Author's Note- This is the first part in a longer series involving an 18 year old sister and her 20 year old brother home alone from college and forced to shelter in place together. This first chapter is mainly setting the story/characters up for the more intense action to follow. I hope you enjoy it and the chapters to follow. Please leave a comment, vote if you like it and feel free to reach out to message me if you enjoy the story.
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When the quarantine hit, their mom and dad were on a private island resort in the Virgin Islands. Brad had just spent a week in Florida with his buddies for Spring Break, but when he got back to campus, he was told he had until noon Monday to take whatever he needed from the dorms because they were closing down campus.
Brad just gotten started on the three hour drive home when his eighteen year old sister called him, freaking out that her college was closing down too and in a panic that they had cancelled train service out to her remote college town until the quarantine was lifted. Brad pulled off the interstate and crossed the bridge over the six lanes of traffic so that he could turn around and get back on headed back north.
Melissa's college was a small, liberal arts school in the mountains upstate. Brad always teased her that if you wanted to major in conservation, pot smoking or lesbian studies it was a great school, but otherwise it was a total waste. There was nothing else up in that part of the state but summer cabins, fish camps and hunting lodges so it didn't shock him that they discontinued train service. Most of the kids were gone for Spring Break and with hundreds of public transit workers calling in sick, they wouldn't waste the manpower to keep that line running.
Melissa should have been home, or off on Spring Break herself, but she had volunteered to stay behind and do an observational data study for a family of beavers that the school was trying to reintroduce to a local river. She was one of only a handful of students and faculty left behind when they announced that they were closing the nearly deserted campus for the rest of the semester.
It meant driving another 90 minutes back the way Brad had come, but it wasn't like he could leave her there. Brad called her cell phone once he pulled up outside the dining commons where she had asked him to pick her up. She came to the door and waved to him for help. It was cold, grey and there was still patchy snow on the brown grass alongside the walkway. Brad hunched down into his coat and leaned into the wind as he trudged up to the door and into the warm steamy air of the dining commons. There were a couple dozen people sitting around at the dining tables drinking coffee and snacking on what the food they still had to serve as everyone waited for their rides to arrive.
"Thanks Brad," Melissa was sliding an overstuffed duffel bag across the tile floor toward him from a pile of suitcases and tote boxes piled up against one wall to the right of the door. "If you could take this one I'll start bringing the suitcases."
Brad hefted the duffel over a shoulder and walked it out to his SUV. He still had plenty of room in the cargo area, but folded down the back seats to make even more space. Melissa rolled up with two suitcase that Brad loaded in and they went back to get the rest of her stuff. With a couple more trips, they had the rest of it loaded and were back on the road.
"I can't believe they just kicked us out like that!" Melissa fumed as she stared out at the rolling hills and bare trees along our route.
"Hey, think of it as an extended Spring Break," Brad shrugged. "Everybody is closing down."
"Well maybe some of us are actually more interested in doing something more challenging than going on Spring Break during college." She huffed.
"Listen, Pre-Law isn't like the hemp woven textiles studies you guys take up here, Melissa." Brad was getting irritated, which was nothing new between them. "It's actually a lot of work, a lot of pressure and once you're in third year like I am it's brutally competitive if you plan to get into one of the big law schools. Winters suck up here and if you don't get away for a while to decompress, you will go bat-crap crazy and lose your shit at some point. I've seen it happen. So give the frat-boy thing a rest because as a freshman at that hippie hideaway you have no idea what it's really like, okay?"
Melissa looked over and was about to say something, but she could tell Brad was fully ready to get into it and she knew he was more than capable of giving as good as he got when it came to arguing. Instead, she started pulling off her hat and heavy coat now that she was warmed up in the car. She had to unbuckle her seat belt to get out of her coat. The back of the SUV was now fully stacked with both of their stuff so there wasn't a back seat to toss her coat onto. She turned around in the seat and leaned into the gap between the two front seats to stuff her jacket and then her backpack into whatever gap she could find between the boxes and bags. Her hip and side pressed into his shoulder and she ended up bumping his head with her elbow as she wrestled with her bag.
"Owww?" Brad complained half-heartedly, more out of annoyance than injury. "Trying to drive here, thanks." He navigated the long arcing bend around the hillside and her weight shifted over onto his side, her thigh and rounded hip in denim felt firm and comfortable as her weight rolled against him. Her stretching arms revealed a couple inches of warm pink skin between her belt and the bottom of her sweater and Brad couldn't help notice how good she smelled. A little like soap and citrus, maybe even cucumber.
Her gear settled, Melissa slid back into her seat and reached for her seat belt. Brad looked over and joked, "Looks like somebody didn't dodge the freshman fifteen!" He could feel her glare as he saw her head turn in the corner of my eye. "Relax," Brad said. "You were one of the few who could actually use it." And the truth was she could. Melissa had always been small and skinny. Even if she hadn't been two years younger, she couldn't have avoided the nickname "runt" as she had topped out about 5'5" and couldn't weigh more than 110 lbs with both her pockets filled with change when she went away to college. In a mildly uncomfortable way, Brad had noticed that the seatbelt had nestled into a respectable pair of C sized breasts underneath her soft, cream colored sweater and though her jeans now fit more snugly than they had in the fall, her thighs looked pleasantly firm beneath the stretched denim.
"Well I didn't earn a lacrosse scholarship to a power five school like some people," she sniffed sarcastically."But you'd be amazed what level of exercise you can get doing wildlife studies in the field around here." They wound our way through the small town at the base of the hills and Brad looked for the on ramp to the highway. "I didn't get fat. I got stronger, actually."
"Okay, okay. Truce." Brad chuckled. "It's going to be a long drive."
Nearly six hours later, it was the dead of night when they pulled into the garage at our parent's home in the gated suburban community where they had grown up. They were too tired to do all of the unloading, but took a few bags each and went up to their rooms.
It was after 9:00 when Brad woke the next morning and he was pretty sure he was the first one up. Melissa was famous for sleeping late and Brad didn't hear any sounds from her room as he took a leak in our shared bathroom. He made his way downstairs to the kitchen and trudged sleepily across the tile in his bare feet toward the coffee machine on the counter. He pulled down the coffee and filters from the cupboard and added water to the reservoir before turning on the machine to begin brewing. He stood sleepily watching it begin to gurgle and drip as he yawned and enjoyed a leisurely scratch of his balls by reaching down to into his flannel pajama bottoms without the restriction of underwear to impede his access.
