Sister In The Afternoon

“I think I see what your problem is,” I said, popping up over the bathroom counter with my adjustable wrench in one hand and a wet wad in the other. “You can’t flush a paper towel, Angela, it’s too heavy. These modern low-flow toilets can’t handle anything that doesn’t dissolve in water.”

My sister nodded her head and shuffled her feet. “I guess I knew that,” she admitted, smiling, “if I’d been thinking. You might want to get rid of that thing, though, Neil.”

I looked at the mushy wad of paper I’d just pulled out of the gooseneck trap of her john. “Why? What is it?”

“A wrapped-up cat turd.”

“Yah!” I tossed the wad across the bathroom and it went into the trash can without touching the sides, like a Michael Jordan classic. “You have to warn a guy about things like that!”

Angela giggled and blushed bright red. She ducked her head to keep me from seeing she was blushing, like she always does. I think she believes it makes her look too childish and girly, but I have to admit, I like it when my sister blushes. The luminous crimson on her fair skin made her look like a modern-day Caravaggio painting standing right in front of me. “Listen, thanks for coming over,” she said. “Plumbers will rob you blind if they can, and Shawn doesn’t usually get home on Thursdays until nearly eight.”

“Yeah, Shawn,” I agreed. “Right.” I didn’t want to admit what I was thinking, which was that my brother- in-law is pretty much useless around the house. This blockage was too thick to dislodge with a plunger, and when that failed he would have just called in a plumber anyway. Or me. “Listen, Angela, I need to get home and get back to work, but I’d like to get together for coffee some time this week. How about that new place on Thirty-Third?”

The blush faded from Angela’s cheeks and she looked up into my eyes. “It’s not another goddamn Starbuck’s, is it?”

“Nope. One hundred percent locally owned. Good lattes, too,” I assured her.

“Actually, what time is it,” Angela asked, checking her watch. “One o’clock? Are you sure you can’t stay for just a little bit?”

“No, I have work to get done.”

“Oh, are you sure, Neil?” My sister flashed me her best pouty little-girl face and batted her eyelashes at me. “Please, please, please? I get so lonely in this big house by myself.”

“I’m on a deadline…” I admit it, my protests sounded weak even in my own ears. I’m a full-time writer, and I work from a converted spare bedroom in my own house. I make my own schedule, which is how Angela reached me in the middle of a weekday, and that’s why I was able to spend time playing Roto-Rooter Man in the middle of the day. “Yeah, what the hell,” I finally concede. “I guess work can wait.”

Angela smiled again. “I’ll put some coffee on. I think I’d like a shot of brandy in mine, how about you?”

“Sounds great.”

“Why don’t you pick some music out while I’m doing that?” She strode out of the master bathroom, bouncing a little with each stride, her swirly blonde ponytail springing up and down with each step she took. I admit to thinking my sister has the best hair in America, and I’d like to grab a fistful and breathe it in like a drug. But she’s three years older than me, and married, and I let her get a few steps ahead of me, just to keep a safe distance.

When I moved back to my hometown after college, Angela lined me up a nice duplex three blocks from her and her husband, and I’ve been living there for two years now. I’m twenty-four and she’s twenty-seven. We were good friends growing up, since both of us had social difficulties. I was a book nerd whose idea of a Saturday well spent was a patch of grass at the park, two cold sandwiches, and a paperback Shakespeare.

Angela wasn’t a geeky type like me, but she was kind of an outcast too. She was unusually good-looking, and girls will do whatever it takes to humiliate any other girl they know is prettier than them, so she never got along with the girls in her class. And the guys would act friendly and civil, but it didn’t take long with each one before she found out they were only trying to get into her pants. So every day at school she just drifted through the crowd of kids like some aloof goddess, and when we got home at the end of the day each of us was the best friend the other had.

One of my earliest sexual memories was when I was twelve. Angela gave me a three-by-five of her high school portrait. She was fifteen, tall and green-eyed, with creamy skin and cherry lips. The picture had her body turned at a slight angle to the camera, her hair billowing down around her shoulders like the surf at Waimea, a wide genuine smile on her face, and just a hint of cleavage at the bottom of the photo.

