Chapter 12

Still Dave's turn:

"The heart wants what the heart wants." Brindy looked so serious when she said it.

"Brindy!" Pat said.

"Pat, you know what I mean..."

My eyes are darting back and forth. I'm trying hard to parse all this.

"Brindy, this is a good time for you to do that thing we talked about. Dave and I need to talk."

Brindy frowned. "Pat, don't beat Dave up. Carlita looks like a good kid. What you told me about 'er, she needs a break, too."

I caught the 'too'.

Brindy grabbed her purse. "Good meeting you, Dave. I hope things turn out okay. Pat, I'll be back in a bit. Or do you want me to hang out somewhere and call you or you call me?"

"GImme an hour, okay?"

I knew I had less than an hour to live.

Brindy left. "What's with Brindy," I said.

"Brindy, dear brother, is why I couldn't say anything about you and the fourteen year old orphan girl..."

"Carlita. And what's Brindy got to do with it?"

"Brindy and I ... She just turned eighteen ... Last weekend."

It dawned on me. Hey, I'm a good engineer. Interpersonal relationships? Not so much... "You and Brindy ... Pat, I didn't know you..."

She fixed me in her stare. "Dave, the LAST man I was with was YOU."

"Pat..."

"You're my brother. I know we didn't have a future ... I was coming down from that turd. You were freshly dumped..."

"Oh, just come over," Pat said. "I got some wine. Got a couple of movies I wanna see on NetFlix. And neither of us needs to be alone..."

She was right. Another evening by myself – I didn't need that crap. "I'll be down there. Want me to bring anything?"

Wasn't ONE bottle of wine, it was two, and we started out laughing about wine and crackers and cheese and the stupid movie and then we were on the sofa, both at the same end.

Did I mention that Pat is NOT a bad-looking woman? And both of us were pretty mellowed and lit.

Sitting on the same sofa, at the same end, she ended up leaning against me, laughing, then lounging on me, and I had my arm around her. It's my sister, right? Felt good.

Felt better when she put her arm under my leg to pull herself closer, and left her hand there. Way up there.

The movie was on the ragged edge of soft porn, and what happened on the screen was Big Hollywood sexy. I felt fingers stroking idly on the inside of my thigh, I smelled the fragrance of her hair. If I turned my head, I could smell a little more of the enticing aroma. I turned, buried my nose in her hair.

Okay, those fingers are WAY high now ... We should stop, but my hand's on her waist and I swear it slipped up and cupped the underside of her breast.

An alcohol-infused giggle accompanied the fingers that moved to measure the lump in my pants. "I haven't seen you naked since I was twelve."

"Stop that!" I said, not too seriously. "I haven't seen you since I stopped peeking in your door..."

Giggle. "I've grown since then." An index finger traced the length of that bulge. "So have you..."

She scooted up a bit higher, too close ... and we kissed. I remember it getting frantic after that, the two of us using each other to make up for recent failures and hurts, and the truth? It was GOOD. Multiple times. We moved from the sofa to Pat's bed and tore the covers off and went at each other like animals.

Somewhere during the night we got covered up and slept, two naked adults still sticky from frantic hot sex.

"Dave," she said, shaking me from my sleep the next morning.

I woke up to see the face of my sister, her hair a disheveled mess, her face inches from mine. Realized that HER naked body was pressed against mine, accounting for my erection.

I silenced her by the expedient of putting my lips against hers, rolling her over on her back and penetrating her as deeply as I could.

Protest? There was one ... a couple of words ... but I discounted it because it did not jibe with the legs wrapping around me as I thrust.

Pat comes easily and her pussy is alive with tremors and spasms and I'm unloading HARD in her.

That time ... she's lying against me.

"What were you saying?"

"Dammit, brother, this is a mess with a capital 'M'. I ... we just fucked. Sister and brother..."

"Male and female."

"Doesn't matter," she said.

"I love you, Sis. Apparently we had some pent-up frustrations."

I'd have believed she was more upset if her hand wasn't playing with my dick, still slippery from five minutes ago.

"It was GOOD," she said. "But still wrong..."

"You ARE protected, right?" I asked.

"Hell of a time to ask, Dave," she said. "And yes, of course..."

"Then it's just a little more than a brother and sister giving each other a hug," I said.

We tried it for a week, giving each other sexual release, for sure, and sibling love as well, but at the end of the week, the enormity of what we were doing sort of caught up. I moved back into my house, Pat stayed in hers.

At first, after that decision, we avoided one another, but slowly things got back to a normal brother and sister relationship. It was a while, though, before I could look at my sister and not think of her naked, riding me almost angrily.

"I turned my sister into a lesbian," I said.

"Don't flatter yourself, Bro," she laughed. "I gotta admit, it was good, you and me, but if anything, I've always been kind of bi."

"Brindy?"

"One of those cases you read about in the paper. Mom remarried. Stepdad was abusive."

"Was?"

"He can practice his abuse in jail now. They arrested 'im. I'm the one who reported him..."

"And now..."

