Eventually her sobbing slowed, then stopped, and her breathing evened out and slowed, deepening as she fell asleep still clutching on to me. I lay awake for a long time, my emotions still roiling as I contemplated a life without parents, trying not to remember the life I had when I still had a family, trying not to feel sorry for myself, and not succeeding very well.
I woke early, my med student time-sense flipping me from sleep to full wakefulness with no intermediate state. I was confused for a moment; wasn’t I supposed to be at home? Then memory flooded back; there was no home; this was home now. Then came the realisation and recollection that Lena was here with me, and why, with her leg thrown over mine, and her arm flung across my chest.
I eased her arm back and her leg off me so I could slip out of bed and take a pee, then debated getting back into bed or getting dressed. I didn’t really want to get back into bed with my kid sister; it felt weird and pervy, so I quietly got a change of clothes and went to have a quick shower before getting some breakfast. When I came back, to wake Lena and ask her what she wanted to do about breakfast, she’d rolled onto her stomach, with her shirt pulled up around her waist, and I could see she was wearing a pink thong. I’d never thought of my sister in a remotely sexual way before, she was just Lena, and now, here was her very shapely rump practically naked to my view, just the string of the thong disappearing into the cleft between her softly rounded buttocks to say she wasn’t completely naked under her sleeping Tee.
Admittedly, in my time on the wards at St. George’s I’d seen more bare backsides than a man should see in a long lifetime, but there was something so sweetly innocent, and yet so furiously sexy about Lena’s practically bare, perfectly formed bottom thrust out at me in that way; innocent yet desirable. I shook myself.
‘Get a grip, she’s your sister!’ I told myself severely, and reached over to pull the sheet up over her, hiding that lovely bum from my view.
I had nothing to eat here; I’d expected to be away for a couple of weeks, or maybe longer, so I’d run the fridge dry, emptied the freezer, and switched them both off. Luckily, there was a golden arches at Amen Corner, just round the corner from the flat, so I went there and bought two sausage muffins and two orange juices for breakfast.
When I came back in, I heard Lena call my name, so I pushed the bedroom door open, and froze. Lena was on her back, her eyes closed and her t-shirt pushed right up under her chin, one hand squeezing and tugging her nipples and the other hand was down inside the front of her thong, working furiously as she rubbed herself. I was transfixed; she had lovely firm breasts, probably 34C or better, a nice handful in any case, topped with long pink nipples, stiff and delicious-looking, surmounting small rose-pink areolas.
“Yes, Darryl, ooh God, yes, like that!” she moaned, and I broke out of my frozen trance to hurriedly back out before she saw me. I walked back to the sitting room in a daze, with just one thought clanging around in my head; Lena was masturbating over me, oh my God! Now what did I do? I’d seen her, heard her, how was I supposed to act around her now? Christ, did she see me? Fuck, this could get awkward really quickly.
To say I was super-weirded out would be an understatement; and yet, the image of her slender figure, her erect nipples, and her hand working away between her thighs remained with me. Every detail of her beautiful face flushed with arousal, her smooth rounded thighs flexing and corded as she thrust her mons against her hand, and her gorgeous pink nipples, stiff and up thrust as she pulled and squeezed them was imprinted on my mind. I could feel myself getting hard as that scene replayed yet again in my mind’s eye.
Shaking myself to try and clear the images from my head, I pondered what to do next. I knew I wouldn’t confront her, even if I wanted to; a person’s fantasies are their own personal property, and if she wanted to rub-off over me, it didn’t really affect me; (or at least it hadn’t until I’d walked in on her and discovered her doing it). In the meantime breakfast was getting cold, and I had no burning desire to have anything like that kind of conversation with my kid sister (even if she wasn’t, a sharp jab of melancholy reminded me…).
Just then, a loud sobbing moan from the bedroom reminded me what Lena was doing in there, and she was probably finished now, so time to arrive…
Getting up, I silently opened and then slammed the front door, to alert her to the fact I was back, and called out to her.
“Lena, fast-food breakfast, come and get it while it’s edible!” I shouted, hoping no trace of what I’d seen was in my voice or tone to alert her I was uncomfortable or embarrassed about something.
She appeared at the doorway, smiling, still in her long t-shirt, to sit cross-legged on the couch and dig into her sausage muffin and juice.
“So Darryl, what’s the plan for today?” she inquired, and I looked blankly at her; I hadn’t thought about it, as I’d planned on a fairly stress-free few weeks with mum and da… them, so my calendar was empty. I plopped down on the other end of the couch and looked at her.
“Lena, I don’t know what to do next. I’ve got quite a bit of cash stored up, so that should tide me… us over for a good while yet, but I wasn’t planning on being disinherited so completely, so I don’t know. Baby steps, I suppose. Do some shopping. Look for jobs. Work out who I am and where I’m supposed to go now.”
