Inappropriate Ch. 03

Three weeks went by without either of us mentioning that night. It could have been a dream if it weren't for the dark looks I occasionally received from my sister whenever Vicky and I were together. After that night, I was determined to make things work between us, to have an honest shot at a normal relationship, one that wouldn't land me in prison.

Yes, prison. Turns out, my home state carried a twenty-five year sentence. There was very little information available on consensual incest, but there was plenty on the non-consensual variety, including a slew of Land and Order: SVU episodes. Everything I learned confirmed my worst fears, and left me convinced that I'd made the right choice, no matter how painful it was.

Jen and I made every effort to continue on like nothing had happened, both in private and in public. But something had broken between us and it became more and more difficult for us to even be in the same room together. The gang still met on occasion at Vicky and Michelle's dorm room, but we went our separate ways more often than not. Vicky and I would go to her room. Michelle, Ryan, and Nick would hang out in the living room, and Jennifer eventually just stopped showing up altogether.

We rarely spoke, even when we were at home. Whole days would pass without either of us uttering a word to one another. I felt like I was going crazy. I wanted desperately to reach out, to touch her, hold her, tell her that I loved her and that when I imagined the future, that she was the only part of it that mattered.

But my sister deserved better than that. Husband, kids, picket fence, and all that. She deserved better than stolen moments and a life of constant fear. She deserved better than scorn, shame, and ridicule. She deserved better than metal bars and an orange suit. So I stayed silent, hoping that this...obsession would pass and the two of us would figure out a way to be a normal brother and sister.

While the cold war raged between me and my sister, my relationship with Vicky maintained the same stagnant pace. Sleep was becoming difficult to come by. Vicky had taken to staying overnight with me on weekends, but I was starting to sense that it was more about staking a claim than it was prolonging intimacy.

Jennifer and Vicky are entirely different as bed mates. Jennifer snores for one. Not loud, but enough to notice. She's a rather messy sleeper too, sprawling across the entire bed, entangling her limbs with my own.

Vicky on the other hand slept like the dead. Silent and still, she curled into a tight ball, affording me so much space I sometimes forgot she was there.

I heard my bedroom door creak open late one night as I lay awake, still in the grip of insomnia. I kept my eyes closed tight, wanting to avoid another whispered argument with my twin. Vicky had every right to be there and Jennifer was just going to have to learn to live with it.

My conclusion, however well-reasoned, didn't make me feel any less guilty as my sister quietly retreated back into her own bed. I tried to put that thought and all others out of my head as gazed at Jennifer's tightly shut door, hoping I was imagining the sound of a lost girl crying in the dark.

As the spring approached, the cracks in the armor became deeper and more jagged. Vicky excitedly made plans for a spring break road trip, one which included the entire group, save for my sister. "Well, I thought she had her own friends now," Vicky explained, feigning sympathy. "I didn't think she'd want to come."

This slight and others didn't go unnoticed by Jennifer, and what started as a quasi-amicable rivalry between the two women escalated to the point of outright contempt, with Vicky getting the upper hand at every turn. Things were coming to a head.

-

By some small miracle, Nick and I were invited to a genuine college party by some guy named Dave. Nick was given a laundry list of alcohol to provide in exchange for his admission, while my sole instructions were to, "make sure that fine-ass sister of yours shows up." As much as I despised the notion of Dave or any other drunken frat boy piece of shit even touching my sister, I thought that socializing with our peers might do us all some good.

The atmosphere in the Vicky's dorm room had grown suffocating since Jen's departure. Michelle was never the most social person, even by our standards, but now she rarely looked up from her computer. Nick and I were forbidden from Halo, Madden, and all other forms of digital distraction when Vicky was in the room, which was goddamn always. Ryan and I had even less to say to one another now that our jam sessions had come to an end. As for Vicky, I honestly kind of hated her.

And so, the six of us made our way to Dave's house. As expected, the place was a dilapidated hell hole, worn down by years of abuse and neglect. But there was beer, and beer can make anything better.

We arrived separately. Vicky and I rode in her car, Michelle and Ryan in his van, and Nick and Jennifer in his truck, thus affording each of us a convenient exit without burdening the entire group. It also had the unspoken benefit of keeping Jen and Vicky away from each other.

