A Step Too Far - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Teddy shoved his bags into the back of the cab and got into the passenger seat. He told the cabby his address and buckled in.

“That’s way out on the edge of town, isn’t it?” The cabby asked. “It’s going to be more expensive, just so you know. We don’t usually drive out that far.”

“Yeah, yeah I know,” Teddy replied. “I have no choice. My dad is out of town, again. Plus, the bus doesn’t even run out that way really.”

The cabby nodded and pressed his console, starting the trip-timer. He pulled away and Teddy gazed out at typical box stores as they headed out of town. He had been putting this moment out of his mind for months. He’d delayed leaving his dorm until the last possible day. He’d even thought about getting a summer job and trying to crash on one of his friends’ couch for the season, but in the end he decided he’d rather chill at home in the comfort of his own room.

Now, as the taxi drove toward the Tadman household, Teddy began to feel a creeping sense of anxiety. Would his father’s new wife be in their house? Maybe she’d gone along with Teddy’s father on his current business trip. Teddy pushed these thoughts and doubts out of his mind and tried to think about what his summer break might offer: gaming with Elliot, parties, visits to the lake, and the opportunity to just chill beside the swimming pool at home.

Reed had had the pool installed several years ago during a particularly brutal heat wave, although he almost never used it. Teddy had been mildly annoyed that his father had insisted on a pool like that matched the old house, in order to retain the property’s heritage value. Still, Teddy had been happy to see it added to the house. Despite the stuffy brick and tile aesthetic of the pool, it had been a great way to get girls over to the house in high school, and it was just nice to be able to take a dip when the weather was hot. There wasn’t much else to do so far out of town. Teddy’s father refused to buy his son a car, and Teddy had never really gotten into reading. So summers had mostly consisted of video games, movies, and dips in the pool.

“So, you back from college then?” the cabbie asked, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Uh, yeah. I guess you get a lot of students coming back this time of year,” Teddy replied.

The cab-drive nodded. “Yup.” He sped up to match the posted speed limit on the quiet country road. “You got a summer job then?”

“Uh…well I might get one,” Teddy said. “I just want something that fits me, you know?”

The cabby grunted, sounding a little less than impressed.

Teddy shrugged and looked out at a passing apple orchard, the carefully pruned trees all in neat fastidious rows. What did he care about the opinion of some cabby? It was Teddy’s life and Teddy’s summer. He’d earned a break. He could make some cash later in the summer, when he’d found something right. He wasn’t about to take on some retail job like Elliot. It was bad enough that he’d had to come home for summer, but half of the reason he’d chosen to was simply to avoid taking on a boring job.

Teddy didn’t like being confronted with the truth of his laziness by a total stranger, especially some cabby. Sure, other students at university were spending the summer working at shops, camps, or even unpleasant jobs like factories. But Teddy’s father had the money to help him with tuition, and he wasn’t the only student in that situation. Why should he feel weird about it?

Besides, was his father really any different? Teddy had watched his father find innovative ways to get easy money time and again. People who agreed to lower their heads and just go to work for minimum wage week after weeks weren’t better, they were just unlucky, or lacked a certain savvy smarts. That was the message Reed had often conveyed to his son in offhand comments.

Teddy muttered a bit under his breath, but the cabby ignored him.

“Here, turn here,” Teddy said, as the taxi descended a shallow hill. “It’s easy to miss the turn off, but it’s up here on the right, just past that marker.

“Should I drop you here?”

“Oh no, the driveway is quite long. You can turn around at the end of it,” Teddy explained.

The cabby nodded and took the turn, slowly crawling up the driveway. Two unpaved wheel ruts led up into a leafy tunnel formed by a dense canopy of deciduous trees. The driveway was groomed, but not paved in any way. Teddy’s father preferred it that way. He sometimes called the house his “little retreat from the world”. For Teddy, it had become a true home.

The cab emerged into a clear area. Green lawn surrounded a large rambling Victorian house and an ornate gateway blocked further access onto the quarter-acre of cleared gardens around the structure. Teddy hopped out. “You can turn around here. I can let myself in,” he said.

“Right,” the cabby answered, looking up at the house with curiosity.

The driver popped the cab trunk open and Teddy promptly pulled his luggage out. He paid for the taxi using his card. “Here you go,” Teddy said.

“Thanks,” the cab driver answered. “I never would have guessed this kind of a house was out here. I kind of get why you have other plans for the summer.”

“Yeah…” Teddy said. “Well, have a good one!”

