Chapter 0002

-Caleb-

Eating disorder?

“What, like you’re anorexic?” I asked, horrified.

My stepsister curled tightly into her door. She wouldn’t even look at me, and not for the usual reasons.

I raked my eyes over Jacey, trying to see what would ever have given her the idea she needed to be anorexic.

“Bulimic. And let’s just drop the subject now,” my mother said sharply.

Yeah, the subject should never have been opened in the first place, but Hank Collins had all the sensitivity of a post. Everything was funny. Nothing was off limits.

Mom found it charming, but it usually pissed me off. Especially when he stuck Jocelyn into uncomfortable situations, like he was doing now.

I was completely aware my stepsister had a crush on me. When she was fifteen and pouring out her heart to me, I’d be the first to admit I didn’t handle it well. I was shocked.

Ever since then, though, the very thought of those mischievous green eyes and thick black hair, not to mention a body that could have been a World War II pinup, made my dick twitch. It’d become impossible to go home from college after I started thinking about her THAT way.

Hank, mercifully, moved onto another subject with Mom’s direction, but the damage was done. Jocelyn looked positively miserable.

Maybe if we weren’t stepbrother and stepsister, our parents weren’t in the car, and Jocelyn wasn’t four years younger than me, I would have taken this opportunity to show her just how beautiful her body really was. As things stood, the best I could do was hold out my phone to her.

“Wanna play sudoku?” I asked.

Our new inside joke made her laugh a little, and Jocelyn relaxed, peeling herself off the door and taking my phone so she could stare at the black screen for a while.

I held my breath when our fingers brushed and told the naughty asshole in my pants to calm the fuck down. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving, when I’d had no excuse not to come back home, it only became more uncomfortable. Jocelyn wouldn’t look at me, and, God help me, I COULDN’T look at her. Not the way she just kept getting hotter.

When this trip came up and Hank wouldn’t take no for an answer, privately threatening to pull the tuition payment he’d promised for my medical degree if I didn’t “start getting along” with my “sister,” I knew I could have made a stink. I could have gone to Mom and complained. But it’d seemed so silly at the time to cause strife in their marriage just because of one camping trip.

Then I’d laid eyes on Jocelyn, wearing jeans that were worn in all the right places and a loose T-shirt that, nevertheless, did little to hide some of her better assets. I knew from the moment Hank had taken my waterproof pack and threw it in the back of the Suburban that I should have kicked and screamed before agreeing to this trip.

Because some deep, dark devil in me knew in two days, Jocelyn was going to be legal.

It was one of the many barriers I’d thrown up between myself and my baser desires. If Jocelyn wasn’t eighteen, then there was no way I would touch her. Then there was the added complication of her being my stepsister. And four years my junior.

And... and... and...

I’d stacked all the excuses up carefully, one-by-one, to try to get myself to stop having X-rated thoughts about Jocelyn. Most of the time it worked.

But then, most of the time, I didn’t have a living, breathing Jocelyn sitting right next to me, holding my phone, staring into a lost abyss.

Damned right, I wanted to be her white knight.

The best I could do on that score, however, was to give her a way to zone out of the family conversations before my mother or, God forbid, Hank decided to pester her some more.

“So, how’s it going at the U of M?” Hank asked, breaking the soft squabble he’d been having with my mother that had ended in more kissy-kissy noises.

Sometimes they were nauseating, but I was happy Mom had found happiness. “Still third in my class,” I replied. It was more than I usually gave him, as I liked to keep that part of my life private, especially from Hank, but I figured if it kept the pressure off Jocelyn, I could make the sacrifice.

“Really? That’s great!” Hank said. “And you’re going to Johns Hopkins this year for your Masters or whatever the next step for doctors is?”

“Hank,” Mom murmured, “we talked about this. Caleb is going NEXT year. He’s taking a year off between.”

“Otherwise my semester would have started two weeks ago,” I added.

Hank frowned slightly, then nodded. “Oh, that’s right. So, you working, then?”

“Yes. I’m going to be a part-time research assistant for a professor of mine for a year,” I replied. Hank was an old-school believer in work. I respected that about him, but that did mean I knew what was coming next.

“Part-time? Why just part-time? It’s not like you’re doing anything,” Hank grunted.

“Oh, give the boy a break, Hank. He works very hard,” Mom butted in.

“I didn’t say he doesn’t work hard. I’m just saying—”

“We’re here!” Jocelyn interrupted, dousing the coals of anger that had started simmering in my belly.

Hank looked up at a series of nondescript orange plastic ties sticking out from a pine tree and made a hard left.

We bounced off the gravel logging road and onto sloped, hardpacked rock and sand. There was a truck parked to one side, a small camper to the other, and two boats tied out to the side of the landing at the edge of a mess of boulders.

Shimmer Lake, our destination, was a mere twelve feet from us, sparkling, as its name implied, in the sunlight.

