TABOO TALES(erotica)

Mum filled me in on Nia.

“She not do too well in her A-Levels, so she not going university this year. She want to re-sit in August, and start university at Easter, when she be 19. She want to study law at the London School of Economics, not move away from home, stay in London. Your father and I support her, we not want her off by herself in remote part of the country; she too young to be alone, need family nearby.”Text © owned by NôvelDrama.Org.

I asked mum where Nia was, she looked sad. “I ask her to be here, she say she will, but I not see her since morning. Maybe she come back soon, gone out with friends, I think.”

I was feeling a little tired, so I asked mum if I could go and lie down, and she looked surprised. “Why you asking, Jamie, this your home, not need permission in own home! Your room is clean and ready for you, Nia tidy it for you, every week she tidy it for you!”

I raised an eyebrow at that, walked up to my room, and gasped. Nothing had been changed since the day I left, and I mean nothing. It was as though the room had been in a time-warp; even a handful of small change on the dresser was exactly where I’d spilled it, my books with their bookmarked pages still stacked on the ground next to the bed, my Sam Cooke CD still in the CD player, the case open on my dresser, my tennis racquet tossed carelessly on the bed where I’d left it, with a post-it note to Nia to use it as I wouldn’t need it still stuck to the case, and my CD’s all jumbled together on the corner of my wardrobe, again exactly where I’d left them; there were even the post-it notes with various notes-to-self still tacked to my desk. This was creepy; it was like a shrine to Jamie…

Felling very weird about this, I grabbed my clothes out of my case and dumped them in the laundry basket, shoving the case under the bed and peeling of my clothes, dumping them as well, and climbing into bed. The sheets and linens were all freshly laundered, so Nia must have stripped the bed, and re-made it exactly how I left it; that was slightly scary, I would need a talk with that girl. Thinking along those lines, I fell asleep, to dream of Nia when she was small, holding my hand as I walked her to school.

I woke with a start, checked my watch, discovered I’d been asleep for almost 3 hours.

“Finally, it stirs!” said a voice behind me. I spun around, and there was Nia, sitting on my study chair, grinning at me. But what a change! I’d last seen her as a surly, defensive 15 year old teen nightmare; lip always ready to curl in derision, eyes sullen and flat, hostility just below the surface.

Now she’d changed beyond all recognition; I’d have walked right past her without recognising her! She was tall, I could see that even sitting down, a slender, willowy, but shapely figure, hair waved and teased into a riotous tumble of black curls, long slender legs encased in skin-tight black leggings, flat-soled harem-slippers on her feet and wearing a loose, boat-neck cream pullover top that left one shoulder bare. Her skin still had that pale, fresh complexion, her almond eyes were large bright blue sapphires, or maybe cornflowers, expressive and beautiful, surrounded by sooty lashes, and her mouth was wide, generous, made for smiling. Her lips were naturally coral pink, her face heart-shaped and perfectly symmetrical, her fine oriental features highlighted perfectly by her Caucasian genes. She was beautiful! Following on the heels of that was the realisation that I was checking-out my sister! Eewww!

“Close your mouth, Jamie, you’re drooling!” she giggled, and my mouth snapped shut, flushing as I realised I was busted, ogling my sister, although, to be fair, she was eminently worth the ogle!

“Nia, you surprised me! I came home and you weren’t here…!” I trailed off.

Nia stood up in one lithe move, and slid onto the bed next to me, to slid her arms around my neck and press her cheek against mine.

“Welcome home, Jamie, I missed you so much…!” she said softly, and I hugged her close, then something made me pull away to look at her, seeing she was crying.

“Nia, what… why… don’t do that, you troll, you know what you look like when you cry!” I grinned at her, and she slapped me on the upper arm, trying to smile as two big tears escaped her brimming eyes and ran down her cheeks. I pulled a tissue out from the nightstand, gave it to her, and waited while she dabbed her eyes dry again.

I hugged her again, glad to be holding her again after all this time. “I missed you Nia, more than you know!” I said, and I meant it. “Why were you so mad, that you had to cut me off for three whole years? I asked dad about you every time I called home. I missed you very much Nguye’t!”

Nia tried to speak, and started crying again instead, and all at once she was 8 years old, and this was Nia-in-distress crying again, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. I gathered her into me, soothing her as I used to when she was small, the act of doing that reuniting us again, the intervening years dropping away.

