“Sister Josh?” I felt my lips freeze as I turned to sigh at my boss’ husband and hoped to God that was the only reference I’d get to my professional life.
Dinner was nothing short of fantastic – seven courses of a culinary adventures for a pair of rejects who were more accustomed to eating pop tarts and mold than anything close to the wines and dinners we were served. To top it off, they even refused my attempts to pay, stating I’d done much to relieve my boss of her duties. That was the first time I ever considered that I had, in essence, taken her problems and carried them with me – lightening her load while breaking my back. Perhaps our professional relationship was not so one-sided as I had felt it was.
When we exited, Sarah was ecstatic and the wines had loosened her shoulders up a bit. Enough so that it no longer felt weird to have her arm in mine as we wandered back towards the car. “-that pineapple stuff! I’ve never even thought of combining it!” I chuckled at her excitement as I closed the door on her and took a deep breath of the cold evening air, questioning when I last enjoyed the darkness with such clarity.
“Where are we going now?” Sarah asked as I stepped into the car. Her entire persona had transformed and she had returned to her nervous self, but with an absence of a flush to her cheeks. “Don’t worry, I’m not done with you yet. Assuming you’re still interested in continuing our siblingly date.” This brightened her smile and she ceased fidgeting her fingers to briefly clap my gear-shifting hand. “Word of advice – don’t call your date your sibling.” She giggled with a tad too much bemusement. The wine must’ve really gotten to you, huh.
She’d watched the world outside the car window grow darker and darker as we journeyed further into the thick, overgrown forest. The bright moonlight cast its silvery glow on the trees, but despite the eerie atmosphere, Sarah remained calm in the warm interior of the car.
After a fifteen-minute drive along the busted road, I stopped at a clearing where the local farmers had once stored hay for the winter, where last year’s great, white, plastic balls still shone in the relative darkness. There, I keyed off the ignition and sat back in my seat to stare at the green grass for a moment. “Uhm… Josh. Is this it? I was kinda thinking bowling or something.” I smiled and shook my head before opening to door to step outside – closely followed by a similar departure from my sister. There, we stepped to the hood of the car and sat down, uncaring for the effect of our clothing on the white, aged paint. I pointed up towards the sight that had paralyzed me last time I’d been there – years past, when I’d first gotten my driver’s license and needed a breath of air. Her jaw fell agape with awe as she saw the bright, full moon and the billions upon billions of stars with more clarity than I supposed anywhere else in the world couldn’t offer.
She whispered: “Oh, nevermind… this is the perfect ending to a date. You’ve got more moves than I gave you credit for, bro.” She elbowed me in the side and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Thanks. Alas, I meant to bring my sister here, not my date. Just wanted to show you how the skies look without light pollution.” She kept her gaze firmly affixed on the moon – bathing in its white radiance. Her pale face lit up as her lips parted in a grin the likes I hadn’t ever seen on her face. She took a cautious step to the side and leaned against my shoulder. That momentary smile – that feeling of contentment reminded me of why I’d kept pushing forwards. It had all been for her – my lovely, beautiful sister whose life I’d been charged with supporting.
“This is a good place to kiss your date, you know.”
She tugged at me sleeve and when I looked over, she looked up at me with that devilish, malicious grin I’d come to miss during my work hours. I had to laugh and shake my head: “I’ll keep that in mind for when I find a date.”
“But I’m your date. Tonight.” I couldn’t make sense of her tone at that moment. If I hadn’t known her better, I’d have said she was pleading with me, but when I looked down I saw another one of her strange smiles. One thing was for sure – even in the silvery moonlight, her cheeks were bright-red. “Sarah… is anything wrong?” Was all I could ask.
She leaned heavier on my shoulder and shrugged, finally breaking her gaze on me and the stars to mutter something I couldn’t catch. I had to ask her to repeat it, only to hear her shout at me: “I haven’t kissed anyone before!” To me, this was startling information, but I couldn’t tell why I felt so startled at the moment. Perhaps it was simply so off-handed that it seemed a random bit of trivia or perhaps I was simply too intrigued by the fact of the matter. I cocked my head and ruffled her hair. “Me neither. I’m surprised, though… you must’ve been popular with the boys in high school.” She shook her head into my shoulder. “Not really, no. I’ve only ever been on one date.” She never struck me as a particular ice-queen, but I might’ve been wrong. I raised my arm around her and comfortingly rubbed her naked, cold shoulder. “We’ll find you someone who deserves you, eventually. I might need some convincing, though-”
“Josh, can you promise not to freak out when I ask you something?”
