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Just Like in a Song

By: MSTarot



There are only so many ways to tell someone you love them, and music has explored every possibly way to say those three words.

"I love you."

Why is that so hard to say?

What is it about those three words that can turn your stomach into a butterfly convention? That can make your heart flutter till you're sure it's about to stop? Just three simple words and they have the power to make your hands shake and your knees tremble.

Do we fear to say them least the one we tell not say them back? Could that be it? We are afraid to say I love you to someone - simply because they might not say it back to us? How cowardly...but how incredibly brave are those that can?

The Fates are three fucking vicious cunts, and there are no other words for them. When they will pull some sick shit like this on a person they are the lowest of the low.

"Play the hand you're dealt"

Well, just how the hell do you play this hand of cards? Hell, what game is this even, because it's certainly no type of Poker I've ever heard of? It sure isn't Texas Hold'em when you realize you've fallen in love with a woman, but she a person you can't be in love with, not in that way. What do you do when the love you have is forbidden? Not only forbidden, but illegal! It's illegal for me to be in love with the woman I love. How fucked up is that? Hell, according to some it's even a sin against God himself that I love this woman the way I do.

I would have to be a fucking damn good poker player to make these cards win.

You see, I'm in love with my sister, Marcy.

Not in the normal "Oh, I love you Sis." sense of the word. No, more in the "I want to make you to orgasm till you're human pudding>" kind of way. And I'm too much of a coward to tell her how I feel. 

How do I tell her that? And just what will it do to us if I tell her and she doesn't feel the same way? Just how badly will it wreck things between us? There's forty years of sibling relationship between us, which can be destroyed in a few moments, with a few words, simply because her younger brother finally found the balls to tell his older sister that he desires her. That I think she is the most beautiful woman to have ever walked the face of the earth. That I've has always thought of her as such.

And can I live with myself, if I tell her, and it tears us apart? Knowing that I have taken from her the Comfort of Family simply for my own greedy needs? What would that do to me? How could I look her in the face, for the rest of our lives, and see revulsion in those sexy blue eyes?

All for my horny greed?

But what if Marcy was to say yes? That she had felt that same way towards me. That was the fantasy that kept me awake at nights.

Of course the possibility of that happening was slim and none, and slim left town a long time ago. I mean she had done the whole "Married her college sweetheart, had the two-point-five children, the house with the honest-to-god white picket fence. She was like the worlds greatest mom, at least since the Partridge Family parked their bus. Marcy had lived the American Dream life and done all the normal things that come with that dream. 

She was a Suzy Fuckin' Homemaker. Martha Fuckin' Steward in training.

Well, I guess someone should have told her that in that "normal" life, the husband often ends up banging the twenty-something year old secretarial assistant at the office. Yeah...someone really should have mentioned the whole male-midlife-crises to her. The, oh, I'm sorry I'm going to go run off and be a Sugar Daddy to little Miss "I suck cock like a hooker, while you-don't, so I'm stealing your husband."

Yep, the American Dream, it's a wonderful story till you get to those chapters near the end of the book. Then like all fairytales things can get a bit grim.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

As I pulled the rented U-Haul box-truck into the driveway of what had been my sister's perfectly normal, split-level ranch house...

As I turned at the perfectly manicured lawn edging, and backed the truck in to park next to her open, carriage-style garage doors...

As I shut off the grumbling motor of the truck and sat, with my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles were white...

...I pondered that question. Should I tell her?

I mean, how can I possibly let her know how I feel? She's single again! I want to cheer! I want to climb up on the roof of this truck here and scream it to the world. "The woman I love is single again...and you fuckers still won't let me have her. Well fuck all of you motherless sons of..."

Glancing up at my side mirror, I saw my niece Sandra come bouncing down the sidewalk from the front of the house. She waved at me, then came around to my side of the truck, leaned into my window, and placed a peck of a kiss on my cheek. I smiled as she did it. She was the very image of her mother, my sister, from when we were in high school. When I had first fallen in love with Marcy.

"Hey, glad you are here," she told me, leaning her chin on her hands resting on the door. "Mom has gone off the deep end. Not once, not twice - but five times today she has had a complete mental breakdown, I've had it. I've got to go, or I'm going to be late for my classes. I've already missed one whole day due to all this drama. Enough is enough!"

I merely lifted an eyebrow in the face of this sudden verbal onslaught.

Sandra sighed, "I get it okay, I understand! Dad ran off with some skank only two years older than me and now Mom is all 'Oh, I'll never know a moment's happiness ever again. I might as well throw myself of Ferguson Bridge.' Well, I've had it!" My niece shook her head. "I did three early college study programs just so I could get away from this kind of high school level drama, crap! This is the same type of shit Belinda used to pull!"

I nodded, remembering all too well her older sister the drama queen. Marcy, a couple of years back, would call me at least once a week just to tell me what trouble Belinda had gotten into this time. I had sat for hours on the phone and listened attentively to my sister, bemoaning that her daughter was such a pain in the posterior, for no other reason than I got to hear the voice of the woman I loved.

"I'll go talk to your mother. And don't worry about her jumping off a bridge; your mom is terrified of heights. She can't even cross that bridge without her hands about to break the steering wheel she's gripping it so hard." I pulled out the keys.

My niece moved back, while I opened the truck door, but her blather rolled on. "I know, right, but that has been all she's been talking about all morning. How terribly unlivable life will be without my father here." Sandra huffed and stomped her foot, a gesture so much her mom's I had to smile "I'm completely sick of it! I've got to go!"

"Well, shoo." I urged her away with the backs of my fingers. "I've got this."

I watched her walk to her little car, wake up the hamster that lived under the SmartCar's hood, and peddle it away down the street. Walking through the garage, I saw the leaning towers of boxes, all with their double-taped corners, and labeled with her label maker for what was in each. Even in the face of a desired suicidal plunge off a hundred foot bridge she was carefully packing and marking things.

With a shake of my head, I went up the short, carpeted stairs into my sister's house, but grinned as I heard her rant before I opened the door.

"I swear that this world will just be better off without the likes of me using up the excess air. I know when I've been told it's time for me to move on. See if I'll let grass grow under my feet on the way out this life. That will show him-'sniffle'- him and his little cotton tailed slut!"

I moved my head, as a small picture frame hit the wall right by the door frame I was leaning on with my arms folded. Marcy's eye went to the size of teacup saucers as she saw that she had nearly hit me with the thrown picture.

"Cotton tailed?" I asked with a bemused smile. 

After a moment Marcy explained. "She went to the company Christmas party dressed a mix between an elf and a playboy bunny. All green velvet and white fur, red fishnet stockings and a stupid wad of cotton stuck to her ass. It was all that she was wearing when I walked in on them in our bed."

"Ah. I see." 

Bending down, I picked up the bent, metal, picture frame, walked it over to the large trashcan and dropped it in without giving it a look see. I figured it was Rodger and I had already seen enough of that man to last two lifetimes. Just knowing that he had been given years of making love to this woman, that I wanted so badly, and to then find out he had cheated on her? Yeah, he was not on my top people in the world list.

"Now what's this about you doing a Greg Louganis off Ferguson bridge?" I asked her when I turned back around. "I told you to keep me up to date on what's going on in your life. Do you have any idea how many tickets I could sell to something like that? Here I am, just scrapping by, and you want to orchestrate something that major and leave me out in the cold? I swear! Ungrateful woman! Did I not let you spend four months out of your life trying to teach me calculus? Did I not have the good grace to call you two times to come bail me out of jail?"

Marcy began to shake her head and smile, her light gray curls brushing the sides of her neck.

"How many nights, through my college years, did I have to call you to come get me from a bar when I was too drunk to tell you were it was at? That you had to get directions from the bartender to find me! How many?" I asked.

"That number cannot be counted without the calculus I taught you," she said, her lips smirked. "Remember any of it?"

"Not the first bit!" Walking over to her I fished out my glasses, plopped them on my nose and pulled them down till they rested on my nostrils and I was looking over the top of the rim. "Now young woman would you care to explain yourself, or shall I call your mother?"

She chuckled at my impersonation of our father. Then she sniffled again and her face went very sad. "I miss him."

"Yeah, so do I. Him and Mom. I want you to think about that while you're here talking about killing yourself in front of your daughter." I pushed my glasses back up my nose hard, something else our dad had often done to make a point. "Think about how it must feel to be her, hearing that kind of crap."

"She knows I don't mean it." Marcy hung her head a bit then turned to put something in a box she had setting on the coffee table.

I caught her arm and made her turn back to look at me. She saw then how serous I was.

"Does she?" I asked.

"Of course! She knows I wouldn't do something that crazy." She pulled at my grip, but I held on. Not saying a word I turned her wrist and slid back the silver charm bracelet she never took off. The scar, which after twenty five years to heal, was hardly noticeable. Unless you knew it was there.

"Does she?" I asked again.

Marcy pulled her arm away from my fingers and pushed back down the bracelet. "Neither of the girls knows about that. In fact, since Mom passed, you and I are the only ones that know, I told Rodger I cut myself in the kitchen when I was in my teens."

She went to turn back to the box, but again I did not let her.

Catching her wrist again, I gentle pulled her arm to me, pushed back the bracelet again and placed a soft kiss on her delicate wrist, a gesture I made all those years ago while she was lying in a hospital bed. I had been just a kid, but had cried myself sick to know that my big sister had nearly killed herself. Over a stupid boy, an idiot boy that hadn't given a moment's thought to breaking her heart, by cheating on her.

When my lips left her wrist, I wrapped her hand up in both of mine and pulled her close. As always when she was this close to me the smell of her was intoxicating. Her face was beautiful as always, despite the effects of time and tears to attack that beauty. With a soft smile, I kissed her ring-less finger. A gesture that, for me held far more meaning, but she got a smile from the kiss.

"So, you here to help your big sister move away from this den of inequity?" She asked, giving her house a disgusted look.

I reluctantly turned her hand lose.

"Hell, no!" I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. "If I came here to help you move I would have brought a U-Haul truck, furniture dolly, moving blankets, tie down straps, packing tape and crap like that. Nope, not here to help you move at all. What kinda brother would I be if I did that, kinda crap?"

"A loving one. Well, if you're not here to help me move, then what are you here for?" she asked with a smile.

"I'm here to help my big sister get tore-off-her-tits drunk, at her new place tonight. That's what I'm here for and you can't talk me into anything else. Not even with promises of your famous cheese steak sandwiches, will you tempt me to lift a single box."

"How about if I make some peanut butter fudge for dessert?"

"Well, that's a monkey's ass of a different color, let's get these boxes in the truck and get out of this place. It smells like cotton tail pussy in here." I grabbed a box and headed down the stairs.

"Hey!" she called down to me before I was halfway.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

I smiled up at her. "You're very welcome."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"So anyway, there I was so drunk I could not tell you what month it was let alone what day, and I had somehow wandered into a Walmart. Maybe I was hungry, I don't know...but I was trying to find the grocery section-or automotive, whichever came first. I somehow ended up in the bra and panties section of the store. And as I'm trying to negotiate my way out of that satin filled hell of unfulfilled promises, who should I come across-but, Mrs. Hardling. Yeah!" Laughing, I took a sip of my drink and leaned back against the sofa cushion I have propped against the wall. "There she was, miss face like a prune, in her Sunday finest, looking down her nose at me, because of the inebriated state I was in, and probably because of where I was. Well..."