Vicky had something of a tomboyish streak about her, which I actually liked as a rule, but clashed considerably with the designated feminine attire of the event. All the other girls were dressed in cocktail dresses of some kind or another. I was actually a little excited about the prospect of showing up at a social function with a date that wasn't my twin, so the fact that we were dressed almost identically, jeans, leather jacket, and Tom Petty/Rolling Stones t-shirts kind of undermined the whole effect.

Jennifer on the other hand looked like something out of a dream. She wore a little black dress, a very little black dress, which basically consisted of a strip of shiny cloth that served to cover her ass and sort of cover her tits, albeit very poorly. I didn't know that she owned such a gratuitous article of "fuck me" clothing, so I assumed she bought it just for this occasion.

Shit, she caught me staring. The last thing I needed in a public venue. She seemed please though, almost smug. I tried to regain my composure with a joke.

"Mug a tween for that get-up?" I asked sarcastically, making a mental note not to state at my sister's cleavage.

"I know, right?" she agreed. "I'm practically spilling out of this thing. They just don't make a decent dress anymore for a girl with tits. I was going for Breakfast at Tiffany's, not Girls Gone Wild."

"You look beautiful Jen." I whispered softly. She smiled brightly at me, a warm genuine smile miles away from stone silent sister I'd failed to grow accustomed to. Naturally that was Vicky's cue to fuck it up.

"Jennifer, nice to see you as always," Victoria said diplomatically.

"Vicky," Jen replied stiffly.

"I love your dress. I bet you'll get plenty of attention wearing that," Vicky said, her eyes glancing down at Jennifer's ample breasts. I never cease to be amazed at a woman's ability to mask an insult with a compliment.

"I know, it's a little revealing. Must be nice not to worry about that," Jen fired back. It was not secret that Vicky's figure was a little on the boyish side, and her manner of dress did nothing to help that fact, but even I had to admit it was a low blow.

"Why don't we get drinks?" I suggested, eager to diffuse the situation. Jennifer, sensing that she'd been offered an opportunity to exit the conversation gracefully, excused herself and faded into the crowd. Vicky and I made our way to the bar, where Dave, at least, I think it was Dave, offered us both a bright red cup full of coldish beer.

Despite early setbacks, the night held some promise. There would be drinking, there would be dancing, and hopefully the combination of alcohol and poor judgment would make Vicky the Ice Queen a little more pliable in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, Vicky insisted on talking instead of drinking, and instead of receiving another lecture on the genius of Albert Hitchcock, I was treated to an angry tirade about my sister.

"Thanks for your help by the way," she muttered after stewing for several minutes.

"You're...welcome?" I offered. Wrong answer.

"Look, maybe you don't care that she just waltzed up to us dressed like some cheap whore, but the least you could do is actually stand up for me when I'm being insulted right to my face," Vicky demanded.

I bit my lip, holding back a vicious and poorly thought out defense of my sister's honor, mindful that neither of them were in the right in that exchange. "She's not a whore," I muttered. I couldn't help myself.

"See! That, right there! No matter what it is, you always take her side! I'm sick of coming second to your sister Jack!" Vicky shouted.

We were starting to attract a crowd. Apparently people were still sober enough to take an interest in our squabble. I spotted my sister toward the back of the horde. She slipped her way past it and grabbed me by the hand, as if she was trying to rescue me.

"We need to talk," she muttered as she started to pull me away.

"I'm his girlfriend Jennifer!" Vicky protested, prompting Jennifer to turn around. "That means we should be able to go to on social event without you lurking around the corner like some kind of pathetic stalker. And to be honest, this jealousy of yours is more than a little inappropriate."

"You want inappropriate?" Jennifer challenged.

Before I knew what was happening, my sister linked her hands behind my neck, pulled me in, and kissed me. Not a quick, chaste, familial kiss. Not a lingering, intimate, borderline inappropriate kiss. She put everything into that kiss, all her joy and fear and anger and regret, everything she was and is and ever could be. She kissed me like we were the only two people in the world. Only we weren't. Everyone, fucking everyone was watching.

Thank holy Christ, most of the people at that party had no idea who we were. But some did, and even one was far too many. Especially since she was standing right next to us, her face contorted in revulsion and fury.

