and turned to face Josh. "Wait just a fucking minute," I called after him.

Josh stopped and turned. "What?"

"If you have learned anything in the nearly twenty years you have been my best friend, what is it?"

"Tequila makes you mean," he said, laughing a little.

"Fuck, Josh, not that." I tilted my head toward the coffee shop. "It's that when the situation seems impossible, I can find a way through it to get what I want."

Josh sighed. "Wilder, it’s just coffee. Don't be dramatic."

I grinned. "You're talking to a drama major. And me being a monster in the morning
is
a serious concern, is it not?" I turned to look in the windows so I could bang on the door and sweet talk whoever was in there into letting me have some fucking coffee.

That was when my heart stopped. "Fuck," I said loudly.

"What?" Josh asked, walking over to the window. "Oh."

Standing there in the coffee shop was the most gorgeous fucking woman I'd ever seen in my life. She was ridiculously tall, with an ass that wouldn't quit and long blonde hair that kissed the bottom of her curvy tits. I felt my dick tingling underneath my jeans. She was flipping chairs on top of recently wiped down tables. They were still streaky from the wetness of the cloth. All the lights were still on.

"It couldn't have been much time since she closed up the shop," I said with a smile.

"Wilder," Josh said, turning to me. "We are here for
coffee
. I don't have time to be your wingman tonight."

I ignored him and pounded on the glass. "Hey! Could you please let us in?" I yelled, plastering my face with the widest smile I could.

The girl jumped about a foot in the air and put her hand over her chest, trying to catch her breath.

"Sorry!" I said back, holding my hands up. "I didn't know if you could hear me!" I said loudly.

Josh laughed next to me. “When you’re drunk, the entire
campus
can hear you even if you’re whispering.”

She pointed angrily to the sign. "We're closed. Can't you read?" Her mouth formed itself into the sexiest pout I'd ever seen in my life. It only made me want to get in there even more.

"I'm Nick Wilder," I said, shining the biggest smile I could muster. "You know who I am.
Everyone
knows I am."

Josh groaned. "You're more drunk than I thought you were. You're like, bragging to the cheerleading squad that Richard Branson is considering you as a candidate to fly to Mars drunk."

I turned to him. "You will never let me forget that." I knocked on the window again. "Come on. Can't you see that I'm drunk? I have an exam tomorrow." The girl looked at me skeptically. "Okay, well.
He
has an exam tomorrow.” I pointed toward Josh. “And he's risked his perfect GPA to make sure that his best friend in the entire world doesn't get so blinding drunk that he strips his clothes off on the quad." I tilted my head to the side and stuck my lip out slightly.

"Dude, puppy dog face is not going to work with her. Just trust me on that,” Josh informed me.

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Because I come to this coffee shop all the damn time. She flirts with no one. She's immovable. I swear. I think she's too good for you anyway," Josh said.

"Challenge accepted," I replied. I saw that the girl had turned back to stacking chairs on top of tables. "This could be your community service for the week. Helping out two sick bastards with much-needed caffeine."

That worked. She turned around and walked toward the door, scowling. She turned the metallic lock and pulled the door open. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. My eyes were drawn immediately to her chest. Thankfully I was able to save the moment by glancing at her name tag. "Olivia," I said quietly, smiling at the feel of her name in my mouth. That wasn’t the only thing of hers I wanted in my mouth, either.

She blushed slightly. I internally gave myself a high five. I was
in
.

Olivia put her hand on her hip and scowled. "This is only so you will leave me alone so I can go to bed," she said, irritated. "Also the owner says that any leftover coffee gets deducted from our paycheck for waste. So drink up and pay up."

I took a calculated risk. “Can I hug you?” I asked her. It wasn’t really a question.

She looked surprised. “I guess-“

I didn’t wait for her to finish. I bent down, reaching my arms around Olivia and hugging her tightly. I felt her stiffen and then relax slightly. I smelled her silky hair. It smelled like vanilla.

I pulled away from her and saw that her face was one of confusion and pink blush. "Okay, boys," she said, turning away from me. "Make it quick."

She pushed past us and stood behind the bar, pulling out ceramic mugs that clinked together. She filled them with steaming, black coffee from the industrial sized coffee maker that sat perched on the bar. She pushed the mugs rapidly to the center of the counter.

"I'm not your waitress here. Come get it."

Josh set down two chairs and then grabbed the coffee mugs. I walked around the countertop and opened the sliding glass doors of the case of baked goods. I saw exactly what I wanted there and picked it out deftly.

"Plates?" I asked Olivia. She gaped at me, evidently not amused by my initiative. "What? You said to serve ourselves."

"Underneath the counter," she acquiesced, jabbing her finger to indicate the cabinet door by my feet.

I grabbed two plates and plated the cherry turnovers, placing them on the table. Josh looked at me, confused.