He shut the car door and turned to the gate’s security panel. Teddy listened as the cab’s tires rolled over gravel, making sure it had fully turned around and was moving away before he looked over his shoulder.

“It’s just a big house in the country,” Teddy said to himself. “It’s not like I’m super rich.”

Teddy pulled his suitcase with him and punched his security code into the panel for the front gate.

An error sound chimed and Teddy sighed. He punched his code in again.

The error sound chimed again.

“What the hell?” Teddy said. He punched his code in a third time, but got the same error. A message flashed on the small LCD display: “Error: Incorrect code.”

Teddy took out his phone and began typing out a text to his father.

The intercom above the security panel clicked and Teddy heard a subtle hiss of dead air coming form the speaker.

“Whatever you are buying or promoting, we aren’t interested.” A smooth female voice spoke from the intercom.

Teddy stopped writing his text and stared at the intercom in shock. “Who the hell are you? This is my house!”

“There is no need for that kind of language, young man,” the woman replied. “It sounds like you are confused. This house belongs to me, in part. I think you should leave.”

“But this is my home!” Teddy exclaimed. “Where is my father? Where is Reed Tadman? He is the one who owns this house!”

Several moments passed.

“Hello?!” Teddy shouted.

“Are you Theodore?” The woman’s voice asked.

“Of course I am!”

“Oh I see. Just wait a moment.”

The intercom clicked and went dead. Teddy stood, staring through the bars of the gate in anger as birds cheerfully sang in the woods behind him.

Teddy was just about to begin texting his father again when he saw a young woman walk around the far side of the house. She appeared to be around the same age as Teddy and was wearing nothing except for a very tight blue one-piece swimsuit, the kind a fitness model or competitive swimmer might wear. As she walked across the grass toward the gate, Teddy found himself staring at the woman’s incredible body. She was shorter than him, standing maybe 5’4”, but was curvaceous and fit, with platinum blonde hair that appeared to be completely natural. Her skin was smooth and creamy, soaked in a layer of water that Teddy assumed was from the pool behind the house.

“Hey,” Teddy said.

“You sure managed to make my mother angry fast,” the platinum blonde said. She was clearly unhappy, but even with her displeased expression, she was pretty in a sort of haughty pouty way.

“Well this is my home! She talked to me like I was just a salesperson or delivery boy.”

“So what? How would we know that? We’ve been living here for weeks and suddenly this little asshole comes to our gate and begins making demands.” The woman came up to the gate and stared through the bars at Teddy with her hands on her hips. Her pale grey eyes flashed a cold light as she slowly looked him over.

Teddy found himself looking back. This was the kind of girl that the guys in his dorm at college would kill to ask out to a party. Her perky breasts swelled provocatively inside her tight well-fitting one-piece. Her wet hair was pulled back in a French braid for swimming.

“Listen, can I just come inside?” Teddy sighed. “I promise, I’m Reed’s son. Are you my dad’s girlfriend’s kid?”

“I’m not a fucking kid,” the woman said. Then she smirked. “I think you know that though. Talk about compensation. You’re the one who looks like a boy who got lost somewhere.”

Teddy grabbed onto the cast iron bars of the gate, trying to control his anger and humiliation. “I didn’t mean it th—”

“Yes you did. You just didn’t think first,” the woman interrupted. “Oh, and my mom isn’t your dad’s ‘girlfriend’. She’s his wife. If you are who you say you are, she’s also your new stepmom.”

Teddy grew quiet. His eyes widened. He’d never really thought of it that way.

“Yeah, think about that,” the blonde said. She punched a code on the other side of the gate. “I’m Vivianne, by the way, if you’re done staring at my tits.”

“I wasn’t staring at your boobs. Besides, I’m not the one traipsing around in a wet swimsuit,” Teddy retorted. He grabbed his luggage and began to walk toward the front door, passing Vivianne with determination, not bothering to thank her. He didn’t intend to thank some random blonde for letting him into his own damn house.

Behind him, Vivianne just snickered. “Yeah, whatever Theodore. Or actually, isn’t it Teddy?”

“It’s Theodore!” Teddy said, as he opened the solid wooden front door of the house and went in.

But Vivianne was already jogging her way back to the pool, laughing to herself.

Teddy climbed the old oak stairs, heading straight for his bedroom. He ran his hands over the thick bannister, but paused half-way up the staircase. Strange paintings were hanging on the walls. They had replaced peaceful landscapes and expensive abstract art his father had acquired as investments. The house had clearly been redecorated, or was in the process of being redecorated. Everything was both familiar yet unsettlingly different.

