You've felt that way ever since they told you. "He's sixteen," you argued. "He's too young to be away from home." That had been mostly selfishness on your part. Truth was, he would probably be happier boarding than being here at home. But you wanted him to stay. "Marisa, your brother was very lucky to get a place in such a prestigious school. And it's just too far away for him to travel every day. You know how heavy his workload has been this year, and next year he's a senior. It can only get worse." "Then we should move," you argued. "If it's so important for him to go there, then we should move." You knew they would never agree, but somehow it was important to try. And, of course, they didn't. But still, the feeling wasn't acute back then. After all, there was still the whole summer to go before he had to leave. And your friends kept telling you how cool it would be with no big brother to cramp your style. You just nodded and smiled and kept your mouth shut. You didn't tell them that it wasn't like that. That Ryan was your friend. They wouldn't have understood anyway. So you spent as much time with him as you could, and you told yourself that when he was gone, you would be okay. That every third weekend would be enough. And you knew it was a lie. You knew, beneath the lie, that coming home to this soulless house every day, with no-one to share it, would slowly drive you mad. It isn't that bad, you tell yourself. It's not like they hurt you or anything. And they don't. Your father has never laid a hand on you. Not to hit you. Not to hug you. He just sits there behind his newspaper, quietly disapproving of the clothes you wear and the books you read and the friends you see. You abhor his politics and his social views, and he abhors yours. But he's never hurt you. Your mother is just an empty shell. She has no opinions, except about clothes and makeup and drapes. Certainly, she has no opinion of you. She knows what colours bring out your eyes, but she has no idea who you are. Ryan knows who you are. And in just a few hours, he'll be gone. "Reese?" You jump a little. Disturbed from your reverie. You look up at him. He has a steaming cup in each hand. He puts one down on the windowsill in front of you. "Thanks." You smile at up at him, and you feel the way the window seat shifts when he sits down behind you. He puts a companionable arm around you from behind, and rests his head on your shoulder. You lean back against him. Tears sting your eyes. You feel stupid. What are you, nine years old? Like it's going to kill you to make your own goddamn tea when he goes. You're an idiot, Marisa. You're mooning over him like those stupid girls at school who want to ask him to the school formal. You'll be batting your eyelashes at him next. "I'm gonna miss you, Reese." You hug yourself. "Yeah. Me too." "You're my friend," he says. Childlike. Morose. You close your eyes and let the tears fall. "Same." He tries to kiss your cheek, but it's awkward from behind, and it winds up being your neck where it meets your jaw. You turn your face into the kiss, sighing. You're going to miss him so goddamn much. You turn a little more, and your lips find his. Just a single kiss. That's all it is. Just your lips pressed chastely to his. More an accident than anything. You don't even know whether it was you or him or both that started it. You just need him close. You need him close before they take him away. His eyes are wide when you break apart. You grope for something to say. "Who was that on the phone?" you manage at last. Pretty lame, Marisa. He looks at you blankly. "What?" His voice shakes a little. "When?" "Before," you say. "About an hour ago." In truth, you have no idea how long ago it was. Time has become distorted the last few days. You've been in a fog. He frowns a moment, but then his expression clears. "Oh! Oh, that. It was Robbie. He wanted me to go over and hang out for a while before I leave." Heat rises in your face. You can taste salt in your mouth. "You're going over there?" "Hell, no! I told him I was spending the day with you. I wouldn't do that." At that, the hurt subsides, and a deeper grief takes its place. Suddenly you want him gone. You want him gone so you can cry. "You should go, Ryan. He's your friend. I'll still be here when you come back." He looks inexplicably hurt. "Reese, it's my last day at home." "All the more reason, then," you say. "I have things to do anyway." He draws away. Releases you, and you feel naked and cold without his arm around you. "Fine," he snaps. You've pissed him off, but there's nothing to be done about it. Not unless you're willing to fall against him and cry your eyes out, and you won't do that. You're hurting, yes, but you're not prepared to play damsel in distress just yet. Leave that pathetic shit for the other tenth-graders. He gets up and leaves. He bangs the door behind him. You drop your head into your hands. You stay there for a minute or two. Just long enough for the first wave of tears to rise up and then ebb away. There are more, many more, and somehow you know that you have to get them out - now, while the house is empty. You get to your feet and walk to his bedroom. His bags are packed, standing neatly by the door. You think that should bring on more tears, but it doesn't. It just leaves you feeling cold. The empty closet leaves you colder still. You stand there in the