Is it love or lust for her brother.. When Love Is Wrong.. I’ll never know what came over me.
Maybe it was the heat. Somehow, in summer, I always felt the air was filled with the scent of raw male. The way my short summer skirts would swing against the back of my bare legs, the way the sudden cool breeze would caress the strands of hair resting at the nape of my sweaty neck, like a lover’s whispered breath.
Maybe I was mad at having been cheated on by my loser boyfriend. Betrayal rumbled deep in the pit of my stomach that summer. Bitterness laced each waking day. Sex had always been a part of our power play. Maybe I had come up with the only way to trump him.
Or maybe it was the way Nick carried me upstairs and tucked me into bed when I’d tried to drowned my sorrows, pulled the covers up to my chin, tucked my fringe behind my ear and kissed my forehead before leaving my room, careful to leave my door half open. His tenderness touching me even through my drunken haze.
Or maybe it was just time.
The morning after my now infamous drinking binge, like hundreds of morning before, my little brother was sitting at the counter shovelling cereal into his mouth, engrossed in some textbook, as I stumbled into the kitchen. Leaning against the counter in my robe and nursing my coffee, I found myself scrutinising him, observing him, and, if I was totally, completely honest, deliciously, visually, devouring him. Having just turned 18, his still lanky body had an undeniable sexy awkwardness. Being 24, I’m used to fully built bodies, arms and legs muscly and strong. The way his legs folded and wrapped around the kitchen stool was boyishly clumsy. His upper body, however, told a different story. A rower all his life, his arms strong and tanned, the outline of his biceps stretched against his t-shirt as he continued lifting the spoon to his mouth at a record rate. I sighed as I dimly recalled how he’d held my body the night before.
“Hey Nicky, thanks for last night, babe. Hope I wasn’t too much trouble.” His grunt, though not an uncommon sound in the morning, seemed a little more loaded than usual. Never one to avoid any kind of conflict, real or imagined I asked,
“What’s up?”
Still looking into his industrial sized bowl of cereal, he mumbled, “You drink too much, Amy. If you’re just having fun that’s fine but I know it’s still over that shithead ex of yours. Get over it. It’s been a month. He’s moved on, in fact, he moved on while you were still together, remember? Do you really want to be pining over him?”
His words, as always pierced to the heart of truth. But it was his concern for me that touched. Not that being told what to do by my little brother didn’t irk though.
“Fine. No more drowning sorrows drinking,” I mumbled. Then to clear the air, I joked, “As long as every other kind is up for grabs.”
But he’d already returned to his textbook. I smiled at his face, scrunched up in concentration. I’d always admired how he’d devote himself 100% to anything he cared about. Pretending to be engrossed in my coffee I went back to observing him. His hair, black and wildly unkempt, falling back into his eyes as soon as he’d pushed it back. His sleepy face; wrinkled by pillow creases and unshaven. He looked young, rugged, sexy, beautiful.