Tall, skinny pine trees and some birch fell all over each other to create dark, mysterious tangles of trees all around the lake. Not that all of the lake could be seen from this one spot. According to Hank, you could portage through seven lakes just by accessing this one. The lakes we’d be fishing were Shimmer Lake, North Shimmer, and Little Shimmer.

“Okay, everybody out! We need to unload, then the menfolk need to get the boats in the water,” Hank said.

We all hopped out into the crisp Canadian air. It smelled earthy, yet clean. Like wet rock and green leaves.

“I can help,” Jocelyn pointed out, returning my phone.

Hank laughed and patted her on the head. “I know, cupcake, but it’ll go faster if Caleb and I do it.”

Jocelyn’s shoulders slumped, and she went to help Jeanie unload the truck.

I stopped Hank before we joined in. “Hey,” I said in a low tone, “I think she really wanted to help.”

Obtuse as usual, Hank just shrugged. “She helps. She’s helping right now. And every other year we’ve been up here, she’s been the one to back the boat into the water. It’ll just go faster if we do it.”

I didn’t see how. It wasn’t as though how fast or slow the Suburban went was dependent on the gender of the person driving it. “But I think she wants to. Does it really matter how fast we get in the water?”

Hank scoffed. “Sure does. If we set up camp by tonight, there’s still good fishing to be had!”

I decided there was no use arguing any further. “Fine. Let’s just get this thing unloaded.”

Hank and I went back to the boat trailer and untied the canoe that was sitting flipped on top of a simple, metal fishing boat beneath. We carried it down to the water, where Jocelyn quickly tied a rope to a metal ring at the front and guided it past the rocks to sit off to the side with the other fishermen’s boats, so it was out of the way.

I hadn’t even seen her put on her wading boots. She’d just appeared out of nowhere.

“Jacey knows the routine,” Hank chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder. “You’ll learn quick.”

Piles of lifejackets, two tents, four large coolers, bottled water, sleeping bags, our personal packs, rain gear, fishing gear, and what I assumed had to be a partridge in a pear tree were laid off to the side of the landing in the scraggly grass. Hank and I pulled two motors and four full gas cans out of the back of the Suburban.

Jacey had thrown on her lifejacket already, while Mom was giggling and practically falling off a boulder trying to get her feet in her wading boots.

“Don’t take Mom up here much?” I observed as we carefully placed the small motor, for the canoe, and the big motor, for the boat, off to the side with the gas cans.

Hank took the carpet pieces that had been padding the gas cans and threw them back into the Suburban. “Nah. Usually, it’s just me and Jacey.”

“You don’t think she prefers it that way?” I hazarded.

Hank’s eyes flashed, and he put his hands on his hips. “You want to go down this road again?”

Damn straight I wanted to go down this road again. Jocelyn was turning eighteen, and I had a feeling Hank hadn’t even asked her what she wanted. But, in the interest of peace, I grit my teeth and shook my head. “No, sir.”

“That’s what I thought. Now, hop up there behind the wheel and back the boat up a bit more so we can get it off the landing,” Hank said.

I was almost determined to make this the worst back-up job ever seen. But I didn’t want to waste more time arguing with Hank. At least once we got to camp, I could hide out in my tent and avoid him. And Jocelyn. I hoped.

The boat trailer bounced over an inconveniently placed boulder in the middle of the sandy slope to the landing, but otherwise I got the boat down there without incident.

Hank was not there to receive the boat, however. He was over giggling with Mom, helping her into her boots.

I parked the Suburban then saw Jocelyn was already undoing the ropes that held the boat to the trailer.

“Hey, is that safe?” I asked, going over to her.

Jocelyn looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “How else do you expect to get it in the water?”

“Yeah, but, won’t it fall off?” I pressed.

Jocelyn gestured to the crank at the front of the boat trailer. “It’d have to try really hard.”

“Ah, Jacey, good. Showing your brother the ropes,” Hank said, then laughed at his little dad joke.

Mom tittered, also finding it funny.

Jocelyn looked annoyed. I saw it before she could wipe the expression away with a smile. I didn’t blame her. Now her stepmother and stepbrother were intruding on time she usually spent alone with her father.

I really was going to have to try to impress this on Hank before he tried pulling this same shit next year.

“So, we just grab it and haul it in, right?” I said, going to the other side of the boat and grabbing one of the back handles.

“Sure do. It’s lighter at the front. Why don’t you two womenfolk grab it up there? Can’t get the boat trailer in any deeper, I’m afraid. Rocks.” Hank went to the front of the boat briefly to un-crank the rope.

The boat slid back almost immediately, and I dug my tennis shoes into the dirt to stop it from falling onto the ground.

Jocelyn held the boat at the top, but Mom was basically useless, giggling over the whole process.

Hank just made kissy faces at her while he sprinted to the back of the boat and grabbed the other handle. He looked at my feet and frowned. “Well, son, you should have put your boots on.”

“Huh?” I said.

“You’re about to get wet.” Hank gave a mighty pull.

And I ended up in the water.