At eleven-thirty that evening I took her picture into the bathroom and beat off for the first time in my life. I still have that picture in a drawer in my desk, and although the corners are getting dog-eared, I still sometimes stroke myself while studying my sister’s butter-colored face.

What’s more, she knows I find her attractive. Not long after she gave me that picture she caught me studying her body, and it wasn’t the first time or the last time. We’ve never discussed it out loud, but it’s an open secret between us.

That pouty face she used to make me stay is the same one that she uses to do whatever she wants, from minor household repairs to accompanying her to the doctor the last time she needed a physical. I’ve never touched her body more than to give her a friendly pat on the shoulder, but she knows I’d like to, and she uses that fact.

She’s even learned what clothes to wear to make me do certain tasks. A dress with a narrow waist that highlights her hips and a skirt that stops mid-thigh, and I’ll mow the lawn. A muslin peasant blouse with a cinch tie under her breasts will make me help her cook dinner for her useless husband. And a white cotton scoop-neck t-shirt will inspire me to run down to the drug store to buy her tampons and Midol. All this just for a chance to look at my beautiful sister’s body.

I selected a Robert Johnson CD from her collection and plopped on the couch. The Terraplane Blues was on the sound system and I was bopping along in my seat when Angela came in with two steaming mugs. She handed me one that read “World’s Best Husband,” and in her own hand she cradled a mug emblazoned “Kiss Me I’m Irish.” She settled onto the couch next to me, wiggled a little to make a soft nest for her butt, and leaned back against the overstuffed cushions.

“So what are you working on?” she asked me.

“Come on, you know I don’t like to talk about my work until I have a complete draft done.”

“Oh, you won’t even tell me one little plot point? Just for me?”

“Sorry,” I said. “If the Virgin Mary Herself came down and asked me about my writing I’d stay mum until I had something to show her.”

Angela sighed, long, slow, and pretty. She lay her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear: “I’ve been learning to knit.”

“Knit?” I repeated. “Not many people do that these days.”

“I have a big house, no kids, and no job,” she said. “I just wanted something to do with my hands, and I wanted it to be something useful.” She poked me lightly on the arm. “I bet I’d be hot in an Irish fisherman sweater.”

“I bet you would,” I agreed, and turned my head to smile into her hair.

Angela set her coffee on a TV tray, and then she surprised me by turning her body a little and nestling into my side. Her breast was pressed into my ribs, and she put the palm of her hand on my chest, right over my nipple. This was a lover’s position, and I was a little uncomfortable, especially when I started to get hard. It was no secret I lusted after my sister, but I was a good guy, and I wanted to do the right thing. Cuddling my older, married sister on her couch struck me as the opposite of the right thing.

She rubbed her cheek against my shoulder, with her eyes closed like a kitten getting its ears scratched. I started to feel awkward with my arms hanging at my sides like a paralytic, so I set my coffee aside and draped one arm around Angela’s shoulder. “I get so lonely,” she whispered into my shirt. “Talk to me.”

“Talk to you about what?”

“Anything.”

I fished through my brain, suddenly muddled by lust and moral objection, for any subject I could come up with. “So,” I muttered lamely, “have you spoken to Mom lately?” It’s always kind of pathetic when a writer can’t come up words.

“Not as much as I should,” she whispered. “Don’t talk about family.”

“Why not?”

She took a deep breath, and I felt her breast move against my body. “I don’t want you to be my brother right now. I want you to be my friend.”

“Can’t I be both?”

“No. Not today. Drink your coffee.”

I scooped up my mug with my free hand and put it to my lips. The coffee had gone cool, and I drank it down in two swallows. It was black, but I noticed it tasted a little sweet. “Drink mine too,” Angela urged me.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely, go on. I’d like you to.”

