Life kind of rambled on for me; I seemed to spend a lot of time going shopping with one or the other of the girls, everything from grocery shopping to mall-raiding, and I was starting to notice a pattern. When I went out with Shari, she always wrapped her arm through mine, and piloted me though coffee shops and boutiques, chatting but never being TOO chatty; it was like she was simultaneously teaching me how to shop while showing me how to navigate Mall-space, and at the same time reminding me that she was the older one here, and I was kid sibling. Not that I minded; being seen with a seriously hot, exotic girl like her did wonders for my ego, believe me!
Shopping with Yaz couldn’t have been more different; for one thing, she always held my hand, she never just linked arms with me, and she laughed and chattered and tugged me from place to random place on a whim. In supermarkets she played dodgems with the shopping carts and stood on the rail pointing out aisles she wanted to go down, or sat on the front section as I pushed her around the store, chucking groceries and snacks and any treats she thought I’d like into the cart while chattering about everything and nothing, or making me stretch up to get top-shelf items then tickling me when my hands were full and I couldn’t fight back.
We be sat on mall seats or the rim of fountains eating ice cream cones and she’d say ‘quick, look over there!’ and when I did she’d suddenly dab my nose with her ice cream and giggle uncontrollably, or she’d drag us into fast food places and talk endlessly while loading up on French Fries and cheeseburgers, nuggets, anything that took her fancy, then suddenly I’d be in a boutique with her while she paraded around in a succession of crazy outfits, hoping to make me laugh at the sheer absurdity or ugliness of some of them.
If she was tired and there was only limited seating available in the busy malls, she’d push me into the first free seat and plop herself down on my lap with her arm around my neck without a second thought. Add to that the longing, envious looks I’d be getting from other men as they ogled her and the way it made her laugh happily usually made my day. Yaz was definitely the fun one.
In the house, it was just as… odd, but a very nice kind of odd; when we sat in the lounge and watched TV together, all three of us sprawled on the couch while Ayesha sat in her armchair, somehow Yaz would end up tucked against me, and if she thought I was being too serious or intent on a particular programme, she’d poke me in my side right in the ticklish spot just to make me jump, then demand hot chocolate or a cup of tea and snacks, and suddenly we’d be making mugs of hot drinks and carting around piles of toast and jars of jam and peanut butter and packets of chocolate biscuits. I can’t count the number of times I dozed off in front of the TV with her leaning against me, snapping awake with a dead arm only when Ayesha ruffled my hair and pointed at Yaz fast asleep against me, with Shari curled up asleep on the other side of the couch.
At breakfast time, a kind of ritual developed between the two of us; Yaz would make a pot of tea, and a cafetiere of coffee, while I made a stack of hot, buttered toast, with a proper three-minute boiled egg for Shari, and scrambled egg on toast for Ayesha. Then, while Shari drank her tea and dipped her toast in her egg, Yaz and I would work our way through a pile of toast and a pot of marmalade, something she loved and I learned to love, and Shari absolutely hated. Toast and marmalade became our thing, our connection.
Downstairs in the rec room it was more of the same; if I was relaxing in my room after doing my chores and getting the place spic and span, the intercom would go off and Yaz would ask if wanted to watch TV. Of course I’d say yes, next thing I knew she’d be bounding down the stairs with a big tin of chocolate biscuits and a six pack of cokes under one arm, and a duvet and pillows under the other, she’d make up the couch as an extravagant nest with the pillows and duvet from my bed too, and then the two of us would watch horror movies or her favourite rubbishy ‘Hallmark’ romances on the big screen TV down there. When Shari came in she’d join us, and I’d spend the evening with two beautiful girls screaming, hiding their eyes and clutching me, or huddling up against me sighing and weeping happily while I held the box of Kleenex they’d go through. It was a closeness I’d never had with anyone, and I ate it up.
Yaz was definitely handsy with me, though, enough that I was having serious issues with remembering she was my sister, even though nothing inappropriate had happened at all. Yet.
But, there was no getting away from the fact that she was hot; even ignorant, sheltered, isolated me knew that much, and added to that the fact she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off me and monopolized my every free moment only deepened my sense that what I was feeling was very wrong. It didn’t help that she’d come in from working a half-day at Ayesha’s property company and immediately call out for me, and when I came running, asking ‘what, what’s wrong?’ she’d give me that sweet, cheeky grin of hers and tell me ‘Nothing, Ricky, I missed you all day and I just wanted to see you!’
This was shaping up to be something bad, I could tell, but I didn’t know what, or what to do about it; tell Shari? Somehow I didn’t think she’d be sympathetic to my thoughts and feelings, confused as they were, about her kid sister. Tell Ayesha? My skin actually crawled at the thought of what she’d do to me if she thought I was having improper thoughts about my sister, seeing as who my father was. I had to face it; I was in a jam, here…
The climax to all this literally came out of left-field and caught me completely on the hop. Ayesha had finally convinced me that if I was going to be her son, then I should be calling her ‘mum’; after all the time I’d spent living with her, and the significant changes in our relationship, it seemed almost disrespectfully formal to keep calling her ‘Miss Ayesha’, especially since she had told me more than once that it was OK to call her ‘mum’. So ‘mum’ she became, and that’s where the changes came in. She asked me to help her clear up after breakfast one morning, and I saw the quick eye-rolls she gave the girls, so I guessed she wanted to talk in private. I was right.
“Ricky, I keep getting the feeling you’re feeling at a loose end, that you want to be doing something, not just whiling away the days doing nothing; that’s kind of my fault, though; I like having you around to talk to, so I never asked you what you wanted, so am I right? Are you bored?”
She gave me a questioning look, and I nodded; that was indeed how I was feeling, like some kind of eternal houseguest who came for a visit and never left, just kept hanging around sponging off these good people and taking advantage of their kindness. She slipped her arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer so I could lean against her, a close contact I really liked, if I’m being totally honest here.
“Look, I know you think you don’t know anything, but I think you could. How would you like to work with the girls? This is a family business, we all have proper jobs and areas we stick to, would you like to learn what we do? We’d love to have you join the family firm. Yaz is a natural negotiator when it comes to dealing with contractors and local authorities, student housing committees, that kind of thing, while Shari has a really good handle on the local property market; perhaps you could spend some time with both girls, maybe take some time to find out where you fit in, and go with it?”
I was stunned; she was offering me a job, and of course I jumped at it; I didn’t even ask her if I was going to get paid, it never even occurred to me to ask, because I actually didn’t need money at all; all my needs were being taken care of by my family, and I didn’t know what I’d spend money on anyway, because the girls and Ayesha kept buying me things. The thought of finally being useful instead of just being some useless, freeloading drone spending my days reading, lounging around, or chatting with mum and waiting for the girls to come home lifted my spirits tremendously; I’d actually gotten to the point where I was getting up at the crack of dawn and working out before cleaning the house top to bottom every day just to keep myself occupied, just as I had back in my old life; anything that got me away from that was a good thing, in my book.
“Go and rest, son, it’s your last chance!” she grinned, so I made us both a cup of tea and disappeared down into my room to watch TV. I must have dozed off with the TV on, because next thing I knew, Yaz had landed on top of me, jarring me awake and knocking the wind out of me, but she didn’t seem to notice, in her excitement, instead she bounced on me a few more times to shake me fully awake, then slid down next to me and hugged me, hard.