middle of the room, trembling. His bed is right there by the window. You don't question the impulse. Just slip into his bed and pull the quilt around you. You imagine that you can smell him on it. That the warmth cradling you is him. You hate yourself for the sentimentality of it all, but then the tears come again, and you let them take you under. You don't care how pathetic you look or sound. You give over to them and weep them out in racking sobs, and let the thought of him holding you be your comfort. It takes longer than the first wave - much longer. But at last, the tears subside. You wipe them away, hugging yourself under the quilt, staring out the window into the back garden. Reliving a thousand memories. They overlap with one another, like looking at them through broken glass. It's a big garden, on two levels. There's a steep slope, with steps, leading down to an overgrown area you can't see. What you can see is the big mulberry tree with its wide canopy over the far end of the garden. You used to love playing out there together, eating the mulberries, rumbling and tumbling in the maidenhair ferns on the ground below. A ghost of a smile lights on your face when you think of it. A tremulous smile, tainted with tears, but a smile just the same. You remember chasing one another around the garden. You remember him tackling you. You would land on the ground cover of maidenhair, soft like down, and wait for him to fall down with you and cuddle you and tickle you. He was always gentle once he got you down there, and you never fought it. You arched your back beneath him and let him touch you. You liked it. You liked his hands on your flesh. You liked his warmth. Sometimes he would pick some of the maidenhair and tease it over your face with the lightest of touches, and you would lie there, eyes closed, letting him do it, feeling adored. The tickling stopped when you were thirteen. Your father saw you, and you were old enough by then to have a vague idea of what he was thinking. You felt like screaming at him, "Damn you! We didn't do anything wrong!" But you stayed silent, and he took Ryan aside after dinner, and after that the tickling stopped. You never talked about it. You wonder if he remembers that. It was innocent enough at the time. You liked being touched, yes - but it wasn't what your father thought it was. He never touched you anywhere he shouldn't. Yes, it was innocent at the time. But you think of it, now, when you touch yourself in your bed late at night. You wonder what it would be like to feel the maidenhair down the length of your body. What had Adam said in the Garden of Eden? "I was naked and I was ashamed." But how did he know he was naked? Because someone told him. You think that the stirrings you feel now might be because of your father and the way he reacted back then. You've never thought of Ryan doing it to you, though. In your mind, your eyes are closed. The boy has no face. No name. It's all feeling. Warm breaths. Warm skin. Hands roaming your flesh as Ryan's did so long ago. You unbutton your shirt. Your fingers are trembling. Your hands slide over your flesh. Tentative. Gentle. You have not yet learned the different and equal joy of a firmer touch. You find the rise of your breasts, and the shape of them pleases you. The trails of feeling that spread out from your nipples make you sigh with pleasure. You feel the release of dampness and warmth between your thighs. In your mind, the unseen boy has caught you. His hands are upon you. His mouth is on your neck. Your quaking fingers slip up beneath your skirt and drag your panties to the side. You find the hard, aching place there. You still don't have a name for it, besides the textbook one. You stroke. Harder than you meant to, and it hurts a little, it makes you arch and hiss a little in surprise - but God, the friction is good. The quilt is warm, but you're shivering with need. The boy lowers you down into the maidenhair. When he puts it inside you (and that part is vague, because even though you've used your fingers there, you don't know what that might really feel like) you rock hard, grinding against your hand. You begin to whimper as your body rises, and inside you seize up, searching for that which should be there and is not. In your mind, the boy kisses you, and you kiss him back, hungry, needy. When you break the kiss, you open your eyes, and it's Ryan, it's your brother, and you realise that you knew it deep down all along. You cry out his name when you come. When the tremors subside, you break down in hard, racking sobs. They leave you in painful thrusts with heaving sighs between. There's nothing delicate and girlish about them. This is grief, raw and brutal. It leaves your throat sore and your eyes hurting in their sockets. You love him. You can't have him. And he's going away. You stay there, hugging yourself, staring dully out the window for a long time. Gradually, you get yourself together. You have no idea how long you've stayed here in his bed, but he's bound to be home soon. You force yourself to get up. To straighten the quilt. To go to his little bathroom and clean yourself up. You use a flannel, first dipped in warm water to ease the puffiness around your eyes, then cold, to draw the redness away. He's waiting in the kitchen when you come out. He damn near scares the shit out of you. "You mustn't have heard me come