Lena slid up next to me, and wrapped her arm around my waist as she laid her head on my shoulder.
“Darryl, you don’t need to work out who you are; you’re Doctor Daryl Morgan, graduate of the University of London, St. George’s Medical School, surgeon par excellence, that hasn’t changed, and you’re my big brother, and that hasn’t changed either. The only identity crisis we need to worry about is the one going on back in Bristol with those two idiots who seem to think they’re not your parents!”
I had to grin at that. Talking to Lena was always a lift for my spirits, her irreverence, wit, observational skills and ability to judge character were a delight to listen to when she was in full flow.
She leaned up and pecked me on the cheek.
“Right now we have more immediate matters to attend to; you have no food or supplies, so we need to go shopping soon; a muffin for breakfast may seem like the ideal way to start the day, but that’s just advertising propaganda; we need to get some real food, something to stick to the ribs, as well as toiletries, all the things they tell us we can’t live without! Thank you for letting me stay with you, I’ll go as soon as I can find a place of my own, I promise.”
I grinned at her. “Don’t be daft, Lena, I’d love you to stay as long as you want; a day, a week, a month, a year, forever, I don’t care; you’re my little sister and it’s still my job to look after you!”
She dimpled at that.
“And that’s why I love you so much, Darryl Morgan! Just wait ’til I get dressed, and I’ll make you a lunch you’d write home about.”
She dressed in an outfit guaranteed to stop traffic, a tiny black skirt of some stretchy material that just covered the cheeks of her bum, a low-cut, figure-hugging black top that outlined every curve and jiggle, and teetering heels that made her legs go on forever. If she hadn’t been my sister/aunt/whatever, I’d have a made a grab at her, and she seemed to know that was the effect she was having on me. Had she dressed like this just to tempt me and reel me in? An intriguing, uncomfortable, arousing thought.
We shopped at the local Sainsbury’s in Balham. I told Lena to have a ball, my treat, buy anything she wanted, and she took me at my word, loading the shopping trolley with any and everything that took her fancy. As we strolled around the supermarket, I pushed the shopping trolley, and she linked arms with me, walking close enough to bump hips with me, and occasionally flashing me that 1, 000 kilowatt smile of hers.
She got a lot of looks, I have to admit, and I did feel more than a little ego-boosted to have such a beautiful girl hanging on my arm as though we were actually a real couple.
When we got back to the flat, I stashed the groceries while Lena started cooking, and in an hour we were sitting down to her speciality, a fabulous Cottage Pie with green beans and cabbage, good, old-fashioned comfort food. She’d changed into a t-shirt and a pair of track-suit bottoms to cook, and I couldn’t help noticing how they clung to her svelte legs and firm bum.
I didn’t have a dining room, only a small dinette table I sometimes used for studying, so we ate in front of the TV, one at each end of that atrocious couch so we could talk as we ate. Our conversation was mostly about her parents. I still couldn’t bring myself to resume calling them ‘mum & dad’; well, they weren’t, were they?
Lena tapped her fork thoughtfully against her bottom lip.
“You know, Darryl, much as I thought about it, and tried to put myself in their place, and tried to see it from their point of view, I couldn’t; they had no right to just cast you adrift like that. They should have told you when you were a small boy, or never. You had a right to know, and they had a duty to either tell you from the outset, or kept their mouths shut forever after, amen!”
I was kind of in agreement with her, but they were still her parents, and dumping them like that seemed a little drastic. I said as much to her, and she looked at me with that diamond-hard stare she’d given her mother last night as she walked out of her house.
“I said it once before, Darryl, do pay attention! They tried to take my big brother away from me; hell, they DID take him away; in their eyes he never existed, they just kept you because they didn’t know what else to do. They made my brother into a phantom with a couple of sentences, and they wonder why you reacted the way you did. Well, you may not be their son, but you are my brother, and you’re all the family I want or need around me, end of story!”
She put her plate down on the coffee table and slid next to me, slipping her arm around my waist as she rested her head on my shoulder.
“I want you to know one thing, sweetie; I will never, ever, desert you or hurt you like that, I swear. After last night, I know you need me, and God knows, I need you too, but I need you to know and believe that you still have family who love you, you have me. We’re family, the only family we have left, and we need to stick together. I’ll always be here for you, just like you were always there for me when I was growing up. OK?”
With that, she leant up and kissed me, a small, firm kiss on the corner of my mouth, gentle, loving and genuine, a sisterly kiss, but it burned as it chimed and resonated through me.
We avoided the subject for the rest of the day, talking instead about what we were going to do next, our ideal jobs and how to find them, and mutual friends from back home. I’d almost forgotten how much I needed Lena; almost losing her nine years before had scared me in a way I’d never thought possible, and she’d become very precious to me, both as my sister and as my very best friend.