"What did you say?" Marcy asked, her face a huge grin of anticipation.

"I looked over at this frilly bright red bra on the rack, and then I looked at her tits. You know how ginormous her breasts are right? And I gave her my best drunken smile..."

"Yes?"

"And I said, if you're looking for something to help lift those you're in the wrong place. Car jacks are in automotive." I shook my head "Then I took a few steps over to where that phone hangs on the post by the fitting room, took it down, hit intercom and began yelling "Watermelon smuggler in aisle ten! Can I get a forklift and security to aisle ten?"

"That was just cruel!" My sister threw a pretzel at me.

"Hey, no...No! That-cunt-spent five years trying to turn our mother against me, every Sunday at church! And for what? For what? All because she walked in on me getting a blow job from her daughter. It was not my fault that she didn't knock on the door of an adult's bedroom before entering. Her daughter was nineteen, I was eighteen so we were breaking no laws. And I mean it isn't like Mrs. Hardling had never seen a dick before! That woman had six kids, god bless their poor little hearts, I know that she had to have at least seen one, once or twice."

"So what happened at the Walmart?" Marcy asked, taking a large sip from her wine glass.

"Oh, I got escorted out and locked up for public drunkenness." I smiled, and then shook my head. "They held me overnight. Dad came and bailed me out, took me home and then Mom read me the riot act about being a foul mouth to the Deacon's wife. She had, it seems, also been at Dad all night long about how could he have raised so ill-mannered a child? Because apparently, my being drunk and telling off the biggest cow in the whole congregation, was his entire fault. How Mom figured that I'll never know." Shaking my head, I rubbed at my temples, where it seemed I was still nursing that hangover from when I was twenty four. "So Mom is letting me have it, and firing shots at Dad at the same time, throwing in every few minutes about how, my getting arrested, had somehow ruined your wedding, even though by that time you were on a plane to Hawaii." I shrugged to show I still haven't figured that one out. "And then in the middle of this...the doorbell rang. It's Mr. Hardling, with his wife standing right behind him. Now Dad doesn't even get in a word before Mr. Hardling cuts loose on how I am the worst person to walk the face of the earth since Judas of Iscariot."

"Oh, my lord." Marcy covered her mouth to hide the giggles.

"Yeah. That pious church Deacon called me everything but a son of God. I was a hoodlum," I began counting off on my fingers. "A juvenile delinquent and how the hell that worked since I was twenty four at that time I don't know, I was a drunk, a malcontent, a troublemaker and a dozen other things. Now never once did he swear but he was about to run out of thesaurus...when Dad held up his hand. Our dear, sweet, church-going father, who never said a harsh word in his life to anyone, held up his hand. Looked Mr. Hardling in the eyes."

"Yes?"

"And our father told the Head Deacon of the church he had been going to for half his life...to go take a flying fuck at the moon and to get that Hindenburg tittied woman the hell off his porch. That her breasts were exceeding the weight limit of the pine boards!"

Marcy, fell over to lay on the floor laughing. She was soon clutching at her sides.

"And that would be the story of just why Mom and Dad changed churches while you were off on your honeymoon," I said after I had waited till it looked like she could breathe again. Picking up the wine bottle I leaned over and refilled her glass, then poured the last of it into mine. "And why Mom didn't really speak to Dad for about six months. That would also be why I moved back out, so soon, after I got back from college."

"I thought that was because you got the job you wanted?" My sister's eyebrows lowered. "Didn't you get hired on right about then?"

I shook my head. "It was about six weeks of ramen noodles dinners before that happened. I was working night shift at the B.P. down on 119, just making rent money for a shitty apartment. Then putting in applications all day at everywhere that my S&M degree would help land a job. Finally, Tramlines Inc. decided they need a new piece of marketing-meat to feed to the corporate wolves up in Chicago."

Marcy absently dipped her finger into her glass and sucked wine off the tip, something that drove me wild every time I have seen her do it. "Well, at least you managed to land a great job. I wasted my degree. I had such dreams of traveling to Paris and learning to paint in the schools where the great masters learned. I wanted so badly to be remembered as a great artist...and instead I became a Tupperware distributor. Amway. Mary Kay cosmetics. Hell, you name it; anything that you can do off your kitchen table to make money I worked it."

"Home prostitute?" I chimed in.

"What!"

"Well, you said anything you can do off your kitchen table to make money."

"I am...Oh, you are such an asshole. Pervert!"

"Yes? What, you expect me to deny that one? Ha! I'm as perverted as it gets, big sister. I'll have you know, I once went on a sorority house's laundry room on a 'dirty' panty raid. We raised over five hundred dollars for charity auctioning them off."

"What?" My sister looked at me like I had grown two heads.

I explained. "We raided their laundry room for dirty underwear. When we got back to the our place, we sealed them up in plastic bags, put name tags on them so we knew who's underwear it was and put them up for sale on the college's underground website-with pictures of the girls, next to a picture of their underwear."


Just Like in a Song



"That is disgusting." My sister took a sip of her wine as if to wash a taste from her mouth. "That's disgusting and you're disgusting for being a part of something like that."

I shrugged. "I was pledging the fraternity. Believe me, stealing dirty underwear was preferable to a few of the things some of the other guys had to do. When rumors of those began to surface I dropped out of that house and went to live in the dorm."

"Such as?" she asked, confused.

"A couple of guys had to get nude photos of their sisters, younger sister preferable but older sister would do if you didn't have a younger sister. Anyway, those pictures would then be posted to a porn site and the pledge would have read the comments the guys were leaving-out loud, every night before bed."

She looked at me her eyes wide. After a second she shook her head. "If I had found out you did that to me I would have killed you. I swear. I would have killed you dead as hell."

I nodded. "I knew that even back then. Like I said, I quit the fraternity. Beside if I had a naked picture of you the last place it would have gone would have been a porn site." Why the fuck did I just say that? Oh, my fucking god how much have I been drinking?

"What would you have done with it...if you had somehow gotten a picture of me naked?" she demanded, her voice carrying more than a bit of anger. "Well?"

There is no way I could tell her the truth, that I would have built a shrine to that image. Worshiped it every day, several times a day-okay, all day long.

"I would have sent it to Playboy magazine," I said as the idea popped into my head. "With a letter that said sexiest girl since Marilyn Monroe, in big letters across the front."

"I can see now why you need glasses so young, your eye sight is horrible," she told me after a moment. "Oops, I've got to get up."

"What's the matter?" I asked when she began to try and struggle her way to her feet.

"Potty emergency!" she cried in distress as she fell back, unable to get to her feet.

Laughing, I got to my feet staggered, and catching her hand, helped her up. With her using my arm, I walked, well stumbled, along beside her to the bathroom and left her using towel racks to steady her way to the toilet. 

Time for some food. 

I wandered off towards her new kitchen, in the hopes that there was something there to eat, besides the pretzels we had been snacking on. Nope. "Hey, old mother Hubbard! Your cupboard is bare!" I called down the hall after a thorough search of the cabinets. "I'm hungry and there was mention of steak sandwiches, and peanut butter fudge that got forgotten about. You don't have any food here."

Her voice answered me from the bathroom over the sound of the toilet flushing.

"No shit, really? I haven't been to the grocery story yet, Sherlock! That was what I had planned for tonight but then my silly kid brother showed up and proceeded to get me shit faced drunk. Order us a damn pizza already before I kick your tail feathers." She weaved and caught the wall. "Okay, I need to go sit back down."

Getting out my cell phone, I called and got that request ordered and on the way. Grabbing another bottle of her wine, I headed back to the nest of pillows and sofa cushions we had built before her, as yet unused, fireplace.

"We seriously need to get some firewood for that thing," I said, as I flopped back down in my seat, and began to fish around for the dropped corkscrew.

"Yeah..." she answered softly.

I looked up at the sad tone to see twin lines of tears running down her face. "Hey, now no tears. This is a house warming. That not a sad time." Getting to my knees, I knee-walked over to her across the pillows. "Come here. Come here, sis. I know."

I wrapped her in my arms as she began to cry.

"That fucking prick. I fucking loved him! I fucking...loved him. He was my life. He was my..."

"Shush, I know. I know." Pulling her into my chest, I held her as she finally let what she had been keeping bottled up for a month out. "It's alright. I understand."

"NO!" She shook her head against my chest. "No, you don't understand. You've never been married. Never given your whole life to just one person and then had them just...toss it all away for the first piece of young-pussy, that came their way." She pulled back and looked me in the face, her beautiful eyes soaked with tears. "There is no way you can understand it, brother. It has never happened to you. You were the smart one. You never fell in love."

I pulled her back hard to my chest and made my drunken mouth stay closed. She clung to me and cried herself out, her head against my shoulder while I buried my face in her fluffy curls. The strands of gray that now mixed with her brown wove together to make soft patterns of contrasting color to my unaided eyesight. I held her close, reveling in the contact. Wishing it would last forever.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"Why did you order green peppers?" She demanded, pulling them off the slice she held and putting them in the corner of the box. "You, know I can't stand veggies on a pizza!"

"Not all of us eating here tonight are pure carnivores. I happen to like to have a few toppings that are not greasy meat chunks." I picked up the discarded peppers from the box and put them on top of my second slice of pizza.

"You're weird," she said, chewing a mouth full of just pepperoni.

"I'm not the one sitting there taking the toppings off piece by piece." I countered.

Marcy shook her head. "See, this is why you never got married. You don't know proper pizza edict. The toppings are like the appetizer and the crust is the main course."

"I have so got to drag you up to Gino's East for some real pizza." I took a sip of my soda. "Pizza you have to have a fork to eat."

"That's not pizza, that is a pasta-less lasagna, with a crust. She leaned back and watched me as she ate. Then after a few moments she asked. "Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I what, Miss vague questions out the blue?" I asked her as soon as I had my mouth empty.

"Get married." 

"Well, I was madly and passionately I love with a married woman and I didn't think it would be right to break up a happy home just because I wanted her." I answered in full honestly, knowing she would never believe me.

"I was being serious!" She nudged my knee with her foot. "Why didn't you get married?"

I shrugged. "I seriously can't tell you the true in any other way. I was in love with someone, who was married. She had everything in life that a woman could want or be given to make her happy and...well, for me to go to her and tell her that I loved her and that I wanted her to divorce her husband, the father of her children, and run away with me...just didn't seem right." I pulled a third slice of pizza loose and gathered the green peppers off two other slices to add to it. "I've been single, basically, because I didn't want any other woman but her. Call me picky."

"I'm calling you a bullshit artist." She smirked. "Why have I never heard about this woman before now?"

"Do you have a bee in your ear? I said she was married. It's not like I'm going to wave semaphore flags from the roof top." I picked up a napkin and gave it a flutter. "I didn't want word getting around and her hearing, which she certainly would have." That I was actually having this conversation and telling the absolute truth to the woman I loved was amazing to me. Not knowing the secret she didn't seem to find it so.

"So what is she like? This secret desire of yours" she asked clearly not believing a word I was saying.

Leaning back into the sofa cushion, I closed my eyes. A smile came to my lips as I had no trouble picturing the woman sitting in front of me. "She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Soft curves, full hips, she's real easy on the eyes. With sexy legs and the most spectacular eyes. Sexy, half awake, come to my bedroom with me lover, eyes. And she's smart, one of the smartest women I've ever known. Book smart, street smart, life smart she-she's perfect. And I love her with all my heart."

