She could tell that Jeff was trying to suppress a laugh and saw him sport a sly grin before she carried the bags toward the bedroom.
The cabin itself was quite spacious though it only sported a few rooms. The doorway opened between the living room on the left which was open to the kitchen on the right. The front and back porch were covered under-roof, and the hot tub was situated on the rear porch faced the forest behind the cabin. A large stone fireplace stood proudly along the wall in the living room. Next to the fireplace was a short corridor that led to the home theater that could seat four on two plush loveseats. The door opposite the corridor from the theater led to a nicely appointed bathroom with a large walk-in shower and soaking tub. Going over the top of the bathroom was a staircase that started at the kitchen and led up to the loft bedroom. The loft overlooked the rest of the cabin and exposed timber beams jutted outward over the living room. The sleeping area was mostly open to the cabin through a railing and pickets except for where the stone chimney towered upward through the roof.
Katy was old enough to remember the state of the place when her father had bought it and was always impressed with how lovely everything eventually became. She briefly reminisced about playing around the property as a young girl while her father and brother toiled away at renovating it from the run-down old cabin into the beautiful getaway that it now was. She climbed the stairs and looked down toward the fireplace where her brother was hunched and working at starting the fire. Above the mantel she saw the slab of wood her father had cut from the forest and ornately carved the initials of the three family members before finishing it into a nicely done wall-piece and mounted it above the fireplace. She felt her eyes moisten with tears and then quickly kept ascending the stairs before anyone noticed.
Katy dropped Bethany’s bags upstairs and composed herself before going back down to get dinner started. By the time she arrived back on the ground floor, Jeff had the fire started well enough and he hung his coat and joined Katy in the kitchen. Cooking together was something the pair had done since they were both young. Jeff had taught her all the basics of the kitchen when she was a girl, but even he admitted that she had since become a far better cook than he ever was. The act of cooking together in this cabin under these circumstances was comforting to Katy and reminded her of what a calming presence her brother was in her life. She nearly teared up again as Jeff pulled on his apron and gave her shoulder a soft squeeze before they unpacked the food and set about to meal preparations.
To Katy’s chagrin, Bethany remained in the living room for the duration of the cooking and only came to the table when Jeff announced it was time to eat. They all ate in relative silence, being hungry from the journey and the cold. At the meal’s conclusion, Jeff gathered the dishes and set about washing them.
“I’m going to change and probably lounge by the fire for a bit,” Katy said as she got up from the table. “Don’t drink any of my wine!” she added with a smirk. The comment was more toward Bethany as she knew her brother preferred rum or scotch whisky.
Bethany feigned a smile and replied, “Oh I’ve brought my own don’t worry.”
Even the sound of her voice was beginning to irk Katy. She always had found Bethany’s voice to be a bit patronising and disingenuous and had just let it roll off her in the past. But now it screeched to her like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Katy stood and snatched up her bag from the sofa before heading into the bathroom to change. She had planned on sleeping on the sofa since the cabin only had a single bedroom. When Katy was young, she and her brother would roll out their sleeping bags in front of the fireplace and pretend to camp out, sometimes even roasting marshmallows and making s’mores in the fire. As comforting as that would be in the current situation, she knew that likely was not an option with Bethany around.
Jeff met Bethany at university and they were married directly after graduation. Katy had only been fourteen when they were married but as the years progressed she got the distinct impression that Bethany was a bit of a frigid, but jealous wife. Jeff and Katy were very open with each other about most things, and though her brother would never divulge any of the exact details, she inferred that he was beginning to think he had made a mistake. But she also knew her brother to be one to put up with things for the greater good and make sacrifices for causes he deemed noble. In that way, the same characteristics that made him the best brother she could ask for seemed to set him up for neglect as a husband as the events of the evening seemed to illustrate.
