Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.
-1-
You could say this is the story of why loon calls, lapping waves, and the scent of pine needles baked in the sun get me all hot and bothered. It's the story of the best night of my life—it's long behind me, but I'm not sad to know that's true. Perhaps that's because, in a way, it's never ended.
My mom's side of the family is Irish Catholic, which is to say crazy and numerous. I'm the fourth-oldest of 24 cousins (and counting—my youngest aunt, who's only a few years older than me, had twins less than a year ago), if you can believe it. My theory has always been that with those numbers, odds are you're going to have at least one or two cousins who are objectively hot. In my case, this was my cousin Megan.
She was a few years older than me, so I looked up to her when were little. She lived a couple hours away in a real redneck town, so she had the sort of thick Central Maine drawl actors are always butchering in movies based on Stephen King stories. She cussed like a lumberjack but dressed like the cool kids. She was a great soccer player and downhill skier, and she had the first six-pack abs I ever saw in person—the first I ever touched. When we were young, we saw each other all the time. Starting when I was maybe 9 or 10, she would spend a week with my family every summer. Since I have all brothers, she would always stay in my room.
We were both interested in boys, but by the time we were in middle school it became clear something unspoken had developed between us, a certain tension I'd never felt with anyone else, male or female. She was my first kiss. Our parents' generation thinks you should feel guilty for waking up in the morning, let alone catching feelings for a family member who's the same sex as you before marriage. Still, the thrill outweighed the shame.
There was a sense of inevitability between us, a magnetism we could neither understand nor control. One night, we crawled out onto the roof and she told me she loved me. It wasn't the first time she'd said this to me, but this time her eyes were different. I told her I knew what she meant.
I thought I'd go insane when she went home that year. I could hardly wait for the next time I saw her, or more importantly, for the next summer—the mere thought of that glorious week in July made me so delirious I could barely understand what I was feeling. I only knew I needed more of it, and that meant more of her.
That spring, however, my mom told me Megan's family was moving down to Indiana. She wouldn't be staying with us that year. I can't describe the devastation. I cried for days. I was sure it was all over, our friendship, our closeness, whatever you called what we had. It couldn't possibly survive her moving halfway across the country. Whatever momentum we had built would slowly but surely recede.
We'd talk on the phone now and then. She said she missed me. We saw each other only a couple times a year after that, sometimes only at Christmas. My whole family gathered at my grandparents' house at Christmastime, so it was impossible for us to get away with doing what I knew were both thinking about. Instead we compared notes on our dalliances with boys. We'd steal the occasional kiss in the woods, hold hands when no one was looking. All year I'd look forward to those few stolen moments.
For a while in high school Megan had a pretty serious boyfriend. One of the most difficult things I've ever done is indulge her in those conversations, hiding the irrational sense of betrayal and abandonment I felt. I didn't have a boyfriend. Megan might have been the only one who knew why. We talked less and less. Our conversations had longer, more frequent lapses of silence. Sometimes when I would lie in bed at night, I thought I could feel her drifting further and further away. For two years, her family didn't even come up to Maine for the holidays.
I figured we'd continue that way, maybe until the end of high school, until eventually the phone calls stopped. She'd be off at college, I'd still be stuck in my hometown, wondering what sort of adventures the rest of the world was having, how many guys and maybe girls would get to know Megan as I almost had. It was as if my body still craved her, I don't know how else to put it.
Toward the end of high school, I started making a conscious effort not to think about her. I figured she was thinking about me less and less, maybe even forgotten me, except when she was laughing with her friends about stupid things they'd done when they were younger.
I was doing a decent job, too, until I came home from track practice one day and my mom told me she had exciting news. That summer was my grandma and grandpa's 50
th
wedding anniversary, and to celebrate two of my uncles had rented a huge cabin on a lake up north. The entire family was coming from all over the country to throw them a surprise party.
I had to hide behind the refrigerator door until I stopped blushing when my mom added that I'd finally get some "quality girl time" with my cousin Megan. That was how she put it. I wonder sometimes if she knows more than she lets on. She's the ultimate goody-two-shoes, though, at Mass every Sunday, doesn't drink or smoke or gamble, disapproves of most dancing. Surely she'd have something to say beyond a wink-wink quip if she knew I had the hots for my girl cousin.
The only other thing I remember about that day is what I did in the shower about half an hour later. I'm still surprised I didn't snap the detachable showerhead in half when I came. I felt ashamed of my weakness, of breaking my promise to myself—I was absolutely, under no circumstances, permitted to think about her like that. It was never going to happen, so why torment myself? But like that first meeting of our lips in my moonlit room a decade before, in the moment it felt too goddamn good to care.
-2-
I turned 18 at the beginning of that summer, which would have made Megan 20, almost 21. I hadn't seen her in two years, and I was nervous.
She had taken a gap year after high school during which she travelled throughout Europe and went on a cross-country road trip with her friends, ultimately settling in Colorado, where she was about to start her third year of college. She started out majoring in anthropology, but last I heard she'd settled on wildlife ecology after a brief switch to sports medicine.
She had done so much, seen so much while I was stuck rotting away in the middle of nowhere. What if she thought I was boring now? What if she was too good for me, too sophisticated? For weeks before the family reunion I lost sleep worrying that she'd be different. Maybe she'd even look different—what if she was fat now, or worse, what if she'd gotten even more beautiful? I even had a few nights where I was convinced she wouldn't remember me at all.
Then, the week before the big anniversary party, I got a text from an unfamiliar number asking if this was still me. When I said yes, the next text apologized for losing touch and said it was Megan. She had been looking forward to the family reunion all summer—"literally marking off the days on my calendar"—and in particular she couldn't wait to see me. It must have been five full minutes before I got up the courage to respond.