Marcy sat silent for a moment, and then her head slowly tilted a bit. "I'm still not sure you're not pulling my leg, but you sounded sincere just then. So...I'll just say this. If she loves the man she is married to, then you need to hang it up. Go find yourself the world's most beautiful woman number two and leave her to live out her life."

"And if she doesn't?"

"Then the best thing you could do is just to tell her. Let her know that in the world there is at least one other person that will love her for the woman she is."

Lord, if it was that simple.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"No, no, no you are not getting out of this one! I want to know...I want to know just why you got so drunk you missed my wedding reception. I remember...I remember back then..."

"You can barely remember your name right now!" I told her, smiling. I bumped her arm with my left elbow, and leaned back into the big cushion we were sharing. The two bottles of wine, then two bottles of champagne, (and a half a bottle of very good Jamaican rum I had hogged to myself,) had rendered us both no longer holding back any minor secrets. Only the rest of that bottle of rum could have teased out of me the un-tell-able secret and luckily for me someone else had finished that a few months back.

"Hey! No evading the issue. You went to my wedding. I saw you there. You had on a very nice suit, with a ridiculous tie."

"Now wait a minute. There is nothing ridiculous about my Mrs. Pacman tie. That thing is a classic piece of Americana fashion."

"You're evading the question, yet again! Now, answer me. You were at the wedding, and then you were in Walmart, so drunk you insulted a Deacon's wife, and then you got your ass thrown into jail. Why?" she demanded.

I shrugged, and looked away from her. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

"No, no, no bullshit. No." She poked my arm. "I will not sit here quietly and let you tell me such a bold faced lie. No. You see, I know what it was-that sent you somewhere other than my reception that day. It was my bridesmaid."

"WHAT?"

"Sharon Yanovitch. My bridesmaid. I figured it out. YOU, DOG!" She poked my arm again. "Sharon is the woman you've been in love with all these years, and she was there with her fiancé, Frank, that day at my wedding. It was the first time you had ever seen him and you got so filed with jealousy...you couldn't handle it. You went to a liquor store, got drunk and told an old Church lady she had huge tits!" My sister crowed at me.

I starred at her like she had grown a second head. "Sharon Yanovitch? Woman, you probably need to stop drinking, cause either you can't handle your liquor or you've done lost your damn mind. I'll have you know I have a lot better taste in women than Sharon...Yanovitch. My god, even the thought of her makes my skin crawl." I shivered.

"Why? She's beautiful, far prettier than any of the girls you went to school with! She was head cheerleader... she was prom queen, she was voted most beautiful senior."

"She has two brain cells! They sit in the dark and call out to each other! 'Hello, hello. Is anyone out there? It's awful dark in here. Can anyone hear me? Hello.' I would just as soon date a duck! At least it's smart enough to get out the rain and its ass is waterproof!" I shuddered. "And her fiancé? Frank! Oh my god, there is a man for the record books."

"He was valedictorian of his school!" she insisted.

"He was home-schooled!"

"He...what?" She stopped talking and looked at me blinking. "Wait, wait, wait. He said went to...wait, no, no that was Sharon said he went to Elwin.

"Frank, went to Elwin high school for about two weeks. He and I were talking, while we were waiting for you and Sharon to get done primping for the wedding, and I mentioned I heard he went to Elwin. I asked if he had played football for the Vikings. Big guy like that, I figured maybe he went out for the team. He got this nose-in-the-air look, and then told me he had quit such a public-brainwashing-institution and then told me he didn't go out for plebeian displays of machismo. That it was a total waste of time and money that could be better spent in a more productive fashion. He then began to try and tell me just how."

"Sharon said he was a genius." Marcy shrugged an apology.

"I could rest my case on the both of them with that statement." I chuckled. "His bright idea for all the money wasted on sports programs was to use it to fund genetic engineering to bring back the passenger pigeon." At her frown I smiled and did my best impersonation of Sharon's husband. "It's an established fact that the extinction of the supermassive flocks of those birds is the true cause of global warming, and that by replacing those flocks we could easily stop the end of the world."

My sister sat there for a second just looking at me. "Seriously?"

I nodded, and popped my cheek with my finger.

"Yep. And he wants to put fart-gas collecting tanks on the backs of every cow in the world, to definitively prove that cow farts cannot be a contributing factor." I picked up the wine bottle next to me and poured the last two drops into my glass. "Sharon? The love of my life? Not in a frigging acid induced nightmare. Here's to your bridesmaid and her wonderful husband. They were made for each other. Cheers." I let the wine drip into my mouth, and then smacked my lips. "We are out of wine."

"That's just as well. I'm too drunk to see straight as is. This is all your fault. I don't do this. I don't sit around and get shit faced drunk. This isn't me at all."

"Oh. Which 'me' would that be?" I put the wine bottle on the floor next to me and absently gave it a spin. "The 'me' who is a great mom, or maybe the 'me' who has a shithead for an ex-husband? Could it be the 'me' who can now be the artist she always wanted to be...but because of the shithead couldn't be? Is it that 'me', or is this some other 'me' that I need to know about? I mean just how many Marcy's are there in this room?"

"Just one, the 'normal' me." She watched the spinning bottle slow to a stop. When it did she leaned over my legs and spun it again. For a moment I had her leaned across my lap, the scent of her hair filling my nose as she sat back up. Then she was pressed against my left side, her head resting on my shoulder. "Just plain old normal me."

I leaned my head over till my ear rested in those soft curls. "You've never been just plain. At no time in your life have you ever been...just...plain. You were beautiful when you were in high school. Even more beautiful in college. You were stunningly beautiful at your wedding and then you only got more so after the girls were born." Reaching down, I gave the stopped bottle one more twist, and watched it wobble round and round. "You are by far the most beautiful woman in the world."

As the empty glass bottle turned I watched the play of lights as they revolved.

"What did you just say?" she asked.

"I said that you're the most beautiful woman in the world." I was absently reaching for the stopped bottle when her hand caught my chin and turned my head to face her. Her eyes were wide and her expression was pure shock. "What?"

"Say it again," she demanded.

I laughed, "What? Do you need your ego stroked tonight?" I shook my head and smiled. "I said you are the most beautiful woman in the world."

Even as I said it, I saw in her face what I had done. Oh, shit!

Blinking, her eyes never once leaving my face, her fingers left my chin and caressed the side of my face right by my ear. I couldn't help but half close my eyes and lean into that caress.

"Would you...would you like to tell me something? Something important." My sister's hand began to shake a little. 

With an embarrassed shake of my head, I looked away from her to the empty wine bottle that was now pointing right at the two of us. Huh. Appropriate.

"Hey, don't turn away. Talk to me. It's okay." Her fingers were back on my chin but I didn't let her move my face. "Please?"

"What do you want me to tell you?" I asked, after taking a deep breath. The alcohol buzz was suddenly leaving me very quickly. "I think I've already said enough. We probably won't remember half of this in the morning. Tomorrow."

"It already is morning. Today became tomorrow about three hours ago. Now I want you to look at me...look at me, and talk...To...Me."

Swallowing, I turned to look at my sister. Her eyes began to take in every inch of my face. Those sexy, half-awake, bedroom eyes.

"Is it me?" Marcy asked when I couldn't say anything. "Me?"

I took a deep breath and had to move my eyes, I couldn't meet her gaze. "What do you want? A confession? I told you I was a pervert, now you know just how much of one I am." Out the corner of my eyes I saw her brow furl as she frowned. Then her hand was taking mine into her soft fingers. When I looked down I saw the whiter band of skin where her wedding band would normally be.

Her fingers tightened on mine.

"I don't think you're a pervert. You're just lonely and a bit confused. It's okay. You've just been alone too long is all, I understand. I'm a little flattered that you have a crush on me. It's sweet. How...hey, hey," She gave my fingers a quick squeeze. "Look up here... how long have you felt this way towards me?"

A crush? A crush? I began to chuckle as I looked up at her beautiful face.

"You were right, well partly right anyway; I did leave your wedding because I was jealous. Does that give you a hint?" I asked.

She blinked as the full details of our earlier conversations began to filter back to her through the alcohol fumes.

"Really?" she said the word as if stunned. Her fingers began to slowly slip from mine.

"Yeah." Taking back my hand, I looked away. I pulled a knee up to my chest, hugged it with my arms, and rested my chin on my kneecap. I couldn't look at her, and see that growing look in her eyes. "You came walking out that room at the Church, in your wedding dress, my god you looked like an angel, and then I had to watch you walk down the aisle on Dad's arm and put another man's ring on your finger." I clamped my teeth together on the bitter memory. "Everyone was smiling, and congratulating you..., he-and it felt like knives were in my heart. Then a couple of the groomsmen made a joke about the wedding night and the honeymoon and I felt like my soul had caught fire. By the time everyone was throwing rice I was already in my car. I spent the next two hours downing shot after shot, bottle after bottle of Jack Daniels. Till I, somehow, ended up in Walmart. Fucked if I know how I got there."

"Why?" she asked softly.

"Because all I could picture was him with you, in your arms. In your bed. The two of your together. And every time I closed my eyes-I saw that and...I would take another drink.

"No. Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, her hand touching my elbow.

"Oh, yeah how would that conversation have played out?" I chuckled. "Hey sis, have I ever told you that I want to make love to you till you're screaming my name? How many times? Oh well for the rest of my life of course. Why? Well, because you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and I'm madly in love with you, of course!" I chuckled ruefully. "Oh, yeah that would have been a wonderful conversation."

"One for the record books," she said softly, using one of my favorite phrases.

"Yeah, call Guinness." I agreed. When her hand brushed my cheek I realized a single tear had fallen from my eye. Embarrassed, I moved my face from her touch. "I need to go."

She laughed. "You, little brother, are going nowhere but in there on that bed and to sleep." She levered herself up onto her knees and leaned in next to my face. "Because if you're so drunk you've confessed to being in love with me-you're far too drunk to drive. Come on."




Just Like in a Song



Her arm came around my shoulder, a brief hug, and then she was bracing herself against the wall behind me, pushing herself to her feet. Then she held her hand down to me.

"Come on," So soft as to be a whisper. "Let's go to bed."

Pushing up with my knee and my off hand, I tried as best I could to not let her take too much of my weight. Then as I got to my feet, my balance went to hell. She caught me but then she staggered a bit herself. Supporting each other we managed the short hike to the bedroom. We had never gotten around to putting the bed together so the mattress and box springs was lying on the floor. That was fine; I could find the floor easily enough. I lay on the bare mattress, then blinked and found myself in possession of a pillow. A sheet was covering me and I looked up to see Marcy walk into the room.

"Here, drink some. It will help the hangover in the morning." She sat down awkwardly on the bed next to me.

I took the bottle of water she handed me. 

"It's already morning." I told her after a long sip. When I looked up, I noticed the edges of her gray and brown hair, where it framed her face, were damp. "Is it raining?" I asked, not knowing why.

She smiled.

"No, I just had to wash my face," she said pulling the sheet up over my shoulder as I laid my head back on the pillow. A pillow that smelled of her.

"Why?" I asked her as my eyes fluttering closed. I was too asleep to understand the answer, but I heard it.

"Too many tears had crossed my cheeks. Get some sleep, little brother." She leaned in next to my face and placed a gentle kiss on my closed eye lids.

