From the Embers

First-time erotica poster.

This is definitely one of those stories where the pay-off isn’t immediate. I’ve been playing a lot around with this romance, so it’s a bit lengthy and you won’t see a fuckin’ in ever paragraph. But I hope you enjoy it and I’d love a comment or a rating to see whether I’ve got what it takes to keep writing in this genre!

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My dad used to say that life was a losing battle. As a child, that saying had little to no meaning to me. My childhood ignorance had spared me the harsh realities of the bills, sicknesses and pains that had consumed his every waking moment near the end of his life. Ignorance was a luxury that I found had lulled me into a false sense of security – a foolish sheepishness that had me believing my father would always be around to guide me when the day came for me to understand this cruelty of the world.

But my father, like his late wife, fought a war against himself. Whereas my mother had died years past from cancer, his sickness was of a far darker and less televised nature… at least until the police had found him on a road shoulder with a fat bear-slug having tore through the roof of his mouth.

As much as I would’ve loved a farewell note, he’d left me something far more important. Dreadfully, the childhood I’d squandered by not appreciating my blissful freedom was something other than the dark, harsh realities my sister had been cast into. I had been twenty-one when he blew his head open, whereas she still had five years left of her teenage years. At fifteen years old, she’d not only lost her father, but with the remaining mortgage and our already-poor finances, I had to dedicate most of my waking hours to support us, which had cost her the closest of her friends and the only family that remained of our clan… me.

I worked hard – harder than I needed to. It was reflexive – perhaps a coping mechanism more than a need to secure our future. Whatever the reason, I needed to support her, as the month we spent starving ourselves to make ends meet had scarred me for the rest of my life. Seeing her misery – not only of having lost our dear patriarch, but from starvation and freezing, left me no choice but to pause my nursing-studies to work. And work, I did.

We got in a rhythm of not seeing one-another for weeks at a time as I balanced my jobs and saved up enough to continue my studies, but the damage had already been done. I’d gotten into the habits of a workaholic – overcome with the incessant need to earn money and be productive with every waking moment and if I did not… I’d remember her misery and I’d be treated to a profound, passing melancholy that only died as I returned to work.

That’s not to say that professional life wasn’t good to me. Eventually I finished, I specialized, I got a new job with a boss that I adored and who loved me like her own child… but in the field of medicine, happiness usually just precedes a fall to new lows. As an ophthalmic nurse, I gave intravitreal injections most days during regular working hours before working my rounds until bedtime. Statistically, any large-scale procedure is a battle against statistics – we all know that big complication’s coming, but it’s up to anyone’s guess to know when or why. But I knew it as soon as I saw the patient return four days after the procedure with a red eye, astounding pain and a poor vision. It had finally happened to me, too, after dreading it for several years and hoping I’d be the one of my colleagues never to have it happen to one of my patients.

Life was a losing battle.

Never had it made more sense to me as I sat in the kitchen in the dreary, dark morning hours after yet another sleepless night. It hadn’t taken my boss long to notice something was awry – we knew one-another well enough for her to see that my bagged eyes and the pain was indicative of something looming at the back of my mind. Perhaps she took pity on me for my background and for knowing my motivations, but she’d been quick to pull me aside and speak those horrible words: “We handle the bad with the good, Josh. I know you well enough by now to know that your idea of good is another shift, but when the good turns to bad, you need to have something outside of a white uniform to turn to. You’re off for a month – PTO. I’ll only let you get back in your scrubs after you’ve proven to me that you have something outside of work to live for… go home.”

And so I had. I looked down at my breakfast of champions – the first drink I’d had since my twenty-first birthday. Five years of losing a battle against the inevitable and I was burned out, bummed and suffering through another sip of the whisky I’d poured for myself.

“Hello, stranger.” A melodious, surprisingly cheerful voice chimed in from my left. I hadn’t expected company – it was all too easy to forget I wasn’t alone in this house. I looked over to see my sister in all her tall glory, smiling back at me with a pair of strange, cautious lips. Her blue eyes glanced at the bottle before returning to look into my eyes. She’d let her hair down for work and combed it well, bringing my attention to how her long, blonde strands hung all the way down to her waist. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, perhaps that’s why I got so caught up with her gaunt cheeks and felt a pang of jealousy at how well she wore her white shirt and the black skirt / tights combo. It took me a moment to remember that she’d taken on a part-time job as a waiter at our town’s one fancy hotel and was likely headed out for the breakfast service.