At last she slowed down, her sobbing giving way to silent tears, with me holding her against my shoulder and silently feeding her paper tissues; I’d been here before so I knew, when she was ready to talk, she’d talk.

At last her breathing started sounding normal, so I asked her “What brought that on, Troll-Child, why the waterworks?”

She buried her face in my shoulder, and started speaking. “When you left, I was so horrible, I thought you were going because you didn’t want to stay with us, with me, any longer, and that you were paying me back for all the mean things I did. I thought you hated me! And I was going to hate you back, but all I could do was miss you, and then I didn’t know how to say suh… suh… sorry! You were gone and I wanted you back!” She swallowed, obviously near tears again.

I was thunderstruck. Had I really come across like that, given her the impression I hated her?

She continued. “I was there every time you called, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you, I didn’t know what to say, and ‘sorry’ was too hard to say. Or not enough, I don’t know. And the longer it went on, the harder it was to stop it. I tried to make myself believe I didn’t need you around, but that didn’t work, I never realised just how much of my day was spent around you!”

I eased her up so I could look at her. “And this?” I asked, indicating my room, “was this all part of that as well?”

She nodded. “I thought if your room looked just like it did when you left, I could pretend you’d just gone out, and were coming back any minute, it would feel like you were still around. Can you understand that?”

I did.

I looked into her eyes. “Listen to me, I have never hated you, or wanted to leave you, or mum and dad, ever. I just wanted to go to the university that gave me the best degree. You’re my little sister, and while I admit, yes, I did sometimes want Dorothy to drop a house on you, I never hated you, even when you were being your brattiest! Mum told me that being your older brother came with responsibilities, and I said yes, and took them on, because I wanted to. I wanted to then, and I want to now. OK?”

Nia looked sideways at me. “When did mum ask you this, Jamie?”

“When you were born, Nia, when she brought you home.” I replied

“And you stuck to it, after all the shit I put you through? Really?” I nodded. Her eyes welled-up again, and I hastily grabbed a tissue.

“Jamie, poor you, you let me do all those horrid things, say all those horrid things, all those years, because of a promise to mum? You promised to look after me and I took so much advantage of you; I don’t deserve you!”

I grinned. “I’ll say! But in your defence, it was a lot of fun too! True, being your guardian angel was no bed of roses, but it wasn’t exactly the death of a thousand cuts either! Watching you learn to skate, for one; I actually laughed ’til I was sick!”

She looked at me, seemed to make a decision, grabbed my face and kissed me on the cheek, a long smacker. I was a little surprised, and a little wistful as well she used to do that a lot when she was small, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it.

Then she really surprised me. Still holding my face, she planted a firm kiss right on my lips. For a stunned second I enjoyed it, then reality blinked back on and I reared back, pulling away from her and sliding off my bed and onto the floor. I peered up at her over the edge of the bed, like the world’s most reluctant bridegroom, to see her still sitting there, looking at me strangely. “Jamie, you look ridiculous down there, come back up here, I won’t bite, you know!”

It wasn’t the biting I was afraid of, although what I was afraid of I didn’t know, just that something had suddenly changed between us. I shook my head emphatically.

“Jamie! I said, ‘come back up here’!” she snapped, eyes darkening as she ordered me back next to her. 15 years of conditioning took over, and I crept back up onto the bed, as far from her as I could. We stared at each other, Nia looking ever so slightly pleased with herself; I shudder to think what I looked like.

Nia grinned at me. “Calm, down, Jamie, I said, I’m not going to bite you. You can relax, seriously. You look like someone just gave your scrotum a really big tweak!”

Some sort of response was needed here, I felt. “Glaarrrkk!” was the best I could do, good for an opener, but needed more. I cleared my throat, and tried again.

“What the fu… um, hell did you do, Nia, why did you do that?” I croaked.

Nia smiled. “I did it because I always wanted to do it, I wanted to see what it would be like, and I liked it! How was it for you?” she twinkled mischievously.

“God, Nia, I’m your brother, you can’t go doing stuff like that…!” I trailed of as she failed to look the least bit contrite.

“Oh balls, Jamie, I’m a big girl, and I wanted to see what it would be like to snog my cute man-tottie big brother; don’t say you didn’t like it – you kissed me back! Besides, you were the one practically peeling down my panties with your eyes a couple of minutes ago!”