"Love...you." I mumbled.

"I...love you too," she said softly.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"Oh, why the hell did I drink the rum?"

Waking up, with the dried-out, scraped-together remains of a pirate ship's bilge on my tongue; I slowly sat up in the bed, only to find that I hadn't really achieved much, since the bed was on the floor. Spotting the bottle of water next to the bed, I took a sip which was a mistake and it simply hydrated the foul taste in my mouth and made it twice as disgusting.

Resting my elbows on my knees, I pressed against my temples with my palms wishing the throbbing in my brain would stop.

I swear the only reason I didn't just lay back down and try to sleep this pain away was the fact that I had to go piss so badly my eyeballs were floating. With a groan, I finally managed to leaver myself to my feet. Stumbling over to the hallway door, I crossed into the plain beige bathroom, and debated a slight pause to wash my face. Nope! Bladder will not be denied.

I had to use the towel rack to hold myself steady so as not to fall into the toilet bowl. A good hour later, I finally stopped pissing and gave the sick looking zombie in the mirror a far too close inspection. Okay...well, I've looked worse. Like the time I nearly died from p-monia.

As I left the bathroom, I looked down the hall towards the living room and saw a foot hanging off the side of the couch.

"Oh no, she didn't." I mumbled and with a shake of my head went down the hall and confirmed that yes she had slept on the couch. With a sigh, I knelt down next to her. "Hey. Hey silly, wake up.

"Humm?"

"Go get on the bed," I told her my hand resting on her shoulder.

"Bet you say that to all the girls you're in love with." Her eyes opened, she looked into mine, and she took a deep breath, and then gave me a soft, quirky smile. "Yeah...I was sober enough to remember."

I had to shrugged, it was my only defense.

"How about breakfast?" she asked after a bit, when the silence got too thick and needed to be cut.

"You have no food," I reminded her.

"Was thinking Waffle House?"

I failed to suppress a gagging shudder, and then began to frantically shake my head.

"I'm having visions of watery coffee, greasy hash browns and an oily-feeling, vinyl-cover booth, with a shiny, plastic-covered menu. All of which is doing nothing to endear my stomach to you at the moment, sis. IHOP? I'll buy." I smiled at her eyes going the size of saucers. I've never been known to buy meals. "Yes, I'll buy. Oh, the things I do for the woman I love."

"We're going to have to talk about that you know?" she said softly.

"Yeah. But not on an empty stomach, nor with a hangover," I said, avoiding the belly dancing white elephant in the room rather nicely. "I need a moment to get the cobwebs out my head, and then I'll drive us to pancake syrup heaven."

"He's buying, he's driving...?" Marcy sat up and looked at me closely. "Where is my real brother and can you keep him longer?"

"Nice."

Leaving her to wake up, I went to the bathroom again. A much longer washing of my face-okay I tried to drown my head under the tap-helped tame the throbbing to a dull hammering that I could abide with till the half-dozen Advil kicked in. Leaving a blurry reflection, I went on a hunt for my missing glasses. Why they were sitting in the empty refrigerator I don't have any memory of, but I'm sure there was a good reason at the time.

And of course Marcy had hidden my keys in the empty cookie jar on the counter. Even as dead drunk as I had been last night that would have been my first place to look for them since our mother used to hide them in the same damn place. Shaking my head...

"Oh, shit that was a bad idea." I mumbled as the room spun.

"You okay?" my sister called from down the hall.

"Yeah. Just the hangover headache from hell, is kicking my ass." Stepping out the kitchen, I glanced left down the hall and caught just a brief moment of my sister pulling her t-shirt past a soft looking white bra, and down to cover a delicately pale stomach with just a hint of a rounded pooch around her navel. My imagination was just beginning a wonderful fantasy where I was nibbling her there for my breakfast when her eyes cleared the collar and she saw me watching.

When she blushed and turned away I felt like finding another bottle of rum and crawling into it. There it was-the exact thing I had feared—the very reason I never spoke to her about what I felt for her, and it just slapped me in the face. Feeling gut punched, I turned away from her in shame and fled the apartment.

"Hey? Hey, wait!"

If not for a fumble of my keys, in the damn U-Haul's door lock, I would have been in the truck when she caught up. Her hand caught at my arm, but I didn't let her turn me around. Then the warm heat of her body was pressed up against the back of me. Her arms came around me and she hugged me tight.

"I love you, I'm sorry if I upset you. It's just—when I turned around and saw you, the look in your eyes, on your face. It embarrassed me. I'm not used to a man looking at me like that." I felt her lay her head against my back "Like I'm sexy, or something."

I leaned my forehead on the cool glass window. "I was—just enjoying the view. That...and I was thinking some very naughty thoughts about you. Sorry, I can't help that. I've never been able to."

Her arms went a bit loose for a moment then she hugged me again, just as tightly.

"When did that start?" she asked. "You were always such a brat to me, when you were younger. Forever, doing stupid shit to get attention."

I shrugged and sighed.

"Think ahead a few years. Right before high school, when you did that typical girl gone boy crazy, crap. I can remember how I felt seeing you with that first pizza-faced...punk! Todd...Todd what's his name?"

"Winston. Todd Winston," she purred. I sucked at my teeth as she began to chuckle against my back. "He was the first boy to ever tell me I looked beautiful." She giggled, "Then he stole a kiss when I wasn't looking."

Turning in her arms I found myself looking down into her beautiful face, so very, very close to my own. Her eyes went wide as she realized this herself, but by then my arms were holding her in place against me.

"He told you that in a note," I said with confidence. 

"Yeah, he did!" Her face took on a shacked look. "How did you know? Did you find it, and read it?"

"No. He bragged about it." I smiled, ruefully. "And, about kissing you. Boys do that. Tell other boys about their 'conquests' of the female gender. My friends let me know he was talking shit about you."

"Yeah, well that was kind of why I dumped him. I was hearing the same thing from my friends." She shrugged. "He was cute, but stupid. But what does that have to do with you?"

"Todd wasn't the first to tell you that you looked beautiful. I was. I told you that! The night of your grade school prom, when you came down in your dress and Mom was helping you with your corsage..."

"You were standing in the hallway, by the kitchen door, just looking at me." Marcy looked down her eyes on the center of my chest, but the sight she saw was decades ago. "You just kept starring, till finally I got mad at you. I yelled at you. Asked you what you what were you starring at?"

"I could hardly even talk." I smiled when she looked up at me. "Kind of like now. But I told you then what I will still say now. My god, you look beautiful Marcy."

I watched a tear roll from her cheek till my sister leaned her head on my chest and repeated what she had said all those years ago.

"Thank you."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

With my belly full of New York Cheesecake pancakes, and enough coffee to float my eyeballs, the very idea of continuing this moving day was repulsive. I could tell from the expression on her face though that Marcy wanted this over and done. Can't say I blame her for that. Her soon to be ex-husband, Rodger, was an ass when they were married. 

And as I turned the U-Haul around the last corner and headed down her street I saw that all the impending divorce has done was make him an even bigger ass.

"THAT FUCKIN, PRICK!" yelled, my sister.

I had to nod my agreement, as I saw the large pile of her things sitting on the front lawn by the trash cans. From what I could see it was most likely everything of hers left in the house that we didn't take yesterday. Marcy kept up a litany of cussing till I pulled into the driveway and shut off the motor. She jumped out the truck with energy born of fury and stormed to the front door. Her foot stomp, while I was getting out and walking around to the other side told me everything.

"The bastard changed the locks! That fucker thinks he can cheat on me, and then throw me out." She pulled her phone from her pocket, and began to punch keys like a woman possessed.

With a shrug, I walked to the back of the U-Haul and rolled up the door. From my point of view all Rodger had done was getting the stuff outside and closer to the truck for me. As she went on the war path, her foot stomping so much as she walked a circle in the front yard, she truly looked every bit of our (one-third, on our mother's side) Native American heritage. With a shake of my head, I just started loading her stuff into the truck.

"He's maggot-scum, Charles, and I want you to make him know that I think this was just childish-ass-shit what he has done, and I hope that this shit bites him in the ass! Yeah...yeah, I will. Yeah, thanks." She hung up the phone and tucked it backing her back pocket. "My lawyer is going to call his lawyer and we may file a legal protest. A Motion for Sanctions. Rodger has no right to lock me out, I still own half of this house till everything is finalized and he might have just lost himself his half for this crap. I'm not at all in the mood to play! I was willing to let him just prance off into the sunset with his cotton tailed little slut, but if that fucker for a second thinks that I'm willing to sit back and let him turn me out my own damn house that stupid son-of-a-bitch has another god damn thought coming."

"Ah, huh," I mumbled tonelessly. Just nod, keep the smile off my face and load her stuff in the truck.

"I'll burn his ass for this one. I know just who to call, I sic his sister on him. She doesn't know a damn thing about the affair; I've been helping that bastard keep the reason for the divorce from his family. Well, if he thinks after this I'm going to keep up that fucking sham just so save his fucking pride with his damn family, I show him. I've fucking had it. I've fucking had it. I gave him two children and half my damn life and just because he thinking I don't put out like a two dollar whore from the strip he's going to leave me and kick me out of my own damn house? I just wanted out of the marriage, now I want to take his ass to the fucking cleaners! I'll leave him sitting on a street corner with a tin cup, and little Miss Cotton tail will see him for the cheap ass piece of shit he really is. That fucker thinks I'll just be walked over!"

"Ah, huh." Load boxes. Head down, don't look her in the eyes. If she see just how close to giggling joyfully I am-oh fuck it's on.

"I'll make him fucking wish his dumbass was never born if he thinks I'll take this shit lying down."

I listened to Marcy storm for the next hour. Twice she got on her cellphone to deliver long scathing messages to Roger's answering machine. Then she began to help load for a bit, too pissed to even talk. For fifteen minutes she did stopped to talk to one of her neighbors. That led to an even longer, and far more heated, phone call when Marcy learned that the young secretary had helped to move all her stuff out here to the curb.

While that rant was blistering the parrot mural paint job off the side of the U-Haul, I got the last of the taped up boxes loaded and the door pulled down.

"Hey, slave driver," I called to her.

Marcy looked up from the staring contest she was having with her I-Pad's screen.

"It's all loaded." I nodded my head towards the truck. "Want to get the fuck out of here? To me this place reeks of cotton tail pussy, and that not the one I want to smell at the moment."

"Yeah, we can go..." Her head shot suddenly around to look at my face and then she turned a dozen shades of bright red. Still blushing, she put up her phone and walked around to the other side of the U-Haul. When I climbed into the driver's side she shot me only a half glance, blushed even deeper and looked out her window.

The ride over to her apartment I thought was going to be quite, till I heard a sigh.

"So you are in love with me." I looked over to find her looking at me. At my nod she shook her head "You realize how impossible that is on so many levels, right?"

"Yeah, I do. Doesn't change how I feel."

She sat quiet for a mile or so.

"What do you think is going to happen? I'm going to jump madly into your arms?" She gave a half chuckle. "Oh take, me take me now...brother? Ah, no. Sorry, not just no but no way in hell."

I gave a shrug. "Still doesn't change the way I feel."

"I'M. YOUR. SISTER! How the fuck can you look at me and think about sex?"

