My Brother's Bitch

*Payton*

I was finally ready to get out on my own and do something with my life. I had just spent six years completing a MBA, trying to rush through before cancer finally took my father from me for good. I had managed to finish my undergraduate before he had died and I knew he was proud of me but he had never got to see me graduate. I shake my head to clear the thoughts bringing me down. It had been two years since he passed but it never got any easier to think about him.

I had one week off to relax, then I was going to work at my stepfather’s real estate firm in the accounting department. It wasn’t what I really wanted but it was a guaranteed job, so I had to take it for the time being to get some experience. Hopefully after some experience I could get a job in marketing but they didn’t have any openings in that department and I didn’t want anyone saying he made a position for me. Plus it would allow me to get to know Roland better.

I was not exactly happy that my mother had gotten remarried one year after my father had passed but I wasn't overly surprised. My mother was not a very independent woman and believed a woman needed a man to be happy. God knows she questioned me enough about not having a man in my life. I loved my mother but no way would I ever be as needy and dependent on a man as what my mother was. I didn’t need a man to be happy, certainly not the drunken frat boys who had tried to get in my pants in university. They were so crude and vulgar, after a few parties my first year at school I was turned off by men and their one track minds. I sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with me as at 24, a man was the last thing on my mind. Most of my high school friends were married with children on the way.

As I put away my belongings in my new, temporary (at least that was what I hoped) room, I thought about my mother’s new husband. Roland was nice enough to and I was grateful to him for giving me this opportunity to at least build her resume but there was something about him that I just didn’t like. I had only met him twice before, last fall when I had come home for the wedding and again when I came home for Christmas. Those two times I had stayed in my childhood home. Since then, much to my heartbreak, my mother had sold our family home, so I was now settling into a guest room in my stepfather’s house. As soon as I had enough for an apartment of my own I would have my freedom. He was a widower with no children, so why he had this huge house was a mystery to me. I knew from my mother that he held a lot of dinner meetings here with potential clients and as a real estate mogul I guess he had an image to upkeep.

Apparently Roland was making some big announcement at dinner tonight, so I guess I had better finish this up and get ready to see what that was all about.

After spending the past six years in university and living on student loans, I can’t say that I had a lot of formal clothes to wear. I felt completely underdressed in my best leggings and a sweater as I came down the stairs from my room for dinner. My mother had on a dress and heels, makeup perfectly applied, while Roland had on a full suit. My mother looked up from the martini she was mixing and I noticed that Roland already had a glass of amber liquid in his hand. Well, that was new, mom drinking a martini. She had a rare glass of wine in the past, usually at celebrations but I had never seen her drink anything stronger and certainly not on a regular Saturday night.