I said. “Yeah?” he said, blearily. I sat down across the kitchen table from my stepbrother and looked at him. I had been planning this for weeks and I knew I had to make every detail perfect. I pretended I’d just gotten up, but I’d been awake for hours, styling my hair, making it shine and fame my face in loose waves so it looked like bedhead but more, I don’t know, artful. I was in my underwear and a tank top with nothing on under it, and when I leaned forward to look him in the eye I pushed my breasts together with my arms. His eyes flicked to my chest and I saw his cheeks redden just a bit before he looked down at his cereal and took a hungry bite, as if by crunching hard on it he could banish me from sight. We would be separated in two days, both of us going to college, me as a freshman, my stepbrother as a junior. He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Yeah? What?” “What are you doing today?” “I have to mow the back yard,” he yawned, “and finish packing up my stuff.” Hearing word of him packing his things to go away made me sigh, and sigh harder when I realized I was doing it, too.