I forced a smile and raised a greeting hand. “Long time no see. Care to join me for breakfast?” Her smile turned to a smirk of worry as she saw the glass in my hand. She shook her head and took a few, cautious steps forwards before sitting down across from me. “Bit early for that, isn’t it? Rough shift?”

I sighed, wishing I could just open up the floodgates I’d spent a lifetime building. As I stared into her worried eyes, I came to the realization that my only friend… my only social contact in the entire world was my twenty-year-old sister. The very same person I’d been putting walls around to shield her from the shittiness of adult life. “No, everything’s fine. I just got the day off, so I decided to get the day started right.”

She breathed a sigh of relief as her smile returned. As if struck by a grand idea from the blue, she reached into the bag slung over the back of her chair and rummaged through the brown canvas to produce a paper which she graciously used her long, delicate fingers to lay down on the table, spun around and showed me her results. A red ‘A’ had been circled near the bottom – another top grade from her creative writing. I’d been so numbed by my pride in her efforts at school that I’d begun to take her genius creativity for granted, but every time I was presented with her papers, I greedily read them. She folded her hands on the table and grew a couple of inches with pride as she saw my continued surprise, before cautiously suggesting: “Well… I know you hate time off. If you have time, maybe you could read something that wasn’t some disgusting eye-stuff, for once. I’d love your feedback.” Little did she know, I read all her papers. I looked sideways to find my trusted pen protruding from my table-top discarded scrubs and wrote what I always did when seeing her ‘A’s.

A heart and an encouraging ‘I’m proud of you. Love.’

Her giggle sounded almost nervous as she beamed back at me. “I’m right here, you know.”

I put the paper down, sighed contently and bobbed my head. “You are. I’m proud of you, kid.” I held up my fingers in the shape of a heart and found her response curious – as if she dismissed my compliment entirely, but smiled just genuinely enough to fool me on any other day. I could scarcely deny that my words should have meant little to her – I was a stranger, more than a family member. She rose up, maintaining her smile and looked out the window at the grand clearing around our desolate, forested house and spoke:

“Well, I’ve gotta get going. Believe it or not, there are people out there who eat, rather than drink their breakfast.” I scoffed my bemusement, but took her jab for what it was. “Point taken.” I pushed the bottle aside and smiled back at her, wishing she didn’t have to leave. “Before you go, Sarah… I-…” I opened my mouth without a plan in an effort to stall her. What would I say? I love her? Have a great day? “I’ve got some time off for the next month. Maybe-…” I narrowed my eyes at her, grimacing, still uncertain as to what the hell I was thinking when I began my efforts to stall her. All I knew was that I did not want to be alone.

Her shallow smile faded for a millisecond to make way for an expression of fleeting, profound pain, before she returned to smiling again. “I’ll stay out of your hair, don’t worry. I’ll see if I can get some more shifts-”

I can’t even begin to understand what happened. I shot up from my chair so swiftly it startled her enough to thump her back against the wall. “No!” I likely appeared a savage when I shouted my desperate plea. I gathered myself before continuing: “N-no, that’s not what I meant. I just… I’d like to spend some time together. I’m not sure what we’d do, exactly, but… I mean, we used to go fishing?” If I’d shit on a platter and tried to serve it to her, I still believe she’d be less confused. Upturned brows and wide eyes aside, her shock soon turned to bemusement. She flashed her teeth in a warm smile and brought her feet together in an almost nervous gesture before stating: “I’d like that. I’ll be done at noon… if you’ve got the day off…” She trailed off in a manner so similar to my own, it wasn’t hard to see where she’d picked up her habits.

With a crooked smile of my own, I promised: “I’ll pack lunch.” Incapable of helping herself, she raised her eyebrow and spoke over her shoulder: “Solid, if it’s not too much to ask.”