Jennifer froze, the implications of what she had done and where she had done it flashing across her face in silent horror. When we were kids, she had a bad habit of making leaving me to clean up our mutual messes. This was no different. She literally ran from the room, fighting her way past a horde of morbidly curious onlookers.

This situation made me a firm believer that a human being can indeed be rendered speechless. I just stood there, trying to process a couple of thousand thoughts and sensations at once. I needed to do something, anything. "Vicky, I..." I stammered hoarsely. Only she wasn't the one I needed to talk to right now.

There was pain and anger in her face and all manner of other emotion, but she didn't look surprised. It was if every terrible thing, every suspicion she ever had about my relationship with my sister was simple inevitable, and had finally come to pass. For the first time, we were on the same page. "Save it Jack," she spat acidly. "You two fucking deserve each other."

Vicky stood there, waiting for me to defend myself, waiting me make an excuse, come up with a logical reason why when Jennifer kissed me I didn't recoil in horror. But Vicky was right. She would always come second to my sister and that was never going to change.

-

I ended up beating my Jennifer home. Even though we were both on foot, I had the advantage of running without heels. Fifteen minutes later, Jen finally emerged through our front door. Her hair was disheveled and dark black streaks ran down from her eyes.

"Hey," I said quietly.

"Hey," she replied tonelessly.

She took a seat next to me on the couch, tucking her knees into her chest and wrapping herself into a ball. We sat there in the dark, the room illuminated only by the muted images on the television. Both of us waited for the other one to speak.

I broke the silence. "Jen, what the hell?" I asked softly.

"I'm know, I know," she moaned. "I'm sorry, ok? I don't know what came over me."

"If this gets out, do you know what could happen?" I demanded.

"Little late for that, isn't it?" she said weakly as she started digging for her cell phone.

"What do you mean?" I asked darkly. Something told me I had more to fear than the drunken rumor mill.

A familiar scene played out on her screen, cleverly titled, "Twincest Freakshow." Fucking smart phones.

"Good thing Mom and Dad still haven't figured out YouTube yet," she smirked mirthlessly as she put the image away.

"You think this is funny?" I demanded.

"No."

"We have to make this right," I persisted.

"Why?" Jen asked defensively. "You shouldn't even be with her."

"That's not your decision," I asserted, although I was confused as to why I was continuing to defend a relationship I no longer desired.

"So you don't care what it does to me?" Jennifer asked me, her voice shaking with a sort of cracked sadness.

"I don't want to hurt you," I said softly, my frustration suddenly replaced by concern.

"Well, you did. You picked the one way that you could hurt me," she started, her voice cracking up, tears pooling in her eyes, "worse than you could ever understand." She inhaled deeply, trying to hold back a threatening sob. "I know you said that we needed to branch out, open up to other people. And that was ok. It made sense. But when you're with her... You stopped talking to me. I never see you, and when I do you're with her. It's like I don't even exist."

Until that point, I hadn't fully appreciated the damage I had done to my sister. I had no idea how to make it right. "I'm sorry. I didn't know..."

Jennifer laughed, a choked unnatural laugh. "Of course you didn't know. How could you know?" She closed her eyes, massaging her temples. "Our whole lives, we've only had each other," she explained quietly. "But that was ok, because we always had each other, and I never, even on the worst day of my life, ever felt alone. But now...it's like you're leaving me behind."

"I never meant for that to happen," I said solemnly. I was desperate to explain, to make her see that this was the only way. "But don't you think it's time we started living our own lives? Don't you want to get married, start a family, all that? How are we supposed to move forward if we're attached at the hip?

"Is that what you really want?" Good question. I hadn't thought to ask it.

"I don't know!" I shouted in exasperation. "Look, I know Vicky isn't perfect. I don't know if we have a future together, but I feel like if you love me, you'll give me a chance to figure it out."

"If I love you?" Jennifer choked incredulously. "If I love you. Jesus, Jack, are you fucking blind? I'm in love with you!"

And there it was. There was nothing surprising about it. I knew how she felt about me. I felt the same way about her and I probably always had. All it took was my raw, shattered, and infinitely more courageous twin to say it out loud.

"You're...in love with me?" I repeated slowly.

