Ian,
I sit and stare at this blank place and think about how to tell you in direct and elegant prose how my world has come undone.
There's a yard, somewhere, that maybe you remember. In the sunlight which turns a yellow-green in the warm summers, blonde children hide in the cool and green shade beneath the porch, when not jumping, stamping feet, excited, or reading a book where the cinderblocks make the patio and feel cool despite the heat.
In the yard, there's a shed, which was a whitish shade of corrugated metal with a matching roof, and inside smelled of pesticides and lawn clippings. Or it was wood-shingled and hand-machined. Or it was red, faded to almost the color of blood, and the chipping paint on the trim was made to mock a barn. I can't remember. But there was a space behind it, where the dirt was soft and dry and a pale gold the color of lion's fur. Weeds grew tall along the fence, which was open chain link, and there were stacks of old bricks that had gone unused when the Dragon had...no. No, when my father...when Walker made...I don't remember, and maybe that doesn't matter either.
Brad's voice teases from it, forever the summer of boys in the woods.
"I read it in a book, Evie."
"You did not."
"Yes, no matter what, exactly the same."
"That's stupid."
See, with me and Brad, it's always felt that if any pair of eyes but ours were laid on us, we would vanish forever, and maybe that's because we grew up one another's imaginary friends. But the silences alone, we treasure because it's a feeling of hidden reality. If there was a secret world you could get to, whenever you wanted, that felt like heaven, but vanished when someone got near, wouldn't you...wouldn't you...hide...somewhere...forever?
"You have them on your cheeks and I don't."
"No, that's not what I'm saying. You can have them wherever, but there's always the same NUMBER."
"How many do you have?"
"52."
"You counted already?"
He laughs low, breathy, the sound of a boy trying to be quiet.
"Yeah, I checked in a mirror. Even on my ass."
"You don't get freckles on your ASS."
"Yes huh."
"Well, I can't count right now because I don't have a mirror."
He snaps a piece of gum, or maybe cracks his grin because it approaches him fast.
"I could do it for you."
"Will it get you to shut up about it?"
"Yeah."
I sigh long and theatrically.
"Alright."
I pull my dress up, over my head, and spread it neatly onto the brick pile, to keep it from the dirt. Under it, I'm wearing a dark blue satin bra and magenta satin panties. From where he sits against the fence, his eyes get big, maybe used to seeing or used the idea of white cotton underwear with tiny yellow or purple flowers hanging on the clothesline.
"Where the fuck did you get those?"
"Nowhere. The store," I shrug at him, confused and self-conscious and not feeling like admitting I'd stolen them from...one of our mothers.
"Well, you have to take those off, too," he said, his smile getting sly. "You need help?"
"No," I told him, denying his help and his requirements. I stood, obstinate, in the summer air.
He stood up to count, and started at my legs. He took, methodically, parts of me in his hands, to turn and examine, and mutter under his breath. I got nervous someone would see. His missing shirt was allowed. Mine was not.
"You have to take your panties off," he said at last, standing in the space behind me. My hair was very long and brushed my back and shoulders, then.
"Okay."
Pulling them off, he lifted the curtain of my hair to see my skin better, and I felt his breath on me and shivered.
"You aren't cold, are you?" he asked me, softly. I could smell the detergent on his clothes, and the sweat in his hair. I wondered what of me he could smell. I could tell his jeans were newly washed, as was his hair. The regimented machine of a mother with multiple children meant that we were both often scrubbed clean and not allowed to wilt in summers.
"No," I said, almost in defiance. He chuffed under his breath, and muttered.
"24."
When we approached my shoulders, he turned me to face him and walked his fingers over me, counting, his expression one of intense concentration.
"3...6. 3...7"
In an abrupt change of course, his eyes snapped up into mine.
"Will you kiss me?" he asked, his voice somewhere between playing and serious.
I stood up on my toes and gave him a peck on the mouth. As I did, his hand snaked around the back of my neck and held me there, long enough the tension in my mouth softened and my heart started to pound.
Our skin met and we felt it's meeting with encircled hands, while he tried to make clear his point.
"I like when you sleep in my bed," he said, his voice strained. The tangle of us in his bed at night was sometimes warm and welcomed, and sometimes hot and fitful, pushing us past one another and away for air or space, and coming back again in nuzzles cooled by sweat. His breath was cottony and rumpled, like old laundry, when he puffed it into my face.
I lowered my eyes, realizing he wanted to kiss me while I was naked and I fell for it. I scoffed.
"No, I do," he said, pulling me back to him. "I do, I like you touching me. I want to kiss you all the time."
His eyes turned from playful to pleading, and we kissed again, against the scratch or burn of the wall of the shed.
"Here," he said, his voice suddenly loud and startling. "Here, lay down."
In the dirt, we laid down together like we did in his bed, and facing him, I kissed his mouth while he looked at me confused and lost. Something grown up and adult was seeping into the world we'd made. Some feeling I knew was real was the coming of an impending precipice. Now, it'll be more like...now, when we play, it'll be more like...
He found his way, hot under the sun, his skin baking warm and steamed by his sweat, between my thighs. The pressure of him against my body made me moan soft into him, and he swallowed it hard in the dimensions of our kiss.
Rapid and before I was aware enough to comment on a yes or no, he dragged from behind his open zipper the weight of his cock and pushed it, hard and suddenly, into me, where I yelled some strange sound, and his hand clamped over my mouth.
"They'll hear us," he hissed.
I tried to steady my breath, and whimpered under him.
"Shhh," he said. "Shhh, it's okay, Evie."
"Brad?" I almost asked him, digging the pads of my fingers into his shoulders, feeling the cool dirt under me, and how it caught and coated my hair.
He moved slow and cautious.
"Does it hurt?" he asked me, and I confirmed him.
"Yeah."
He made sounds of disbelief above me, sweat that had nested in the root of his hair now escaping down his temples.
"Oh...oh fuck...Evie."
The catch of his hips against me was something he kept low and soft, like he was trying to nudge me gently from a heavy sleep. I felt my eyes drop and something like sleep come close to me, something he was teasing me toward. I made louder and hoarsely-whispered moans into his ear, and his hand came back.
"Shhhhh," he said. "We can't let anyone hear us."
He swallowed a gasp of surprise when I came painfully around his cock, and he spilled his cum inside me a second later. I felt him clutching the ground for something, and balling his fists into my hair, which he buried his face in and blew dust and sweat between us.
"I love you," I murmured to him, and he choked a sob and said it back.
"I love you. We have to go before someone catches us."
"Okay," I told him, stunned and full of some kind of peace.
"Will you spend the night with me?" he asked me, somehow shy suddenly.
"Yeah."
I wanted to tell him in that moment something he knew and would remember forever, but highlighted something I believed was true, in a sense I wasn't sure how to articulate. I wanted to tell him, "You're my brother."
He pulled away from me with a last kiss.
"You won't tell anyone, will you?" he asked me, and I shook my head.
"No. We're a secret."
Love,
Annik
