Sweet Little Sister

A few months had passed by, leaving a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Everything had worked out fine and I had finally gotten rid of my brother, spending quality time with my boyfriend. I had to admit, there were times when I hated his guts and times when I felt like strangling him but I came around to living with him… and forgot about Sebastian.

Skid Row were currently on tour with Bon Jovi, after releasing their first album and going to the top of the charts.
Joe was nagging me for weeks, telling me I should listen to it because it was really good but I had my mind set, I wasn’t going to listen to Sebastian’s voice with my own will. Nope, wasn’t going to happen.

I had learned to avoid watching mtv and various rock radio stations. Joe and I would go out once a week, to places like the Rainbow and watch people make fools of themselves. It was debauchary at its finest and it seemed to be hip.
Everybody was in a band, every girl was a groupie and everybody was spreading diseases. Was I the only one who didn’t want to partake in all that?

“You look depressed…” Joe stated, petting me on the head.

I was half-awake, just thinking over stuff. I rolled onto my stomach, snuggling him and taking a deep breath.
“Its just that I’m starting to hate this place,” I said in-between yawns. “I wanna stay in forever and never go outside.”

He laughed, making my head go up and down and I felt dizzy. “Its worse than I thought…,” he joked, “but maybe we should go somewhere for vacation, somewhere warm where we can sit around and sleep all day long.”

“We do that here.”

“Change is good.”

“Change is scary Joe…”

“Are you scared of me? Still think that I’m a psychopath, that I’ll kill you in your sleep?”
He started tickling me while I was pushing him around, until he pushed me under him. He was hovering over me, looking at me with his loving eyes. I smiled and kissed him lightly, savoring the taste of smoke. Yeah, I had made him change cigarette brands.

“I love you,” I whispered into his hair. He remained close to me, with his arms wrapped around my waist.

There was a moment of silence and stiffness in his body. I had my eyes closed but I could tell that he was looking at me and thinking. His nose brushed against mine.

“Marry me.”

I opened my eyes and his eyes were locked with mine.

“Did you just speak?” I mumbled, terrified.

“Yep.”

“I just imagined that you said something,” I laughed, concluding that it was just my head making up things.

“I spoke, I said that you should marry me. See, changes happen all the time.”

“Okay, please tell me you’re joking.”

“You know I’m not the one to joke around all the time; unlike you,” he said, his lips curving into a grin.

“You can’t marry me,” I answered.

He laughed again. “You’re legal. Or are you? You haven’t been lying about your age right?”

“Joe, this is very serious!” I snapped. “You can’t just ask me to marry you!”

“Its better than forcing you, don’t you think?”

Woah, he was being sarcastic! That was serious, he was never sarcastic, something must be seriously wrong.

“I’m eighteen! I can’t marry the first guy I meet, I wanna live my life.”

“So live it, with me.”
His gaze was so strong that I had to look away. This was the most intense moment I had ever experienced so far.

“What will everybody say? That I got married with some stranger and next thing you know, I’ll be stuck in a house with four children and you’ll sit on the couch and watch tv all day long.”

“I hate watching tv.”

“You’ll be off doing god knows what…” I muttered.

He looked hurt. “I don’t care if we have any children, I just want you.”

“Oh my god! We’re actually talking about children!” I screamed, jumping up and leaving.

“You’re the one that mentioned children!” he complained as I stormed off to the kitchen.

I poured myself a glass of water with shaking hands. Who would have thought, me, a random girl, getting married to him! Wait, I wasn’t gonna marry him! Darn, why was I thinking about this? Damn it…

He strolled inside, with his fucking blue boxers on. I was tempted to grab a knife and mutilate him but thought otherwise since my experience with knives would only lead to me getting stitches.

I was holding onto the glass so hard that I was expecting it to crack. My body language was screaming ‘get the fuck away from me’ but he ignored it. He brushed against me, sighing.

“I got this for you.”
He left something on the counter. I didn’t dare look. I heard him go into the bedroom and put clothes on, I could hear his belt buckle. He was giving me some alone time, wasn’t he? The front door opened and he left.
Moments later, I heard his motorcycle. Great, now I couldn’t help but look at what he had left on the counter.

No, I wasn’t going to look.

I covered my eyes as I tried to walk back to the living room, maybe read a book or make a fucking scarf for our growing family. Ha, very funny. Not.

My eyes darted to the counter. I couldn’t see anything.

Of course, being me, I went back, scanning the flat surface for any kind of commitment object. A shiny thing caught my eye.

Fuck him.

The simplest silver band was placed beside the fruit bowl. Just a simple silver ring. He was a sneeky motherfucker, he knew my fetish for plain silver rings, I used to have five to put on my fingers but they had all mysteriously disappeared.
I wonder who could have thrown them away or hidden them.

He knew I wasn’t the kind of bitch to wear a diamond ring or something flashy. The only kind of rocks I liked was the Aerosmith album.
I tried it on, just out of curiosity. It fit perfectly on my finger. Did he measure it while I was sleeping or something? I was fuming just thinking about it, wondering about how long he had been planning all this.