I raised an eyebrow and shrugged – I’d heard fucked-up things for years at that point.
“I want you to be my first kiss.” My breath got caught in my throat as I was treated to a new variety of fucked up. She hurriedly continued, still wrapped in my arm. “That sounds pervy and fucked, but take it for what it is… today’s been amazing and I want to remember this forever. Even if you slip away again, I’ll always know that my first kiss was with you and not some shithead I’ll end up dumping for being a horndog.”
I’d like to say I took some more convincing than that… but she wasn’t wrong. Most people I’d talked to couldn’t remember their first kiss and those who did, spoke of it being a clumsy, weird thing. I ran my free hand over my palm when I realized that her romantic sentiment wasn’t bad – it was well befitting her artistic behaviorisms. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever done, reaching down for her chin and bringing her up to stare her embarrassed smile at me. “You’re sure? Not fucking with me?” I asked. She hurriedly shook her head, whipping my arm with her blonde hair. I shrugged one last time before I leaned in to touch my lips to hers.
I had gone in for the peck, but as soon as the softness of our lips connected, I froze. It dawned on me how weird this was, but it also dawned on me how weird it wasn’t… and that was likely just as scary. I felt a warm, queasy fluttering in my stomach and my ever sense sharpened – I could feel her heartbeat reverberating through my arm as we committed that memory to long-term storage. I can’t tell you how long we stayed that way, nor can I say who broke it off, but after what felt like an hour and a second all at once, we split apart to exchange a meaningful gaze of something. Awe? Hunger? Disgust? Regret? I couldn’t tell.
Neither of us wiped our lips when we returned to silently stare up at the skies. Fuck that was nice.
The date ended with the kiss and when we were back home again, we both splayed out on the sofa and rekindled our acquaintance with human proximity by her resting her aching feet in my lap. Sarah was watching some documentary about Alaskan gold-miners, whereas I was struggling with the new pill-packaging as I readied my week’s dosages of SSRIs – a treat I’d gotten addicted to before our father’s brutal farewell. I’d found myself sneaking glances over at her rolled-up dress, drawn to looking at her thin thighs while considering how many calories a girl like her could need to pack some pounds on, when she finally broke the lengthy silence to ask: “You’re pretty bad at that for being a medical professional.” She didn’t look away from the TV, but I could see the outline of a sly smirk on her lips.
“New packaging. I’d get a knife, but your stankies are in the way.” I looked over at her and, to my horror, caught a glance up her dress to see a pair of thin, black lace undies. What happened to my sister’s innocence – that little girl who’d get up early in the saturday mornings to watch cartoons had now grown into a woman capable of wearing… that.” I saw her head move and hurriedly looked back to the task at hand – the damnable paper-and-plastic wrapping. “You like my stankies, admit it.” She waved her feet around my lap for me to chuckle – I’d smelled far worse. After a moment’s pause, she asked: “So, what are those for? I didn’t know you were on any medication.” I smirked sideways. It was one of those things I’d kept from her – one of the things I’d decided to stop keeping from her.
“They’re anti-depressants. Mild. Don’t worry – I’m fine with the medication and the techniques the therapist gave me.” Her lips contorted into a pained, wrinkle-chinned frown and for a moment I thought I’d hear a sniffle again. Instead, she swallowed the lump in her throat and asked: “Promise? You’re not gonna go dad on me, right?”
“Of course not. Who’d date my sister if I went and did myself in?” She breathed a sigh of relief before turning to look at my now-dextrous hands. “Your corpse. So, what’s the deal? How do they work? Do they have side-effects?”
I decided not to go into the details of neurochemistry and spoke instead: “It makes me not sleep all the time. And the side-effects are most prominent in the start. These days I mostly have restless legs.”
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