in," he says when you jump. "Want some lunch?" "S-sure," you manage. Completely unnerved. How long has he been home? Was he down here when you were...were... "Good," he says brightly. He lifts up the picnic basket from the floor at his side. You hadn't noticed it. "We're eating outside." Under the mulberry tree, probably, with your luck. You're too fragile for that right now. "Oh, Ryan, I don't know-" "Reese," he says, unexpectedly solemn. "This is my last day at home. I insist you have lunch with me." How can you refuse him anything? "All right," you say. "I guess I'll be having lunch with you, then." He doesn't take you to the mulberry tree, after all. Apparently, whatever deities decide whether a girl's life becomes a bad romance novel (complete with cheesy symbolism) are on your side today. No, he leads you down the stairs to the bottom of the garden instead. You traipse through the knee-high torpedo grass. Your father says it's a weed - that it germinates wild and destroys everything in its path - but you love it. It looks like baby stalks of wheat, fluttering there in the breeze. The whole lower garden is pretty much a field of overgrown grass, with a shallow creek at the property line. Any gardener worth her salt would gasp in horror about it (and your mother frequently does), but it suited you fine as children, and it suits you now. You settle on a spot near the creek - near enough to see it and hear it, but not near enough to be sitting on the rocks. Ryan yanks out the worst of the grass, and flattens the rest. He spreads out the blanket on top. You drop down beside him, picnic basket between you. The grass nearby is up to your shoulders. You like it. It's like being sheltered. You feel like a little kid again, running through the grass, hiding from your parents. Stumbling and giggling. The nostalgia makes you smile. "What is it?" he wonders, smiling back at you. You tell him, and soon you're trading memories. Laughing. Dipping into the food, then the wine (which your parents will, no doubt, be mightily pissed to learn is missing when they notice). You love him for making him laugh when you were hurting so bad. You wind up lying down, side by side. Staring up at the sky. It's a bright, cloudy day. The sort of day where you get sunburnt without even knowing it until later. The effect is soporific. You feel lulled. Sleepy, even. There will be more tears later, you suppose, but right now, lying down beside him in the sun, you're feeling good. "Reese?" he says after a while. "Yeah?" He rolls onto his side. You feel his body touching yours. You open your eyes, a little irritated at being disturbed, and you see him looking down at you. His expression is grave. "What is it?" you say when he doesn't answer. He hesitates. There's a look on his face you haven't seen before. Cautious. Guarded. "I saw you, Reese," he says at last. "This morning. In my room." It hits you like a punch in the stomach. You pull away from him. "Oh, my God," you gasp. He grabs you around your waist before you can scramble to your feet. "Marisa, shit, don't. Stay here. Talk to me." You lay there with your back to him. Shoulders stiff. Mortified. His arm is firm and snug around your stomach. "I didn't go to Robbie's," he says. "I came back. I didn't get why you were acting so weird. I thought you wanted to get rid of me." "I did," you mutter. "Why?" he demands. "So you could cry? So you could jack off in my bed? What the fuck is going on with you, Reese? Have you got the hots for me or something?" "Have I got the *hots* for you?" you echo, turning your head, meeting his gaze with fury. "You fucking prick!" "Then what? You're in love with me? "I don't know!" you burst out. "It's all mixed up! I just love you!" You turn your head away once more. Still mortified. Closing your eyes and wishing this whole thing would just be over. Oddly, this seems to be the right answer. His grip on you loosens, and he moves closer. You can feel his body against your back. His warmth. Just brushing you. Like being kissed by a warm breeze. "I love you too, Reese," he says against your shoulder. "How," you say dully. It isn't a question, really. You don't expect an answer. Certainly not one that changes anything. "I don't know," he says. "I just love you." "It sounded better when I said it." He laughs a little. You both do. You lean back against him with a sigh. His arm tightens around you once more. You touch it with your hand. Holding on to him. Relief washes over you, and you feel the tension leave your body. He still loves you. He doesn't hate you or pity you or think you're awful. That alone is enough to make it better. Not all better, but a lot better. His hand slips under your shirt. Comes to rest against the flesh of your belly. Making gentle circles with his thumb. You lie very still. Waiting. Wanting. "I want what you want, Reese," he says against your shoulder after a while. His voice is low. You tremble when his hot breath reverberates against the flesh at your neck. "I always have." You look at him over your shoulder. Drawn by that hypnotic voice. His eyes hold yours, and there's something demanding there that you've never seen before. Something hungry. You take his hand in yours, and you draw it further around you. Beneath your breast. You want him to touch it, but you don't know how to ask. "Do you want this?" he says. His voice is ragged. You think