Teddy walked slower, looking at the nearest strange painting on the wall, which depicted a woman with an elaborate headdress seated in some sort of high-backed chair. Two knights knelt at her feet and a half naked young man stood behind her with a platter of grapes and a goblet, which he was offering the woman. The light in the painting was shadowy and gothic. Teddy thought the painting was interesting, but the expression on the face of the woman was arrogant and made him feel insecure.

He quickly climbed the rest of the stairs, passing a painting of a woman with a crown of leaves like a roman emperor or general. She was clothed in translucent white robes that showed part of her naked curves beneath, and was standing on the marble steps of an ancient city in ruins, burning in the distance. Dead soldiers in bronze armour lay scattered and bleeding at the bottom of enormous broken pillars.

Teddy tore his eyes from the painting and went straight to his room, trying not to look at any more of the new art on the walls. He opened the door of his room and went in. Teddy looked around and felt a sense of relief that at least nothing in the room seemed to have been changed.

Teddy closed the door and let out a deep sigh. He was home. A lot had changed, but at least he had his space, his room, his sanctuary. He began to unpack and tried to push aside the fact that he needed to go meet his father’s new wife. She was obviously somewhere in the house. She even claimed that she owned part of the house.

But Teddy didn’t want to think about it. In fact, a part of Teddy was beginning to regret his decision to come home for the summer. Maybe a job in the city wouldn’t have been so bad.

At the same time, his mind kept drifting back to Vivianne, dripping wet in her tight blue one-piece swimsuit, her body like some sort of sculpted erotic dream. Teddy stepped over to the window of his bedroom and peeked down at the pool.

Vivianne was lounging beside the water and Teddy, safe in the privacy of his room, took the chance to stare. He felt his penis growing erect, despite himself. She was just so hot. His dick didn’t care if she had been so confrontational, so rude. The way her swimsuit clung to her hips and was skin-tight over her athletic body was impossible to ignore.

As Teddy drunk in the sight of Vivianne, another young woman stepped out from the house and dipped her toe in the water of the pool. She had strawberry-blonde hair and was dressed in a yellow sun-dress, with her long hair left loose down her back. She was clearly pretty, but it was harder to get a look at her from this angle. The two young women began to talk and Teddy heard the sound of Vivianne laughing as the other woman gasped softly.

Teddy suspected they were talking about him. He shook his head and moved away from the window, putting more of his things back into their appropriate drawers and shelves. It would just be a few months and then he’d be back at college.

How could his father have done this? Everything had been fine the way it was. Why did he have to go and get married in some snap decision? Yet it was the way he did so many things, on impulse, acting selfish, taking the easy way.

Teddy sighed and sat down on his bed. Then he noticed something.

Teddy was very familiar with his room. He’d spent years living in it. Being an only child so far from town, this room had been a place he’d kept as a sort of personal cocoon, and he tended to know where everything was. He had lived mostly out of a suitcase at college. Teddy knew that the day he moved out of his bedroom, would be the day he really moved out on his own for good.

That was the only reason why Teddy spotted the very subtle change on his bookshelf. A series of pulpy fantasy and sci fi novels lined a bookshelf against one wall of the room. They weren’t really in any particular order, but they’d been in the same arbitrary places for years.

Teddy stood up and went over to the shelf. Someone had moved his books around. The titles had been alphabetized. Someone had been in his room after all. What else could they have touched or moved?

Teddy felt a mixture of anger, violation, and frustration. This was HIS space. HIS home. This was too far. The idea of a stranger nosing around his bedroom was just wrong.

Outside his window, the sound of women laughing and giggling down at the pool now grated against Teddy’s ears. Had Vivianne been in here?

Suddenly, Teddy remembered the stack of softcore lingerie pictures and erotic art he kept hidden under his mattress. He turned and went to the bed, pulling up the mattress.

There was nothing there.

Teddy swallowed, feeling a sudden lump in his throat. He knew he was blushing, even though there was no one in the room with him. His mouth felt dry. Some of the material under his bed had been very private. A mixture of innocent glamour pictures from before he’d discovered internet porn and kinkier art he’d found in the city - both made up his little paper collection. He’d never even thought about it being discovered. Not in a house where the only other person was his father, who mostly kept to his own affairs.

A knock sounded on Teddy’s bedroom door.

Teddy dropped the corner of the mattress and turned around quickly. The door was slightly open and a startlingly attractive older woman was watching him. “Are you busy Theodore?” The woman asked. “I’m Morganna. I think you owe me an apology.”

