Ryan watched as Lily gunned her little Toyota and sped off in a spray of moist dirt. A cool drizzle had started and he could see that many of the mourners shivered and cursed under their breaths and wished they had the audacity to break the sacrosanct mourning mob. Ryan dug his hands deeper in the pockets of his woollen overcoat and raised his face to the drizzle – he loved that Lily had Grace's impulsiveness, but he also wished she did not share her mother's impatience. But his own patience waned as the group broke into little clicks, each sharing a moment about the impact Grace had on their lives. Soon, Ryan stood alone over her grave and looked down at the empty hole that was to be her final resting place. Off to the side the burial crew waited patiently till the last farewell was given.
"Well, Grace," Ryan started as the drizzle slowly shifted to full blown rain. "This is quite a predicament you've put me in. I've been on back order for you for the past 15 years ... waiting for you to say you loved me and you pull this stunt? That was a wake up call." Ryan laughed to himself, sure that Grace was looking down at him from wherever she was and flipping him the bird with a smile that could charm the wings off an angel – he realized that would be the only way she would ever get her wings anyway.
"Wat was it you sang to me ... 'You got too much future/I got too much past/We'll never be together/It was never meant to last'. I guess you were right about that. But hat didn't matter to me, really. I'll never regret the 15 years I waited. Those were some of the best years of my life ... even if we never got together. But that was then; I have a long road ahead of me." He let the white rose he had been holding fall onto Grace's coffin. "And don't worry, I'll take care of Lily. She's taken this harder than she lets on ... I hope I can be there for her the way she needs me." Ryan turned around and walked to his Honda, put the car in gear and pulled away without glancing in his mirror while the burial crew dropped the first shovel full of dirt on his past.
Thirty rain soaked minutes later he was pulling in to the driveway of the house Lily had shared with Grace and that was now hers alone. Using the key Grace had given him when she and Lily had moved in five years prior, Ryan found the house to be a shambles of boxes and covered furniture. Each light he flicked on as he went from one room to the next displayed the efforts Lily had put in to bury Grace's ghost. He wondered what Lily was trying to do – suppress her memories of Grace to disguise the emptiness or just put them away to better get on with her own life? He thought he would have the answer soon when he heard stumbling and a muted curse from upstairs. His hands still in his pockets, Ryan took the stairs 2 at a time till he stood before Grace's bedroom. He opened the door and the first thing he noticed were the piles of pictures strewn across the bed haphazardly – he peered over them; they were all of Grace and him and Lily at different times of their relationships.
As he looked at the photographs, he consciously noticed, for the first time, the uncanny resemblance between Grace and Lily. Each was the mirror of the other with the only difference being their ages. He also noticed the glances they cast his way in the photographs where he appeared to pay attention to one woman over the other. Ryan removed his overcoat and cast it on the bed and picked up a picture of all 3 of them together: he was in the middle while Lily was at his right and Grace at his left. Only 15 years separated them in age – when Ryan had met them, Grace was 30, Lily was 15 and he was 20. A young mother trying to make her way and cope with a rebellious teenager, and an infatuated male tethering on the edge of boyhood and adulthood, unsure what defined either stage of life.
"Quite a family, weren't we," Lily said as she stood in the doorway. She was wearing the short blue silk robe Grace often wore. Lily was holding a glass of red wine and her face was flushed with drunkenness. Ryan scanned the floor and found an empty wine bottle by the bed – he also noticed another opened bottle on the dresser. Ryan noted that Lily's legs were bare – and he glimpsed for the first time how tone they were. He remembered how she had been a dance teacher until she tore ligaments in her knee in a biking accident. Lily moved slowly to the bed to join him. As she walked, the robe sometimes opened, offering Ryan flashes of her bare breasts and erect nipples that poked against the sheer material.
"You look so much like her," Ryan said as his cock stirred. He suddenly dug his nails into his palms – this was not the time to get all horny around the daughter of the first woman he ever loved!
"I do, don't I," she said as she sat on the bed, tucking her knees under her but not bothering to close her robe. She took a deep sip of the wine and handed Ryan the glass. Lily rummaged through the pictures till she found one showing Grace in a bikini taken while they were on vacation. Lily touched the picture with her thumb. "The same brown eyes. Same shoulder length blond hair. We both have freckles across a button nose. She was a bit taller but my tits are a cup bigger – but you know that, don't you?" Lily put the photo down and took the wine glass from Ryan's hand her fingers lingered on his for a moment. "Twins out of time, that's what we were."
She then got up and walked to the dresser and opened a drawer. Lily put the glass on the dresser surface and undid her robe. Ryan stared at her transfixed as the robe fell – his lower lip trembled as he watched her naked reflection stare back. He witnessed her heavy breasts heave as she exposed herself to him-- from her reflection he knew she had planned for his eyes to drink in every inch of her toned back, rounded hips and bulbous ass. She took out a floral print summer dress that she languidly slipped over her head and across her sumptuous figure. She then tilted her head to the left, lifted her mane from her neck, and sprayed Grace's favourite perfume in the crook.
"Do you like the way I look?" she slurred while bracing herself on the dresser. "Am I everything you remember about her?"
Ryan swallowed hard as his mind flashed to the first time he ever met Grace Harper. She had worn the same dress Lily was wearing now. Grace had knocked on his door, eyes full of tears, a small trail of blood and a bruised cheek desecrating her luminous face. Her boyfriend at the time had taken offence that dinner was not ready and that Lily was out beyond her curfew. Holden – the boyfriend -- had pursued Grace down the hall of the apartment building till Grace stopped at the first door where she heard music. Ryan was in college and was a fan of Twisted Sister. When he had seen Grace show up at his door in distress but also glowing with strength that required an anchor, he pledged his heart to her defence. The next few minutes were filled with harsh words and violence that left Holden pinned to the ground in an arm lock applied by Ryan till the police Grace had called picked him up.
Holden never returned and Grace was finally strong enough to give her rebellious daughter the attention she needed while acknowledging but never returning Ryan's unrequited love. But Lily always remained rebellious and headstrong, often migrating from one messed up relationship to another. But all that rebellion was melting away as Ryan witnessed the raw sexuality he had always tried to deny in her.
"Lily, why are you doing this?" he asked as he closed his eyes and fought the rising desire before it clouded his judgement completely.
"I can be the Grace you deserved. You always stood by and gave her the kind of pure love she kept for me." Lily's eyes began to puff and water. "As long as I was there, she never allowed herself to be who she wanted to be, with you."
"She told me about how important you were to her ... how she loved watching you move. She called you an example of graceful violence – we got drunk together once and she told me about a time when you two almost fucked. She said you were beautifully toned because of your swimming and she told me your cock was a piece of art. She said you'd been gentle when she was desperate to be touched. But she said she chickened out because she wanted to let you in but she wasn't ready yet."
Lily finished her glass of wine and poured another one; Ryan traced an imaginary line from the base of the glass while she drank, down her neck to the excessive cleavage of her compressed tits. "I found her so selfish when she told me that," Lily continued after she emptied the crystal and let it drop on the dresser. "I realized then that I wanted you. But you'd never really seen me other than as Grace's daughter. Messed up Lily who needed your protection but was too stubborn to accept it.