about it. About him going away. About him being your brother. About being scared of the pain. About being alone. You look at him, thinking about it. In the end, the only thing that makes any sense is his arm around you and his eyes fixed on yours. "Do you?" you ask him finally. "I want whatever you want." A bald-faced lie. He wants you so badly he can hardly breathe. You can see it in his eyes, and you wonder why you never saw it before. But the lie is kindly meant, and it tells you all you need to know. You take his hand in yours. Trembling a little, you lift it to your breast. "I want it." He closes his eyes and sighs. Kisses your shoulder where it meets your neck. His palm cups your breast. Squeezing, just a little. His touch is firmer than yours. Heavier. You like it. His mouth closes on yours. It's like flicking a switch. Hesitancy becomes urgency. You kiss him, hungry and feverish. Nothing like the way you thought your first kiss would be. You twist so you can face him, and his hand grows more insistent on your breast. Squeezing harder. Your nipple is hard and swollen between his fingers. You want it softer and harder both at the same time, and you arch against him, whimpering his name. Your senses are in overload. He's clumsy. You both are - trembling and needy - but it doesn't matter. None of it matters. Nothing but the two of you, sharing breaths, sharing sighs, whispering each other's names into each other's mouths, language lost yet understood just the same. You envisaged softness and sweetness, but the truth is hard and dark and heavy. And it's right. So right. You're shaking when you work his buttons free. You've seen his chest a thousand times. But now you run your hands over it, tracing its contours. You love the slight rises and falls. Your mouth is still latched firmly on his, exploring him, demanding from him, your eyes closed. You let your palms tell you what you want to know. He runs his hand down over your hip. Then your leg. Traces his fingertips back up from behind your knee to the back of your thigh beneath your skirt. You cry out when the tingling races along your legs. Your panties are wet, and you need them gone. You need to be open to him. Exposed. Right now. Shivering, you reach down and unbutton his fly. You drag down his jeans, first with your hands, then with your feet. Hoping he'll get the message and do the same to you. You tug his briefs down at the back, and work the front free of his...his... Well, it doesn't matter what it's called. It's him, and it's beautiful, even if the words for it feel silly. You look down between you, and you can see the smooth, rounded head. You run your palm over it. It's such a strange mix of hardness and springy softness. Like nothing you've ever felt before. "I don't know what to do," you whisper. A little ashamed of your own inexperience. "And you think I do?" he teases, and your shame melts away. He tugs down your panties and you kick them off, almost as an afterthought. Your earlier urgency is forgotten. You want to explore him. Your touch grows surer. You reach lower. Cupping the sac you find there. Feeling the twin roundness inside. You play. Feeling each of them move beneath your fingers. The shapes and textures are all new. They fascinate you. He grinds out your name through his teeth. Dragging it out. "Ree-eese..." You laugh. You can't help it. He's so serious. It's a fond laugh, and you kiss him. Then his fingers are between your thighs, parting you, and the urgency washes over you all over again. You gasp. Hitching breaths in sudden need. Spreading wide for him. "God!" you whisper. "Ryan, God, yes." "Like that?" he asks, tracing circles around your - (clit, Reese, just say it, clit) around your *clit*, and you clutch at his open shirt, your forehead pressed to his. "Yes, like that," you whisper. "Just like that." His breaths are heavy. Warm. "So beautiful, Reese. So fucking beautiful." It's so...heartfelt. His odd little declaration feels like worship. Profane and sacred in equal measure. Your body thrusts against him hard. Your kiss is tender. You want him inside you. You're afraid to have him inside you. "Ryan," you whisper. "I haven't- I've never-" "Me either." "I'm scared." "We don't have to-" You could kiss him. It would damn near kill him to stop, but he'd do it, if you asked him to. "I want to." "I do love you, Reese. It isn't just - just -" "I know." His hand slowed while you talked. Moving just enough to keep your body humming. Now, he kisses you. So long. So deep and slow and tender. You feel your fears melt away. Like shedding a skin. Naked. Vulnerable. Your limbs are loose and free. That kiss brings you to the brink all by itself. You shiver against him. Sinking down on his fingers. Needing to be touched and covered and filled. He strokes you. Slides his fingers inside you, drawing slick juices and smoothing them out over your clit. You're nearly weeping with longing when he touches you. Your sigh is high and keening. "Now, Ryan," you whisper against his lips. "Please." He nods, and he trembles when he puts it against you. "I don't want to hurt you." "It'll be all right," you say. More confident than you feel. "Just go slow." He nods, and you make yourself breathe. Relax. You think about the way it felt in your hands. How much you loved it. You know it will feel so good inside you, if you can just get through this. You want