Free Step F*#K (A Stepbrother Series Book 1) by Scarlett Ward

I get back from the grocery store and I see my roommate has that look on her face.  
    “Wine!” Megan says, making a beeline from the couch where she’s just been sitting with her laptop, to the kitchen counter. She starts pawing through the first bag of groceries, then the second, until she locates what she’s looking for: a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio. She faux toasts me with it, grabs the corkscrew from the silverware drawer and gets to work. Once the cork is out, she pours herself a generous glass—in an old grape jelly jar, because we’re classy like that—and then myself an even more generous glass.  
    “Drink up,” she says. “I need you to consume at least that entire glass before I tell you what I’ve been up to.”
    I give her a wary look as I put the eggs into the refrigerator. “I probably don’t want to know what you’ve been up to. If it involves a guy, I definitely don’t want to know.” Since Tom dumped me six months, three weeks, and five days ago—but who’s keeping track?—my sex life has been  lived vicariously through Megan, though that’s not to say I necessarily wanted it to be like that. It’s just what happens when your best friend, who is also your roommate, is a sassy petite blond who is a sexually liberated nymphomaniac.  
    I go through the next bag, which contains cereal, pasta, and a loaf of bread. Yes, we like our carbs, and no, we don’t think it’s a bad thing. Eating carbs—less healthy ones, like buckets of cookies, pans of brownies, and many tubs of ice cream—is basically what got me through the first few weeks of my breakup. Megan keeps reiterating the fact that Tom is just an asshole and I should be glad to be rid of him—and who really meets the person they’re going to marry when they’re eighteen, anyway—but I did think we were going be together . . . forever . I did. I realize how naïve that sounds now, and I’m not exactly sure what it says of my judgment; that there would still be this part of me that wanted to be with someone who had spent the last eight months of our relationship cheating on me. With multiple women.  
    “Here, Emma, have a sip,” Megan says, nudging the wine toward me.  
    “Shit.” Both grocery bags are empty, but I’m missing the one item I really meant to get when I stopped by the store: Batteries. For my vibrator.  
    “What?”
    “I could’ve sworn I bought batteries and they’re not here.”
    “You probably left them at the checkout line. Did you do self-checkout?”
    “No, that just takes away from someone’s job.”
    Megan makes a face. “Someone’s shitty job.”
    “That may be so, but it’s still a job, and the person probably needs it.”
    “Well, then the checkout person forgot to put your batteries in the bag. But at least they remembered the wine! What’d you need batteries for?”
    I hesitate. “My vibrator.”
    Megan’s eyebrows raise, her blue eyes sparkle. “Maybe I can help you out.”
    “Why? You have three double A batteries?”
    “No.” She grins. “Something better. Get your glass and come with me.”
    Our apartment here in Echo Park isn’t exactly what might come to mind if you were to say Hollywood apartment . Megan’s an aspiring screenwriter and I’m a college student, studying architecture, just like my dad, whose work has graced the pages of such magazines like Architectural Digest. The truth is though, I want to be a painter. Always have, but my parents just assumed that my art inclinations were childhood whims, the type of thing you grow out of in order to pursue a real profession, like a doctor or an engineer or, say, an architect . So, while I wish our humble two-bedroom apartment was overflowing with canvases and paint and beautiful books about art, it’s mostly full of architecture textbooks, a drafting table, and Megan’s screenwriting stuff. It’s what you’d call an open layout; the living room, dining area, and kitchen are all basically one space, with