I wasn’t going to say that I didn’t love him; of course I loved him. But it was different being in a relationship and being married… or at least that’s what I thought, I never fucking married anybody to know what its like.

“What would Rachel think of this?” I said out loud.

He would certainly oppose and number off one million reasons to help me decide against this. But seriously, Rachel wasn’t the one to talk about settling down, he was probably sleeping with hundreds of chicks right now.
And also, that would mean the end of Sebastian and I, me getting hitched would be the tombstone to anything that could happen between us. He was like a drug, Sebastian. Drugs were bad but when you were taking them, they make you feel like the king of the world.

All this time without him made me see how wrong it was. It was very wrong but I did it anyway… and-

The phone rang, scaring the shit out of me. The phone never rang.

I picked it up cautiously. “Hello?”

There was so much noise at the other side of the line. “Baby!”

I rolled my eyes, it was Rob. There was more commotion on the other side and the phone must have been handed around to somebody else.

“Hey, its me, Rachel.”

“Hey, how are you guys?” I asked. It had been a long time since we last spoke.

“Its fucking great, so wild to be out here! Guess what! We’re back in L.A!”

I cringed. Perfect timing. “Nice…”

“Are you coming tonight? You gotta come!”

“Okay, I’ll be there Rachel… but I can’t stay for any crazy after parties, its not my thing.”

“Are you bringing Joe over?” he half-screamed in his mouth-piece. I had to pull my phone away so he wouldn’t break my ear drum. God, they were wild.

“Yeah, you’ll see us there. Anyway, talk to you later.”

He hung up after giving me directions to the place they were playing. I was questioning whether I should go or not… it would be rude not to go since I was Rachel’s only family around and I knew how much it meant for him.
Of course, they would kill me for not knowing any song of theirs but I didn’t care… At least I was going to have Joe around, to help me keep my mind off Sebastian and all the whores that would be around him.

I jumped straight into the shower, staying under the water doing nothing for a good ten minutes. The body gel was running out so I took Joe’s. I liked the intimacy of sharing shampoo; plus, men’s shower gel was so much better. It smelled amazing, spicy and raw, like a man. A clean man to be exact.

I scrubbed and shaved my legs and washed my hair, I even cleaned my face instead of leaving it the way it was, with my eyes full of old make-up and eyeliner.

The mirror was full of steam so I took my towel and cleaned it off. I looked relaxed, not like the times when I was staying with the asswipes, living in constant stress and having Sebastian around… I preferred this.

I blow-dried my hair a bit but let it moist so I could go outside and let it dry naturally. The Californian sun now in the summer was even stronger. I found my pair of cut-off jean shorts and a black shirt; as always, I wasn’t going to dress up for anything, the short-lived days of me dressing like a hooker had died.
Of course, Cassandra and I still hung out a bit but not as much. She was thinking about going to Seattle, where she had some friends. She had told me about this new music wave was about to happen, some bands were starting up over there and were slowly taking over the scene.

The most surprising thing were those wackos we had met, Guns N’ Roses. They were on the verge of becoming huge, so far, they were starting to overshadow Motley Crue, which at the time seemed impossible.
And of course, Skid Row, can’t forget about them. Those bastards were touring the world and just a year ago, they were nothing. It all seems as if it happened overnight.

“Anna?”

I saw Joe walk in hesitantly. Yeah, you should be scared.

“I’m over here,” I shouted from the balcony.

He came, with a cigarette in his mouth already, lighted and all.

“You’re wearing it?” he exclaimed. I looked down at my hand and holy fuck, I had forgot to take it off. I struggled to get it off but it wouldn’t move.

“What kind of curse have you put on this ring? Its glued on my fucking finger!”

“Can you be honest and serious for once! Just accept the fact that you want it there, you wouldn’t have tried it if you hated the idea. Stop being so difficult.”

The words echoed in my skull. I was being difficult, it was true. The whole idea of trying it on and seeing how it looked on my finger had lured me. Maybe he was right, I had subconsioualy agreed to this proposal. It was just a matter of time, wasn’t it.

“This is happening kinda fast…”

“You think that this doesn’t freak me out? I always thought I’d stay a bachelor forever.”

“Maybe we can see if things work out,” I said, looking out towards the traffic on the street.

“You mean you want to try this?”

I smiled. “Yes. But if you break my nerves this is going up your ass,” I said, pointing to the ring.

He picked me up and spun me around. God this was cheesy.

“I love you more than you can imagine.”

“I love you too,” I said, kissing him, slipping my tongue in his mouth. He moaned in delight, lifting me on the rail of the balcony. A rush of fear spread inside me but he was holding onto me, there was no way I’d drop.
I wrapped my legs around him and melted in his embrace. I felt complete, I truly did.

“If we fuck now we won’t have time to go to the concert…” I laughed.

“God you’re so obscene…” he joked. “What concert?”

“Skid Row, come on, we have to go. And I’ll tell him the news, probably just before he goes on stage, so everybody can watch him go crazy.”

He rolled his eyes. “Always the good little sister.”

“That’s me.”