My motherās parents divorced when she was very young, then later they both remarried. Their new partners each had children from previous marriages and both new couples had children with each other. As a result, my mother has lots of step-brothers and step-sisters, and she also has half-brothers half-sisters and one full brother. One of these half-sisters was born just two months after I was and, since my grandmother lived very close to us, we grew up together. There was also another sister and brother, both younger than us and I have some of my own. Aunt Trisha and I werenāt like brother and sister, nor like aunt and nephew; we were more like the children of close friends. We would often play together during the day and once or twice a week I would be left at my grandmotherās house or Trisha would be left at our house. Back then, almost fifty years ago, it was not unusual for us to sleep in the same bed. We were, after all, infants and then toddlers, so there was no real harm in it. I can remember being aware of how cute she was though, at a very early age. I mean, like three years old.
There was one night when I messed things up. We were five when I just couldnāt resist kissing her. Of course it was nothing like a kiss that teenagers and adults might share, and I didnāt see any harm it. But to my mother and grandmother, when they learned of it in the morning (Trisha had told my mom about it with a little-girl giggle in her voice), it was like an alarm had sounded. There was no more sharing the same bed and almost no overnight visits at all. I sat through a long-winded lecture from both of them and I know that Trisha did too. We also became the family joke for years to come. I didnāt understand and I still donāt, really. If they had not made such a big production out of it then the whole thing would probably have passed out of my system in a short time and been forgotten. The result of their actions though, was that Trisha became the Forbidden Fruit and I never got past wondering what it was that they didnāt want us to find out.
So I was naturally determined to find out the big secret, but it became difficult to explore such things. They must have frightened Trisha because she wouldn't let me kiss her again, and later her family moved several counties away because my grandmotherās husband had inherited a farm. We only saw them a few times each year for a day or two at a time, when they visited us or we visited them. Still, whenever we were together, Trisha and I would be as close as if no time had passed at all. We would be the best of friends, catch each other up on the news, introduce each other to our friends and so on.
Trisha had a life with a lot of heartache in it. Her parents had both been older when she was born and they died while she was still young. She went to live with her grandparents, my great-grandparents, along with her sister and brother. Of course, they were older still and didnāt live long either. After that, the three of them got passed from one family member to another several times. No one in the family was wealthy and, when it got be too much of a financial burden for a half-sister, for example, one or two of them, or all three would be sent to live with a step-brother. In time she came to live with my family. We got to be close again as teenagers because of this, often going out on double dates together or just hanging out.
The last summer that I was home was a very good one for us and it was the year we both turned eighteen. Iād been working for a while, had bought a car from my dad when he bought a new one, and had no other expenses. We would sometimes get our friends together and go out to a show or a ball game or something, then ride around for hours together after I had dropped everyone else off at their homes. Sometimes we would ride all night, just me and her. We would talk about all sorts of things from idle chit-chat to serious things. We talked about our girlfriends and boyfriends, what we wanted to do with our lives, what great catastrophes (to us, with our teenaged eyes) we were facing at a given time and on and on. Toward the end of the summer I began to talk about having my own home and how much I was going to enjoy being in charge of my own life, instead of having to abide by my parents rules.
All this time I still had that crush on Aunt Trisha, but the lesson had been learned. I was not about to do anything overt and have my parents pass her on to some other relative. I just enjoyed what I could of her while she was so near. While she had been cute as a little girl, she had turned into a gorgeous young woman. She was kind of small, maybe five-foot-four or five, with a nice set of curves about her. She had blue eyes and her hair was long, down to the small of her back. It had been fully blonde when she was growing up, but had darkened until it was almost brown. Still, it had a sheen to it that would hint at its history if you knew to look for it. She had taken after her mother, as mine did, in that she was a big-breasted girl. She had begun to develop when she was about twelve and by the time she came to live with us she was already too big for the c-cup bras she had brought with her. Iām not just saying that for the sake of the story. Iāve had women both large-breasted and small, and Iāve enjoyed them either way. This just happens to be the way Aunt Trisha was built. She had short legs by some standards, but they were well-formed and looked good with the short skirts and short-shorts she wore all the time. She often wore cut off t-shirts that showed her belly or formfitting sleeveless sweater-shirts. To any man she was quite an eyeful, but to a teenaged boy with raging hormones she was almost impossible to resist. I remember being jealous of all her boyfriends and many times I shot my load, either with whatever girlfriend I had at the time or alone in my room, with visions of Aunt Trisha flashing through my mind. To reach for her would have been to lose her and I knew it, so I kept myself in check somehow.
The day came when I did move out. My parents helped me locate a place to live, helped me fill my pantry the first time and found enough cast-off furniture, dishes and such to fill it. This wasnāt hard in such a large family. I moved in and immediately began to miss what I had left behind. Not just Aunt Trisha, but the whole family. After a few days though I got over the homesickness and settled in to my new adult life. I had friends over after work and visited friends and family myself from time to time. It was a very small house in a run down neighborhood, but it was my first home and I was proud of it, even if it was somewhat lonely now and then.
About two weeks after I had been living there Trisha was over to visit on one of those nights when the place was full of friends. She had been there several times already, but this time she stayed later. In fact, she made sure that she was the last one there. As each person would go, he or she would offer to give Trisha a ride home and she would say to each one that she was going to stay a while longer. Eventually, we were alone together and we talked as we had always talked.
Finally, she caught me off-guard when she asked me, āCan I stay here a while?ā