Jessie and Karen were hardly sisters at all, as far as I was concerned. True, they shared parents and a home when they were young but they were never exactly friends like my own sisters were. I suppose that's why the events that transpired last Saturday morning were so shocking to me.
"That's fucking obnoxious!" Karen had blurted out from the couch in the living room as Jessie sat at the table popping her gum. Despite nearly six years difference in their age, the two were mirror images of one another, with the exception that the younger sister, Jessie, had stepped out of an elongated and less fashion-trendy mirror. Her hair was long as were her string-like pasty white legs stretched along the bench of their dining room table.
"What?" Said Jessie.
Karen ignored her sister's blatantly irritating taunt with a roll of her eyes. I knew that an argument was coming on.
"I'm here to protect you girls against pervs, not each other." I said, glancing to Karen with an empathetic wink. "I'm gonna go pee." I got up and left.
Who am I? I am the guy has been after Karen for 15 years. Jessie was never exciting to me, since she was only 5 years old when I met Karen at a Youth Group at our Bible Church in downtown Seattle. Even at 19, after Jessie had officially "grown up", I found her pretty but impossible to be attracted to. As a friend of the family, I was frequently invited over for weekends, parties, and particularly, I was also the guard-on-duty when the parents left on their wild weekend getaways in Vancouver and worried about their daughters being alone in the house.
It was on just such a trip that Karen had answered my question about a possibility for 'us'. "You're too close to me. I'm sorry, George. I just can't help it. You're like a brother to me."
I was disappointed but it was not a new answer. Still, I thought "she means it, this time."
As I escaped to the restroom, I thought about having a "fantasy morning" like I normally do on these trips. I was never prone to jack off except for at Karen's house, where the bathroom smelled so girly and there were pictures of her laid out on the wall, along with pictures of Jessie, almost always the two of them together, even though they annoyed the hell out of one another.
Being the oldest, Karen has always felt that she was given a lot of undue responsibility toward her sister. When Karen went to study to become a registered nurse, Jessie started talking about Pre-Med. Similarly, when Karen changed to being called by her middle name, Alexis, Jessie began referring to herself as Andrea, the name of Karen's childhood imaginary friend. I knew that Jessie admired her sister and that's why she emulated her. But, in my heart I loved Karen.
After pacing the floor for a moment, I considered pleasuring myself to a fantasy of Karen masturbating with a household object like a soda bottle or the handle of a rolling pin like I had seen in a porn movie that she and I had watched with our significant others on a long and wicked night of orgy pleasure, years ago. But I did not need to take out my cock to know - I was totally flaccid.
Had her rejection really gotten to me? Surely I couldn't be like a brother to her, could I? A brother? I shuddered to think about it. There was no way I could ever fantasize about Karen, again. Karen and I had always been one another's escape from our bad relationships. We were more than friends and I just knew it.
I unlocked the bathroom door and opened it quietly, not wanting to re-enter the living room during a sisterly quarrel if it could be avoided.
"Why else does he spend so much time in there, then? Doing his hair?" I heard Jessie's voice. My heart stopped. Were they talking about me?
"George doesn't masturbate, Jess, he can have any pussy that he wants. Besides, he probably went to the den to e-mail that stupid girl from Vermont." Said Karen.
How untrue, I thought as I peered out through the crack of the bathroom door. The only pussy that I wanted was the one that didn't want me.
There was a pause. "He does do it and I know it." Jessie said as she angrily turned a page on her magazine.
Karen put her own magazine down and rolled her eyes. "How would you know something like that, Jess?"
Jessie looked up from her own magazine and squinted right at me. I wondered if she saw me. She didn't.
Then she whispered, "He did it while I was in the bathtub."
I seriously thought that I might have a heart attack. It's true that the damned bathtub in their Seattle home was nearly impossible to detect anyone in. It was sunk into the floor and instead of a curtain, it was enclosed in a redwood wall with stained-glass windows. But it occurred to me that Karen would probably genuinely disbelieve her sister.
Karen whispered, "When?"
Shit.
"The day before, yesterday." Jessie confirmed. "Why do you wanna know?"
"Shut up and tell me what happened." Karen said somberly.
Jess looked again. "He's doing it, right now. Look how long he's in there. He can go for a long time."
Karen gave her the look of death, "Shut your mouth, Jess."
But Jessie only stuck her tongue out. "He imagines your body naked and ripe for breeding."
"Shut your mouth, Jess!"
"Oh, come on, like you never do it."
Karen gasped. "How dare you!"
Jessie shrugged "Okay 'big sister', I'll be the first to admit it. He got me so hot, I started doing it, myself."
Karen's tone suddenly became - soft. "What, like touching yourself?"
"I was naked in a bathtub with a gorgeous guy blowing his load less than a yard away. Yeah, I really like George, okay? I think that you're wrong to tease him and then deny him a little fun like you do."
Karen had no response to this: "I never play with myself, Jessica."
Jessie rolled her eyes. "Any minute now he's going to come out of there. Send him away and we'll put Daddy's camera in there and you'll see. Next time he goes in there, use the remote to the camera and start recording."
What do I do? I wondered. No time to panic. I stood and flushed the toilet and walked out.
"Damn toilet keeps plugging up," I managed with a shaky voice. "I'm gonna go e-mail some people and go to the store. Text me if you need anything" I turned and walked away without looking to see their expressions.
***
They hid the camera in the medicine cabinet with the door barely peeking open. After they had shut themselves into the bathroom to install their voyeuristic instrument, I snuck back into the living room and listened to their conversation as they started to talk about it.
"Why does Dad always hide the stupid remote?" Said Jessie.
