"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.
What amounts to gladiator wrestling under water relies a lot on grappling. It's of hardly any use to push someone under water's resistance. A lot of the technique is involved in a solid grip and twist motion. At least for me it was. Again and again, I reached across my sister's chest, taking leisurely liberties with my hands along the way, and wrapping my body around her back. Then it was easy to just kick off the log, twist in the water, and let her release with the waves. It may have been my imagination, but she didn't seem to put up much resistance. She at least laughed good-naturedly at my more clumsy and obvious attempts at fondling her heaving chest, and once laughed with me at punch line to a joke I can't remember that was nothing more than double-handed reverse boob-grope over her bikini top. I expect she knew that I was harder than diamonds the whole time. She must have felt it on her back, or on her stomach, or with her hands the few occasions they wandered lower.
I expect it was our cries of merriment and bliss that woke and raised our father, who came barreling out the door and down towards the dock, tackle box and fishing rod in hand and looking determined.
"You stop with that fooling around boy," he called at me, "We got fish to catch."
My shoulders slumped at the prospect of being pulled from my session of glorified underwater dry-humping with Sam. I gave her a final push on the shoulder, and she floated backwards off the log ineffectually.
"I'm pretty sure I won," I said. "You owe me?"
"Oh yeah?" she said. "This isn't over."
***
We launched from the dock, and were on the water clear through til the evening getting back just in time for the sunset. Dad was quiet, most of the trip, which I thought was a little strange considering how uppity he'd been the last trek out. After a few futile attempts at generating conversation with him, I just dropped it and let the majesty of the river abide my afternoon. It was hard for me not to get hard replaying the past day's events in my head, but the sucker-eyed look of a fish that knows it's dinner will do hard things to a man's libido. We had good success that day, more than yesterday, but not more than we'd usually catch back when we were out fishing and younger.
We docked, and while I tied the canoe Dad proudly held the modest bucket of medium-sized fish we'd caught over his head with pride.
"Dinner's arrived," he said.
"Late, as usual," Mom answered, "We thought you boys had been lost to the current."
"You'll thank me when you're eating the best fish of your life," Dad said, stepping onto the dock and striding immediately towards the fire. Sam came in to the water to help me tying the canoe. She was wearing a different bikini, a more revealing pink bikini with tie-dye splashes of white and light blue.
"About time," she said, "Did you fall in?"
"It was a long day," I said. "Do you ever wear anything but a bikini?" She laughed, pressed her tits together and accentuated her cleavage.
"You're not complaining, are you?" she joked, "You pervert."
I could only smile at her in response.
As it turns out, Mom and Sam had already gotten dinner hungry and had started cooking some of yesterday's fish with a heavy side helping of preserves from the pantry. It was nice to come in fresh from the water to a big warm meal, but I was tired early from the day on the water. When Dad suggested an evening swim, I was the only one who had to bow out. I had to read, I said, to keep up with school.
I had been in bed about an hour, mostly reading and on the cusp of sleep when I heard the screen door creak and slam as my family came indoors. I heard Mom and Dad bid Sam a quick goodnight and eagerly retire to bed. Then I heard the door to my room open and shut. I turned to catch sight of Sam, still in her bikini and thrashing wildly at her hair with a towel. She wasn't being especially quiet, and my reading lamp was still on. I ogled her ass in its tight-fitting bikini bottoms, water forming in little droplets right where the skin of her leg met with the feloniously concealing fabric of her wet bottoms.
