By the end of the day, I had come up with no good answer. I had come up with hundreds of reasons, but none of them really fit how my heart felt about it. I was frustrated, because I didn’t want to just give in and have sex with Jen and have a lingering doubt in my mind. If I did it, I wanted to make love with her honestly.
I left work just as frustrated as when I had entered, and drove home.
******************************************
When I got home, my mom was just setting the table for dinner and Jen wasn’t home yet. I wearily went up to my room and changed into some jeans and a t-shirt, then laid down on the bed. The room seemed like it was spinning around me as my mind kept going over my worries about Jen and I.
Jen got home and we all had dinner together. Mom and Dad talked most of the time as I couldn’t come up with much to say and Jen was strangely silent as well. She did catch my eye and the look on her face was of someone hopeful. She wanted to know if I had an answer. Seeing that I didn’t, her face became a little more troubled and she seemed to focus more on her mashed potatoes than someone should really need to.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the evening was over and I was back in my room getting ready for bed. I sat down and waited patiently until I heard the soft knock I had been anticipating all day.
Jen came in, wearing her loose pajamas and I made room for her to sit on my bed with me.
It was obvious that she was worried and didn’t want to bring it up, but she asked, “So did you think about it today?”
My heart started to ache.
“Yes. All day.”
“And have you decided?” She asked.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. She sighed in frustration and had turned her head away from me.
After a moment of silence, she looked back. Her eyes were filled with tears.
“How could you dare to do all these things with me-” she sobbed, “-and not do this?”
My heart crumpled and I embraced her. She cried silently into my chest.
I cried too; my tears falling into her hair.
Time turned into a hazy fog of sadness.
Things didn’t seem real. It was just she and I, crying together, because we were so in love but so confused.
It took a while, but eventually we both calmed down. She sat up and I pulled over the tissues and we wiped our eyes and cheeks, giggled softly as we blew our noses, and regained our composure.
I sighed heavily. “Jen, you know why.”
She looked in my direction, but kept her eyes downcast.
“I couldn’t love you any more than I do right now, but we both know we can’t build a life together like we were married. I… I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t rob you of the joy of meeting someone else that you really love, getting married to him and having kids with him.”
She turned her head away slightly, but was still listening.
I continued. “There’s just something different about it, and I know you know it too. There’s something good about leaving your family and starting a family of your own. And if we did that together, we wouldn’t grow like we should, and we’d be hurting each other in a way.”
She sighed.
“And I just feel like if we stopped fooling around like we have been, and we got serious, we couldn’t break free from each other. I know I wouldn’t be strong enough to. I could never leave you.”
She started to cry again.
Looking down at the crumpled tissue she held in her lap, she muttered a sad, “I know… I know.”
Then she got up, gave me a quick hug, and left my room.
I felt like my heart had just been torn out.
******************************************
The next several weeks were, well… depressing. Jen and I eventually recovered and were able to continue on. We still joked around a good bit, we still talked, but it was all a little strained. It was like we both didn’t feel like we could be as open with each other as we had been before.
Then, there was the night I heard her come home and go to her room around five in the morning after a date with James. I wanted to throw up. The rest of that week, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. Jen would hardly look at me, and when she did, it was like someone who felt like they had completely betrayed you.
The next week, I took Michelle out dancing. I got she and myself very drunk and we spent that night in a motel room. Michelle is blond, but that night all I could see was Jen’s brown hair. And when I got back home the next day, I couldn’t look Jen in the eye, and I could hear her crying in her room late at night.
In fact, I don’t think things could have been more wretched.
******************************************
It was sometime after midnight, several weeks later. It was raining hard, and peals of thunder would reverberate through the house. I had been lying in bed for an hour, or maybe two, unable to sleep.
All I could think about was Jen. My whole heart was wrapped up in her. It felt like I had been twisted and wrung out like a washrag. I was tired and sad, and so very lonely.
I just couldn’t take it anymore.
This couldn’t go on.
I had thought we were making a wise decision. I thought we were doing what was best for both of us.
But instead, I felt like I was dying.
I could not live like this.
Slowly, I sat up in my bed, then stood and walked to the door leading to the bathroom between our two rooms.
I opened the door.
In front of me, standing in the doorway to her room, her hand still on the knob, was Jen.
There were tears on her cheeks, but she gasped when she saw me and for the first time in a month, there was light in her eyes.
We nearly ran to each other and embraced passionately. We were choking back sobs as we held each other and ran our hands over each other. We kissed, then kept kissing, and our hands wound up around our necks and held our heads closer together as we gasped and sobbed into the other’s lips.
I picked her up around the waist and carried her into my room and we collapsed onto my bed. The rain was crashing on the window, but couldn’t drown out the pounding of our hearts as Jen pulled her top off and worked her pajama bottoms off as I did the same with my shirt and shorts.
She laid back, her eyes longing, and for just a moment, a flash of lightning outlined our nude bodies before the room became dark again and I laid down on my sister.
Her arms clutched at my back and mine wrapped around her body.
My legs went between hers and our chests pressed together.