"Cause you have an incredible personality, a decent sense of humor, and a truly spectacular body." I gave her breasts a quick glance. "You are a smart, beautiful, sexy woman, and one of the better people I know on this earth." I looked over at her, then back at the road. "Since I hit my teens, I've had to watch you get dumped by boyfriend, after boyfriend and now by your husband. Men have treated you rather shitty and I might like to be at least given the chance to treat you like you deserve to be treated."

Again there was silence for a mile or so.

"And how should I be treated?" she asked.

"With tenderness, care, love and affection," I answered, as I turned the truck into the parking lot of her new apartments.

"You can do all of that and still be just my brother."

"Yes I can and will." I parked the truck in front of her apartment and turned to look at her. "But as just your brother I can't keep the men that want you for that sexy body away forever. Your own needs, before long, would work against me doing that. You will meet someone and he will sweep you off your feet and then into his bed. And I will once again be on the outside, having to watch the woman I love being cared for by another man and feeling sick with jealousy."

She just sat looking at me.

"What?" I asked.

"I just can't believe you think of me that way. I...I can't wrap my head around it. You're my brother, I shouldn't be a sexual object for you."

I had to laugh at that one. "Do you have any idea how many times I've moaned your name while playing with myself?"

"AHHH! No! No! No! TMI!"

I laughed as she bailed out the side of the ruck and all but ran to open the door of her apartment. Still chuckling, I opened my door and walked around to the back. When I rolled up the door I sighed at all of the stuff that I had to take inside. Where the fuck was Rodger's dumbass now when I needed him to move shit?

"Probably hip-deep in cotton tail ass." I muttered and started toting boxes. 

Marcy didn't say a word or look at me for the next half-hour as I walked past her carrying her boxes inside. As I got the last of the boxes inside she walked up next to me, tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention, and when I turned she gave me a hug. Just a sisterly hug but it put her in my arms none the less. I leaned my head down till my cheek rested in her soft hair, breathing in the scent of her, a hint of her shampoo still lingered but there was more just her scent, a slight dusty smell from all the moving, and the scent of a woman who had been sweating. All of these mixed in those silken locks to deliver to me a mixture I could have breathed for the rest of my life.

Then her hand pushed on my chest and I turned her lose.

"Thank you." She looked around at the apartment with the piles of boxes. "I've got this now. Thank you."

"Sure?" I nodded. "Call me if you need anything."

"I will."

The ride back to turn in the U-Haul was awful lonely. And god awful quiet.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

The phone call from my niece Sandra woke me at two in the morning. The tears that were making her hard to understand annoyed me till I made out her mom's name among the sobs. That sent me flying out the front door and blazing my way through two dozen red lights as I crossed town at record breaking speeds. 

The first thought I had, when I got to the apartment complex, was that the police had beaten me there to arrest me for those red lights, but when I saw the officers standing by her open apartment door I disregarded silly things like being arrested. I had been before after all and had lived through it then. After answering questions about who I was they let me through the door and into the destruction that was her apartment.

The furniture was overturned, the pictures I had carried in, that I'm sure she had hung with precision, were lying in corners askew, some torn. Broken glassware was all over the place. 

"Mrs. Dempsy? Your brother is here," said one of the female officers, who was knelt on the carpet by my sister's side. I looked past that blue uniform to the tear wrecked face of my beloved Marcy. Kneeling down, I took my sister's hand but then she was in my arms-sobbing into my chest.

"It's all gone. All gone. That fucking prick, it's all gone." I held her as she cried and looked to the officer next to me. My lifted eyebrow asked what I had yet to hear. 

"We got called by the apartment's manager. A loud disturbance." She looked around at the destroyed room, and then nodded her chin at Marcy. "Apparently her husband cashed out a lot of their combined saving and transferred the money."

"It's gone." Marcy was rocking in my arms.

"Shhh." I hissed a whisper. "We'll let your lawyer get it back; he'll take Rodger's ass to the cleaners. Come on, I'm here. I've got you, sis. It will be okay."

"MOM?"

I turned my head hearing my niece's Belinda's voice. I held Marcy for a moment longer then turned her lose to let her oldest daughter hug her. I nodded my head to the male officer that signaled me and walked out the front door to the sidewalk to talk to him.




Just Like in a Song



"Now, I have talked to the apartment's manager and the neighbors. I explained things to them and no one's going to press charges for disturbing the peace. But this can't happen again. And...she has to pay for any damages to the apartment of course."

"I understand. I'm stay here and make sure she stays calm or I'll take her to my place." I sighed. "Her husband is being a complete shit heel and she's just had one thing after another hit her for the last few weeks. I'll take care of her."

"Alright. Well, if we have to be called back out..." he warned.

"Understood."

As the officers departed, I noticed that Belinda's husband, Carl, was sitting in the car out in the parking lot talking on his phone. Walking over to him, he nodded held up a hand, and after a moment finished the conversation and switched off his phone.

"How is Marcy?" He asked, then immediately looked at the time on his phone "We can't stay long; I've got to get Belinda back into bed. She and I both have work in the morning."

Ever felt the need to just slap the taste out of someone's mouth? I don't know what Carl had for dinner but he was so very close to losing any residual flavors it wasn't funny.

"I'll go check, but I know I'm going to stay for the night. Belinda can go, I've got this," I told him.

"Thanks buddy. Appreciate it. We were dead asleep when Sandra called," he said with an exaggerated yawn

Uh huh. Most folks are at this time of night, you fuck head.

Leaving Carl before I said something I would not regret for a second, I walked back to Marcy's apartment. Nodding and silently saying "Sorry" to her still gawking neighbors as I went past their doorways. As I stepped inside I heard Belinda's voice from the back bedroom. Then Marcy's as I walked down the hall. I found my sister lying on her bed with her oldest child sitting beside her. Marcy was clutching a rounded, pill-shaped, yellow neck pillow to her so hard it looked like she was trying to strangle a Minion. Belinda looked up as I came walking in.

"Have the police left?" she asked.

"Yeah." I nodded my head toward the hall behind me. She patted her cry mother's shoulder and followed me down the hall. "Look, I'm going to stay the night and Carl is out there about to crack his head yawning. You can split."

"Really?" she asked surprised.

I gave her a half look "Yeah-she my sister. I'll take care of her."

That she is still surprised that a sibling would stay and help their own blood kin out tells me far more about Belinda than I ever wish I had known. Her next words confirmed this to me.

"Well, thank you." She picked up her purse from the chair where she had left it, the only upright chair in the apartment. "In the morning I'll give Dad a call. I'm sure this is all just a mistake in banking somewhere." She turned back towards the hallway to the bedrooms. "Mom, I love you! I'll call tomorrow!"

I closed the door behind her, without the boot to her ass I so wanted to give her, and walked back to my sister's side. I sat down on the bed next to her and let my hand come to rest on her hip. She sniffled and looked over her shoulder at me.

"They're all gone. It's just you and me," I told her.

She nodded, then wiped at her eyes. I wanted so many things just then. To hold my beloved sister in my arms, to kiss her, to lie on the bed next to Marcy and hold her till she fell asleep in my arms. To tell her that I loved her till she believed, believed with all of her heart, that I truly meant it. To tell her what I felt till I made her understand, that nothing her bastard of a soon-to-be-ex did was important...because I'm here for her. I tried with a look to let her know that, but I knew when she looked down and sniffled, that I had failed.

"I love you," I said simply.

She looked back at me. "Why?"

I smiled, and rubbed my hand on her hip a bit. "Because I do. Because I always have. Because I always will."

"I don't think I'm worth loving anymore." She placed her head on the yellow pillow. "I don't know what to do. I was counting on that money, in the accounts, to carry me through till I found a job. Maybe till I got some training. I haven't held a job since I was twenty. I can't even make the rent on this apartment."

"I'll help."

She looked over at me and gave me a look. "You're barely making ends meet your own self. How will you help?"

"By doing things I don't want to do. Taking on jobs I would normally have passed on because they're not the type of work I like. I can make better money than I do, I just haven't had a desire—a need that had to be met that made me get off my ass and do it. You need my help. You will get my help," I vowed.

She looked at me for a few moments. "Is this because I'm your sister or because...?" she left it hanging.

Smiling at her, I gave her pajama bottoms a tug. "Because I want to get into your pants?"

"Yeah. That."

"Both, I guess." With a shrug, I looked at her from her feet to the top of her head, and then looked her in the eyes. A slow smile twerked my lips. "Yeah, I'm going to have to go with both."

"You're so weird."

"Yeah, but you've got to love me." I let my eyes drop to where my hand rested on the soft warmth. "I can't help it, you know? What I feel for you. Not sure I want to help it either. I sure wouldn't change how I feel, not for anything. I love you. I can't help that I want to show you that by making love to you." I grinned. "It's a very common thing for a man to want to do to a woman he loves."

"Not when she's his sister!" She turned over on the bed and I lifted my hand, letting her turn under it, and then placed it back on the now opposite hip.

"Oh, bullshit. If it wasn't a common male thought, there wouldn't be laws against it." I let my hand caress her hip for a second. "You're my sister, yes but you are also a woman, and sitting here, with my hand on your so very soft, and warm hip, I would like nothing more in this world than to show you all the pleasure I know how to give to you. You are an incredibly desirable woman and if I hear you say you're not worth loving, ever again, I will take great delight in..." Lifting my hand, I moved it around her just a bit and lightly delivered a pop to her ass "...blistering your butt like Mom and Dad would have if you said something like that in front of them."

The shocked look on Marcy's face was enough to make me laugh but at that moment I didn't feel like it. All that I felt I could do was stare at her, just look and contemplate what my world would be like without her in it. It was a grim reality that I could not face, could not even think about for long before I began to feel the tears trying to well-up in my eyes.

Getting up, I moved around to the other side of the bed, toed off my shoes, and laid down next her. She looked over her shoulder at me till I was snug up against her back; I pulled a sheet over the two of us and buried my face in her soft hair.

"What are you doing?" she asked after a few moments of silence.

"Staying here with you. Sleeping here next to you. Holding you."

"Just that?" she asked.

"Yeah. No hanky-panky. Don't figure you're in the mood for that even if I wasn't your brother." I pulled her closer to me. "I can't make promises about tomorrow night or the nights after that. I can only spend so much time curled up next to a goddess like you and not want to—worship."

"Tomorrow night?" she looked back at me.

"You said you can't afford this place right? That leaves two options. I move in here with you, which will sucks since this place is small. Or-you move in with me." I placed my hand back on her hip where it had been, secretly enjoying will all of my soul this close contact between her and myself. "Either way, it's just you and me, sis. Us against the world."

She looked away and let her head rest on her pillows again. About the time I thought she had fallen asleep she placed her hand on top of mine.

"But that means we will have to move stuff again."

I chuckled, ruefully.

"Trust me I know." I gave her thigh a squeeze that pulled her ass back into me a bit. "But that's tomorrow's problem."

"It is tomorrow," she said after a moment.

"Marcy—hush your head, please. I'm trying to enjoy being in heaven."

She snorted and shook her head. After a moment she wiggled back up harder against my chest. 

The warmth of her, the smell of her hair, and the lateness of the hour began to take their toll on me then. Brushing my nose through her hair, enjoying the scent; I mumbled "I love you."

Her fingers curled into mine and I thought that was going to be my only answer until, just as my eyes closed, I heard her softly.