Hers was a little warmer, but cool enough to drink. My neuromuscular system was more interested in my sudden lust than in swallowing a beverage, and it took a little effort to get the coffee to go down. Only after I’d finished it off and set the mug aside that I realized I knew exactly why the coffee tasted sweet: she’d put more than just a shot of brandy into each mug.

“Talk to me some more,” she whispered into my shirt. “I need a trusty human voice.”

Again I struggled for something to say. I thought maybe I ought to ask why she was getting so physical with her brother, but when I opened my mouth I was suddenly tongue-tied. My heartbeat sounded like jungle drums in my ears. My sister’s body was soft and warm with my arm wrapped around her, with her body pressed lightly into mine. I settled on a simple, neutral topic. “What kind of knitting are you learning to do?”

“Basic stuff. Sweaters and scarves. Afghans. I found a book on how to knit soft cotton underwear.”

“That sounds useful,” I said.

“It is. The book has a pattern for a bra, so I knitted myself one. Would you like to see?”

I was speechless. I opened my mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “Do you have it upstairs in your dresser?”

“No, I have it right here.” Angela shrugged my arm off her shoulder and stood up in front of me. She crossed her arms in front of herself, grabbed the hem of her blouse, and peeled it up off herself. Her spine arched and twisted sinuously as she slowly, luxuriously stripped her blouse off herself, revealing a thin white hand-knit bra. She held her blouse up over her head in both hands, let it drop to the tip of one thumb and dangle for several seconds, then dropped it in my lap. “So what do you think?”

“Very… very nice.”

She cupped her hands around her breasts and pressed them into her body. “It’s so soft and tender,” she said, and ran the tip of her strawberry-red tongue over her lips. “Go on, feel and tell me if I’m lying.”

“No, that’s okay,” I assured her. I’ve had erections before, but this one was warping my jeans like never before, and I wasn’t sure there was any blood reaching my legs. “I believe you.”

Angela planted one knee on each side of my legs on the couch and dropped into me, straddling my lap, her breasts just inches from my chin. “Please,” she whispered. “Take a feel. Tell me they’re not the warmest, silkiest thing you’ve ever touched.”

I stared at her breasts for what seemed like days, but was maybe ten seconds. I’d been longing half my life for the chance to bury myself in her cleavage and here it was, staring me quite literally right in the face. I think I forgot how to breathe for several seconds. But then I found my courage and shook my head vigorously to clear my thoughts. “I can’t do this,” I whispered. “You’re my sister, and if that weren’t bad enough you’re married.”

“Oh, don’t turn coy all of a sudden,” Angela purred through a man-eating smile. She reached down, grabbed both my wrists, and planted my hands right on the white cotton cups of her bra. “You’ve been waiting for this moment for over ten years.”

I wish I could say I shoved her off me and gave her a stern rebuke, but I have to admit I didn’t take my hands off her breasts, not even when she let go of my wrist and began kneading my shoulders. “Why are you doing this,” I asked, hoping I sounded wounded and moral. “What do you hope to–”

Angela leaned in then and kissed me full on the mouth. Her tongue lanced out and pushed my lips open and I tasted my sister’s sweet warm mouth for the first time. My courage shattered like a china plate. I slipped my hands off her breasts and wrapped them around her waist, pulling her even closer if that were possible, mashing her breasts into my chest, rubbing my belly into her belly, grinding the crotch of my jeans up against her crotch.

Our faces moved together like a well-oiled machine, our mouths mingling, our tongues tangling yieldingly, like notes of song. I breathed in her scent, filling up my soul with my beautiful, smart, sexy, willing sister until there was nothing else left, no resistance, no well-memorized objections, no pious churchy thou-shalt- not, only this woman, exquisite, sensual, inviting, sinuous, desirable, who knew me better than I knew myself and moved her body over mine better than any fantasy or dream I’d ever had over the last twelve years, who I wanted more than I wanted life itself and who wanted me in return.

After a million years of rapturous ecstasy Angela broke the kiss and lifted her face off mine. I continued to hold her body up against mine, tracing each bone of her spine one by one with my fingertips, while she looked me in the eye. “Don’t ask me that question, Neil,” she murmured, in a tone that combined sexuality with threat. “If I’m ever ready for you to know I’ll tell you.”

