Chapter 5: Meeting the New Steps

Dana

I tightened my seat belt, leaned back, and deflated—all the air in my lungs sighing out in a long, slow hiss.

Brie nervously eyed me from her window seat. “You okay? I thought you’d flown before.”

This was her first flight, so I could understand nerves. “Oh, it’s not the flying. Nor the workshop. I’m, well, not looking forward to the wedding.”

That seemed to relax her a little. “Ah. Don’t get along with the new step-family?”

“Don’t know, ” I admitted. “Haven’t met them yet, except by video-call. The step-sibs seem okay. It gets tiring, though, having to get used to yet another set of steps.”

“A ... brother and sister?” Brie sounded uncertain. “Younger?”

“Both older, twenty-one and—oof!” A man working down the aisle bumped my shoulder with his laptop bag. “—and sixteen.”

The man didn’t even pause. “Jerk, ” Brie muttered, watching him head to the back. Then she turned back to me. “‘Yet another’?”

I tried to keep my voice light—as if it didn’t bother me. “Sandi will be my third stepmother, not counting the Vegas showgirl—that got annulled after two days.”

“Whoa.” Brie’s eyes were wide. It was something way outside the experience of a small-town Mormon girl. Possibly even a single step-mother was.

“Sorry—I should have warned you. What you’re getting into, as my guest.” Never mind what I was getting into.

“’Sokay.” She licked her lips. “I can see why you’re not exactly looking forward to this.”

An announcement crackled overhead—something about preparing for departure, by the cadence.

“Nope. But I am looking forward to this.” I reached into my backpack (already stowed beneath the seat in front of me) for my omnibus of the first three Downstar Runner books. Despite my weepies after our late-night goodbye, I’d gobbled down a half-dozen chapters of Coming In Hot before crashing in bed. I hadn’t brought it out during the ride up to Casper International because I’d been in the back seat between two kindergarteners—Marcianne, Brie’s mother, hadn’t any better babysitting options than bringing the twins along. (Yes, Casper has a better flight to San Diego than Denver. Don’t ask me why. I don’t think even the airlines’ own scheduling mavens understand their algorithms.)

Brie’s eyes widened, checking out the cover—glowing stars, an exploding spaceship, and a man and woman, each holding a blaster and each other, both less than completely clothed. Nothing legally indecent, but it clearly signalled its genre. “You read stuff like that?”

“Generally not, ” I admitted. After all, there’s enough explicit fanfic and manga scanlations out there if I want to scratch that itch. I hesitated, but since Teri was coming out professionally this weekend, this was no longer a deep secret, at least among trusted friends. I was pretty sure, anyway. I should double-check with her on that to be sure-sure. “But in this case, yes—Teri’s a coauthor. That’s confidential, of course.”

Brie checked the byline, then realized. “Oh, well, of course you’d need a pen name for that.” Then another realization. “Teri writes smut?”

“They call it ‘erotic space opera’—so, yup.” I couldn’t keep myself from grinning. Those six chapters had included three sex scenes, two of them hot enough to get me hot-and-bothered, even after an evening of epic farewell lovemaking.

The plane jerked softly as it began backing away from the terminal. I wasn’t sure whether to point this out to Brie—did she cope with nerves by ignoring or confronting head-on?

“Um, wow. She any good at it? Or, wait, you said ‘they’.”

“She has two collaborators, both in university. And, yeah, these are bestsellers.”

Sara, the flight attendant charged with keeping track of us stopped by to, well, track us. We said we were fine, but she stayed beside me to perform the standard flight safety announcement, so rather than show off my book, Brie and I reviewed some last-minute changes to the workshop arrangements that Martin had just sent.

The flights themselves were fine, aside from turbulence over Nevada—which Brie handled better than she expected. We landed two chapters from the end of Coming In Hot. Just as we (as passengers needing assistance, which apparently includes unaccompanied minors) had boarded first, we waited to deplane till everyone was off except for an old woman waiting for her wheelchair. Sara handed us off to Emma, an airline rep, who escorted us through the terminal.

“You’re being met by Sandi Mills?”

“Greg Mills—he should be listed as her backup.” I showed her the selfie he’d sent so we’d recognize him.

He was just outside the security zone, off to the side—a tall, tanned blond. Emma spotted him the same time I did, and headed his way.

