One Step Forward

p r o l o g u e

She broke his heart. So I broke her car.

"Why would you do that?" My brother, Dylan, paces in front of me as I sit on the couch, playing with the rings on my fingers. "Why? Are you going to stoop to any level to get revenge?"

I roll my eyes and look at him like I can't believe he just asked that. "Uh yeah. That's how revenge works. That's how the world works, sunshine."

His cheeks get two patches of red on them, which I find endearing but pretend to find ridiculous because he thinks it's embarrassing. The usual siblings rivalry....and whatnot.

"You do understand she knows I'm involved with this?" He asks me and I tilt my head at him. For someone with straight A's this kid sure is an idiot.

"How?" I decide to humor him and try and lead him there. "You weren't there and their street cameras were coincidentally not working at the time."

He stops pacing for a second and then his face pales even further. "You got Art involved in this? This is a felony! She promised me she wasn't going to use her hacking education for crimes!"

I hold in my smile. It took some serious bribery to convince Art to abandon her 'oath' to shut the cameras off. Luckily, she's a softie for a Toblerone bar...or an entire bag of them. I shrug once again and look around our cozy living room. "Your fault for trusting teenagers. They're nothing like they were in your time."

"In my- wha- I AM TWENTY TWO YEARS OLD!"

"Remove the twenty two years from that sentence and you're spot on," I lean forward and widen my eyes in innocence at him.

He huffs and continues pacing while muttering to himself. I get up off of the couch and walk to the kitchen. As I come closer to the fridge, I see a picture of a teen couple standing and smiling back at me.

I take it off and rip it before tossing it in the trash. As I take a sip of my water, I stare at the pieces of torn picture paper in the trash bin. For extra measures, I pour the remainder of my water over it. Good, now no one would have the urge to touch soggy paper from the trash.

Here's the thing:
My brother got his heart broken by the biggest player on the planet. That's right, I said it. Girls can be players too, you know.

And while I support women and believe them to be in no way inferior to men in any way, I am not going to let anyone just stampede all over my brother"s heart regardless of their gender. No hate, just loyalty.

He got his heart broken and spent the past month wallowing and being depressed.

To try and help him, I took matters into my own cute hands; I mean, she broke his heart not mine. So I broke her car.

Because the only one who can mess with my brother is me. It's what we do.

Only problem? My brother isn't the only one who messes with me this year.

Who knew it all started with me wrecking a car...