I stood in the saloon bar of “The Old Compass” pub in Hamble-le-Rice, Southampton, trying to finish my beer, but Sam, my best friend and usual wingman wouldn’t let me alone on the subject of Sherry, the gorgeous blue-eyed, black-haired barmaid.
“Dan, she’s fucking hot, she makes those munters you grope in the Student’s Union on Saturday nights look like blow-up dolls; she’s practically panting over you!”
He slapped me gently on the back of the head, a “wake-up and get with-it!” kind of slap.
“Everyone here, shit, everyone in Hamble knows she fancies the fuck out of you; what is wrong with you? Why not just go with the zeitgeist, mate, take her home and fuck her properly; that way she’ll have had what she wants, and she’ll be back in circulation, and we can all take a crack at her. You owe it to the men of Hamble, Danny-boy. It’s your duty; you have to fuck that girl. It’s the only way to cure the epidemic of Blue-Balls she’s causing up and down the coast!”
Sam was right about Sherry; she’d made it obvious from day one she wanted nothing more than an extended sweaty-session with me and ordinarily I’d have been up for it like a rat up a drainpipe, as my poor old dad would have said, and with good reason: Sherry was everything a man could have asked for in a girl: slightly over medium height, with a slender, shapely figure, beautiful heart shaped face with big, sexy cornflower-blue eyes under a glossy quiff of short, sculpted jet-black hair, clear pale skin with a spray of pale freckles dusting her cheeks and cute snub nose, and beautiful coral-pink lips, full and succulent; the kind made to form a seal around the head of a man’s cock.
That night she was wearing a striped boat-necked top with nothing underneath, to judge by the lack of bra strap on her exposed shoulders and the tantalising jiggle coming from inside that top, and Jeggings: leggings printed to look like jeans, which showed every curve and ripple of her supple thighs and fabulous round little bubble-butt, and no VPL, which was causing no end of speculation and wistful staring in the crowded pub.
As I said, she was everything a guy could want, but for some reason she had made it clear she wanted me, and that was where it became a problem, a big one; one that prevented me from moving in for the kill, no matter how delectable I thought she was. I couldn’t make that move on her, much as I might have wanted to, dreamed of doing, had to restrain myself from doing, because Sherry was my aunt: Cherie Morrison Young, to use her proper name, my mum’s baby half-sister.
I didn’t know she worked there when I first went to the University of Southampton, where Sherry had also attended. She’d dropped out after the end of her second year, and I’d lost contact with her, presumably because she wanted it that way, as she had all my contact numbers and email addresses. For reasons of her own she’d decided to disappear, so imagine my shock when Sam and I’d wandered into the remote pub a few weeks previously to get away from the waterfront pubs and bars crowded with middle-aged rich yacht owners and their hot trophy wives talking about how much their yacht cost, how big their place in “Sandbanks” was, money, money blah, blah, blah and there she was, my hot young aunt, after almost two years with no sign or word of her, a former medical student, pulling pints and serving sandwiches.
To my surprise, she’d shown no trace of recognition, instead serving Sam and me, flashing Sam her professional smile, but then she’d reached out and stroked my face as she grinned at me.
“What’s your name, handsome?” she purred, kissing her fingertip and pressing it to my lips before winking, raking my hair back of my forehead with her fingertips and going off to serve some other customers at the bar.
“Well fuck me, that’s a first, innit!” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see one of the locals standing behind me. “Sherry don’t usually say nothing to no-one ‘ceptin’ what a barmaid should. You lucky barstard, oi think she loikes you!”
Sam was looking at me in open-mouthed astonishment.
“You lucky, jammy fucker, how the fuck did you do that? She took one look and practically asked to have your babies! I’m definitely sticking with you; maybe some of it’ll rub off on me!”
At this point, I think a little background is necessary. Sherry was my mother’s young half-sister. Mum’s parents had split-up when she was in her early teens, and my grandfather had played the field for years, before finally settling down again with a new, much younger, as in younger than Mum, if you can believe it, partner. In the meantime, Mum and Dad had met and eventually married in their early twenties, at just about the time Sherry, Mum’s half-sister, was born. Two years after Sherry was born, Mum had me. Predictably enough, my deadbeat grandfather got the wanderlust again just before Sherry was born and disappeared, leaving Sherry’s mother, Rosa Morrison, literally holding the baby.