"I love you too."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The unusual warmth next to me may have been what woke me. When my eyes opened and I found myself with Marcy's head rested on my chest, snuggled up into the crook of me, I felt my heart—among other things, swell up. Bringing my hand to her face I gently brushed a few stray gray frosted hairs from her cheek.

Her eyes fluttered open when I continued that touch.

"I want this," I whispered. "I want this every morning, till my last day. I want to wake up with you safe in my arms."

She snuggled her face into my chest.

"I think I want this too. I haven't slept this well in a long time." She gave a little yawn that reminded me of a cat. Her hand moved across my stomach and she hugged me to her.

As I lay there, half between awake and in dreams, not terribly sure this wasn't a dream, I knew there would never be a time when Marcy would be the one who made the first move. She was just not the type to do that. And yet while I know what I wanted, I was still terrified of going too quickly and losing her. Making her hate me could be a possible outcome of making too sudden a move towards what I wanted to do. When I looked down I saw her looking up at my face.

"You look like you're thinking very hard about something." She moved and pushed herself higher in the bed till she was propped on her elbow next to me. "Do I want to know what?"

"I don't know what you want. That's the problem." I reached up and moved that stray strand of hair back out the way again. "I know what I want to do. I know how I feel, what I want, what I would love to have happen, how I would like it to play out. But what you want is the one I can't guess at."

She shrugged, lay down, placed her head on the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. Her lips moved a few times, as various emotions played their way behind her eyes, making me long to kiss those sexy, perky lips.

"I don't know for sure. Part of me wants it to all just have been a nightmare." She wiped at her eyes. "For everything to be just the way that it was and for me to be happily ignorant of the fact that Rodger really doesn't give two shits and a penny whistle for me. He and I had been together for so long I was comfortable. Happy most of the time, content the rest. I had my normal daily routine. Knew what was going to happen from day to day. Could make plans without worrying they would fall apart in seconds if I looked away long enough for a cup of coffee. Now? I don't even know where I'm going to be tomorrow. What am I going to be doing next week? I don't have a clue."

Sitting up to lean on my elbow, I looked down at her face, that so very familiar face, one that had been both a bane through my childhood and a fantasy though most of my adult years. The glistening tears at the corner of these sexy half-awake eyes broke my heart.

"Tomorrow you're going to wake up in my spare bedroom. Next week you will be job hunting, most likely." Reaching across her I picked up her cell phone from next to bed and placed it between her breasts. "Till then you're going to call you lawyer and have him take your asshole of a husband's butt to the cleaners for this crap...while I go make us some breakfast."

"I still don't have any food," she said looking at the phone resting where I wanted my face to be. "I was about to go get something when I checked the bank accounts."

"Then I will go get us something for breakfast." I sat up on the bed and noticed I had at some point in the night kicked off my shoes. Leaning down I fished around and found them in the pile of scatter clothes and wreckage that was her bedroom. "Then, after we eat, I'll help you pack back up anything you left unbroken and we'll get you moved to my place."

"I...I don't know if I should do that."

I paused pulling on my shoe. "Why not?"

Marcy wasn't looking at me but at the phone she was clutching. "Because of the secret you've told me."

My mouth twitched then set itself into a firm line. I got to my feet. "You don't trust me to live under my roof? I said I'm a pervert not a rapist." 

"No! No...it's not that at all," She moved and caught the side of my pants as I went to walk away. "No, I trust you."

"Then why?"

She swallowed and looked down. "I'm not sure I trust me."

Looking down at her I felt my heart break. Slowly I dropped to my knees in front of her and put my arms around her as she silently cried.

"I'm so broken inside." She said after a few minutes. "I'm afraid I'll do something I'll look back on and not forgive myself for doing, simply because I'm so messed up."

"I understand. I do. Now, listen to me." I lifted her head by her chin. "I love you. I won't ever put pressure on you to do something you wouldn't want to do. I'll be simply your brother."

I hugged her to me tighter than before.

"I'm not sure I can ever see you as just that anymore," she said holding tight to my shirt. "I can't, not know what I do now. How can I?"

"Marcy, nothing has changed from yesterday, a week ago, or ten years back. I've always felt this way." Moving my hands from behind her back I cupped her hands and held them to my chest. "I'm still your brother."

"Who wants to fuck me," she said giving me a quirked smile.

I quirked an eyebrow "You say that as if it is a bad thing?"

She sighed and covered her face with her hand

"Go get us breakfast, you perv."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

When the last of the croissant wrapped cheese sausages and the flaky cannoli were memories I began the task of helping my sister to pack back up her things. Luckily she hadn't taken the time to take too much out of boxes yet and she hadn't destroyed too much that was still packed. A few boxes made terrible sounds when moved, but those could be sorted out later.

With a sigh for my bank account I went to the U-haul store and got the same truck I had just returned and began the task of yet again refilling it with Marcy's things.

Marcy? Well she spent the day on the phone. Calm at first, then with a growing rumble that resembled an approving thundercloud. The storm broke as I was loading the last of the stuff into the truck.

"WHAT!"

With a shake of my head, and the hum of "Riders on the storm" trying to slip past my teeth, I went inside the now echoing apartment to make her calm down before the police got called back.

"Charles, I want you to crucify him by his fucking testacies!" My sister was pacing a circle in her living room. "I want it all now, not a penny less than every fucking dime!"

Walking up, I put a hand over her mouth and leaned in next to the phone.

"Hey Charles, this is her brother. I've got to get her out of here before she gets arrested for disturbing the peace. She will call you back." I held my hand over her mouth, with her eyeing me daggers, till she hung up the phone.

"What do you...!" she began at a window glass shattering volume.

I clamped my hand back into place.

"The police gave me a warning last night. If they get called back you're going to be arrested. Now, shush." I still held my hand there when her eyes burned and her nostrils flared "Find your inner angry voice or I'll find the duct tape."

I very slowly eased my hand away when she finally nodded.

"That fucking bastard took our life savings and bought two plane tickets." She gave me a look that told me she was screaming inside. "Rodger took his little cum-dumpster to the fucking Bahamas. He's going to spend every dime of it down there on her and I won't be left with a penny I don't have to sue him to get."

"But you will get those pennies and so much more." I assured her. "Your lawyer is going to deal with this. Let him do his job, and you will be sitting pretty here in just a few months. Rodger..." I all but spit the name, "...could not have hurt his chances in that settlement hearing more. But, it will do you no good to stand around here yelling at the top of your lungs. Now, let's get the last of this stuff and go get it socked away at my place then see about some food."

"And alcohol." She pocketed her phone and grabbed up a box. "I need booze in a bad way."

I gave my somewhat depleted liquor cabinet at home a mental scan and then gave a hidden sigh for my dwindling cash flow. 

"We can manage that," I promised.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The bento boxes were a stick mess, with starch-thickened sauces drying to off putting glue like consistency, and the last remnants of egg rolls, spring rolls and wonton sat forgotten. There was music playing from my phone, and there was a dvd playing unwatched in the living room. Apollo 13. Simply background noise I had turned on while I brought in boxes then forgotten about, like most everything, under the haze of a seemingly endless round of rum and coke refills Marcy and I had been consuming as we talked.

Of life. Love. Family. Loss. Fear and pain.

As the hours passed, and the rum in the drinks seemed to grow stronger with every drink, she cried more than once. I held my sister to me during those times. Held her and told her it would be okay, that her tears were wasted emotions on a man that no longer gave two shits and penny whistle, to use her phrase, about her feelings. I tried to not let show just how much I was enjoying the close contact between us, but I think I failed. The tears would fade and she would gently pull away from me.

I felt like a leper when she did that. Unclean. Maybe I should have a sign made up and wear it around my neck, or maybe I need a scarlet letter penned to my shirt. A badge of shame to show the world that I was a man sick enough to have fallen for his own sister.

Sitting on my couch looking down into my glass, feeling the emptiness of the seat next to me, she had gotten up an left me there after that last bout of tears, I wondered just what I could say that would bring her out of her depression. Or my own for that matter. 

I had not considered just what having her in the same house with me would be like. I had figured it would be similar to when we had shared the same home as kids. But that had been years ago and those memories had been dulled with too many late nights of inhibition. The reality of the woman I loved in my place and me not being able to even hug her without her pulling away from me was a pill of bitter bile.

"Hey."

Looking up from the half full glass, I saw her standing in the door to the hallway. She was using it to help hold her upright. I noticed she had changed into soft looking flannel pajamas.

"It's late, little brother. Let's call it a night." She leaned her head on the doorframe. "Come tuck me into bed."

Closing my eyes, I nodded and shot down the last of my watery rum. How bitter a pill indeed.

I had to have the arm of the couch to help steady me but once I was on my feet I managed a semblance of sobriety. Marcy stood there watching me, her head still on the wood door jam, her eyes never leaving my face. When I got close to her she smiled and held out her hand to me. Taking those delicate fingers I followed her to my extra bedroom, dodging around the stuff I had pulled from it to make room for her bed and other stuff. 

"Have to find a place for all of that tomorrow." I thought as I stepped into the room.




Just Like in a Song



Marcy turned and looked up at me. She slowly smiled.

"I know what is going on behind your eyes, in that head of yours. What you would like to do." She reached up and pushed my hair back from my eyes then she lifted my glasses from my nose. "I don't think I will ever be able to do something like that with you, but I would like to have you beside me tonight. I've had too much tearing pieces of my heart into shreds; I could use the comfort of...my brother...holding me while I sleep." 

My god how beautiful her face looked. How incredibly sexy those bedroom eyes were. How delicious her lips looked. 

My fucking god how bitter this pill.

"I would like that too but...I'm not made of stone." Moving my hand to the back of her neck I pulled her face into mine and at the last second lifted my head and placed a hard kiss on her forehead. "I love you. I have to go to my own room. I'm sorry I can't."

Leaving her there alone in that bedroom had to be the toughest thing I've ever done in my life. Even watching her marry another man had not hurt this much. I could hear her crying when I pulled the door closed behind me, and took the two steps across the hallway to lean my face into the cool wall beside my bedroom door. I noticed I was softly whispering her name to myself. Her name and three words.

"Marcy, I love you."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Pondering just how many hangovers a man can wake up from in a single week's time and still live through it, I rolled over in bed to find my sister sitting on the bed beside me.

"Did you need something?" I asked, as I reached to my nightstand for my glasses. She didn't answer. "Marcy?"

"Yeah. Yeah I needed something. And it wasn't there for me when I asked for it." She looked down my chest to where the crotch of my flannel sleep pants was tented from morning wood. "Because of that."

With a groan I sat up, put my back against the headboard and drew my knees up towards my chest. Resting my elbows on my knees I gripped the back of my head to try and comfort the throbbing pain behind my ears.

"Sorry."

"Is that the best you have?" she asked after a moment. "That you're sorry? I need my brother and instead I got a closed door. Why?"

I rubbed at the ache between my eyes.

"Simply put, because your brother is also a man." I looked up at her. "A single man, a man that is madly in love with you, desires you and was too drunk to trust himself in your arms. In your bed." I looked over at the night stand and picked up a warm, half-finished bottle of water. It tasted of plastic but quelled the Sahara forming on my tongue. "Do you have any idea just how badly I wanted to do that? To crawl into bed with you last night? But I knew, knew in my heart, my head, and my soul that if did that I could never have kept my hands to myself." 

She went to say something but I held up my hand.

"Marcy...you were drunk as well. If I had started kissing you, caressing you would you..." I pointed the now empty bottle at her, "... have told me to stop?"