She shook her head. "It wasn't' supposed to happen like that. Devastated, abused young girl. Needed a friend, and high school kids, they apparently don't do that kind of friendship. Brindy and I started talking. She'd come over and visit, we'd watch TV..."

"I know how that can get," I said.

"You do. I do. I should know better..."

"How long?"

"Eight months..."

"All the way?"

She didn't have to answer. Her head hung, nodding.

"We hid it."

"Did a good job," I said. "I had no idea ... I wondered why you looked at me weird when I brought Carlita home..."

"It weirded me out, Dave. FOURTEEN! And I was a mess over Brindy and she was seventeen."

"And a student at your high school."

"That, too. But Saturday was her birthday. She's eighteen."

"Permanent?"

"Yours?" she asked pointedly.

"God, I hope so..."

"Carlita's young and sweet and..."

"Pat, Carlita's been through it. Not talked about it. Not read about it. Actually been through it ... I am not going to be the one to hurt her."

"Kind of the way I feel about Brindy. You saw her..."

"And you're okay with me and Lita?"

"I don't know if I'm okay..." Her eyes flashed. "Dammit, Dave, maybe a little bit jealous..."

"Pat, we talked..."

"I know. We needed to go buy a trailer on the outskirts of town with an old pickup truck on cinder blocks in the front yard..."

"Or recognize that society would never..."

"Which is what we did, Dave. I cried..."

"I didn't know that."

"I did. Almost ... Called you back. Begged."

"I know. For weeks I lay there wishing ... But it's gone."

"I know. So Carlita..."

"She's like nothing I've ever dealt with, Pat. That vocabulary of hers ... the way she talks, you KNOW she's not a native English speaker, her sentence structures, her word use, it's quirky, but she's so obviously smart."

"And she's collected you."

"She's collected me. Says we ARE married. De facto. Promised each other."

"She's fourteen, Dave."

"Papers say eighteen. Who's gonna say different? She's certainly in the range for the physical characteristics..."

"I know," Pat acknowledged. "She says 'marriage'?"

I smiled, thinking of the serious look on her face when she told me, 'I have arranged my OWN marriage.' "Yeah, her idea. I'm all for it. What a partner."

"You're not suffering from some weird 'hero' syndrome, are you, Dave?"

"No. I don't think so. You don't know how scared I was when she..."

"She what?!?" Pat spat.

"She crawled in bed with me. First night. In Texas. I woke up with her in bed with me that next morning." I saw Pat's look. "Pat, NOTHING happened. Lita said that the queen bed she started out in was just too much."

"And since then?"

"Every night. Said that the enormity of the situation ... She needed to NOT sleep alone in a strange room."

"That night that she tried to spend the night here..."

I nodded. Pat looked horrified.

"Pat, we did NOTHING. She and I occupied the same bed. The only touching was snuggling."

"So when did you..."

"Last night. She said that things that were bad for fourteen year old Lita were maybe not so bad for eighteen year old Lita, and she kissed me. Really kissed me. And technically, no, we haven't done that..."

"She's a virgin?"

"Yes."

"She asked me about birth control. I'm taking her to the clinic Wednesday morning. We talked about the Pill versus the IUD."

"I heard that's expensive..."

"I was gonna pay for it and hit you up..."

"We can do that."

"Yes," she laughed. "Keeps me from whipping out a credit card with 'David Johnson' on it."

"You're laughing now. Does that mean you're good with this?" I asked.

"Kind of like Brindy said. 'Where's my moral high ground'?"

"She just sort of told you what she thought."

"That in itself is a breakthrough, Dave. I'm trying to get her to be assertive. So, are you good with Brindy?"

"I guess."

"It was a good week, Dave. If you weren't my brother..." Her eyes looked wistful.

"It was, Pat. I've thought the same thing. But now, here's Carlita. Her, it can be us. You and I, we really never could ... Maybe in a city far away..."

"Carlita deserves your best, Dave."

"I want to give her my best, Pat. I think we both have release here ... Brindy's a cutie in her own way..."

"It's about what's inside," Pat said. "Really is. She's like ... It's like she put out these tendrils that enveloped me inside..."

"As opposed to popping up from behind my truck seat."

My cellphone rang. Carlita.

"Hi, Sweetness," I said.

"We are nearing home," she said. "Are you there?"

"I will be in a minute. I am talking with Pat."

"Oh," Lita said tersely. "Please be home for me."

I smiled. "I will be."

Pat smiled. "Your face lights up, Dave. Go home and be there for her."

"Okay, Sis," I said.

She followed me to the door. Gave me a hug, a little longer than normal, before letting me go out.

In a couple of minutes I was inside the house, waiting. I heard Carlie's SUV pull into the drive. I went outside, met Carlie and the bunch, collected Lita, who wisely did NOT grab my hand, bounced into the house ahead of me.

I closed the door behind us, got an armful of bouncy teen.

"I missed you, Dave ... I really missed you."

"I missed you, too, my Lita. How was your day?"

"I visited Pat. Dave, there was a girl there," she said.

"Brindy," I replied. "I met her today."

"I saw her kissing Pat. They do not know. Dave," she continued, "It was like I kiss you."