Gasping for breath after a kiss unmatched in all my life, all I could do was nod.

Angela put her hands on my shoulders and pushed slightly, lifting herself a few inches off my body. “Now you’re not being fair,” she insisted. “You’ve already seen a sample of what you have to look forward to this afternoon, and I don’t get to see what you have to offer me.” She paused with her palms on my chest, her thumbs drawing gentle circles around my nipples, before she began unbuttoning my shirt.

“Now it’s my turn to tell you not to be coy,” I said. I slipped my arms off her back, grasped my shirt with both hands, and pulled. Buttons went flying, and one wedged itself in Angela’s cleavage. We both stared at the button, balanced precariously in the gentle auburn shadow between her breasts. All of a sudden I felt unaccountably embarrassed. But then Angela giggled, and that flawless, adorable, cherry-colored blush returned to her velvety cheeks, and I chuckled, and then we were laughing madly, hugging and kissing and shaking with hysterical glee like children playing in the sun.

I tossed my shirt aside, still laughing. “I’ll get that.” I pulled her into me, hands roughly clutching her body, and lived out the long-deferred fantasy of a twelve-year-old baby brother, burying my face in her breasts, rubbing the skin against my cheeks, kissing and licking, groaning hungrily. A bead of sweat trickled between her breasts and I caught it on my tongue.

I felt blindly against her back until I felt the clasp of her bra, and undid the hooks. She shrugged out of the straps, and I tossed her bra in the same general direction as my shirt. Her nipples stared up at me, a dark russet color, large as silver dollars and hard as carbon steel. When I finally pulled my face back I had the button between my teeth. I waggled my eyebrows at her and spat the button off to one side, and we laughed some more.

We were still sitting upright, and Angela grabbed my shoulders and threw herself backward onto the carpet, pulling me after her. “Come on, be a man,” she said. “Get on top.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” I answered, climbing into the best possible position.

She reached down and grasped the fly of my jeans. “You’ve been waiting for this since you were a little boy, haven’t you?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

“And now you’re ready to receive your reward for being so patient.”

Something in the tone of her voice made me pause. “It’s not like I’m a virgin.”

“Of course not. You’ve probably been with, what, three, four women?”

“Six,” I clarified.

“How many since college?”

“One. It’s been over a year.”

“And with every one of them, in the half a second before you came, you closed your eyes and saw my face, didn’t you?”

“I even called your name once.” I grinned, embarrassed, and I felt like I needed to explain. “I had to claim I had an old girlfriend named Angela, and she still walked out on me.”

“So you were trying to forget me, weren’t you? But you never could, could you?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Angela unbuttoned my waistband and unzipped my fly. “That sounds like true love to me.”

I kicked my jeans off behind me, then sat up just long enough to shirk my boxer shorts. I was now fully naked in front of my sister, erect, flush with lust and laughter. We paused a moment so she could study me, then I grasped her own jeans. She lifted her butt so I could slide them off her hips, and I tossed them behind me. I pulled her panties off, and this time I turned to look where I was throwing.

Our clothing was in a heap, mingled and twisting around each other with the same indiscriminate sweat-soaked passion that was gripping our bodies. Early afternoon sunlight slanted white and yellow through the Venetian blinds, painting stripes across our young naked bodies. Robert Johnson sang about meeting the Devil at the crossroads. We kissed and stroked each other’s faces, gnawed on each other’s ears. We rubbed our bellies together, slick with sweat, warm with the rush of blood.

I put my mouth over hers and kissed hard. She closed her eyes and I closed mine, and our tongues moved over each other. I explored her mouth with the eagerness and curiosity of a starved cave diver. Her hands on my back traced figure eights. My right hand stroked her shoulder while my left hand cupped her breast. I shifted my pelvis until the head of my penis found the lips of her warm, wet hole.

It took all the effort I had, but I broke the kiss and lifted my face off hers. “Now be reasonable, Angela.”

