Chapter 12

They only worked as long as it took to finish the second frame. Tabitha said she’d come back and help them cover the two new frames with canvas and get the scenes drawn on them. Then, with typical teenage superiority, she said she’d teach them how to paint, if they wanted to learn.

Bobby smiled and Erica saw the flush that appeared on Tabitha’s face as she got attention from the man she was almost willing to, “do something stupid with.”

On her way home she had a lot to think about. Most of it centered on her conversation with Tabitha, who wasn’t nearly as bubble-headed as Erica had thought she might be. Her comments on marriage were hard to argue with, since they were conditional. If she met the right man, and if that man made her think about marriage ... she’d think about marriage. How could you argue about that?

To Erica’s way of thinking, the musical she was working so hard to make a success pointed out many of the problems with traditional romance and marriage. Take Jean, for instance. There she was, at the beginning of her adult life, with all her choices still available to her. And what did she do? She threw all her choices away. She married a man who didn’t want to get married, while another man was willing to destroy Brigadoon because he couldn’t have her. And Fiona. She was crazy about a man she argued with about everything! That was typical. The message was that, for a woman to be happy, she had to agree with the man. It was nonsense. And Tommy, engaged to Jane, back in New York, goes and falls in love with Fiona! That was typical of a man ... never satisfied ... always selfish ... acting like an alley cat ... breaking women’s hearts right and left.

She felt much better when she pulled into the driveway, and prepared to go inside and share her day with Will.

That was because she could stop thinking about all this, and concentrate on dinner ... and then her brother. She felt relieved that, within an hour or two, the other thoughts that had kept intruding on her introspection about her discussion with Tabitha would be banished by what she was doing with Will.

Those other thoughts had been about how different she wanted to think she was from Tabitha, who was willing to trust the winds of fate, and reach for little pleasures where she could find them. Erica wanted to think she was in control of her own fate.

But her real frustration was that those other thoughts had also included the “killer cute” and “smokin’” man that made Tabitha get “all wiggly inside” when he looked at her.

Those thoughts were disturbing to Erica, because she was beginning to recognize that “wiggly” feeling in herself ... when Bobby Dalton looked at her too.

Will had finished one of the 5000 piece puzzles that day. He said he wasn’t bored, but he was obviously glad to see Erica, and it wasn’t dependent on what they’d do later, in his bedroom. He talked to her while she got dinner ready, and she told him about her conversation with Tabitha.

“I know what she’s talking about,” said Will. “When I looked at a girl, and she smiled at me, it made me feel fabulous.”

“Well, whoever that girl was, she probably wasn’t thinking about having sex with you,” said Erica.

“Yeah, I know that now,” said Will. “But back then, it was really fun to daydream about what might happen. Then I came home and peeked at you and thought about what might happen some more.” He grinned.

“Did you ever think about getting married?” asked Erica.

“Only in a vague sense,” he said. “None of the girls I knew made me think about that. You did, but not them.”

“You can’t marry your sister,” she chided.

“I know that,” he said. “But I imagined being married to someone like you.”

“That’s sweet.”

“I spied on you, Erica,” he reminded her.

“I know. I’ve forgiven you for that.”

“And I know that,” he said. “You know I love you so much, and that’s part of why I do. I was so afraid you’d hate me forever if you ever found out.”

“Well I don’t hate you, and I never could, so that’s settled,” she said. “Now stop talking like that. You’re making me horny.”

She stopped, the spoon she had been about to use suspended above the pan on the stove. She froze like that because she had just used the word “horny,” at least as it related to her own feelings, for the first time in her life. She waS horny! That feeling in her nipples, and lower down too ... it meant she was horny!

She turned around to see her brother’s right hand in his lap, rubbing gently ... just pressing here, and moving there. He was looking just looking at her.

“I like it when you’re horny,” he said. His eyes slid from her face ... lower.

The wild impulse to take her blouse and bra off, and stand in front of him made her feel almost dizzy. She realized suddenly that her fingers had gone to the top button of her blouse, unconsciously.

“Are you really hungry right now?” she asked, her voice husky.

“Not really,” he said.

“Me, either,” she said. She turned around to turn the burner off under the pot.

By the time she turned back, he had already turned his chair and had dragged himself almost to the door.

She couldn’t believe she was doing what she was doing. She had unbuttoned two buttons of her blouse, and then pulled them apart to expose her upper chest and the edges of her bra. Then her hands had gone to cup her breasts, and lift them.

“You want to see these, don’t you?” she had said.

“Yes,” Will had said, his voice low. “You know I do.”

She had unbuttoned the rest of her blouse, and let it hang. After a few seconds she had pulled the sides apart, to expose her bra-encased chest to him.

She was doing what amounted to a striptease for her brother.

That was part of what she couldn’t believe. The other part was that she was enjoying the way teasing her little brother made her feel, as his eyes followed her every movement. His appreciation was palpable. She knew he expected something perilously close to “sex” from her. What she couldn’t believe was how excited that made her feel. The fleeting image of her, wearing a cheerleader’s outfit, popped into her mind and was then chased away.

When she got down to just her bra and panties, ten minutes had gone by. Will hadn’t complained. He moved in his chair, but he didn’t urge her to hurry up.

“Let’s get you on the bed,” she said.

He cooperated, using his one hand to help her get his clothes off. He was hard as stone when she bared his penis. She felt an almost cramp in her loins as she acknowledged she was responsible for this erection. It was almost as if she had waved some magic wand and uttered an incantation.

Once he was on the bed, she let herself enjoy teasing him some more. She undid her bra, but kept the cups covering her. Then, in fractions of an inch, she let it slide off her mounds. He hissed when her nipples finally came into view. Some instinct made her go to the bed and lean over to put her breasts above his face. That instinct made her shake her shoulders, so that her breasts wobbled as she lowered them, until his face slid between them. She dragged them back and forth, feeling the nipples slide over his mouth and nose.

