Sibling Reunion

A brother and sister get-together in Fort Lauderdale turns into way more than either of them expected

Ron Ehrs

I was sitting on the sofa in the lobby of the hotel in Fort Lauderdale. It was a little before 1 PM on Saturday afternoon, with bright sun shining in from outside. I had already checked into my room and left my bags up there. Evie had texted me that she was on her way and should arrive in about 20 minutes.

I kept on looking over at the front entrance to see who might be coming in. Finally, I saw a young woman in white Capri pants, wearing sandals and a Hawaiian floral print shirt come walking in, carrying a large handbag and towing a rolling suitcase behind her. She took off her sunglasses and it was Evie all right. I got up and went over to her. She recognized me and ran over and gave me a big hug.

"Ronnie," she said, "you're looking great!"

"You too," I said to her.

I told her I had already checked in for both of us and I had her key so we could head up directly. "Uncle Marvin got us two adjoining rooms, with a connecting door between them. He and Aunt Sue were supposed to get back to Miami on Monday, but Aunt Sue left a message with the desk that their cruise ship had had some mechanical trouble and they were going to be stuck in Antigua for a couple more days while they wait for replacement parts to get there. Uncle Marvin told us to enjoy ourselves and charge anything we want to our rooms, and they'll see us when they get here."

Our parents were off taking a driving tour of a bunch of Western states as a kind of second honeymoon, so this was a good opportunity for our aunt and uncle to invite us to spend a little time with them. They lived in a retirement community further inland, but they figured we'd have a lot more fun meeting in Fort Lauderdale.

Evie and I got in the elevator and went up to the fifth floor, and I led her down the hall to where our rooms were.

I unlocked the door to her room. I had left the connecting door between the two rooms open. Both our rooms had huge plate-glass windows looking down on the beach and the ocean. Evie immediately went over to the window and was delighted with the view. "This is amazing," she said. "I can't believe how cool this is. Especially after having been stuck in Houston all this time. I mean U of H is okay, but it's nothing like this."

"Well, coming from New Jersey, it's even more of a change," I said. "I love it. I'm starting to think I may want to stay here."

* * *

Evie had eaten on the plane, and I had grabbed a snack when I arrived at the airport, and we were both eager to get to the beach. I went into my room and got my swim trunks and flops out of my suitcase. I got changed and waited for Evie to be ready.

After a couple of minutes, I heard a knock on the connecting door and Evie walked in, wearing a light blue bikini. I hadn't seen much of Evie in a couple of years. Since I had started college, I'd mainly only seen her at Christmas vacation, and last year she only showed up for a day or two before going to visit her boyfriend. Anyway, when she walked in wearing that bikini, she looked amazing. I had no idea how good she really looked, and hadn't seen anything of her body in I don't know how long.

"Is this okay for the beach?" Evie asked. "I don't want to look slutty or anything. The guy I was dating before wouldn't have approved of it all. He was very jealous and didn't want me showing off my body."

Well, the thing is, she did look absolutely amazing, and she had this incredible body. But her bikini? It was fine, but I had a feeling that by Miami standards of string bikinis and thongs it was practically old-fashioned.

I was still trying to take in her staggering body, but at least I managed to say, "Your suit is fine. Probably around here, it will look pretty conservative."

I had put on a pair of short-cut swim trunks -- not the baggy kind that had come into fashion for some reason. Fortunately, I had been jogging pretty regularly so I was in pretty good shape for beach season.

We both put on flops and took our sunglasses. I grabbed a can of sunscreen and we headed out the door. We took the elevator down to the ground floor and walked out the back past the hotel pool and out to the beach itself. We went over to the shade of a palm tree and sprayed each other heavily with sunscreen. No sense in starting our vacation with a sunburn. The can was almost empty when we finished so I just tossed it in a trashcan and we set out walking along the beach.

I hadn't really talked to Evie in a long time. All I really knew was that she had been dating some guy and she had broken up with him a couple of months ago and that was about it.