She looked away from me. After a moment she gave a half shrug.

"And if you hadn't and we woke up in a tangle of sex smelling sheets would you have ever forgiven me? Or yourself?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said after a few second.

"Yeah. And that would be why. If I ever get to make love to the woman I love there will be no regrets." I was about to say more when she jumped to her feet and stormed out the room only to return just seconds later.

"How! How can you think of me that way?" she demanded. "How can you look at me, see your sister and then think about having sex with me?"

"Because, I see more than just my sister! I see the woman that she is. And I love that woman; love her with all my heart." I smiled. "Do you not think I've had this same conversation with myself dozens of times? I've thought and thought and thought about this for decades." I shrugged. "I simply had to finally come to accept that I love the woman that you are. I love you. Want you. Desire you with a fire that will not be put out. Not with time...not with anything I've ever encountered. I've had other women in the bed. Several. I've slept with my share, trust me."

She was looking at me, her arms crossed over her breasts, a frown on her lips. "And?"

"And none of them made me not want you. Even in the middle of the wildest nights of drunken sexual debauchery I would be thinking of you the whole time." I turned from her and swung my legs off the side of the bed. Resting my elbow on my knee, I slid down my glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I cannot change what I feel for you, and I have no real reason to want to."

"Why not?" she asked. "Have you given even a second's thought to what this is doing to me? To know that you..."

"A second's thought?" I came up to my feet and walked around till I was in front of Marcy. "A second? I just told you I've give it decades of thought." I moved my fingers to her chin and lifted her downcast face to look at me. "For me to deny what I feel for you would be as much of a betrayal as what Rodger did to you. Now..."

She looked at me, I could see in her face a moment of apprehension that I might be about to try and kiss her. To touch her in a way she would not be comfortable with.

"... if you will please move out of the doorway I need to go to the bathroom."

When instead of that she slid to the side, I did not hesitate to not move as close to her as I could to slip through the door. Leaning in right beside her ear I placed a single soft kiss on her skin. 

"I love you."

When she moved her hip a bit and her body press my erections up against my belly I moaned.

"I can tell," she said and then a slow smile light up her face. Marcy shook her head. "What am I going to do with you, little brother?"

"I have suggestions but they depend on how flexible you are," I said smiling.

She groaned, shook her head and then rested it on my bare chest. Her hair just under my nose was all silky warmth. I couldn't help burying my face in her hair and breathing deep the scent of her.

"Go. Go, before I let your perverted-self talk me into something I'll regret," she said after a moment. "Besides you're poking me in the belly."

"God, I wish," I said with a chuckle.

She laughed and pushed against my chest while turning us both. 

"Get, you rum-smelling perv." She gave me another little shove, but then caught my hand before I moved too far away. "Hey. I love you too."

I smiled at my sister. "Enough to forgive me for wanting to...jump your bones?"

She nodded. "Maybe even enough to let you do that-someday." I grinned as my heart skipped a beat. She held up a finger. "I said maybe."

Catching her hand, I brought that finger to my lips and kissed it. 

"Here's to maybe."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Marcy and I had settled into a comfortable pattern of life by the end of that first week. Me working, her job hunting. Money was tighter than before she moved in but it wasn't unmanageably so. I wasn't quite sure how to handle the little things though. 

A clean house.

Not since our mom had passed away had I ever come home to find the place I lived smelling of pine sol and looking like it had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life. When I walked in and saw the place, I had stopped at the door and double check to make sure I hadn't walking into someone else's home. I heard her signing in the kitchen and when I followed that sound it was to stand and watch her in amassment. Cleaning. It seemed to make her happier than anything I had seen her doing in the past week.

Then there was the matter of dinner.

I was generally indifferent to what I ate but when I opened the door one afternoon and smelled a half-forgotten scent from my childhood, Mom's baked chicken spaghetti, I had broken down. Marcy had found me there in the living room tears pouring down my face, sobbing. She held me like the broken child I felt like, and then with a smile, took me to the kitchen and gave me a bowl full of delicious memories.

If anything her cooking was even better than I remember our mom's being..

Slowly the reality of what a life with my sister would be like began to sink into my life. And the more it did the more I knew I was going to be forever lost when she finally left to live her own life and I was alone again. I wanted her now more than I ever had and it was for far more than simply a lifetime of desired sex. I wanted this and I had to ask myself what the hell was mentally wrong with her ex-idiot's mind to make him give this up. How? How could anyone take this level of comfort and her level of beauty so for granted as to leave her for a piece of cotton tailed ass?

And how would I survive the loss when she left?

Sitting alone out on my patio after dinner, I pondered that very question as I sipped at a glass of rum and coke.

For leave she surely would. At some point and time. What was to hold her here but the lack of a job and she already had more than a few good leads that were promising. Also her lawyer, Charles, had apparently done some legal miracles and frozen everything monetary that Rodger could access, even things at his company were now off limits to him.

When Marcy was on the phone with him I kept hearing words like "contempt of court" "Temporary restraining orders."

Of course Marcy, to judge by the things she often said, was more in the mind of the Spanish Inquisition.

"Hey."

Looking over my shoulder at her, I enjoyed again the choice of clothes she had picked out for today. The cut-off shorts weren't too short, or the tank-top too revealing but by her normal standards they were risqué.

"Margarita movie night, remember?" She held up a solo cup. "Bartender? Where's my booze?"

With a chuckle, I got to my feet and went to the kitchen. I saw that she had already pulled out my infomercial-bought, totally-overpowered, worth-every-nineteen-ninety-five-payment, cool-to-hell-and-back Ninja blender. I opened my cabinet and started pulling out bottles. Then got fresh and frozen fruit from the fridge.

Marcy started rocking the bottom of her solo cup on the counter.

"Service, barkeep, service." She shook her head. "You're steadily losing your tip."

"I'd like to service you, you..." I shooed her away. "Stand back master mixologist at work."

"Hah!"

"Go pick out a movie already," I told her as I tossed strawberries into my blender.

"I already did, we're going to watch Moulin Rouge." She left the red cup on the counter and flounced off towards the living room.

Watching her oh-so-kissable ass in those shorts, I had to take a quick breath to steady myself. The love of my life and I can only flirt without her getting edgy with me, pulling away, shutting down. Pouring Cointreau and Casa Noble into the blender, I tossed in the fresh pineapple and then my sour mix. While the Ninja did its work I finished the last of my rum and coke and tossed the cup for a fresh one.

Filling two red plastic cups, I grabbed a few paper towels to catch condensation and went to join her on the couch. She already had the DVD in and was leaned back swaying her head to the opening music that was playing.

"Your drink, madam." I presented it with a flourish then rudely plopped down next to her. "So...please tell me you've seen this before."

"It's a musical. Of course not! Rodg...well, dickhead would no sooner watch a musical than go see a Broadway show." She took a sip of her Hawaiian margarita. "Delicious. I like the music I'm hearing so far."

I eyed my sister for a moment. 

"Want any warnings about the movie?" I asked, knowing the sad ending. 

"Nope, I'm good." She sucked in her cheeks sipping at her straw. "Damn, this is good. Excellent work, barkeep. You've earned your tip."

I huffed a chuckle. "And what tip is that? Don't take wooden nickels?"

Marcy leaned in and whispered right by my ear. "I tip better than that."

When I turned to face her, my sister's hand caught my face and turned it just a little more and then our lips met. When her mouth didn't immediately move from mine but let me enjoy kissing her I felt like all of heaven had opened up for me. I knew, knew in my heart that nothing, in my life to come, would ever take this memory from me. As the kiss parted I wanted to weep that it ended.

"Figured you've more than earned at least that," she said softly then chuckled. "You're a good kisser." I was about to say something when she put her fingers on my lips. "Not now, let's watch the movie. We can talk later."

When she turned, snuggled into the side of me, propped her feet up on the opposite end of the couch and sipped at her drink, who was I to disobey? I hit play on the remote and settled in to watch.

Having seen this movie several times, I kept drifting back to that kiss, that first magical kiss. Like with most things once you've had a taste of it you want more. I wanted so very much more. I wanted to turn off this TV, sweep this woman up into my arms and take her to bed. I wanted to cover her whole body with kisses. I wanted...I wanted...

I wanted her. 

Marcy. 

I smiled when she laughed at all the predicable parts in the film. The silly moments, narcoleptic Argentines, tone deaf piano players, Cancan dancing midgets. But as the movie progressed and the dark parts of the story formed she went quiet. Not even the "Like a Virgin" song got a laugh, just a "I'll never hear this and not think of this scene" comment from her.

Then as Spectacular, Spectacular began she sat up and pulled her legs to her chest, hugging her knees.

"Satine's going to die isn't she?" she asked.

I nodded.

"And Christian?" she asked.

"You saw him at the beginning. Alone. Alone in a dark place with no joy in life anymore." I picked up my cup, finding it empty I grabbed hers and went to the kitchen. The blender was filled with melted dregs. I was tossing more frozen strawberries into it when Marcy walking in. I could hear the movie still playing. "You didn't pause it?"

"I don't want to watch anymore." She stopped a few feet from me. "Why did you buy so sad a movie?"

I shrugged. "I enjoyed the music. The story seemed to hit a special place in me, I don't know. I just..."

"You feel like him don't you? Christian. When he had to watch Satine go to be with the Duke." My sister gripped her elbow harder, hugging herself. "That's how you felt at my wedding? Seeing me marry another man?"

I swallowed, nodded once, and hid what I was feeling under the whirl of super-speed blades. The blender turned frozen fruit to frozen slush in bare seconds. Not nearly long enough.

"I'm so sorry," she said when I shut it off.

"You didn't know. It's not your fault how I felt. Feel." I didn't meet her eyes as I filled the two cups. 

"Not then. Now."

I did look up at that.

"I've been wallowing in self-pity because a man I love has told me he no longer loves me." She moved to stand right in front of me but didn't stop hugging herself. "All the while ignoring the fact that a man I love far more than I ever did that bastard is in love with me."

She was then pressed against me, suddenly holding hard to my chest. 

"Marcy?"

"I know how much it hurts to tell someone you love them and have them not answer you back." My sister shook as her body was racked with inner grief. "To want the world to be the way it should be and no matter how much you beg for it to be that way it just ignores you." She looked up at me, tears streaming down from her eyes. "I've been doing that to you. Ignoring your love for me. Making believe it was just some silly crush. I'm sorry, for doing that to you."

Smiling, I brushed her tears away. "Don't cry, my love. You didn't hurt me."

"Liar," she said softly. "I've seen that I have. Well, no more. I won't hurt you ever again, not for loving me."

I was not sure what she meant till she lifted herself and touched her mouth to mine. This second kiss was as surprising as the first, but I reacted to it far quicker.

No flirty peck on the lips, not even the more sensuous kiss from earlier. No, this was a kiss from a woman to a man, being given with a great deal of passion behind it. Passion I returned a thousand fold as all the desire I have for her flowed from me to her through that bridging of our love. Our bodies pressed together. Her hands were in my hair. Her fingers pulled me closer making me kiss her all the harder.

Slowly, ever so slowly she let her body sink back down off her toes, and I followed her lips down. Chasing those kisses, not letting them go. Finally she placed a hand not on my neck but on my chest. I opened my eyes and looked into her smiling face.

