It had been 3 years since we last went home to India. My parents moved to the USA when I was 11. We would return twice a year in our first 4 years but we had not been back in 3 years.
I had been close to my cousins in India and we had a large family. In the USA I always felt a little on the outside. I had friendships but I never felt anyone ever got me as a person. My life was more complex than the ordinary experience of an American teenager. It was almost as though I lived a dual life between my Hindu friends and the life I had with my white friends.
We were staying at my Father's ancestral home with my Grandma. It had been a long time since she had seen me and she showered me with love.
I was just happy to be there and it felt like home. It was somewhere I could be my true self.
After we had recovered from our jetlag we went to visit our cousins.
A few of my older cousins still lived in the village but my young cousins had moved to the city or away for college.
The next day we went to the city and I was excited to meet Avaneesh. We were always close as kids and played together for hours. We were of the same age and this helped us to bond.
"Rupa, how much you have grown?" My aunty greeted with a big hug and kiss on my cheek. She was my Father's sister. She was always warm and welcoming to me.
"Where is Avi?" I asked.
"He is in his bedroom. I can never get him out," she replies.
"Don't worry aunty. I will get him out," I reply.
She lets me head to his room. Avi is sat at the foot of the bed playing Glory.
We exchange a casual "hey" and it feels normal. Like it is not some big event that I am here after 3 years.
I casually sit down on his bed.
"So, you remembered we exist?" He said while looking back for my reaction. His head like a meerkat peeking over the edge of the bed.
"Shut up, dude. Like I can forget your ugly face. Still gives me nightmares," I say with an exaggerated shiver and he laughs.
"Oh, so it is 'dude' now? It used to be 'yaar'. You have gone full ABCD," he says teasing me.
"Shut up," I say as I throw a pillow at his head.
His phone buzzes next to me as it is on charge.
The text notification is from a Sara. The curiosity is too much for me and I open the message.
His passcode is easy to guess. The same one he had for everything. The first 4 digits of pi. He was a nerd and I was glad he hadn't changed.
"Can you come to the library?" The message reads from Sara. It makes me curious and I wonder if they are dating. So I do what every curious cousin would do, I begin to scroll through his previous messages with Sara.
"Hey, why have you gone so quiet?" He asks after a few minutes.
He looks up and I am cradling his phone in my hand.
"What have you got there?" He asks and then realizes I have his phone as a panic comes on his face.
He jumps up in a flash and tries to grapple the phone away from me but I am using my back to keep him away.
I am giggling like crazy as we wrestle over the phone.
I can feel myself backing into him with my ass. It seems harmless in the moment and we have always played in this way with each other. Teasing each other and playing pranks.
All of a sudden I felt something hard poking against my ass. It wasn't his leg or hand. It felt different and I pushed back harder trying to figure out what it was in that curious way.
"What is that?" I asked and then I felt him back away all of a sudden almost like he was embarrassed and then I realized what I had felt.
He awkwardly sat back in his place and was unable to make eye contact with me.
I handed his phone back to him without looking further. The messages seemed innocent enough and it made me slightly curious why he was so protective over his phone but I guess most of us are.
Avi was playing a soccer game now and the silence between us seemed less deafening with the background noise of the game.
It was a game we had played often when I had visited before. We usually played basketball or soccer games. I was better at basketball but he usually got the better of me at soccer. I felt guilty for what happened and wanted to break the ice, "Can I play?" I asked in my soft voice.
He looked back, that awkwardness was hard to hide but he agreed in a slightly surly manner. He blamed me for the awkwardness of him getting a boner. As if I had some magical control over his boner.
He nodded his head and I joined him at the foot of the bed.
As I sat down I glanced down at his crotch just to check his boner was still not alert and it seemed to not be fully flaccid.
Avi was an avid Manchester United fan. He always had been since we were children. He would always wear the United t-shirt everywhere we went. He seemed to have grown out of that habit now but he still picked them on the game.
I would always pick Manchester City usually to annoy him as they were their rivals or something.
I saw a slight grin from him as he saw me pick Manchester City.
"So, is Sara like your girlfriend?" I asked that curiosity still prodding the back of my head.
"Why? Are you jealous?" He quickly responded.
"Ew! Gross! Dude! Come on," I said in surprise as I hit him with my elbow.
He started laughing too and it seemed to break that awkwardness from before.
After a few minutes I asked again, "So, seriously what is going on with you guys?"
He gave me a curious look at my persistence.
