Oh Brother - Season 1 - Episode 29

Episode 5 years ago

Oh Brother - Season 1 - Episode 29

☆☆


Jealous was definitely what I had been yesterday. I had been jealous of a girl being too close to Christian. Hurt too, because he had allowed her to touch him. Both of those things I admitted to myself, but I wouldn’t let those things change anything. I couldn’t.

Cheryl’s idea of me liking Christian made more sense now. Feeling jealous of another girl being around Christian showed me that I may feel something. That maybe, what I felt was more than what you’d feel for a sibling. But even knowing that, I couldn’t help but push that idea to the very back of my mind. Christian was someone I once hated. Someone who was my stepbrother. It wasn’t my pride getting in the way of liking him, it was the fact that this couldn’t be true. It was just too unbelievable.

Sighing, I got up from my bed as I perfected my plan. These feelings I could possibly have needed to go, so I had made a plan to return everything to the way they formerly were. Knowing our friendship started with a certain event, I decided to spend the day with Christian teaching him something that related to that specific event. That way, we would return to the past that didn’t involve all these complications. I knew it was kind of a crazy idea, but I had to try it. I just had to, for my sake.


Getting up from my bed, I decided to go see Christian. With my offer for him fresh in my mind, I made my way to his bedroom.


Before I knew it I was knocking on the door to his room.


He quickly popped up, looking tired.


Running his fingers through his hair, he analyzed me for a second. From the way his eyebrows furrowed, I knew he was confused.
“Hey,” I said, forcing a smile since the awkward tension seemed dense.


“Hey,” he simply replied. “What’s up?”
“Everything has been crazy lately,” I admitted, looking away from his bright eyes that had been locked on my own. “And I’m tired of it. I’m tired of fighting with you.”
That was the truth. Whether I liked him or not in a certain way didn’t change the fact that I was also really tired of fighting with him. We seemed to fight a lot for the stupidest reasons, and I hated it. Hated it so much because I did care about him and hated having these situations where we didn’t talk and then needed to apologize to one another. It was just so tiring.


“Me too.” Christian’s eyes softened. “By now you’d think we’d know how not to get on the other’s bad side.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I know right. Well, that’s why I want to teach you something.”


“You want to teach me something?” He raised an eyebrow. “What?”
I smiled, almost shyly. “How to cook. I’m kind of worried that you might burn the house down one day, so it seems like a good idea.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Shall we?”
“We shall.”

I stepped away from his door and turned around, beginning to walk away. But then suddenly, I felt a hand wrap around my wrist. My heart froze at the warm touch, and I fought off the urge to rip my arm away from him. If we were going to go back to the way things were, I knew I needed to stop feeling this way by something as simple as his touch.
“Autumn,” Christian said as I stayed facing away from him. “I know you probably don’t care, but Liz means nothing to me. Well, she’s my friend… but nothing more.”
At that, I found my heart oddly relaxing. I didn’t even know I had been worried about that until now. With my relaxed heart, I frowned as I knew I shouldn’t be feeling this way.


“You’re right, I don’t care,” I lied, starting to walk again.


Thankfully, Christian didn’t say anything as I placed a hand on my heart that was now fluttering at the realization that my task of returning things to normal was impossible. Shaking my head, I knew I had to try.


*****

I laughed as Christian’s eyes widened in fear. Taking the pan from him, I shook my head as he calmed down quickly. It was strange seeing Christian so uneasy from something as simple as cooking.

“Why are you so nervous when it comes to cooking?” I asked, smiling as I flipped the omelet we were making.


“I don’t know,” he said, frowning as he watched me cook with confidence. “I guess because I know about nothing when it comes to it.”


“Your mom never taught you?”
I instantly regretted asking the question, knowing you shouldn’t ask about someone’s parent that wasn’t around anymore. Even though I didn’t mind, the topic of my dad was a soft spot even for me. Christian was the last person I ever brought him up to, and that had been months ago.
Before I could take back my question, Christian replied, “No, my mom had always been distant with us. She was a good mom and all, but my dad and I rarely interacted with her.”


“Why didn’t you?” I couldn’t help but ask.


“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Like I said, she was a good mom. A good wife too. She did all of the house work and had an actual job, and she made sure that we were alright. But even though she was perfect in those aspects, she never really seemed happy. I guess that’s why she had an affair.”


I frowned at that. I never understood why people would pretend to be happy when they weren’t. It only made the situation worse in the end, like how his mom cheated on Stephen. That was one of the reasons why I never hid my feelings of unhappiness.


“I’m sorry.” I looked up at him, my eyes sad. “I hate when people say that because that usually don’t mean it in the way in these situations, but I do. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”


He shrugged, but I caught the sadness that overwhelmed his eyes. As he looked away, I felt sad myself. Thinking about what Stephen had told me, I knew what his mom did really hurt him. It had changed him to this person that I knew I would never recognize.
But then, I thought about what else Stephen told me. Of how I made Christian truly happy. The thought always touched me, and seeing how sad he was now urged me to comfort him. Because the truth was, he was the one person I wanted to keep happy. My face reddened at the thought.


Ignoring my embarrassment, I knew I had to comfort him as he continued to look away from me. Not knowing what to do, I didn’t give myself time to rethink the idea that suddenly hit me. So sighing lightly, I rested my head on his shoulder.


To my shock, he almost instantly wrapped an arm around me. I smiled at that and closed my eyes, allowing him to comfort me instead of the other way around. At first I didn’t know why I needed to be comforted, but then it hit me. Hit me not as hard as I expected, because I kind of knew it by now. I liked Christian.


Knowing I loved being with him. Knowing I wanted to keep him happy. Knowing I wanted to be able to touch him whenever I wanted to, for the butterflies and everything else, I knew I liked him by now. The thought of liking him was scary, a bit horrifying, but at this point I decided to just admit it. For once I had to let my pride fall down, and admit that I liked this incredible guy I was cuddling with.
Sighing, I smiled as I felt almost relieved at my confession to myself. Thinking back to the months of progress we had since I hated him, I realized one thing. I had been pushing him away for a long time. For almost no reason, I had. But this all made sense now. I had been pushing away Christian because of these feelings I had. These feelings, I couldn’t let become true. But now, I couldn’t care less about them being true. He made me happy, and apparently I did the same for him. Even if we weren’t anything special, I was happy with this.
“Autumn,” Christian suddenly said, snapping me out my thoughts. “The omelet, it’s burning.”


My eyes flew opened as I gasped. Quickly moving away from him, I grabbed the pan and turned off of the stove. I frowned as I saw that the omelet was burnt. I had to blame Christian for it, even though it was I who had gotten lost in thoughts.
“You’re really bad luck when it comes to cooking,” I grumbled, walking towards the garbage can.
He laughed. “Hey, you should’ve been paying more attention to it.”
I couldn’t help but blush as I dropped the omelet into the garbage. A part of me wondered if he knew he was what distracted me, but then I remembered how naive he was. I was safe – for now.
“Well, you could’ve paid attention to it too,” I shot back, turning around and crossing my arms to glare at him.”
“Sorry.” He grinned. “I was distracted by someone.”
This time, I didn’t try to hide my blush. I just stared at him. Stared at his perfectly chiseled face. With his blue eyes bright, his plump, pink lips, and messy black hair that I really wanted to run my fingers through, I finally admitted that he was attractive. Incredibly attractive, he was. Smiling to myself, I was glad to see that I fell for the perfect package. Even though I knew I would regret admitting I liked him, I was temporarily glad.