Morganna stepped into the room. She was wearing expensive slacks and a form-hugging blouse. Her thick dark-red hair was pulled up in a bun, with a fringe and bangs serving to frame her high cheekbones, dark jade eyes, and full lips. Her hips and bust seemed to strain against her stylish attire. Teddy might have been taller than Morganna, but she was wearing dark green high heels that boosted her height to the same level as Teddy’s. He found himself eye-to-eye with Morganna as she entered his room with confidence.

“I was still unpacking.” Teddy said. “I’m really not sure what you mean though. I was just trying to get into my own house.”

Morganna crossed her arms over her bust, causing them to swell a bit inside her blouse. “You’re a very rude boy, do you know that?” Morganna said. “As I tried to explain earlier, this house is now my property via the marriage, just as much as it is your father’s. If you’d been around for the wedding, you’d know that your father added me to all his holdings. We worked out a very healthy and modern prenuptial agreement. But then again, that’s none of your business really. All you need to know is that I have the right to update the security codes of my new home, and all you had to do was call ahead and we could have avoided all of this.”

“I didn’t think th—”

“No, you didn’t think,” Morganna said, her voice growing curt and assertive. “I really can’t believe you’re nineteen. You hardly act like it.”

“I’m here on summer break from college. Trust me, I just didn’t understand why there were strangers in my house.”

“From college…right,” Morganna answered. “Reed told me you were attending some low-ranked college on the coast. He said he pays your whole tuition. Or rather, I suppose, we pay your tuition. I really don’t see that it’s doing much good to be honest. Your father showed me what classes you’ve chosen, and your grades as well.”

Teddy blinked in shock, feeling humiliated that his college life had been so casually dismissed by Morganna, but also that she might insinuate he was wasting his time. “What…what are you implying? I just met you. You can’t just decide that kind of thing.”

“Exactly. You just met me, and you started off by showing up unannounced, insulting me, insulting my daughter, staring at her boobs, pretending like you don’t know anything about my marriage to your father, and refusing to apologize for any of it!”

Teddy backed away from Morganna as her voice rose, but she persisted and stepped forward, moving further into his bedroom, until he backed into his bed and was forced to sit down, looking up at her as she talked.

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry!” Teddy said.

Morganna peered down at Teddy. “Better,” she said. “Things are going to change around here. You are going to have to learn how to be a good boy in my household. Think of it like one of your little college classes, but more useful. I have had my share of experiences with idiotic men and childish ex-husbands. I will not have some boy, who frankly barely looks old enough to drive, back-talk me or my intelligent lovely daughters just because he thinks he is entitled to do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Teddy repeated. He just wanted her to get out of his room.

“Mhmm…” Morganna sighed. She stepped back. “Dinner is at seven. I expect you to wash your hands before you come to the table.”

Dinner? Who scheduled dinner? Teddy and his father had always eaten while seated at the TV or separately at different hours while doing other things. But he wasn’t about to risk another lecture from Morganna. He was too tired from his flight home. “Uh…okay.”

“Uh…okay?” Morganna imitated Teddy and put her hands on her hips. “Is that a yes or a no?”

Teddy stood up and sighed. “YES, Morganna.”

Morganna smiled slightly. “That’s better. We’ll work on that attitude, but that’s better.”

As Morganna left his room, Teddy sighed and pushed the door shut. He needed to get a lock.

A cloying doubt lingered at the back of his mind. Morganna had shaken his entire sense of self and derailed his line-of-thought regarding the summer. His room, his sanctuary, had been invaded and his ego was bruised. Vivianne had been annoying, yet hot. But Morganna has been something more. Teddy couldn’t simply brush past Morganna’s words or her physical presence, not when she stood eye-to-eye with him in her heels. Not when she claimed co-ownership over everything his father possessed. Teddy still doubted that could be true. His father was too smart to do something like that. Wasn’t he?

Teddy shook his head and opened up his laptop. He logged into Steam.

Just a bit over three months, he told himself. Three months and he could go back college. Maybe he’d have all his stuff shipped there. He could move out entirely this time. The idea of such a change and the effort it would entail was discouraging.

Teddy fantasized about getting an apartment in the city, a girlfriend, telling his dad to come visit him for a change. Maybe he could do it. Then again, this was still his home, and he felt like fleeing that way would be to let Morganna and her daughters win. He wasn’t about to be pushed out of his own house that easily. Once his father came back home from whatever business or investment trip he was on, Teddy would get it all sorted out. For now, he just needed to keep to himself and bide his time.

Teddy started a video game on his laptop and tried to forget how crappy the day had been. He let himself slip into digital escapism.