PARKER 018

PARKER 018
EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT AFTER SANTA Monica.

I suppose I’d known that I liked Angela for a while, but Santa Monica put the truth in neon for us both. The dawning of my attraction had been slow enough to crawl up and catch me by surprise. Every day, I’d told myself it could be easily ignored. It wasn’t happening.

Angela had started to grow nice boobs? So what? Even obnoxious stepsisters grew boobs. That didn’t mean I’d spent ever more time wondering what they looked like. It didn’t mean that when she wore short shorts, I looked at her ass more often. It meant nothing.

The creeping lust before that day — and I’m positive she felt the same for me — was so gradual that we had time to deny it for a while before being forced to confront it. By then, even though I didn’t like living at Maria’s house, I’d still come to think of Angela as a reluctant sort of family, and she’d thought the same about me. You know how you’ll get used to thinking of someone a certain way, and then it’s hard to switch that mental pigeonhole even if it makes sense? That’s how it was for us. For all of us.

Angela turned eighteen not long after that. That made things a little easier for me — but not much. I’d spent a lot of time fantasizing about her, and I told myself that once she was eighteen, I’d at least not be a total creep. Now, instead of thinking about my underage stepsister’s body, I was thinking about my eighteen-year-old stepsister’s body. That made me merely disgusting rather than a total perv. I’d invoke the wrath of my dad and stepmother, be shunned by others upon discovery rather than be arrested.

Angela seemed to be feeling the same things. The rest of the Santa Monica trip was hard because I could no longer pretend I was the only pervy one. Something had passed between us, and both of us knew it. She hadn’t covered up; I’d known she liked me seeing her half-naked like that. And although I should have averted my eyes, I didn’t. And she knew I hadn’t wanted to.

We’d both wanted to do more than just looking, and easily could have. After the moment had passed, we’d both seemed to have realized it and danced toward trying to find another suitable spot … without making it obvious that we were looking. Then, when we ended up alone again, neither could make a move. Because even though we weren’t related by blood, we’d become related in our minds, used to thinking of each other as forbidden, and even as much of a shit as I was back then, I couldn’t do something that felt so utterly wrong.

We avoided one another more than usual. But I found myself wanting Angela more than ever. I tried to catch glimpses of her running to or from showers. I listened at our shared walls, wondering if she touched herself at night. Wondering if, when she did, she ever pictured that day on the beach like I did, imagining how things might have unfolded if we’d only had the nerve.

Eventually, things calmed between us, at least enough. Until one evening, we were both in the living room, holding bowls of popcorn for an ultra-rare family movie night. Only after we’d sat on the couch — right beside each other; we’d left the chairs for Dad and Maria — did we realize that the adults had made other plans. They were leaving us alone, on the couch, together.

It was too awkward to stay but far more awkward to leave. I couldn’t say, “I’m sorry; I lust for you far too much for a movie together.” We settled in for our two-hour game of chicken, and I could see the fear in her eyes. A desirous fear of me, same as the delicious terror I had for her.

We made it easily through the romcom’s first half, laughing and pretending that everything was cool. We stayed side-by-side on the couch because moving apart felt like admission of something neither of us was willing to admit. Her warmth was close. Funny parts made us forget.

But then there was the romance.

Then the first sex scene.

It was about a relationship that shouldn’t happen. Taboo, like ours.

Then the second sex scene.

It turned out all right in the end. The taboo stopped mattering, like ours shouldn’t matter. We were both legal adults; only our parents’ marriage made us family. In other circumstances, we’d have been two young adults, both breathing shallow, alone in the house, free to do whatever we wanted.

But a huge part of me tried to remember that I was the black sheep. Nobody liked or wanted me here. My dad tolerated me because he had to. Maria hated me. Angela hated me beneath her desire; I’d sensed that from the beginning. Maybe I could lean in, as the credits rolled, and make this happen. Maybe I could show her that taboos didn’t matter.

But then it would be my fault, and I’d only have proved everyone right.

The black sheep strikes again.

Angela raised the remote to kill the TV. But she fumbled, and it landed across my other side. We were too close; she’d dropped the thing because her inside arm had run along mine. Instead of asking me to grab the remote for her, I saw this terrified look on her face as if she’d done something horribly wrong but promised to fix it. She leaned. As she reached, her breasts brushed against me. Her hair draped my chest. Angela grabbed the remote and turned to me as she withdrew, but I could no longer take it.

We were boiling, and had been for weeks. The movie had stoked every bit of what we’d been trying to hide. The guilt remained, but it was somehow above us, looking down.

Lust was stronger.

I embraced her. One hand slithered around Angela’s back, pulling her face to mine. She easily came, wanting the same thing. One hand found her chest as her momentum rolled us, Angela’s back lying flat and me coming above her, my hand pawing her shirt, kneading her soft breasts. Our mouths were a frenzy; once the bubble had popped, there was no way to slow or stop or hesitate. No way to think.

No need to say anything.