We walked along the water line on the beach and let the waves come up and cover our feet and ankles from time to time.

"I guess you heard that I broke up with my boyfriend," she finally said. She took my hand in hers as we kept on walking. I was a little surprised about having her holding hands with me, but she made it seem pretty natural.

Anyone who saw us walking along would just be seeing a young couple holding hands, enjoying a long walk on the beach (to borrow an almost ubiquitous phrase from dating site profiles). And that's almost how I was feeling as well. It felt really good walking along, holding hands with Evie. It felt better walking along, holding hands with her than I remembered it ever having felt with anyone else. But still, it wasn't any big deal.

* * *

As we walked and let the water cool off our feet as we went, Evie began telling me the story of her ex-boyfriend. "His name was Derrick. At first, he seemed nice and really interested in me. And the thing was, the previous spring, there was this guy I dated a few times who seemed nice but almost immediately became really clingy. But what I realized was, he was basically a wimp. He could never make decisions, and in the end, I didn't want to be in a relationship where I was going to have to be making decisions for both of us all the time. So I was on the lookout for someone who wouldn't be a wimp.

"Derrick seemed like the opposite of that. He seemed very confident. He was on the school baseball team, which didn't interest me all that much but he thought it was a big deal. Anyhow, I started going with him, and at first everything seemed fine. He seemed polite and considerate and interested in what I had to say. But then, after a little while, when we were sort of an item, he began to get more uptight and controlling and jealous. It sort of crept up, so I didn't notice it right away. But he'd start getting passive-aggressive when I wanted to do something that he wasn't into, stuff like that. It was real red flag stuff, but I hadn't dated enough to know about that kind of thing. The other girls at the sorority tried to warn me, but I kind of brushed it off, until finally, I realized how bad it was and broke up with him.

"Because of the way he was acting, I broke up with him by text message. I know that's not the 'right' way to do things, but I didn't want to have to deal with any more of his manipulative crap in person. He started trying to call me and text me and email me all the time and after a little while, that got kind of creepy. I ended up talking to the house mother of the sorority. Some of the girls resented having her enforce rules that they didn't like, and I understood that, but when I talked to her, she understood right away and had my back. She sent him an email telling him to stop trying to contact me or she would get in touch with the police and have them issue a cease-and-desist order. She did have some contacts in the police department, and she probably could've done it, but just the threat was enough to put a stop to it.

"Anyway, part of it was that I had been sleeping with him. I had been curious about sex for a while anyway, but I had wanted to wait until I was in a real relationship, and that's what I thought I had with him. Anyhow, the girls at the sorority were always talking about how great sex was and all the orgasms they were having and all that kind of stuff. But that's not what was happening with us. Just from hearing the other girls talk, I realized he was probably the most boring person in bed that there ever was. It was always missionary position, period. And he always came pretty much right away, without paying any attention to me. Sometimes, if he fell asleep right away, I would finish myself off while he was asleep, but I knew damn well that wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

"Anyway, that was about three months ago. You might think that that would be plenty of time to find someone else, but after that experience, I just didn't feel like I could count on myself to know who to trust. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah," I said. "I totally get it. I had something kind of similar happen to me. I had started dating this one girl last fall. I was really busy with my coursework, so I didn't have a lot of time for thinking about my social life. Anyhow, I met this girl at a party and she sort of latched onto me, and after a little while, we started making out and then she ended up spending the night. And after that, she kind of kept setting stuff up for us. I didn't think about it too much at the time. I was focused on my classes and papers I needed to write, so having a guaranteed date for the weekend just made life a little more convenient for me.

