Page 1 of Puck My Stepbrother
1
QUINN
On moving day, I found a bed and dresser already sitting in my new bedroom. Even worse, I found out about Levi. Hold on, wait, that wasn’t my biggest problem. Let’s try this again. My dad was getting married, had sprung the whole thing on me, and now we were moving into a new house with his fiancée and her son…
I’m sorry, I’m usually a lot better at expressing myself. I’ve just been super flustered by everything that’s happened to me recently. I feel like a tornado has blown through my life and scattered debris everywhere. Maybe I should start from the beginning?
Okay, so I told you my dad was getting married. That’s where this story starts. It was really heavy; I won’t lie. My mom died when I was little, and I’d never seen him date anyone else. He was too busy raising me, I guess, but I didn’t think of it that way. I just figured he wasn’t worried about women. He definitely didn’t try to reel in the first woman to come along just to make sure I had a mom.
He told me three months ago that he’d been seeing a woman named Maureen for almost a year, that he’d “found love again atlong last” and felt reborn. You know, like he was a character in a rom-com or part of some overplayed love song on the radio. And then they announced that they’d be getting married and buying a house together on Lafayette Avenue.
To say my world had been turned upside down would’ve been an understatement.
I was welcome to move in with them, of course. Dad promised I would always be his number one priority. He said I’d “always be part of the family” and that nothing would change, and I vowed to be supportive even though I knew his pledge about nothing changing was total bullshit. Think about it. I’d be moving in with total strangers. How could things not change?
Like I said, I wanted to be a supportive, good son, but I had a lot to process. Like, if Dad was seeing someone, why hadn’t he told me? Why keep it secret? And why wait until the wedding was only a few months away to tell me they were getting married?
But that wasn’t my biggest problem. Like I said, that’s just where the story starts, if I want to tell it with any sense of chronological order.
I didn’t discover my next problems until I actually moved into the house. I guess my dad felt bad about having sprung so much on me, because he tried to make it up by letting me pick my own bedroom. He had a long way to go, but picking my own room had its perks. I will say that the house on Lafayette Avenue was far nicer than the one we’d had on West Ferry Street. It boasted three spacious bedrooms, making a bad choice nearly impossible.
I chose the corner bedroom at the back of the house. That end of Lafayette Avenue wasn’t loud, even with Elmwood Avenue just a block away, and I valued my peace and quiet and wanted to savor all of it that I could. Dad agreed, so that was settled.
Until it wasn’t.
On moving day, I ran upstairs, expecting to find the wide-open space that’d stood there when I picked that room, and found a bed already inside. There were also a few boxes stacked in the corner.
That must’ve been some sort of mistake, right? Nothing I couldn’t fix?
I didn’t start breathing heavily or panicking (that came later and for different reasons, thank you very much), but I felt taken aback. Like, didn’t my dad alreadyknowthat this was my room? Shouldn’t he have made that abundantly clear to the movers? Even with everything going on, he hadn’t forgotten his promise, had he?
But here’s the thing: that bed was a little small for two people. It wasn’t tiny—a single person could really spread out on that mattress, but there was no way my dad and his bride would both fit on it.
But that wasn’t the worst of my problems. I discovered that a few minutes later. It was yet another thing nobody had bothered to tell me about:
Levi.
When I saw Levi Dunn, Ididbreathe heavier. Drawing in air felt like sucking a tennis ball through a straw. My heart pounded harder. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and I thought I was on the verge of a panic attack. I turned, clasped my chest, and counted to ten, because that was the only way I knew how to fight these things. By the time I reached eight, my breathing had slowed and I had a shot at rational thinking.
Anyway, back to the story. I found Levi and some muscly guy I’d never seen before lugging stuff up the front stairs, practically steamrolling me as they marched down the hall. Either I didn’t exist for them, or they just didn’t care. I wasn’t sure which option was worse. They carried their loads into my room, seeming to think absolutely nothing of it.
When Levi stopped and surveyed the room, I stood in the doorway. I wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the words. Or the nerve, whichever you prefer. After all, this was Levi Dunn, a guy I had absolutely nothing to say to.
Levi Dunn stood over six feet tall, had short blonde hair, and was a mountain of muscle. He’d played hockey all his life and was always in amazing shape, but now he looked bigger and stronger than ever, like he could overturn a car or rip a parking meter out of the concrete and twist it into a bow.
Yeah, that was Levi Dunn.
The same Levi Dunn I’d known from kindergarten through the end of high school. The same Levi Dunn I’d hoped to free myself from forever after high school graduation. The Levi Dunn who’d made so many school days miserable for me because he was the hockey player, the cool kid, and one hot shit. I, on the other hand, was the nerd who couldn’t fit in with the cool kids, and Levi never let me forget that.
He stood in my bedroom with his hands on his hips, drinking in his surroundings as if deciding where to hang his Buffalo Sabres flag or install his trophy case. I hoped this wasn’t what I thought it was. Any second now he’d tell me that he was working for a moving company on the weekends and obviously wouldn’t be living in our house. Full-time moving work would’ve sounded even better, because I hated to think Levi Dunn could’ve moved on to something super successful.
At first, he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t speak either. Once his musclehead friend disappeared, I stood in the doorway,gazing at those broad shoulders and the powerful chest that threatened to tear his T-shirt. I also noticed how his hulking biceps stretched his sleeves. Suddenly it seemed awfully hot in the room.
Old habits die hard, I guess.
When he looked up, his eyes landed on me, but he needed a moment to process what he was seeing. Then his face brightened, and I didn’t know how to interpret that. This was Levi Dunn, after all.
“Quinn?” he asked. “Quinn Standish?”
