She’s lying on her back, legs slightly bent. Suddenly she shifts one of her legs, and I hear a soft whimper. The blankets are moving slightly. Is she… she is! I feel myself starting to flush and my pulse starts to race as I realise I’ve caught her playing with herself. It’s incredibly embarrassing. I know I should make some noise, roll over again or something, but I can’t… I’m so turned on by the thought that my sister is masturbating not three metres from me that I can’t do anything but slowly slide my own hand back down, slipping a finger gently between my lips and finding my clit. I stroke myself, heart thumping in my chest, listening Alexis playing with herself.
I can hear her breathing tempo increase, and my own does in sympathy. I build and build, then my thighs clamp down on my hand as I start to climax, finger stroking along my clit and lips down to my aching entrance while I hear Alexis whimpering a quiet ‘fuckfuckfuck’.
I lie dead still as I recover, trying not to shudder. My orgasm was strong, verging on epic. And I feel incredibly dirty at the thought that it was the sight and sound of my sister playing with herself that made it so hot for me.
I hear her shifting, and quickly close my eyes to slits. Her eyes are open and she’s looking my way. She watches me, for maybe thirty seconds. Then she sighs, rolls back over, and doesn’t move again.
—
I sleep eventually, and I don’t remember dreaming. When I finally wake up, grey light is filtering through the French doors and Lexi is gone; her blankets are still crumpled where she left them. I stand and stretch the kinks out of my back, then go hunting some coffee. I nurse a cup of it at the table and mull over what I saw.
I’ve always been peripherally aware of Lexi’s habits. She’s an attractive and friendly person, and she’s comfortable with herself. But, fantasies aside, until now I’d not thought of her as a blatantly sexual creature. Perhaps this was a peculiar blindness because she’s my sister. It’s silly, in retrospect. I masturbate. Frequently. It’s only logical that she would as well.
But seeing her actually doing it was something else entirely.
I suddenly realise that I’m still in yesterdayaTMs clothes and grimace. Lexi might mock me for my tangled hair but I still prefer being clean to being dirty. I head upstairs and turn on the shower, giving the gas boiler time to warm the water before I climb in. I catch a glimpse of myself in the full length mirror, and whimsically pause to eye myself.
Lexi called me gorgeous. I snort. My mousy brown hair frames a face that I would call plain. In the right light I suppose I could verge on ‘attractive’. I pout and then blow a kiss at my reflection. Then I shake my head, annoyed at my vanity. Flirty, hot Robyn is an apparition. Plodding backwoods Robyn is the everyday reality.
I undress and strip out of my sports bra and briefs. Then I stand and stare at myself, taking stock. I’m slim and toned, with only the slightest hint of extra padding around my bum. At least there’s that, I suppose. If I can’t be hot I can at least be hardcore. I cup my breasts and squeeze them together gently. Adequate cleavage. Not that it matters right now, given that I’m my only lover.
‘Oh get over yourself’ I tell my reflection, and then climb into the shower. It’s gloriously hot, thank God for gas. I brace my forearms against the wall and then lean forward, letting the hot water sluice over my head and shoulders. I close my eyes and daydream, imagining myself a tropical island with a waterfall this hot that I can stand under for hours without gas bills.
I don’t know how long I stand there. When I open my eyes, though, Lexi is leading against the bathroom door, grinning at me. I squawk.
‘Shit, Lexi!’
‘Don’t stop on my account’, she laughs.
I grab frantically for a towel to cover myself with.
‘Oh God, Robs, I’ve seen just about all of it anyway, I don’t know why you’re bothering to hide your bod from me.’
‘Get out, Lexi!’ I shriek, flailing at the taps as I realise I’m soaking my towel under the shower jet. I spin, blinded by the water, and my usually great sense of balance lets me down.
Ever dropped a melon or a coconut? A head on tiles makes a sound like that. For some reason this thought is uppermost in my mind in the seconds immediately after I fall backwards and crash against the wall.
I vaguely realise that Alexis is shouting. My ears don’t seem to work properly. It hurts like hell. The water is pink. Water shouldn’t be pink. Pink water is bad news, after all. I giggle to myself. Sharks and stuff.
Somehow Lexi gets me out of the shower and props me up agaist the bathroom wall. She pushes a facecloth against my head and gives me an imperious ‘Hold this and do not move’ before she disappears. I woozily wonder where she’s gone. My head is stinging like billy-o behind my ear where the facecloth is.
Lexi rematerializes.
‘Don’t move, Robs. I’m warning you, I’ll slap you if you do’.
She starts wrapping something around my head, pulling my fingers out the way as she gets it down where she told me to hold. Her face is beautifully framed between the white sparkles which are swimming through my vision.
‘You have very pretty lights, Lexi.’ I say, seriously. ‘Can I have some of them?’
‘Shut it, Robs. Don’t move’. She disappears again and I sit, happily watching the lights as they pinwheel. My fingers are tingling as well – maybe the lights are doing it.