"But then, this spring, she started talking about all her friends who were getting married, and her friends from last year who were having babies and buying houses and all of that. So I realized she saw us as being on the fast track to getting married and doing all the same stuff that all her friends were doing. Only the thing was, I was planning to go to grad school in economics. If I just got a Masters, I could get a job in about another year, but I was thinking about going on getting a Ph.D. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it, maybe work for an investment bank, maybe teach at a college somewhere. But whatever it was, it was going to take a while and I had no interest in getting married right then. So I tried to explain that to her, and she got pissed and broke up with me. At first, I didn't quite know how to feel about it, but before long it felt like a huge weight had lifted from me. The thing was, the main thing keeping us together was convenience. She thought I was her ticket to the life she was expecting, and I was happy to not have to go looking for dates every weekend.

"I realized that I never really connected with her anyway. I didn't love her, I just kind of fell into being with her. I don't think she loved me either, I was just there. It was not until after we broke up that I realized how relieved I felt. I hadn't really put my finger on it but everything had been kind of, you know, vanilla. There wasn't any real passion, nothing really seemed to matter. Even the sex was vanilla. She was kind of like, 'I'm having sex with my boyfriend and I'm really hot stuff.' She seemed to think that it was a big deal that she was having sex with me and I think she thought that meant she was pretty hot in bed, but really, it was bland and boring. I don't know if either of us ever really cared. She had a lot of illusions about herself that I didn't pay attention to until after I was free of all that. And in a way that made me realize that I had never really had a girlfriend I felt passionate about. On some level, it was always about going through the motions or something.

"So yeah, I know what you mean about not trusting yourself to be able to tell when you've found the right person."

* * *

After Evie had finished her story and I had finished mine, we were still holding hands. Then she released her hand from mine and reached over and put her hand around my waist. I put my hand around her waist as well, and she gave me a kind of sideways hug. Then we continued walking, arms around each other's waists, not saying anything, just feeling each other's presence.

I had been surprised when she first put her hand around my waist, but I was very happy she did so. It felt good to feel so close to her, for us to feel so close to each other.

The other thing, and I felt weird about even thinking it, was how it felt to be holding her bare waist like that. I mean there wasn't anything sexual about all of this....was there? It was just natural, for brother and sister to hug each other and to feel close to each other. That's all it was.

In a little bit, we began to come back towards the hotel and Evie took her hand from my waist and I let go of her and we walked towards the hotel side-by-side like any normal brother and sister.

* * *

It had been sunny all day, but now it was becoming overcast and dark clouds were starting to roll in. I even thought I felt a few raindrops as we reached the rear door by the pool and came back into the hotel.

We took the elevator up to our floor. When we got back to our rooms, we decided that rather than go down to the hotel restaurant we would order dinner from room service. Neither of us wanted to make a big deal out of it, so I just ordered a large pizza, and then decided to go ahead and add a bottle of wine. Through the window, we could see the sky turning dark and in the distance we could see some faint flashes of lightning.

Evie went into her room to take a shower and I hopped into my bathroom to hit the shower as well. I put on a pair of blue cotton shorts and a white V-neck T-shirt and waited for room service to arrive. After a few minutes, the connecting door between our rooms opened and Evie came in. She was wearing a pink V-neck nightshirt that reached almost far enough down to reach the bottom of her panties. "Is this okay?" she asked. "I figured it's just the two of us, it's just family."

She looked way more than okay. My only complaint -- though I certainly couldn't say that to her -- was that it covered up a lot more of her than the bikini had. Oh shit. What the hell was I even thinking?

My room had a small round table with a couple of chairs, so she sat down on one of them and I sat on the other while we waited for dinner to arrive.

When we heard the knock on the door from room service, Evie quickly got up and went back into her room, out of sight. I opened the door and the guy from room service brought in a tray with pizza and a bottle of wine and a couple of wine glasses. I signed for the tab and added a good tip, and he headed out again. Then the other door opened and Evie came back in.

I left most of the lights in the room off, except for a relatively small light near the table so we could see our food and I could pour the wine without spilling it. With only a dim light, we could focus on looking out and watching the show, as the lightning moved in and it began to rain harder.