“I’m sick to here of being reasonable,” she said.

“I just want you to be sure. Once this happens we can’t take it back. We can never be just brother and sister again.”

“I want one thing from you, Neil, and I want it now.”

I wanted to say something wise just at the cusp of the moment, but the English language failed me. I nodded, then resumed the heated fervent kiss we’d just broken off. While my tongue penetrated my sister’s mouth, my body penetrated hers. She was warm and soft and wet and everything such a beautiful woman ought to be. She wrapped her arms around my body and pulled me close.

Our tongues tangled and knotted and became one and we rolled with the grace of the tide, slow and gentle, with building intensity, I couldn’t tell where her body began and mine left off, her hair and mine rolled together, her breath, her memory, she enfolded me and I enveloped her, she was everything I ever wanted and so much more, so warm, so strong, so willing, so perfect, I saw her with my fingers, I smelled her with my hair, I tasted her with my body and then a bolt of lightning struck and we screamed and called each other’s names and it was absolute and this, this, this was the only woman I ever wanted to see when I woke up in the morning, I would turn the world away from my door for her lips and her body and her soft gentle touch.

Then it was over. We lay on the carpet with our arms under each other’s heads, staring at the ceiling, struggling to catch our breath. We were both slick with sweat, and with other liquids. Never before in my life had I come like that. A dam had burst, a flood tide had smashed the shore. My whole body still shook with the force of my orgasm. And while I couldn’t see my own face, I turned to look at Angela, and she smiled back at me, bright as the sun. She blushed again, and she did not hide her face from me.

Suddenly a warm hairy weight dropped on my belly. I looked, and Angela’s cat walked across me and made a nest in the canyon Angela and I formed where our bodies were still pressed together. The cat licked his nose and purred at the two of us. I scratched him between the ears while Angela ran soft, gentle fingers down his spine.

“See,” Angela said to me, “this one knows a loving home when he sees it.”

We lay there in silence, basking in our shared light, petting the cat. I loved Angela. If anyone found out, they would say we were immoral. They would call us sinners. They would say I was her brother, and she was married, and possibly even worse things than that, but as I lay there with the only woman who had ever treated me like an equal, the only woman who had ever reacted to me like a human being, I knew everything anybody could say was wrong.

But there was one thing I still needed to know.

I turned my head and whispered in her ear: “Why?”

She returned my gaze. Her eyes looked into mine, and her breath was hot on my lips, and her hair rubbed up against my cheek, and I felt myself beginning to become aroused again.

“I told you not to ask me that,” she said, but not coldly.

“Sorry.”

She paused, then looked back up at the ceiling. “I went to the prom with a football player because I was supposed to. I went off to college when I was eighteen because I was supposed to. I married a guy in one of my classes because I was supposed to. And now I’m twenty- eight years old and wondering why.

“Shawn is out late most evenings,” Angela continued, “drinking beer and eating pizza. He’s gotten fat and his skin is greasy and I told him eight months ago that until he lost weight he wouldn’t be touching me. I guess he’d rather eat and get drunk with the guys than sleep with his own wife. All of my neighbors are two- income families, so I’m the only one at home for several streets around during the day. And Shawn and I tried to have a baby early on, but nothing ever came of that, so I’m just damned lonely.”

She turned to look back at me. “But you,” she said, and paused. “You’re useful. You’re loyal to me. You pamper me like a husband ought to. I, um…” She blushed again, and touched her forehead to mine. “I deliberately clogged the toilet this morning so I could call you over. I just wanted to talk to somebody who would actually have a conversation.”

“So you planned this! The couch and the coffee and you and me and, and everything!”

“No,” she exclaimed. “I just wanted to talk to an adult. But when you were here, and the coffee, and the music, it all just felt right. It’s been months since I’ve been with a man in that way. Shawn hasn’t been a real husband to me for over a year. But you’ve been like a husband to me for my whole adult life. I saw you there on the couch, and I just, I fell in love with you right there. I thought it was maybe time to make you my husband for real.”

