"So, would you like to tell us more?" Kendall asked.
"Would
you
?" Tina questioned.
"I don't think we know each other well enough."
With a nod, Tina inquired, "Can we talk alone? Woman to woman."
Kendall glanced at Joseph for his opinion.
"I'm going to get another piece of cake," he informed them, and then left the table.
"I didn't want to ask this in front of Joseph in case you didn't want to answer it in front of him," Tina began. "But what I want to ask you is the kind of question I could only ask youβor Jackie."
"Ask away."
"Okay," Tina grinned nervously. "But I'm kind of uneasy about asking it for fear of what you might think."
Kendall could see the genuineness of the other girl's emotions. "I'm in no position to judge you or anyone, and for what it's worth, I'm about as open-minded as they come."
That seemed to put Tina at ease. She nodded. "Okay, well, here goes. Have you ever been attracted to your stepbrother sexually?"
Kendall had an inkling that this was where the conversation was headed. After all, she and Mark had almost instantly been attracted to each other, and Joseph and Jackie got together, so it wasn't a stretch that Tina and her stepbrother would be either. Kendall knew there were a number of directions she could go in here, but in these early stages, she decided to keep it simple. "Yes," she answered in an even tone.
"And did you ever act on it?"
And of course, that had to be the next question. As Kendall thought about how and whether she would answer, she realized that she had nothing to lose. She had the people who were most important to her in her life: Joseph; and though strained, Mark and Jackie, because she was certain the situation with them would be resolved. The point was, there was no one else she had to worry about alienating. "Yes."
Tina smiled her relief. "Oh, thank goodness."
"Of course, that begs the question, have
you
ever acted on it?" Kendall felt it necessary to ask.
"Yes. What about Joseph and Jackie?"
"They have also," Kendall didn't feel uncomfortable in saying. "And yes, so have Joseph and I, as have Mark and Jackie." But she stopped short of telling about their foursomes.
Tina's face lit up. "Wow. This is better than I expected."
"Glad I was able to brighten your day. I am curious how you and your stepbrother got started."
With a nervous nod, Tina said, "Okay, I guess that's a reasonable question. Harold and I have been together since we were ten years old. I think we mostly always got along. We had the expected sibling spats and that might have been fueled sometimes by our parents having disagreements about one child getting more than the other. But it was largely harmonious.
"We might have started noticing each other differently when we went through puberty and our bodies were changing. But I think we both really viewed each other as real siblings because we had been together so long, regardless of the fact that we weren't blood related, and I guess because of that, we weren't attracted to each other.
"But that changed during our senior year in high school. Harold was on the football team and the baseball team." Tina smiled warmly. "He wasn't very good and didn't get to play much, but his body really developed. We both turned 18 around the middle of the school year, and that's when I really started to see him differently. And then one day, I caught him jerking off." She paused to gauge Kendall's reaction.
"Go on," Kendall prompted. "Nothing to be ashamed of."
Hesitantly, Tina continued, "He had the most beautiful penis I had ever seen. Not too big, but nowhere near small."
"How many had you seen?"
She shrugged. "Not many real ones. I spied on my stepfather a few times. His was really nice. And that kind of prompted me to look on the internet, and that led to X-rated movies. Anyway, watching Harold stroke himself was pretty exciting. I wanted to burst in, but I didn't. I went back to my room and masturbated. And that started a trend. But he must have just been careless that day because I didn't get many more opportunities to watch him. Still, I had my memory. I hadn't really masturbated much before then, but I really got into after that. It made me feel good.
Real
good. And it made me feel like a woman."
"It
is
kind of exciting watching a guy jerk off," Kendall threw out to help put Tina more at ease because the latter still seemed stressed in telling her story.
That did relieve Tina and she thought, what the hell. So, she told her story no longer caring what Kendall thought. "I was really developing a crush on Harold. So, I started dressing differently hoping he would notice me. I even left cracks in my door hoping
he
would spy on
me
. It didn't seem like he did. Little did I know. Then, one day . . ."
* * *
"How was practice?" Tina asked when Harold arrived home one afternoon.
He merely glanced at her as he headed for the kitchen for a bottle of water. "Good."
The next day, she timed her shower to coincide with his arrival home from practice walking from the bathroom to her bedroom in only a towel loosely wrapped around her.
"Hey," was all he said, barely even noticing her, it seemed.