Off the Clock. Roni Loren

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       4

      

      Nine years later—present day

      Marin woke up to the sound of hushed voices and the envelope of the overdue electric bill stuck to her face. She lifted her head, peeling the envelope away, and blinked in the lamplight of her bedroom, trying to get her bearings. Night still hummed along outside her window, black and quiet, and her laptop was silent beside her on the bed along with the king-sized bag of M&M’s she’d polished off in her stress-induced haze. But something had woken her up. Voices. She’d heard voices.

      She cringed. Hearing voices was never a good sign in this family. Now would be a really inconvenient time for a mental breakdown. But when a thump and a muffled curse sounded down the hall, she let out a breath. Nate must be home.

      Marin rubbed her eyes and checked the clock. Two in the morning. Way past curfew. He was trying to sneak in. Too bad he was such a fail at stealth mode. She shoved the pile of bills to the side of her bed, knocking a stack of research articles to the floor in the process, and sat up. Her bones popped and protested as she climbed off the bed.

      Ugh. She needed to stop falling asleep in weird positions. But she’d been trying to stay awake to make sure her brother got in. Now she’d have to have a talk with him about curfew. She let out a heavy sigh. Sometimes she hated having to be the grown-up. She should be the one sneaking in at two in the morning.

      She pulled a sweatshirt over her tank top and headed down the hallway. Muted light spilled from beneath Nate’s doorway, and she tapped lightly on the wood. But there was no response, just this other subtle sound. She leaned forward, straining. A raspy breath, almost a choking sound. Shit. Her heart jumped into her throat. Nathan was having an asthma attack.

      “Nate.” The word came out in a panic and she shoved open the door. “Are you okay?”

      But she froze one step inside the room because instead of finding her younger brother struggling for breath from asthma, she found him gasping for breath from what the guy parked between his legs was doing to him.

      Nate’s eyes went wide and he grabbed at his quilt, trying to yank it up over himself and his boyfriend. “Oh my God, get out!”

      “Shit. Oh, shit. Sorry.” Marin swung the door shut, her heart hammering and her face going hot. She leaned against the wall in the hallway and put her hand over her eyes, trying to erase the image. But there were some things you couldn’t unsee. Her younger brother getting a blow job—yeah, that she could’ve skipped. She wanted to scrub her eyeballs with bleach.

      There was rustling behind the door, hurried voices as the boys apparently got themselves together, and Marin slipped back into her room to give them space. She’d need to address this with Nathan. He knew he wasn’t supposed to have guys in his room. But she’d give him a minute to get Henry out the door and put himself back together. Hell, she needed a minute. Maybe a week. A year might be good.

      But her brother didn’t give her that long. After the front door slammed shut, Nate stormed back down the hallway and pushed her door open. It hit the wall with a bang. “What the hell, Marin?”

      He looked so tall in the doorway, so adult. How was this the same kid who used to make her turn on four different night-lights in his room so he could go to sleep? At seventeen, he could pass for a grown man with those long limbs and broad shoulders—but he still had those innocent green eyes. His age showed there. And right now, those eyes were burning with annoyance.

      “I thought you were having an asthma attack,” she said. “I heard—”

      His face flushed to his hairline.

      “Well, never mind what I heard, but I thought you needed help. I wouldn’t have been checking on you at all if you had been in by curfew and not broken the rules about bringing someone into your room,” she said, forcing righteous indignation into her voice and trying to sound like she meant it.

      “Okay, I broke the rules. I’m sorry. But you can’t just walk into my room. I need privacy.”

      She held up a hand. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I would’ve never walked in for any other reason.”

      He blew out a breath, his eyes flicking to the piles of books and paperwork on her bed. “And you don’t need to wait up for me. I’m fine. I’m not out drinking or getting high or doing anything dangerous.”

      “Just having unprotected sex in your room.”

      He groaned and raked a hand over his face. “I’m not … We’re not. I haven’t. We were just fooling around. It wasn’t going to go beyond that. And if it did, believe me, I know to be safe. You’ve already made us get tested. And it’s not like I’m going to get him pregnant.”

      She stared at him for a moment and then picked up a pillow to throw at him.

      He caught it and grinned as he dropped it to the floor. “Look, I know if I contracted some horrible STD that the irony of that would literally make your head explode. I wouldn’t do that to you, Mar.”

      Marin sighed. The irony would be deadly. She’d spent the last two years of her Ph.D. program and this past year in her postdoc position creating and testing a sex education program for gay youth. If her own brother didn’t know how to take care of his sexual health, she really would be a serious fail. “You wouldn’t have to worry about the STD because I would kill you.”

      “I know. And I’m sorry you saw what you saw. But I wanted to celebrate tonight, so me and Henry went to a party. When it started getting kind of crazy, we bailed and came here instead. We weren’t doing anything we haven’t before. I just forgot how noisy … things can get.”