Katy shut the bathroom door and began to strip off her clothes and rummage in her bag for her lounge trousers and fleece-lined sweater. Winter nights in the cabin were chilly even with the fire going as the dimples poking through her beige bra indicated. She removed the bra and immediately felt the cold air on her skin which brought her nipples to full standing height. She wrapped her arms around herself as she turned toward her bag to snatch up her t-shirt to give her some insulation from the chilly air. As she turned, she caught her reflection in the vanity mirror. Katy was a curvy girl whose voluptuous frame had gotten her many compliments, with varying degrees of sincerity and lewdness even at her age. According to her father, she had inherited those traits from her mother. Her wide hips sloped upward into her torso and her b-cup breasts hung down while she was bent over pulling out her clothes. Her round backside pointed toward the mirror and was wrapped in a grey pair of cheeky panties. Katy felt an odd sense of arousal well up inside her, warming her body ever so slightly against the cold of the winter mountain air. She pulled down her t-shirt over her head and the fleece sweater quickly thereafter, then worked on a thick pair of wool socks over her dainty feet and stepped into the pyjama trousers. The static from the fleece outerwear had her shoulder-length brunette hair going wayward in all directions. She gave a sigh while she pulled it into a ponytail. She hated having her hair up but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it at the moment. Katy then turned to flick off the light before exiting the bathroom.
The seemingly ill-timed arousal was something she had grown to expect in recent months. Her brother had convinced her to join him for counseling sessions after the passing of their father. She suspected that he was just trying to look out for her, as he always had, noticing the difficult time she was having where most might miss it. At first she was hesitant and skeptical about how effective it would prove to be. It wasn’t until after their second joint session where she began to see just how the ordeal had weighed on her brother. She had always pictured Jeff as an unmovable rock of emotional strength just as she perceived him to be throughout her childhood. But hearing her older brother articulate his grief and concern in that setting revealed that perhaps he needed her as much as she needed him. After the first month of weekly sessions, she took initiative to schedule personal sessions, seeing some of the benefits for both her and her brother, while Jeff also continued his own individual appointments.
In her subsequent personal sessions, she learned about survivor’s guilt and the myriad of ways people attempt to cope with it. She learned how the mind can search for reprieve from feelings of loss. Even though any guilt on her part was unfounded, it weighed on her all the same. For her, one of those coping mechanisms was sex. It gave her a momentary escape from the helpless feelings she was dealing with, and she had begun to use it as an outlet and a momentary reprieve from her grief. Her term at university had given her no shortage of opportunities for such liaisons, but the relief was always temporary. She was always careful and never made any attachments, not that she was in any emotional state to make such attachments in the first place. In the past months her body had begun to expect release in the face of feelings of grief and loss and those feelings were sweeping over her now that she and Jeff were visiting the cabin for the first time without their father. The downside to being in such a remote location with family was that physical release was not going to be much of an option until they returned to civilization.
She steeled herself against the wave of untimely hornyness that was sweeping through her like an ocean storm surge and walked determinedly into the living room. Upon entering, she was greeted by the waves of warmth that radiated from the fireplace, which was now burning warm and bright, and let them soothe and relax her body and mind. She made a line to the armchair that was next to the hearth and found a glass of wine waiting for her on the table next to it. A quick look up and she found Jeff and Bethany seated on the sofa directly across from the fireplace arranged perpendicularly from her own chair. Jeff raised up his own glass in a “cheers” motion toward his sister and she silently mouthed “thank you” to him in return.
She plopped down into the armchair and pulled down the blanket that was draped over the back of it to cover her legs. She quickly found herself trying to ignore Bethany drone on about wanting new furniture in the flat while scrolling through her phone. Katy pulled up a book from the lower shelf of the end table to lose herself in reading to try and block out Bethany’s chatter which she found increasingly irritating. In any case, she would need to wait for her brother and Bethany to go up to bed before she could lie down for the night herself. The sofa was currently occupied and the only bed had already been claimed by the married couple..
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