Light filtered through my eyelids and painted the darkness a light pink across my vision. I was awake and not happy about it. The sleep I'd fallen into had been so good, so much better than any I'd had in what seemed like years, that I just didn't want to give it up. The pull of unconsciousness was fading and I could do nothing to bring it back. Once awake, I'm awake for good.
I let my eyes remain closed for a few more moments, pretending to no one that I was asleep. The warm body that had been pressed tight to me had been such a comfort through the night. I knew I'd had good dreams, sweet dreams even, though I couldn't remember them. I never can.
My eyes opened to see my sister but I was alone, the sheets tucked against me as I lay on my left side. My shoulder was killing me, one of my many injuries, but I hadn't noticed it until I realized I was alone. Somehow it hadn't mattered until then.
I panicked, thinking she'd woken up to realize that the real world was still there and what we had become couldn't exist within it. I had been worrying she might reach that realization from the moment this all started and now that worry became a tight ball of fear that made me sick to my stomach. I kicked at the sheets to push them off my body, naked and vulnerable as a newborn.
I was about to tear my way from the entangled sheets and take off to search the house for her when the sound that had been white noise to my ears the whole time took shape in my mind. The steady spray of water that could only be a shower filled my head and eased my terror stricken mind. I felt my heart beating wildly in my chest as the comprehension that Kerry must be in the shower and hadn't run away in disgust failed to slow it right away.
Too energized by my moment of frantic fear, I couldn't simply lay back and enjoy the unique sensation of waking up in my sister's bed for the first time. I pulled myself from the bed and started for the door intent on joining her in the shower. I rotated my stiff shoulder, feeling the pop of something that shouldn't do that deep in the joint.
I stepped through the door and two paces down the hall I was in front of the door to the bathroom. It was closed, not really unusual since the possibility of showering together hadn't ever existed before. I was still a bit unsettled by that, and I felt a resurgence of panic trying to rise in me. I fought it down and grabbed the doorknob to go in just as the shower went silent.
I could hear her moving through the door, climbing from the bath to dry herself. I wanted to go in but I didn't want to freak her out by just barging in. I hesitated, still worried she wouldn't want me to see her naked again. I cast about for some kind of rational thought to surface before I figured the best way to find out how she felt about me being in the bathroom with her would be to ask.
"Kerry?" I called through the door after a light knock. "Do you mind if I come in?"
"I'm almost done Jay, just give me a sec and it's all yours." Maybe I hadn't been specific enough but now I was stuck. She thought I wanted to use the bathroom, which as it turned out I needed to. I faltered but determination firmed within me and I tried again.
"Do you mind if I come in before you're done?" Silence greeted that and the panic threatened to swell to the breaking point within me. I fought it off and wondered if I should tell her I loved her again. "Kerry?"
"I'm done Jay, go ahead." She pulled open the door and spoke from a foot or two away from me. She was wrapped in a towel big enough for two of her and had her hair similarly wrapped. She looked me in the eye and my heart fell. She looked scared. It wasn't on her face but hidden deep within her eyes and I knew she didn't think I could see it.
"Uh, thanks. I'll just be a minute if..."
"Take as long as you like, I'm gonna go have breakfast after I put some clothes on." She smiled but the fear was still in her eyes and it made mine surge to the point that I had to dash in the bathroom past her in order to avoid letting her see it play across my face.
I closed the door behind me as she walked off toward her bedroom and leaned against it feeling more fear than any insurgent had ever managed to inspire in me. Bullets and bombs can only kill you; love can tear you into shreds and leave you perfectly intact to suffer more the next day.
I used the toilet and then the shower, numb with the understanding that we may have had a one day love affair. I didn't mourn my missed opportunity to make love to her, she wasn't ready so it didn't matter how bad I wanted it. Instead I wondered how we could live together with such an event to color everything between us. How we could deal with knowing we had given in to our powerful emotions and sinned worse than anyone we knew could ever understand.
Worst of all, I wondered if it would kill me when she told me it had been a mistake that we needed to keep secret and never talk about. As much as I was frightened of the pain such an event would give me, I feared she would be wounded worse. Shit, what did I do?
The weight of my selfishness crushed me as I leaned against the tiles in the shower and felt tears burn down my face. I took the best person in my life, the best person who I had ever met and could ever hope to meet, and soiled her with my dark lust. How could she deal with such a thing? How could she reconcile who she had been with what I'd made of her? Surely she'd never forgive me for taking her innocence and damning her to hell.
Her comment about being willing to go to hell surged through my mind. I had brushed it aside in my lust infused state, not willing to listen to her as she told me that she knew what we were doing would have far reaching consequences that I hadn't ever considered. Too swept up in the moment, those words were her best attempt to tell me to stop.
I sobbed and this time I didn't have the loving shoulder of Kerry to support me. I sank down to sit against the back of the tub, racked with painful sobs that stole my air and cramped my stomach. I was going to hell, but that was inconsequential when compared to the fact that my sister would one day join me there. I had torn down a saint and dragged her through the muck. Surely Satan waits with a happy grin for me.
I hadn't ever put any stock in the whole burning for eternity thing before, but that was when I was the only one in risk. The thought of Kerry suffering like that, even if it was just some outdated superstition and there was no Hell, was too much to bear. I couldn't risk her soul because it felt good to be with her.
I finished crying, not because I wasn't still feeling worse than I ever had but because I couldn't continue. I was turning into a prune from being pelted with water for so long and it felt like I hadn't drawn a full breath for hours. Climbing to my feet, I ran some soap over my body and shampooed my hair before twisting off the water. I stepped out onto the towel Kerry had left on the floor in her haste to get away from me and felt the cool stains of her water beneath my soles. It chilled me as I was reminded of my loss.
I pulled a towel from the closet to my right and mindlessly went about the business of drying off; watching the steam from my shower swirl in eddies around my head as my arms moved through it. As the swirls spun away from me I wondered how I could handle the inevitable conversation that faced me on the other side of the door. Would she break down and cry for what I had done to her? Would she be angry and accuse me of taking advantage of her when she was weak? Would she be flip and tell me it was nothing?
With nothing else to wear I wrapped myself in the towel I had used and grabbed the one from under my feet to throw it in the hamper. I pulled open the door and followed the churning steam from the bathroom out into the hallway. The hamper was to my right and I deposited the towel in it as I went by to head into my room. I pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt and turned to head into my future.
I paused as I noticed a crumpled hand towel by my door, lying where Kerry had left it yesterday on the carpet. It just served to remind me of how I had soiled her and after a moment I moved on, leaving the damn thing where it had been dropped.
I tossed my towel in the hamper and made my way downstairs, letting my footfalls sound loudly on each step as I descended. I wanted her to know I was coming so she could avoid me if she wanted to. I was as ready as I could be for the talk, but I wanted to eat something first.
Kerry was curled up on the couch watching some Saturday morning cartoon I had no idea she even knew existed as I turned from the living room and made my way to the kitchen. I didn't try to look closely at her as I passed by behind the couch, hoping to have a few more minutes to compose myself before having to stare her pain in the face. Instead I simply walked through the edge of the room and into the kitchen.
I dug out my usual breakfast, cereal and milk, and filled a bowl. Sitting at the island I ignored the sharp memory of what we'd done on that structure and dug in to my cereal. Every time I looked up I was reminded of the sight she'd made as she stood in front of the sink with her back to me. I refused to relive what I'd done to her in reaction to that sight but relished the feeling she'd given me by simply being good and beautiful and pure.