"I will tell you about Sara but first you must tell me about your boyfriend. Mutually assured destruction if you rat me out to my parents," he says and it makes me giggle.
"You are such a nerd. I don't have a boyfriend," I reply.
"You expect me to believe someone this...I mean I don't believe it," he stops himself mid sentence before correcting himself and I am even more curious.
"This what? You were going to say something," I asked.
"It was nothing," he began acting shy.
"Avi, just say it. Don't be all weird. I have known you all of my life," I say becoming frustrated.
"Hot. This hot. No one this hot will not have a boyfriend," he finally relented and said in frustration.
It gave me a giggling fit and I fell on my side giggling.
"Ewwww. Dude, you are so gross and weird. I am not hot. What even makes me hot?" I reply through my fit of giggles.
"Stop it. It is not weird. It is just fact. You are hot. It is just an objective fact. You have nice boobs and everything," he says trying to defend himself but digging a bigger hole.
I am aghast at his observation and my giggling stops. My boobs were only B cup. My friends had larger breasts. Most were C cups, a couple of D cups and some even larger.
I can see the concern on his face and I do not want to shame him.
"I don't have a boyfriend. That is the truth and I am not lying. No one thinks I am hot. Well, except you. And no one notices my boobs," I say as I look at the TV due to the awkwardness.
"No one notices your boobs. Well, except me," he says and it makes me giggle once more.
"You are too much Avi," I reply. He could make me laugh in the most unexpected times.
The awkwardness has dissipated and we seem more comfortable.
Just as we are getting comfortable my parents call for me and we must leave. I give Avi an awkward goodbye as I am conscious of my boobs pressing into his chest as we hug.
My days are busy as we visit various family members and long distant cousins of my Mother and Father and old family friends.
It is after a few days my Father tells me that we are staying over for a few days in the City. I thought we would be staying in a hotel but this was out of the question as it would be considered the height of rudeness by our family.
We stayed with Avi and his family. Avi was the most on my wavelength from my cousins and I enjoyed spending time with him. He was in tune with western culture and still had that Indian side. We were similar in our thinking but we were just on different continents.
Avi was out with some friends and I told his mother I just wanted to play on his console. I never fit their expectations as I was a bit tomboyish. I enjoyed playing sports and gaming unlike my other female cousins who were more into dolls as children and now make up and fashion as adults. I preferred jeans and a t-shirt.
I switched on the console when I noticed that his laptop was on the bed and the screensaver was bouncing across the screen.
A sense of curiosity over took me and I decided to check if he was still logged in. To my surprise he was and I was even more shocked to find what he had been doing.
I gasped as I saw the video that had been paused. I was no stranger to porn. I mean every curious teenager has watched porn and I did frequently but who still used their laptop? Surely we all used our phones for porn viewing purposes these modern days to avoid the unnecessary overheating lap.
To my shock he was watching stepsister/stepbrother porn. It just made me more curious and as I delved into his history I noticed that his usual preference was MILF porn despite most of the 'MILFS' being no older than 25.
I heard him come back and speak to his Mom. He rushed over to the room when he heard I was here. I quickly put the laptop back how I found it and went back to holding the controller for the console.
He opened the door in a slightly panicked manner but tried to act relaxed when he saw me casually sitting there.
"Hey, where were you? I started without you," I asked.
"Just at the library," he replied as he closed the lid on his laptop and put it away.
"Were you with Sara?" I asked in a slightly jealous tone without intending it.
"Yeah. She just wanted to go over the assignment," he replied in a flippant manner.
"Are you sure she doesn't want to go over anything else?" I asked in a teasing manner winking at him.
"Come on dude. Stop messing. Let's play," he says as he takes the seat next to me.
We ease into the game and just talk casually about college, friends etc.
I am restless and there is something nagging at the back of my mind about what I discovered before.
"So what porn do you like to watch?" I asked in the most casual manner. He was having a sip from his bottle of cola which he spilled over his shirt.
"What?" He finally muttered after almost choking on the cola.
"Come on, dude. I am not going to rat you out. If you tell me, I will tell you," I say with a cheeky smile.
I can see the sweat on his brow as his anxiety rises but he all of a sudden takes a deep breath.
"You first?" He asks.
"You might think this is weird but I like Hentai," I reply.
He seems to physically relax as his body leans back.
"Hentai is not weird. I like it too. But I mainly watch MILF. If you tell anyone I will kill you," he says as the words leave his mouth.
"Likewise," I reply.
We play the game a bit more. I am getting better and it is more competitive between us.