"So where did they come from?" I asked.
"What? The tits?"
"Yeah," I said, "Like, when did they come in? I don't remember you ever looking so top-heavy." She sighed.
"I don't know," she said, "Gradually, then suddenly. I think I grew a few cup sizes in one semester at school."
"Have you been reading Hemingway?" I asked.
"Mhm," she nodded, "I did my culminating assignment in English on Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises."
"I know. Was it tough?"
"The assignment? Not really. My teacher made Hemingway pretty easy. She said it was all only bells, balls, and bulls."
"Well... yeah, that's kind of fair. But I more or less meant about having the tits come in so suddenly. That can't be an easy thing to have to deal with on top of the rest of high school."
"It wasn't easy," she aid after she thought for a moment, "Mostly it was the other girls, weirdly. Rumours and shit. You only have to look a certain way before other girls will start calling you a slut behind your back."
"Were you?"
She rolled on her side and looked me in the eye. "Was I a slut," she asked.
"Yeah."
"No," she said, "I don't think so. But, you know, a girl can only here so many mean things about herself before she starts to believe them."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know," she said, "I don't want to think about it. Didn't you say you were going to sleep?"
"Yeah," I said, "I did."
"Good night."
She rolled over to face the wall. I stared at her back for a while before I rolled over and let sleep come on me at its own pace.
***
The sun was deep in the room when I woke, so I knew it was later in the morning. Sam was gone from the room. I dressed and went into the kitchen expecting family ruckus and breakfast hullabaloo, but it was empty and looking pretty much untouched. Out the window I saw Sam lying out in a bikini next to the fire. Even from a distance, the size of her breasts was noticeable. They were so big they cast a shadow. The fire was lit and running a little low. I went out the screen door and walked down to meet her.
"Quiet morning," I remarked, "Perfect time to go tanning."
"Any time is perfect for tanning," she said, without even opening her eyes. I stood over her and looked her up and down, taking in the breathtaking sight. Her normally pale skin shone in the sun with its recent exposure. Her bikini was light blue this time, and of a more modest cut than she had worn the day before. I wondered if she was having regrets or second thoughts about last night, but decided that what she wore probably didn't have much at all to do with me.
"Did you have breakfast?" I asked.
"Nope," she said, lowering her sunglasses and finally looking at me. "Mom asked me to be out of the house for a few hours. You know. You're not the only one in the family who needs some private time."
"Okay," I said, "That's pretty gross. I wondered why Dad didn't wake me. I could have sworn he'd be up early to go fishing again. We didn't catch that much yesterday, and I know he wants to keep dinners on the ocean."
"Oh my god," she said, "We have all kinds of preserves. We could go without fish a week and not miss a damn meal."
"I know," I said, "But he likes it. He likes being the breadwinner. It makes him feel manly."
"Men are so simple," she said derisively. She sat up, which accentuated the deep V of her cleavage in her bikini top. I'm not sure if caught me looking or not. She gestured to a bunch of breakfast staples she had laid out on the picnic table. "Mom asked me to make you breakfast on the fire out here, if you were hungry. So they could be alone," she winked at me. "So what about it, brother? See anything you'd like to eat?"
I was sure that she was trying to tease me with her winking innuendo, and even though just the sight of her deep cleavage had me hot in the loins, cooler heads managed to prevail. She cooked us eggs and toast in a skillet on an open flame, and when we were done she left the dishes on the table we went into the river for a quick swim.
It's nice to feel water all over your body and to stretch and get exercise, and I particularly enjoyed watching Sam practice her back stroke (my imagination went a little lurid with the idea that she was maybe showing off for me a little), but in reality open-water swimming isn't really entreating for too much more than ten minutes. So once the ennui had set in, and we had defaulted to just wading in deep water until someone suggested heading in to dry, and I had resigned to being that person, Sam surprised with a suggestion I hadn't considered.
"Do you want to play King of The Hill?" she asked.
When we were much younger and visiting the cottage, King of The Hill was a game we played with an old log that had floated up on the beach one day. We brought it out into the river shoulder-deep on Sam and played together, trying to push each other off of the log. It was fun when we were young just because we were competitive, but I imagined a whole new kind of fun playing it with her now that we'd grown.
"Sure," I said, "If we can find a big enough log."
We waded up and down the beach, and as luck or circumstance should have it, we did indeed find solid enough wood to support us in our physical endeavors. We floated it out to the appropriate depth, squared off, and we began to wrestle.