“Gregory Mills? I’ll need to see a photo ID.”

I smiled at him as Emma checked his driver’s license. He smiled back, and while his gaze did wander down to my breasts, he immediately snapped it back up. “Hello, step-sister.”

Well, not entirely true, not yet, but I wasn’t going to dispute it. And to avoid suspicion, I didn’t offer to shake hands or otherwise suggest this wasn’t our first meeting. “Hello. Greg, this is Brie.”

She shook his hand with a smile that lit up her face. Resting, she’s quite pretty, with ash-blond bangs and a dusting of freckles, but smiling, she’s beautiful (both Teri and Mike agree with me on this). “Glad to meet you.”

Emma returned his driver’s license, got his finger-signature on her tablet, and we were off. Welcome to San Diego.

In the car, I took the front passenger seat. “Home for introductions or the hotel first?” Greg asked. His voice was a pleasant tenor—I wondered if he sang.

“Hotel, please, ” I said, glad to be able to delay the inevitable. “I’m meeting someone there.” Speaking of whom, I texted Martin, our contact in the American Friends Service Committee office hosting the workshop, letting him know we’d arrive in fifteen. Off Greg’s look, I explained, “About the workshop.”

“O-kay.” He merged onto the freeway. Why the dubious, though?

My second went to Mom. As I tapped it out, I asked Brie in the back seat, “You let your parents know we’ve arrived?”

“Oh, right.”

For my third text, a photo of a freeway sign with palm trees behind it, sent to Mike and Teri. I tapped Send just in time to receive Martin’s response that he’d meet us in thirty in the lobby. I confirmed that just in time to receive a palm-tree emoji from Mike and a string of hearts from Teri. I smiled and put away my phone.

Greg asked about our flight, how bumpy the landing was—the usual travel chit-chat. We also established that Brie and I were heading into our junior year of high school (I didn’t mention I’m skipping 10th grade, thanks to advanced tracking and summer school) and Greg his junior year at USC.

During a break, he said, “I have to say, this workshop you’re going to looks pretty cool. Anything that helps make the NIS Program safer is a good thing in my books.”

I managed not to stutter or blush. “Thanks.”

“Who’s giving it? The listing I found just said it’s the founders of the first Escorts chapter.”

Uh oh. He didn’t know. This—this was going to sound like showing off. From the back seat, Brie chimed in, “Dana’s leading it.”

“We are leading it, ” I corrected.

“You’re the headliner, Dana—I’m the assistant here and you know it.”

Greg looked at me for longer than I was comfortable with, given he was driving in heavy freeway traffic. “You—? You started this thing?”

“Brie’s also a founder, ” I protested. “She was at our first, organizational meeting.”

“Which you set up and ran, ” she said firmly, as if that proved everything.

“Wow. I hadn’t realized.” Greg checked his blind spot and changed lanes, aiming for an upcoming exit. “So really and honestly student-run. What about the partner assignment app the description mentioned—who created that?”

Our app for matching peer volunteers to Program participants in need of escorts between classes, to prevent abuses. It’s a tricky bit of optimization, calculating who’s overall closest at both the start and finish.

“Dana’s our developer, too, ” Brie bragged.

“Lead developer, ” I corrected. “It’s now open-source on Github.” This time, I couldn’t keep from blushing, just a little.

Greg went back and forth a few times between checking the traffic and me. As he turned onto a surface street, he said, “So what are you doing as an encore?”

Brie burst out laughing behind me. “We’ve been wondering that, too.”

The Courtyard Garden Inn is more expensive than the Holiday Inn a couple blocks from the AFSC office, not to mention further away, but the wedding’s here. Dad had tried to get us to stay at Sandi’s house—or his and Sandi’s, I suppose—but with all the wedding prep, they really didn’t have the space or time for both me and Brie. It was easier all around for us to just stay here.

The last-minute details with Martin could have been handled by phone, but it was good to meet in person beforehand. He did have trouble, the first minute, with addressing my breasts instead of my face, but he got over it.

Which meant that, half an hour after checking in, I had no more excuses for not meeting my soon-to-be stepfamily. Brie wisely decided to order dinner into our room, after I reassured her this was fine. I certainly didn’t want to subject her to my family. Subjecting me was bad enough.