*Author's Note: This is erotic fantasy. It involves sexual situations between consenting adults, all of whom are over 18 years of age. Since it is fantasy and it's my fantasy, I presume a world free of STDs. I hope you enjoy the story; if not, such is life. Comments are always appreciated.
MY STEPBROTHER'S FRIEND
Joey was looking forward to his high school graduation more than most people, and for good reason in his mind. Joey really had no friends and no social life. Ever since junior high school he had been excluded, frozen out by his classmates, his only real friend being his older stepbrother Frank who was finishing his sophomore year at college now. His father had left when he was just a baby and his mother had married Saul shortly thereafter, who was a widower with a young son just a couple of years older than him.
It wasn't his fault that he liked school and did well. He sat in the front row of each class, not because he wanted to be close to the front, but because it made it almost impossible for anyone to pick on him right under the teacher's nose. The fact that he was a quiet, diligent student who usually topped his class actually made things worse, as yet another epithet was made available to hurl at him in the incessant bullying that he had to endure on a daily basis, that of teacher's pet.
As if all of that weren't enough, Joey was only 5'8" and on the thin side, with a curly mop of brown hair above hazel eyes. His mother had always told him that he was the spitting image of his father. He had been picked on his whole life, it seemed, except when Frank was around. Nobody would ever mess with Frank, who was 6'2" and had sandy-blonde hair and light-blue eyes. He was also more inclined to athletics, though never took them seriously.
Joey just had to get through this one last week of school and then it would be over and he would be able to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that he'd never, ever have to have anything to do with any of them again. At least in college he'd be starting with a clean slate, he figured.
Finally, graduation night arrived and Joey couldn't wait to get away for a special dinner celebration at his favorite Mexican restaurant with his parents where they gave him a Galaxy Z Fold3 phone as a graduation present. Though he had told his parents that he wanted to spend the summer helping in the family hardware store, they had both insisted that he not work, that he spend his summer having a good time, especially since Frank was coming home for the summer, that hard work enough awaited him when he started college in the Fall.
Joey was as surprised as anyone when Frank finally arrived a few days later, bringing home with him a new friend from College, Curtis, a black man almost as tall as Frank with whom he had several classes in common, and so they had become friends. When Karen, their mother, had balked at the idea of Curtis sleeping on the sofa in Frank's bedroom, insisting that they find him a proper bed, he had assured her that it was far better than the beds they were provided in the dorms at college.
Joey's bedroom was on the other side of the common bathroom that he shared with Frank's bedroom, each of them having a private entrance to the bathroom so that they didn't have to go out into the hall to use the bathroom they thought of as the guest bathroom, Karen and Saul having their own en-suite bathroom.
"So, what are you boys going to do today?" Saul asked at breakfast.
"I thought I'd show Curtis the swimming hole," Frank replied.
"I used to think that the swimming hole was where Frank lived," Curtis said, smiling broadly. "He never stops talking about it."
"Whenever we'd wonder where the boys were, we always knew that we could find them at the swimming hole," Karen said with a smile.
"Do you still spend a lot of time there, Joey?" Frank asked.
"Not so much since you left for college," Joey admitted. "It's just not the same by myself."
"We used to plan on what we'd do when we took over the world," Frank laughed.
"What was your solution to the pervasive unfairness of earth's societies?" Curtis asked.
"Joey always thought that education was the key," Frank replied. "I always wanted to just snap my fingers and disappear all of the assholes of the world. They're a waste of space and shouldn't be using the oxygen that good people need."
"Do you have so much hate in you?" Karen asked.
"Yeah, sometimes," Frank admitted. "When I think of unfairness, my blood just boils."
"But why?" Saul asked. "What has ever happened to you that would cause you to feel that way? After all, the universe is an inherently unfair place, from what I can tell."
"I always hated it when I'd see people picking on Joey just because he was smaller than them," Frank replied. "He never bothered anyone, why should they treat him poorly?"
"I was always proud of you for standing up for your stepbrother," Saul said. "You could just as easily not done so."
"No way," Frank said emphatically, shaking his head. "Even if he wasn't my stepbrother, I'd have done the same thing. It would be different if he had deserved it in some way, but he hadn't done anything except to do better in his classes. He didn't brag about it or anything, he just did it. It still pisses me off when I think about it."
"I saw Frank deck one of the guys from the football team one day for picking on a student," Curtis said, laughing. "The football player was almost 300lbs and the student he was picking on was short and fat and wearing thick glasses. When Frank told him to leave the guy alone, the football player asked him who the hell he thought he was telling him to do anything. Frank didn't even bother to answer him, just punched him as hard as he could right on the nose and knocked him out cold. I had seen him in some of my classes and we sort of knew each other, but when I saw that, I knew that this was the guy I wanted for a friend."
"Some of the guy's friends were about to step in and take up his side," Frank said, "when suddenly there was Curtis right next to me, daring them to try anything. We've been the best of friends ever since."
"Sadly, there aren't nearly enough people with such principles these days," Karen said. "The news is constantly going on about a gang of this or that attacking a single person for no good reason other than that they can. Instead of society evolving, it seems to be devolving, so much intolerance."
"I learned it from you and Dad," Frank said. "I used to see you being just as nice to delivery people, the gardeners, just about anyone, as you were to your friends or to us. I never saw you treat anyone any differently."
"My mother taught me that I should always treat other people the way I'd want them to treat me if the situation were reversed," Karen said. "For some reason, that idea stuck and became a part of my DNA."
"It was that even-handed compassion as much as anything that first attracted me to your mother," Saul said, smiling at her and reaching for her hand.