Angela lifted her face to look right at me, and I could see that her face was streaked with tears. “I used you for my own satisfaction, and I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.”

I took my hand off the cat and stroked her cheek, mopping up the tears. “I don’t hate you,” I assured her. “I don’t think you could do anything bad enough to make me hate you. I’ve been in love with you since I was twelve, and you know it.”

She smiled at me, and then she sobbed, and the tears rolled out of her like a river.

“What?” I asked, suddenly panicked. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re just so perfect,” she said. “You’re everything a man should be. You’re loyal and loving and handsome and completely devoted and, well, you’re an excellent lover.”

I leaned in and started kissing tears off her face. “And you’re everything a woman should be.”

Angela rolled into me, making the cat jump up and hide behind the couch. “What cruel prank was God playing,” she asked, as she lay on top of me and I continued to kiss tears off her face, “to make you my brother and not a man I’m free to love?”

“Think about it,” I said. “If I weren’t your brother I would have been scared to ever talk to you, and if I ever did you would have thought I was a terrible nerd, and even if you didn’t think that you would have known how badly I wanted to sleep with you and you would have told me to get lost. Being brother and sister gave us a bond that would keep us together in spite of my fear and lust and your pride.”

“I’ve wanted you so badly for so long,” she whispered into my ear.

“And I’ve wanted you just as badly for just as long. I wish I’d been brave enough to say something to you before you went to college and met Shawn.”

She nodded, and I nodded, and she cried, and I felt myself start to cry, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we held each other and laughed and cried and nodded and felt such love as neither of us had ever felt before.

When the laughing and crying stopped, we lay side by side again, and Angela looked at me, big-eyed as if she’d just had an excellent idea. “I could leave Shawn. Once and for all. And when a woman leaves a husband who’s the sole breadwinner, I bet nobody would think anything of it if she moved in with her brother.”

“I bet you’re right,” I agreed.

“You’d work at home like you do,” she said, “and I’d keep house, and we could make love whenever we wanted. As long and as hard as we feel like it. And I could wear that dress you love so much, Neil, and I’d never wear anything but a hand-knit cotton bra, and we’d be there for each other, ’til death do we part, just like it ought to be. And we could start a family, and I could raise–”

“Whoa!” I broke in. “Did you say family?”

Angela nodded. “I’ve wanted a family more than anything, and Shawn hasn’t given me one. I suspect he can’t give me a family, not with his lousy diet and his lackluster performance in bed. But I can think of no one I’d rather start a family with than this man right in front of me, who I love so much.”

“And I can think of no one I’d rather start a family with than this woman in front of me, who I love so much.” I ran the tips of my fingers down her cheek, along her neck, over her shoulder, around her breast, and back up to her chin. “So why don’t we get started right away?”

“What? So soon after the last one?”

I looked down, and she followed my gaze to my penis, already nearly as hard as it had been the first time we made love. “I’m ready if you are,” I said.

She reached down and wrapped a tender hand around the shaft of my cock. She traced my veins with the tip of her finger, then lifted her gaze to look back at me. “Wow, Neil. All this and you can repair the plumbing too.”

“For you and nobody else.”

Angela and I smiled at each other, then she leaned in and kissed me. I ran my hands up and down her spine, and our bodies wrapped together, and the sweat started to flow, and we made love again. And again before I had to leave that evening. And again in the morning.

And the next day when she showed up on my doorstep with her suitcase, wearing a white cotton scoop-neck t-shirt and a hand-knit bra, we made love on the linoleum of my entrance hallway. And in my bed. And in the hammock hanging from the tree in my back yard. And leaning against the kitchen counter while we worked together to make dinner. And in every room of the house, slowly and passionately, one after another.

Seven years and two lovely children later, we’ve scarcely spent a night apart, waking up in each other’s arms and making love to the morning cry of the house sparrow. Now it’s true we’ve had to keep our secrets, but I love my sister, and she loves me. What more can a man ask for in this life than the true love of a beautiful, smart, willing woman?