Liv was gone in the morning. I woke to a soft light and an empty bed. I was still naked, but the sheet had been pulled up over me at some point. The door to our loft room was open, so I wondered if it wasn’t the result of Liv trying to protect my modesty while I slept. It was still hot and the fabric stuck to my skin. The memory of the night before came back to me in a sudden rush. I’d fucked Liv. I’d fucked my sister twice. I’d cum in her twice. And our dad had almost caught us. And we’d gone to bed without really talking about it. And now she’s gone. Fuck.
I had hoped we could’ve shared a hushed chat in bed, before going down to our parents and on with our day. Maybe I shouldn’t have put it off til the morning. Not like I thought we’d be able to solve all the complexities of the situation in a few minutes before breakfast, but it wouldn’t have hurt to start. It would have helped establish that we felt the same as we had the night before, at least. As people say, things always seem a bit different in the light of day. And waking up alone in that bed faced with the realization of what I – what we’d done, things suddenly seemed an awful lot different.
Olivia and I had fucked. Full on fucking sex. Twice. Fuck.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes, my mind whirling. Maybe there was no going on with our day, with our lives. Not in the same way. But was that a bad thing? I’d said I didn’t regret it. But that’d been the easy answer, staring at someone I love, sensing that they needed comfort. Did I really mean it? Did she? Why was she gone? Had she woken up disgusted with herself, unable to be next to me any longer? Was she even now crying somewhere, distraught at our actions and choices?
That was my initial panic. I couldn’t hear any other sounds in the cabin. I couldn’t tell if anyone else was awake. I fumbled around for my phone, trying to see how long I’d slept. It was almost eleven. Makes sense, I’d been up late, and thoroughly exhausted myself in the heat. I decided to go looking for Olivia. And I had to piss.
I threw on some clothes, boxers, shorts, and a t-shirt, and creaked my way down the ladder. Our parents’ door was open, but no one was home. A quick glance into the kitchen told me breakfast had taken place. Wondering where everyone had gotten off to, I relieved myself. I was slightly nervous to go into the bathroom, half expecting to see something incriminating we’d missed in our mad dash the night before. There was nothing of the sort. When I came out dad was in the kitchen waiting for me. He’d been in the garage and must have heard me moving around.
“Good morning. I was starting to think I’d have to give up on you,” He said. Seeing him made me cringe, on edge after Liv and I’s brush with catastrophe. “There’s some eggs left if you want. I could make you oatmeal as well.”
“I’ll probably just stick to cereal, thanks.” I said, becoming more aware of the fact he was treating me completely normal.
“Suit yourself.” There was no apprehension, no sputtering, no nervousness, no anger. Dad was being dad. Not just-caught-his-kids-fucking dad. Just dad. I reminded myself to breathe and walked behind the counter to pour some corn flakes.
“Where’s mom and Liv?”
“Spa day,” Dad said. He was messing with something on his phone. The text was blown up big enough where he could read it without his glasses, meaning I could see it easily as well. He was on a fishing supplier’s website, waiting for the shitty service to load prices. “I thought we could fish today, but then you slept in so long. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I appreciate that.” I mixed in some milk and started crunching away. “Spa day though?” I asked, seeking clarification.
“Yeah, mani/pedis, mud baths, face scrubs. There’s a place in town your mother picked out ahead of time. With you sleeping in, and us not deciding on anything last night, I told them to just go ahead and do it today… You didn’t want to go did you?” He gave me a look.
“Nope.” I said around a mouth full, “not exactly my thing.”
“Didn’t think so. Today’s not supposed to be as hot, so I figured if you woke up in time we could have some father-son bonding. But this late in the day, I don’t think we’ll catch anything.”
“That’s okay, we could still go out. Or at least check out the store you’re looking at.” I was relieved to know, at the very least, Liv wasn’t freaked out enough to alert our parents. I still wished I could talk to her, but now there was nothing to do but wait, even if it did eat me up on the inside.
“Why don’t we get everything ready? We can go check out Jim’s,” my dad referred to the store whose website refused to load. “Then mess around with everything and see how it’d do in the canoes. Then early tomorrow morning the two of us can go out and try our luck?”