him inside you so bad. You feel the dome press against you. You feel the ache. The need to swallow him up into you. He sinks into you a little way. It's tight. Uncomfortable. But not hurting the way you thought it would. You clutch his shoulders and, seeing his worried look, you nod for him to continue. He pushes deeper. You feel him inside you, parting you, making a path. You feel yourself being...opened. Widened. It feels strange and a little awkward. And yet, beneath the discomfort, you feel something else. Something primal. Something that hungers for the fullness. Something that melds with him, clinging to him like a part of yourself you never knew was missing until you got it back. Suddenly you're rising up against him. Trying to get him deeper into you. He loses his restraint (and you suddenly realise how difficult that slow gentleness had been for him) and he shoves it into you the last couple of inches. That does hurt, just a little, but it also brings that primal hunger to its full height. The wind leaves you in a gasp, a sound equal parts shock and need, and you grasp at his back with your hands. "Oh, my God." "Good?" he manages. Thrusting into you, long and slow and deep. You want it faster, the way you rock yourself at night, but after a few strokes, you feel the new vibrations in your body. Deeper than anything you ever felt before. You nod, whimpering a little. Beyond coherence. Too deep, too hard, too primal to be making love. Too much love to be anything else. "Fuck, that's good," you gasp out. Not soft and sweet like you thought it would be. But good. So good. "Love you, Reese," he says between thrusts. Almost a growl. Not from the heart. From the gut. And somehow that touches you all the more. "Love you too," you sigh out between heavy breaths. "Oh! Ryan. God." He kisses you, and then it happens. The ripples explode into tiny trails of pleasure, radiating through your body. Through your limbs. White heat and freezing cold and gentle warmth all at once. You've come before, but you've never come like this. Never felt such absolute release. Never felt so alive. You fall back on the blanket. Limp, except for your legs, still twined with his. You can hear the creek trickling behind you. You feel the air on your body. He's still thrusting into you, and you take it all in. How he looks. The taut lines of his body. The odd mix of concentration and tenderness in his expression. You trail hands down his chest. You love him like this. And when he lowers his body to cradle you in his arms and match your tenderness with his own, you love him even more. This is a different kind of coupling. The thrusts are barely perceptible. He's fully inside you, and you grind against him while he kisses you. He holds you around the shoulders with one arm, and with his free hand, he teases your neck. Your breast. You touch his lips, and he kisses them. Licks them. Reverent. You whimper. Feeling the need rise up all over again. "I'm gonna come, Reese," he says. Somehow that sends the longing spiking to new heights. You want him to empty himself into you. You want something of him within you when it ends. You nod. Breathless. "Do it, Ryan. I want to feel it." He does. You feel the slight pulse inside you when it happens. The thought alone makes you clench around him. Milking him. You come again - not as hard this time, but deeper, somehow. You shiver beneath him, sighing out his name. You slump together. He stays inside you as he grows soft. You like it. It feels nice, being joined that way. Being one. He smooths back your hair and whispers your name into your forehead. Kissing you. Loving you. You tug him close and hold him tight. "Reese?" he says into your hair after a while. "Yeah?" "Will you come and see me at school? The weekends I can't come home?" There's an urgency, a panic in his voice that makes you frown. "Of course I will." "I don't know if we'll be able to - to - you know -" he breaks off awkwardly, then goes on, "I just need you with me." You nod. "I'll come." You lie there, clinging to one another for a long time. At last, he sighs and pulls back a little. He kisses you, this time the way you thought it would be. Soft. Slow. Tender. You kiss him too, brushing his jaw with your fingers. Caressing him with the lightest of touches. It seems like the right way to end it. You break away at last. You sit up and button your shirt. He lies there, watching you. "Do you regret it?" he asks. You shake your head. "No." You pick up your panties. You ball them up in your hand. "Do you?" "No." You start packing up the picnic basket. He helps you. "Do you still love me?" he asks diffidently when you finish. You stare at him. Shocked that he even needs to ask. "Yes, I do." He looks away. Out over the creek. "Remember when we were little? When we used to cuddle down in the maidenhair? How much we loved each other back then?" An odd kind of nostalgia washes over you. Bittersweet. Almost grief. "Yes, I remember." "I don't ever want to lose that, Reese." You shift over behind him. You hold him around the shoulders. Drawing him back against you. "We won't." He takes one of your hands. Kisses it. "I'm going to miss you." You lean your head against his shoulder. "Me too." You sit there in the sun. Listening to the creek. Remembering the way he held you in the maidenhair down. FIN
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