"I asked you to sleep next to me a week ago. I needed to be comforted. I still need that." Her hand toyed with my shirt buttons. "Will you sleep next to me tonight?"

"I still won't be able to keep my hands to myself," I said looking into the beautiful eyes.

She bit her bottom lip, and then let her hand follow my buttons down my shirt and across my jeans to cup my crotch through my pants.

"You don't have to." She gave me a flirty smile. "I know I don't intend to even try."

When Marcy turned me lose and took her drink, I had to stop her before she walked away. I hated myself but I had to ask. "Why the change of heart?"

She stopped and looked me up and down. "Maybe I'm seeing you more as a man, and less as my goofy, kid brother." She shrugged. "A man I can desire. Know what I mean?"

Looking at the woman I have loved for most of my life, I smiled.

"Yeah."

She smiled back at me. "Let me go change into something comfortable, sorry...I've never been one of sexy outfits. Will PJ's do?" she asked, with a laugh hovering behind her words.

"You in my arms is all I want," I told her truthfully. 

Marcy nodded. "I feel the same."

I watched her leave the room and my mind was doing backflips. Was this really happening? A totally surreal feeling had settled over me at some point during that kiss and I was simple drifting feeling like the world had skipped tracks and I was not listening to the song I thought I was. Once removed from reality, I drifted out the kitchen and turned off the forgotten movie. Christian was crying, the Duke was walking out the Moulin Rouge. Their love and lust was lost to them both.

That mine was waiting for me was a thought beyond my minds ability to fully contemplate. When I approached her bedroom door and pushed it open with a tap of my knuckle on the wood, the sight of my beloved sister, sitting in the bed, her hair loose on a propped up pillow.

She smiled. 

"No need for you to be bashful. I'm nervous enough for both of us. Come here. I won't bite, unless you ask me to." She blushed. "I'm sorry, I'm too nervous to be sexy and flirty."

"Stop apologizing." I shook my head. "There is no need. You're beautiful."

"Thank you." She took a deep breath "I haven't been with a man other than with...well, with him... since I was a teen. I can't promise you a wild night. I've never been too Spectacular, Spectacular in bed." She shrugged giggled.

Pulling back the covers on one side, I knee-walked to beside her and laid down, my head on the pillow pile.

"All I've ever wanted was simply you. To me you have always been erotic." I took her hand. "Come here."

She swallowed, then nodded a little and curled herself into the crook of my arm.

Letting my hand rest on her side, I looked down into those sexy eyes I had always hoped to see from this angle. My fingertips brushed her side, just under the edge of her pajama top. Her eyes were devouring my face.

"I love you," she told me then. She wet her lips. "I would have never in my life thought of being here with you like this; about to do this with you, but now that I'm here I wouldn't have it any other way. Kiss me again...please."




Just Like in a Song



It took no effort to lean in those few inches but I felt like I had to cross miles of my memories to manage that distance. The past shredded at the feeling of her mouth on mine. So many fruitless years of wishing for this finally blossomed into life. When I felt her tongue touching mine, I was happier than I had ever known my life to have been. I felt myself beginning to harden at even so simple a thing as a kiss.

Marcy seemed to all but melt into my side at that point. Her body was a warmth and a softness that I pulled to me, letting my hands slowly roam. Touching her. Tasting her lips, neck, and the soft skin under her ear. And she responded by holding me to her all the more. A smile was on her lips when I returned to them then a soft almost purring sounds came from her. I lifted myself up a bit and looked down at her face. She opened her eyes and smiled. Then laughed.

"What's funny?" I asked.

"I've forgotten what it's like to be in bed with a man that I've never known. You're all caution and worry that you might move too quickly, touch me too soon in a place too intimate." She bit her bottom lip. "I'm just a bundle of nerves you won't like the little things. My boobs sag a bit. I have stretch marks around my hips from having the girls. I'm pudgy as..."

I kissed away her words and then kissed her some more to make them stay away. After a few more she began to giggle.

Smiling, I looked down at her face.

"I never have wanted anything more in my life than to hear that from you," I gave her a single peck more. "because I've been kissing you."

Marcy gave a smile then a slow shake of her head.

"I'm in your arms, I'm in your bed, and just how I've agreed to make love to you I'll never know but I'm going to, and you're delighted that I giggle?" She asked grinning at me. She reached up and removed my glasses, I watched her place them on the night table then she snuggled herself in under me more. "I want you to do something for me."

"Anything but help you move so much as one more box," I said placing my hand along her side.

She smile and placed a hand at the back of my neck, her fingers in my hair. She pulled my head down and whispered into my ear. "Make me forget that I was ever married. Help me erase that mistake from my life, forever."

When the warmth of her breath along my neck bringing the last need encouragement to my body. I nodded. "That I can do. That I surely can do."

"Promises, promises," she whispered nibbling at my neck.

Taking her teasing mouth back against mine, my hand went to work on the buttons of her flannel PJ's, only to have her hands meet mine and begin to undo them all the faster. Then I was touching her bare skin, warm and smooth as the finest silk. My mouth left her lips and passed across that darker freckled throat to those pale as milk breasts and then to her rose-wine colored nipples. I sucked her into my mouth, growling at the sound of pleasure it brought from her.

One nipple to the other, I wanted them both and had to make myself not be too aggressive. Then I was being directed to do that very thing. I sucked harder, then harder still making her whimper. She clawed at my head.

Releasing the hardened tip with a pop I sat up and with a grin caught her pajama bottoms. She giggled when I upended her taking them off her so fast. That giggle turned into a gasp when I dropped my head between her thighs and buried my face into her with no warning at all. Marcy was clawing at my head even as my tongue began to taste the nectar I had craved for far too long. Like a man parched getting water at last I drank deeply from her, drank and licked for every extra drop.

"Wait, no. Don't do that." She begged.

Looking up at her I blinked. "Why not?" 

She blushed and leaned forwards to try and get me to move from where I was.

"Because I don't...reciprocate." She shook her head. "Sorry. It's wrong for me to not do that after you've, well, gone down on me. So please I don't have to have that done to me."

With a smile, I placed a kiss on those silky folds of skin that had been growing wet under my tongue.

"You don't have to Marcy. This is a pleasure for me all by itself." I looked across the white plain that was her stomach and past the valley of her breasts to her lovely face. "I will happily do this for you for you all night long and you don't have to do a single thing for me but enjoy it."

She gave me a peculiar look. "Really?"

"Let this be your answer," I said with a grin.

"OH, MY GOD!" she screamed as I buried my tongue as deep into her as I could, and sucked in her...everything...into my mouth. Those hair-laced puffy outer lips, the slicker than sin inner lips that my tongue was pushing through, her clit as well passed my lips, and then I moved just enough to bring that nub between my lip and tongue. I suckled at her as she gripped my hair by the handful and screeched moans of pleasure.

Settling myself into place between her thighs I cupped her plump ass in both hands and lifted her to my mouth like I was eating watermelon, and I got just as wet just as quickly. I gorged my desire, decades in the making, on her passion given moisture. I lapped at her, and then drove my mouth to jaw-breaking-effort to get my tongue deeper into her.

My sister clawed at my shoulders as the seconds became minutes and the minutes rode the clock around and I did not pause. Not for more than the time it takes to draw a breathe did my mouth pause in the efforts to drive her mad, and such was my goal. I wanted to hear her words become mindless, to hear pleasure take hold of her, to take her so far beyond herself that any words would be gibberish, that all she made was mindless sounds. Animalistic moans. Yes, that was my goal. 

And to achieve it I would not, and did not, falter.

Only when my sister lost herself in her third or fourth orgasm did I finally rest my mouth. Getting up I slowly shed my clothes, all the while looking down at the deliciously naked woman laying so very open and ready for me. Her eyes were closed and I smiled to see her riding the last moments of the pleasure I had given her. There was a delicate smile on her lips that I wanted to see there forever.

Walking on my knees back between her legs I smiled at her when her eyes opened. She looked down at my hard cock and nodded, languidly.

"Please," she said, all but breathless. "Now."

Her legs opened wider and she helped me when I caught the back of her knees to hold them up. Then I was between her warm thighs and she was pulling me down to rest my weight on her. I slipped into her with her hand guiding me in between those slick folds. 

When I caught most of my weight on my elbows and was right in front of her face, she placed her mouth next to my ear. Holding me tight to her, she whispered her love of me, her everlasting love. She begged me to let her give me as much pleasure as I had just given to her.

And give it she did. She lifted her hips to meet every thrust, matching my movements like we had danced this sexual dance for all our days. I moved and she moved with me, two bodies joined now by far more than a blood tie, but by the desire to give and take all the pleasure we could. To live, to live in this moment till this moment became the next and then to live in that moment.

As I pulled her to me and she clutched at my body we forgot things like the world and its silly laws. Here in this room, in this bed, they were meaningless. The world was meaningless. Its sole purpose was to give us a place to exist for these few precious minutes of ecstatic shared pleasure.

I wanted to weep when I felt the end coming on me, but she cradled my head to her chest and praised me even as I cursed myself that I had not lasted longer. Her lips placed kisses in my hair even as her hands soothed the deep scratches on my back her fingers had caused.

"I'm sorry for hurting you," she tried to apologize but I kissed those words silent. 

When I slipped out of her and rolled over to lie next to her, she curled herself against me and I brushed her sweaty gray-peppered hair back from her face. She placed her head on my chest.

"Lord, how your heart is pounding." She looked up at me. "Was I that good for you?" she asked with a grin.

"That was everything I could have ever wanted it to be. A thousand fantasies never even came close to being with you for real."

Marcy laid her head back on my chest after a moment.

"It's been so very long since I was with anyone that wanted me that badly. That didn't see sex with me as simple a chore to be taken care of. Thank you. Thank you for making me feel that again." Her hand ran down the trail of hairs to my stomach. "What now?"

"Now?" I nuzzled my cheek into the top of her head. "Well, I can't say I'm as young as I was when I first thought about doing this with you, but you give me a little bit to recover and I'll be happy to..."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" I asked.

"What is next for us? Shall we spend the next few years living in each other's arms? Days working at simple jobs, nights in this bed together." She let her fingers move through that trail of hair lower than before, past my belly button. "It sounds wonderful but... What about when the rumors start? What then?"

I began to softly chuckle.

"What's' funny about what I asked?" she sat up and looked at my face.

With a smile I shook my head. "I just got to make love to a goddess, the fulfillment of half a life of wishful thinking, and you want me to answer questions I've never thought I would have to find answers for?" With a laugh I caught her and pulled her down to me. "We will work out tomorrow...tomorrow, but till then I'm not going to spend a second worrying about it."

She looked at me, smiled then shook her head. "You never change."

"And I never will." The seriousness of my tone made the smile slip from her lips. "No matter what rumors, no matter what happens tomorrow I will never change. I will always be the one person that loves you more than anything in this world."

I watched the slow tear fall from her eye, down her cheek, to land on my chest. Marcy shook as she put her head down to rest on my chest, smothering her own tears.

"I'm not worth that much love. Not from anyone."

I pulled her to me tight.

"To me you are. To me you always have been. To me you always will be." I placed a hard kiss into her hair. "I love you, and I always will."

"I love you, too." She nodded her head under my chin. "You're right, you're right. Let tomorrow be soon enough to worry about things like rumors"

I looked over at the clock on my night stand. I smiled.

"It is tomorrow."