Rosa was killed when a car skidded and rolled into the bus queue she was waiting in with two year-old Sherry. It was a freak accident; Sherry in her stroller was miraculously unharmed, the car missing her completely, but Rosa and the two other people at that bus-stop were killed. Mum was Sherry’s only known living relative (although Mum knew Rosa had had an older sister, Barbara, who’d dropped out of sight after Sherry was born, and an older brother, John or maybe James, but she didn’t really know where he was, and Mum and Rosa had never really talked about her family) so she took her and brought her up with me. I grew up thinking Sherry was my sister, and Mum and Dad, bless them, never treated her any differently to me. I think for a long time Sherry was convinced my parents were her parents as well.
To me, though, she was always just Sherry, my big sister; I never knew she was my aunt until Mum told us, after Dad had passed away, what had happened, and who Sherry really was. I was in my teens by then, so it didn’t make a lot of difference to me, and it didn’t seem to make any difference to Sherry; she was still my beautiful big sister, still just “Sherry”, Mum was still just “Mum”, always and everywhere, for both of us, and Sherry’s real relationship to me, whether sister or aunt, made no difference, for reasons that will become obvious.
Back to the present day. I was at a loss to explain why she hadn’t just greeted me as her younger brother, as had always been the case before, but I had to admit, the envious looks I was getting from the other occupants of the pub were really quite gratifying.
The rest of that evening was a haze of Sherry brushing past me, stroking my face, flicking my hair back out of my eyes, telling me how gorgeous I was, and at least twice brushing her fingers over my crotch. I decided I’d wait until closing time and ask her where she’d been, and just what the hell she thought she was doing, but try as I might, I wasn’t able to catch her that night, or any other night that week; either I missed her, or she was staying behind to stock-take, or any one of a dozen assorted reasons, but the end result was the same.
I’d spend the evening being flirted with by my big sister/aunt, brushed up against by her, teased and touched by her, and on several occasion being lightly kissed by her, but I was never able to get her alone and ask her why; why the hell she’d disappeared on me, to suddenly re-surface like some lovesick teenager obsessed with me, and why she was making it so obvious to every half-awake customer that she was ready, willing and eager to jump in the sack with me.
I couldn’t even understand why she’d singled me out for this whole “throwing herself at a guy” pantomime she seemed bent on playing out; I was no great shakes as a male specimen, tall, well-muscled, but not heavily built, from four years of Taekwondo and working at the speed bag, and playing rugby at school and now uni.
I had nondescript unruly brown hair that seemed to be forever falling into my eyes, pale-grey eyes, regular, forgettable features, what my dad used to call a “crowd face” and certainly not one to set a girl’s heart a-flutter.
Sam of course didn’t get it; night after night he’d come back to the pub with me, and stand in a puddle of his own drool, stripping Sherry bare with his eyes; she never said a word to him other than to be professionally polite and friendly, and that was all, but she rolled innuendo-loaded comments around me, doing the touching thing again and again, and making me feel very singled-out.
“Go on, ask her!” he’d hiss, nudging me as Sherry rubbed herself against me and grinned seductively, or put her arm around my waist and asked me if I was enjoying my evening as she rubbed her hip against mine, or backed into me with a handful of empty beer pots and wriggled slightly, just for a second, racking my internal temperature and pressure up several notches.
“She’s practically handing you the key to her bedroom, Danny, what are you waiting for, boyo?” he’d moan in frustration-by-proxy, and look sideways at me when I looked away and gave him my stock answer; “I have my reasons, Sam, let it go!”
Sam would then respond with his stock rejoinder.
“Danny, she’s a stunner; what’s not to like? I mean, really? Look, I know you’re not gay, not after what I saw you doing with Michaela McGrath at the Fresher’s Ball, so why so reluctant to knock-over Sherry? She’s gagging for you, boyo! Look Danny-boy, all she wants to do is wrap those lovely long legs around you and crush the life out of you; there are worse fucking ways to go, believe me! You’re turning my street-cred into thin runny shit here, boyo; go get her, Danny, for my sake!”