This went on for days; I finally knew where Sherry was, and I wanted to talk to her, I wanted to know why she just dropped-out of uni and off my radar, where she’d been since, why she’d left me alone, but every night she managed to avoid me, while simultaneously flirting outrageously with me in public, until I began to think seriously about finding another pub; Sherry was too busy playing mind-games for me to take her seriously any more, and my studies were beginning to suffer.
After another week of fruitlessly trying to intercept her, I decided to forego any further visits to “The Old Compass” the following week and catch up instead on some required reading, and so for the rest of that week, I immersed myself deeply in Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology. By Friday evening, I was, however, missing seeing her, so I thought “why not?” and before I knew it, I was once again standing at the bar, ordering a drink from my game-playing aunt-slash-sister. She tried her usual flirting gambits on me, but I just took my drink and my change and retreated to a corner, wondering why the hell I’d come; nothing had changed in the last few days, and it looked like nothing was going to change, either.
I put down my beer and turned to leave, and suddenly she was there in front of me, her professional face gone, her flirty, come-hither expression gone; finally, it was just Sherry, my big sister.
I think I should come clean about something. Since I was 10 years old, and Sherry was 12, I’d been in love with her; to me, she was always the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and I would have waded through molten lava for her. As we got older, my feelings intensified; she occupied my every waking thought, even as another part of me entirely kept telling me how wrong those feelings were. When I grew older still, I used to masturbate thinking of her, images of her dancing and cavorting naked through my mind feeding my feverish fantasies.
When she went away to university I was crushed; suddenly all the beauty in my life was gone, the light that lit my days was extinguished. I knew she wouldn’t come back, not for me, not for anything, so I made sure I was accepted at Southampton Medical School, just as she was, so I could be near her again, to learn as I arrived that she’d withdrawn from her third year and requested her transcript; she’d gone. After two years I’d banked heavily on seeing her again, but she was gone and I was devastated.
“Where’ve you been, Danny, I watched out for you all week, I missed you!” she smiled, a normal, sisterly smile. “I wanted to talk to you, baby-boy!”
I looked back at her warily.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you for days, Sherry, I waited for you outside night after night, but you always dodged me; you knew I was there but you just left me there, and you refused to talk to me inside this place; what could you possibly want to talk to me about now, after two years’ silence, Sherry?”
“Not here, Danny, later, I promise!” She smiled, but I wasn’t satisfied.
“No, Sherry, I’m sick to the back teeth with standing around like a lemon while you play mind-games. I’m staying in the student Halls of Residence on Bailey Street, Building A, Room 212; come and see me there if and when you decide to stop playing silly buggers. I don’t have time to waste chasing around after you. Be there or not, I don’t care anymore; after two years I’m used to not seeing or hearing from you!”
Sherry looked shocked at my rejection of her, but I didn’t care; she’d been bouncing me around like a kid’s ball for weeks now and I’d had enough.
“Danny, I’m…” she began, but I cut her short.
“Look, if you want to play more games, find someone else to wrap around your finger; I looked for you for years, Sherry. I thought I’d lost you forever, but you always knew how to reach me; you just never did. You left me behind without a word, and now you want to crawl all over me and play kiss-chase? I don’t think so. When you’re ready to act like an adult, I’ll be there, for you I always was, but if you still want to play games, find someone else, I’m done with all these mind-games.”
I brushed past her and left the pub, walking out in the full glare of my burning bridges, yet feeling curiously light inside; I’d finally had my say, even if it wasn’t exactly what I thought and rehearsed and wanted to say when I finally found her again. I arrived back at the Halls of Residence feeling calm and self-possessed; I felt I’d handled the thing with Sherry like an adult, and I was sure I’d done the right thing. She had no right to play with my emotions and family connections like that, not after two years silence.
I took a shower, feeling emotionally at ease as well as physically relaxed for the first time in what felt like ages. I pulled on my sleeping t-shirt and sports shorts and settled down to catch-up a little further on the day’s lectures. Eventually I looked up at the wall-clock; almost 12:30, so I guessed she wasn’t going to show, then or ever, so I switched off my reading light, checked my alarm, as Sam and I were going for a run in the morning, and settled down for the night.
I was just winging through that place between sleep and wakefulness when a tapping at my door dragged me back to full wakefulness again. I checked my clock; just after 1 AM. so I staggered out of bed and slipped the chain on, opening the door a crack to see who it could be. It was Sherry. I actually debated for a second whether or not to open the door, but good manners (and the need to see her, and have her to myself, if I’m honest) won out, so I unchained the door with a sigh more melodramatic than heartfelt, and opened it, gesturing her in and closing the door behind her.
Sherry looked, as always, absolutely stunning; she may have been working as a barmaid, but she carried herself like a top-flight fashion model, and whatever she wore, no matter how simple or cheap and off-the-peg, she always looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of Vogue, Marie-Claire, Cosmo, or Paris-Match. That night was no exception; she was wearing a simple blue and white striped top with a wide scoop-neck, skin-tight glossy black pedal-pushers paired with black embroidered Harem slippers, and a navy-blue jacket that looked like a cut-down Burberry trench coat, complete with epaulettes, half-cape and belt. Together with her pale flawless complexion, coral-pink lips, and long, sooty eyelashes framing her large expressive eyes, soft and blue, and very beautiful, with her midnight-black hair roached back into a glossy boy-cut quiff, she looked like a sexy chic 1950’s Parisian beatnik, and truly, deeply fuckable.
“Danny, I’m sorry it’s so late, end of week stock-take and all that I didn’t want to wake you… but I owe you an apology… and an explanation.”
I looked blearily at her.
“Sherry, it’s one in the morning.” I yawned involuntarily, “I don’t need any explanations, not now, I was angry earlier, and I’m sorry…”
Sherry brushed my cheek lightly with her fingertips, even that light contact sending a quick ‘zing’ of pleasure rushing through me.
“Sit down, Danny, you look dead on your feet.” she said, urging me toward my bed. I sat in the middle and Sherry sat on the end, one leg bent up under her, just as she used to do when we were younger and we’d sit up chatting late at night.
“I’m sorry, Danny, really, I thought you knew what I was doing. I thought you wanted to play, that’s why I was playing with you, but I honestly thought that you’d… be into it, play along, the thrill of the chase, that sort of thing!”
I looked at her in puzzlement.
“Sherry, right now I have no bloody clue what you’re on about. All I know is, my big sister, the only family I have left, the one person in the entire world who meant everything to me suddenly disappears for years, doesn’t even come back for Mum’s memorial service, falls back into my life by accident, and all she wants to do is flirt with me. Why, Shel? Why don’t you explain, because, like always, you’ve managed to confuse the fuck out of me! Almost the last thing Mum said to me was that I should look out for you, that I needed to talk to you, but how could I when I didn’t know where you were? I had to arrange the memorial service, go there alone, and stand there alone while everyone else had family around them, and I had to settle her estate, and I had to do it all alone. For God’s sake, Sherry, I was only eighteen, I was a teenager and I needed you, I needed my big sister, but you weren’t there. Where were you?”
Sherry looked at me searchingly, her eyes boring into mine, although I don’t know what she expected to see in there other than a complete failure to understand what she was going on about.
“You really don’t know, do you, Danny?” she murmured, and I shook my head again; know about what?