“Sounds good to me.” I nodded, finishing the last few bites of my breakfast. I wasn’t often hungry in the morning, and the heat made me even less so. The one bowl of cereal, and the banana I peeled as I followed dad out the door was plenty. He’d dropped the girls off at the spa knowing we’d probably want the car.
It was fun hanging out with my dad. Normally I would have really enjoyed it. Like the rest of my family, it’d been a long time since I got quality time with him, especially doing something that was purely a shared interest. But there was the small nagging fact of my previous night’s activities. I think he could tell I was distracted by something. I ran through what I could say in my head, maybe something about my summer job search, or news about one of my friends. I was worried about being convincing, but thankfully he didn’t ask. Dad was just happy we were spending time together. He was used to me as a person, and let me be in my peculiar mood.
Getting lost in my head, thinking about Liv and I together… It felt surreal. Watching my dad talk bait and tackle with a clerk, nothing seemed different. The world hadn’t ended. No divine judgment had struck me dead. I wasn’t being racked with waves of unbearable guilt. I didn’t feel like a shit person and a worse brother. Mostly, if anything, I felt a small afterglow. Similar to any other time a girl had given me special attention. Staring at a line of synthetic baits, not really listening to my dad ramble in my ear, I realized what that feeling was. I almost laughed aloud at my ridiculous epiphany. I had a crush on my sister.
I’d had a few girlfriends in high school, two to be exact. The first had barely been a relationship, ninth grade kids saying they were dating and hanging out by lockers. I was with my second girlfriend, Jesse, through most of junior and senior year. I lost my virginity to her, though I’d been her third. We were pretty compatible, and might have stayed together had I not gone far away for school. Yet at the same time we weren’t soul mates or anything, and splitting felt as natural as staying together, in a way. College had, so far, been more of a loose string of hookups. My freshman year there’d been a girl in my intro to econ class I really liked. We studied together often and even made out at a few parties. But she got weird when I asked her out. Things got messy. It took me a while to get over her.
The first few months abroad I’d had another semi-consistent hook-up. I knew her from the previous semester, and if I was honest actually liked her a lot. However, from the beginning she’d been clear about our relationship being purely carnal. It was fun for a while, but then she’d started fucking other guys too (without mentioning it at first, which, uh, makes a huge difference) and I wasn’t exactly down with that, deciding to get out of there before I got my feelings fucked over yet again. Then, as I mentioned previously, a dry spell that lasted up until, well, last night with Liv.
Running through those relationships, especially the more recent spotty ones, was my way of coming to terms with how I felt. Thinking about Liv filled me with the same schoolboy giddiness that thinking about any other girl I’d liked a lot had. My nervousness stemmed from rerunning the night’s events back in my head, wondering if it’d been as great for her as I remembered it being for me. Bashfully aware of my feelings toward the situation, and wishing I could know exactly how she felt. Excited to see her, but hesitant toward what that meeting might mean. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that knowledge. It reminded me of how I had felt toward other romantic/sexual interests. It wasn’t different because she was my sister. Well it was. There was one thing that was clearly different.
I would never hurt her. And I knew she wouldn’t ever hurt me.
Which was a new feeling. Considering my recent past, the thought of a partner who wouldn’t just ditch me, who would want to be with me, someone who I loved spending time with as much as being intimate with, it was too good to be true. And I suppose it was. We couldn’t date. Liv would probably never want that anyway. Which is where my one concern came from. It was like the friends with benefits worry, times a thousand. We would never be able to just not see each other. If we fucked this up, we would still be siblings. So our relationship as siblings had to come first, no matter what else we did. As I wasted the day away with my dad, I became more and more anxious to see my sister, and have that conversation. The conversation to figure out where we stood with each other, and reassure myself we hadn’t drastically fucked everything up.
Dad and I got back to the cabin a bit past one. The girls weren’t expecting a ride home til at least three, so we’d decided to do what he suggested, and play with the canoe setup for our eventual fishing. It didn’t take us nearly as long as we thought it would, and we soon found ourselves lounging on the deck, cold beers that had been meant for the following day in hand.