He was making little noises. “Uh ... uh ... mmm ... ohhh.”

She stepped back to lower her panties. She had been completely naked with him before, and he had seen her ... down there ... as her finger slid into her slippery channel. But she had never “displayed” that part of her body to him. Now, the urge to use her body to make him ... wiggle ... continued.

“You know what seeing you like this makes me want to do?” she asked.

“No,” he gasped. His hand was fluttering by his side, and she knew, somehow, that he was resisting the urge to play with himself.

“It makes me want to do this,” she said.

She put her right hand on her belly and moved it down, pointing her fingers so that they combed her fluffy pubic hair. She spread her feet apart and curled all but her middle finger ... her “cussing finger,” as she thought of it. She watched his eyes follow that finger as she pushed it lower, between slippery folds of skin ... and into her sex.

“Ohhhh fuck, Erica,” moaned Will.

“You make me feel nasty,” she whispered.

His hand lost the battle, and went to his prick. He was jerking furiously on it within seconds.

She wished she had three hands ... two to pull at her itching nipples, and one to keep doing what her finger was doing between her legs. She didn’t touch him, this time. She was unconsciously trying to see if she could inflame him enough for him to finish just by watching her. She’d forgotten that that was how they started this in the first place ... that she’d already done that on many occasions, most of which she wasn’t even aware of.

She spread her feet further and alternated squeezing and pulling her nipples with one hand, while she masturbated furiously with the other. She was aware there was a place that zinged, where the base of her finger was. She was aware that was her clitoris, but she hadn’t been doing this long enough to realize she could center her attention there. To her, “masturbating” just meant rubbing like this, and touching everything. And the finger inside her felt wonderful. It was a case of, “It doesn’t feel broken, so I’m not going to fix it.”

When she heard the sounds that told her he was about to cum, she quickly got into position. This time, also on pure instinct, when his slippery warm stuff started spurting, she rubbed her breasts all over his groin, instead of trying to squeeze her nipples. It wasn’t as electric, but she somehow knew he would like that. He did. It was obvious, and she ended up rubbing her breasts clear up to his chest.

For whatever reason, she didn’t feel like kissing him on the lips. Some of that may have been because half his lips were cold and hard and scarred. Some of it may have been because kisses had always seemed so intimate to her ... the sharing of mouths and even tongues. Maybe it was because you just didn’t kiss your brother on the lips, even if that flew in the face of the other things they were doing, and made no sense at all, under the circumstances.

But she did feel the urge to press her lips to his forehead and cheeks and eyes, everywhere except his lips, even on the scarred flesh of the left side of his face. She did that while he finished, and while she dragged her breasts over his left shoulder and chest.

They were a mess when they finally stopped. She went to get a washcloth, and cleaned him up first, still naked.

“I’m going to take a quick shower, and then finish supper,” she said.

“I love you so much,” he replied.

“I know,” she said. “I love you too. I’m glad we do this.”

She hadn’t cum while she teased her brother. She’d never masturbated in the shower, but since she had done so many other things lately she’d never done before, doing so now didn’t seem to be a problem.

The next day Erica wheeled Will down their new ramp for the first time since he’d gotten to Granger. He hopped, to get into the car. His chair folded, and she was strong enough to lift it into the back seat of her four door sedan.

Their welcome at the Johnson house was somewhat turbulent. There was a ramp, not surprisingly just like theirs, that led to the small porch. There were a lot of emotions running rampant, and it was in both families. Will’s emotions about confronting strangers will be easily understood by most readers without further comment. Erica’s emotions were based on apprehension about wanting this to be something positive, and fearing it could all go wrong. If it did, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get him out of the house again.

The other part of the equation was the Johnsons. You might think that having a disabled person as a husband and father, and being around him all the time, would make seeing another disabled person no big deal. But while there were similarities between Will and Jake, there were also huge differences. Age was one. Jake was twice Will’s age. Will’s burns were another. While David and Meredith didn’t give a single glance to Will’s missing leg or hand, they stared at his face. Tilly’s heart went out to him, because she knew how hard it was for a man in his condition to have hope. Jake’s emotions were somewhat more complicated. When he met Will, he felt both awe that Will could have survived his injuries at all, and gratitude that his own injuries were as “light,” in his mind, as they had been.

The inevitable tension passed, though. Tilly instructed her children not to stare, because it wasn’t polite. Then she had to bark at David for asking point blank “What happened to you?” Will, in a shaky voice, gave the kids a sanitized version, saying there had been an explosion, and that he’d gotten burned.

Five hours later, Erica and Tilly both knew they had established the beginnings of a friendship that might be as important as either of them had ever had before. They had left the men in the living room to talk between themselves, and had sat in the kitchen, sharing stories and emotions that few other people could really understand. The fact that Tilly espoused none of the ideals of the women’s liberation movement didn’t seem important to Erica. Tilly was caring for a man who deserved to be cared for. It was a worthy pursuit.

At one point Erica mentioned how lucky Jake was that a woman would stay with him like that.

“I loved him before this happened,” Tilly had said. “I didn’t want to stop loving him, because I knew I’d never forgive myself. So I just kept loving him.”

“Still, it must have been hard,” said Erica, remembering her own horror at seeing her brother for the first time. Tilly had to have felt something like that, when they brought her broken husband home to her the first time.

“We had some help along the way,” said Tilly, thinking about Bobby.

“I wish there was some way for Will to find a woman like you.”

“To be completely honest, I don’t think I would have been interested in Jake if I’d met him after the accident.” She said it bluntly.