Lexi appears again, with a tracksuit. ‘Put your feet into this’, she says as she holds the tracksuit pants for me, and I oblige. She slides them up to my butt, then grabs the top. ‘Arms through the arms’, she says, and I oblige again. This is a fun game! Lexi eases the tracksuit top over my head and pulls it down.
‘Robs, we’re going to the A&E,’ she says levelly. ‘I need you to help me; I’m not strong, so I need you to try to walk downstairs without slipping. Can you walk downstairs and hold onto the banister and not slip, Robs?’
‘Of course’ I slur. ‘Can do it blindfolded.’
Lexi snorts. ‘Ok, on three, I’m going to pull you up. One, two, three!’ and up I go.
God, my head hurts. Lexi pulls up my tracksuit pants and somehow we manage to stagger downstairs. Lexi steers me out the front door and down the driveway to mum’s old Peugeot. The gravel hurts my bare feet. She manoeuvres me into the passenger seat and closes the door. I think that’s the point that I zone out at. I don’t remember going there, coming home, or Lexi putting me into bed, but she must have, because bed is where I wake up.
—
It’s only 11am, according to the clock.
‘Robs?’
I turn my head gingerly. Focussing is a bit difficult right now.
‘Hey’. She’s sitting on Mum’s old chaise longue, which has been dragged into my room to serve as Lexi’s perch. Music is scattered all over the place, but none’s currently in her lap.
I squint at her. I could almost swear she’s been crying. But that’s crazy, Lexi doesn’t cry.
‘How’re you feeling?’ she asks with concern.
‘Woozy’ I manage. ‘Did you catch the guy who hit me?’
Lexi unfolds her legs, stands and steps over to the bed, sitting down facing me.
‘You had me really scared there, Robs.’
I raise a hand and probe my skull. Lots of bandages. Awesome.
‘I don’t remember much. I hope I didn’t bleed everywhere.’
‘I’m really sorry, Robyn’ she says, softly.
‘Forget it, Lexi.’
‘You know I’m not built that way’.
‘Lexi. It’s not your fault I’m a klutz’
‘It’s my fault you were clumsy. I flustered you and you slipped.’
‘Yeah, fair enough, seeing you there was pretty random. What were you doing? Watching me shower?’
‘I’d just got back home. I heard the water running and came up to say good morning. I wasn’t there for more than 5 seconds.’
‘5 seconds, huh?’, I tease.
‘Okay, maybe 10.’
I eye her blearily. ‘Seriously? You were checking me out.’
‘I wasn’t!’ she protests.
‘Alexis Julia Blake, you know as well as I do, 2 seconds is a glance and 10 seconds is checking me out.’
She’s quiet for a bit, and then says, quietly, ‘Alright, you got me.’
Now it’s my turn to be silenced.
‘What? Seriously?’ I finally manage. I struggle with this concept, briefly.
‘I just wanted to have something to judge myself by. You’re the only girl I know closely enough to ask. I was going to ask, but then you went hara-kiri on me.’
I shake my head reflexively, then groan as the pain hits me.
‘Don’t do that’ says Lexi.
I slump back into the pillows. ‘Wish you’d told me not to do that 3 seconds earlier.’ I manage. Then I take a breath. ‘Why on earth do you need to have someone to judge yourself by, Lexi?’
‘Because…’
‘Because why?’
‘Because guys will lie through their teeth to you if they think they’re going to get lucky.’
I stare at her. ‘Um. Ok, outside my realms of experience, but if you say so.’
‘Take it from me. I know so. So I want… I want an impartial judge.’
I throw up my hands. ‘This day couldn’t get much weirder, could it.’
Lexi gives me a hurt look. ‘I’m sorry, Robs, this was a bad idea. Forget I mentioned anything.’
‘No, Lexi, slow down. I’m sore. I’m trying to get up to speed. Ok?’
She leans back slightly, then sighs. ‘Ok.’
‘So you wanted to see me… nude… so you had someone to judge yourself by? Why me? I’m hardly a good yardstick.’
‘Can it, Robs’ she warns me. ‘We made a deal. Stop talking yourself down. Holy shit, girl, half the women in my orchestra want to kill you every time they see you backstage with me. They’re insanely jealous of you.’
‘Of me?’ I say incredulously. ‘Little Robyn stay-at-home, with the twigs in her hair?’
‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ Alexis says flatly. ‘God, if you weren’t injured I’d thump you, you’re so dense sometimes. To them you’re this totally together hard-as-nails girl who probably chases down reindeer on the Tundra and skins wolves with her bare hands. You show up and don’t give a shit and the men in the orchestra go nuts and the women want to eat your liver. You have this aura and these women can’t handle it – they can’t conceive that you have it so together that you just don’t give two brass pennies about their dresses and their hair and the three hours they spend doing their makeup. You have no idea how attractive that makes you.’