"Fuck. I didn't mean to say that," my sister moaned. I wasn't sure whether or not she meant it.

She drew a long breath, trying desperately to hold onto what little of her composure remained as she began to explain. "When it was just the two of us, I didn't even think about it. I loved you and you loved me and that's all there was to it. I just assumed it would always be just the two of us and that was enough. But when you started seeing Vicky, everything changed. And I wanted more. And that night, when you and I...for a second I thought that maybe what I was feeling made sense, that it wasn't wrong, that maybe you felt the same way that I did."

I couldn't breathe. It was like the weight of her confession was pressing down on my chest, stripping the air from my lungs. I felt like a goddamn coward.

"It's weird, and it's gross, and it's fucked up, but it's how I feel," Jennifer whimpered, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. "Aren't you going to say anything?"

That was the moment that I learned that as unforgiving life can be, once in a while you get a second chance. I had no idea what I was supposed to say, and for a few seconds I just stared, trying to formulate a coherent sentence that captured exactly how I felt about my sister. And then a little voice in the back of my mind reminded me that we were twins and that sometimes words were overrated. And so I kissed her.

-

The next several minutes were a blur, my mind overwhelmed by sensation and emotion. I let everything I'd been trying to hold back, the love and pain, into that kiss, savoring it, searing it into my brain. Slowly, the fear that it wasn't real, that this was nothing more than the tortuous machination of a desperate subconscious faded away, and I began to simply enjoy the simple sensations. The faint scent of strawberries. The slight pebbled texture of her tongue. The steady cadence of her breath.

I felt her smile against my lips, causing me to return it in kind. "What?" I asked playfully. The angry black streaks of smeared mascara were still present, but the light had returned to my sister's eyes.

"I dunno. I guess it's just funny how things work out," Jennifer said coyly. "The truth shall set you free, right?"

I regarded her for a moment. She already knew, but she deserved to hear it. "I love you Jennifer," I said, unafraid.

Another kiss, one I felt to my bones. "I love you too," she whispered.

The journey to the bedroom was brief. I had a decent amount of strength within my wiry muscles, so I simply scooped Jennifer into my arms and carried her into our room. We laid side by side, gently exploring each other's bodies as we. My fingers transitioned through the silky strands of her hair, down the warm smooth surface of her face and neck, down, down, down...

Suddenly Jennifer stood up, and for a brief moment I was concerned I had crossed a line, but she was still smiling. Instead, she reached behind her, slowly unzipping the bit of cloth that separated us. Her dress slipped down, releasing the full, pale globes concealed within. She didn't waste time, hooking her panties with her thumbs and pulling them down to the floor. She kicked both garments away, standing before me in all her glory.

"Look at me Jack," my twin said, her eyes blazing. "Just look at me."

I gazed over every inch of her, taking in her fair beauty. I had seen her in varying states of undress before, but this. This was magic. I stood with her, pulling her into me. As our tongues snaked in each other's mouths, I allowed my hands to wander, gliding over the skin of her back. Her hands reached for my waist, pulling my shirt up and over, forcing us to break away for a moment as it stretched over my head.

I smiled to myself as my jeans hit the floor, thankful for once that I had not bothered with a belt. I felt gooseflesh form on my backside, realizing that my boxers had slid down as well. I stepped out of the denim and cotton, Jennifer gently pulling me toward the bed.

Suddenly I was nervous. I had no misgivings about what I wanted to do, but I had certain concerns about my skill, or lack thereof. I'd seen more than my fair share of pornography since I'd discovered how to bypass my parent's browser settings, but it served to intimidate more than educate.

If Jennifer was nervous, she didn't show it. I was certain my sister was a virgin as well, but she certainly didn't seem anxious about it. She smiled warmly at me, beckoning me to join her. I slinked over her, catching her lips once again. My anxiety began to fade as our bodies began to warm to each other. Emboldened, I began kissing my way down her neck, trailing down her clavicle, down the swell of her left breast until finally my lips brushed her nipple.

I took it into my mouth, teasing it with my tongue and teeth. Jennifer's breath hitched, a deep moan reverberated through the room. As I continued my explorations, her breath became shallower and more ragged, and every so often a faint, "Oh my God," would escape her lips.