It didn't take all that long to finish up our pizza, after which we sat watching the lightning and drinking wine until the bottle was empty. I put the remains of the pizza tray outside for room service to pick up, and put up the "Do not disturb" sign on the door. We sat for a few more minutes, and then Evie said it was probably time to get to bed. She got up and I got up and she gave me a quick hug and headed back to her room. As she was leaving, she said, "Ronnie, sometimes lightning storms freak me out a bit. Is it okay if I leave the door between our rooms open tonight?"

"Sure," I said, "that's fine. See you in the morning."

I turned off the light and got into bed and lay there watching the lightning. The bigger strikes would light up the room like a camera flash, followed shortly thereafter by the deep crash of thunder. All that time, I was still thinking about Evie and walking along the beach holding hands with her, and then walking along with our arms around each other's waists. I couldn't seem to get my mind off that, and how her body looked when she first walked in in her bikini.

I knew it wasn't right to be thinking like that. I was sorry she had gotten herself into such a lousy relationship, and now what I wanted for her was to find somebody who would be good to her. Someone who would care about her as much as... I did? I tried to find something else to think about, but there was nothing I could seem to come up with to distract myself.

I almost thought about just jerking off to take my mind off everything, but that felt like a really bad idea thinking the way I was thinking right now -- and especially with the door between us open. Definitely not.

* * *

By now, the lightning strikes were pretty frequent. It seemed like the center of the storm was moving in on us. I wondered how Evie was doing with all the lightning. Suddenly there was a huge flash -- it looked as if a lightning bolt had just exploded right outside our windows. It felt almost bright enough to x-ray everything in sight. As the light subsided and I waited for the enormous crash of thunder that was about to arrive, I saw what looked like a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

"Ronnie, can I get into bed with you?" I looked up and saw Evie standing there.

I moved over in the bed and pulled the covers up to make room for her. "Sure, hop in."

She got in beside me with her back to me, just as the thunder began to roar.

She snuggled in against me and I put my arm around her waist and held her. It felt really good having her there with me, having her there snuggled up against me like that. It reminded me of how we had felt walking together along the beach.

As the sound of the thunder began to fade away, I raised myself up slightly and bent forward to kiss her on the cheek. "Good night," I said.

When my lips began kissing her cheek, I had been thinking it would just be a quick peck. But somehow, once my lips were on her cheek, I didn't want to stop. While my lips were still kissing her cheek, I suddenly felt Evie turning back towards me. There was another brief flash of lightning and I saw her face. It looked as if she was looking for my face and her lips were pursed together. I wasn't sure what was going on. Maybe she just wanted us to have a quick peck on the lips to say good night? I moved my face down to hers, and put my lips to hers. I thought maybe that would be it, but she began pressing her lips against mine and holding on to me. I was still confused, this felt like something I had been thinking about, something I had been wanting, but...

Hadn't I been thinking about something like this while Evie and I were walking along on the beach holding hands, and then hugging each other around the waist? There had been such an incredible sense of closeness. I felt like she and I were closer to each other than I've ever been with anyone else ever. But that didn't mean that this was okay. Did it? Of course not. But here she was kissing me, and pulling me against her. But that didn't make it okay to take advantage of that closeness we had felt. It definitely didn't.

But still, I couldn't bring myself to pull away from her. And as her lips pressed harder and harder against mine, I began to wonder what was going on here. Almost experimentally, I opened my lips slightly and opened my teeth enough to let my tongue start running along her lips. She felt it and quickly began opening her own mouth to let my tongue in. I felt her sucking my tongue into her mouth and then felt her tongue playing with mine. It felt amazing doing this with her. I knew I didn't want to stop. Yes, she was my sister and I was her brother, and nothing about this was okay, but nothing had ever felt as good as this, nothing had ever felt as right as this.

Sure, she had had a lousy experience with her boyfriend, but was I doing any better? I had had girlfriends, and none of them had been all that awful, but had I really ever felt what I wanted to feel? Right now, with the two of us just kissing, I was feeling more connection and more passion than I could ever recall feeling before.