TABOO TALES(erotica)

He rose to her feet and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek, but she seized him and they embraced. Her hair was shorter than before, cut in a sort of bob, and he could smell the scent of apple and soap on her skin. After a moment they separated, and she sat down.

“I hardly recognised you without the rose,” David said.

She was taken aback. “What? What rose?”

“In your email.” He touched his pocket. “You said you’d be the one with the rose in your teeth.”

“Ah, I remember now.” She smiled. “I tried it but I was worried about the pricks – I mean, prickles.” He could see a faint blush on her cheeks as she corrected herself. “God, that didn’t sound right, did it.” She laughed. “I can see that in the local rag: ‘Local woman meets long lost brother with a prick in her mouth’.”All content © N/.ôvel/Dr/ama.Org.

David laughed with her, and was relieved that she hadn’t lost any of the humour and spontaneity of her youth. Her grey eyes were laughing too, crinkled at the edges, and her teeth were white and even. He realised that she had turned into a beautiful woman.

“Tell me about yourself, Jen. What have you been doing since I last saw you?”

“Short version? Moved to Sydney. Found job, worked, met man. Married. Separated ten years ago – no kids. Hated city so moved to smaller place. Set up business and here I am.” She didn’t mention the years of loneliness, of broken relationships and an empty bed because none of the men she met had measured up to him. “What about you?”

“Moved to Melbourne. Worked. Never married as nobody would have me. Worked some more, wrote to long lost sister and here I am.”

“Why wouldn’t anyone have you?”

David shrugged. “Too grotchety, I guess… and they were always in competition with someone else.” His eyes were on her face, inviting her to talk about it.

She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t, David. Not yet. We can talk about that time somewhere else, but not here -” she broke off as the waitress brought them menus. “God, I’m famished. I plan to eat everything on the menu… what about you?”

He nodded and they scanned the fare, ordering starters and mains and a crisp white Sauvignon Blanc to go with the meal. The food was good and as the level in the bottle dropped they began to relax a little, finding the connection again, laughing at little things they had heard or read about. She ordered a dessert – a fig pudding drizzed in butterscotch sauce and she ate it whilst he sipped his coffee.

David watched her eat the last mouthful with obvious relish. “How come you’re not the size of an elephant?” he asked.

She feigned amazement, looking down into her lap and smoothing her hands over her torso. “You mean I’m not?”

“Hardly. You look good.”

“If I ate like that every meal I would be, but today’s different. ” She glanced around the other tables. “Looks like we’re the last ones here… do you fancy a walk?”

“Yep. Where to?”

“Just a walk… around – you know. I want to talk about things.”

“Right.” He picked up the flowers and the present. “Don’t forget these.”

She took his arm and they walked down the main street of the town, past the little church and the park just beyond it. She was silent for a while and David did not press her, as he sensed that she was gathering her thoughts.

At last she turned to him. “Do you remember the last words I said to you at the hospital?”

“You said ‘No, I won’t. Not again’ … or something like that.”

She nodded. “The doctor had just given me something so I guess over the years I wasn’t too sure what I said, but I thought it might have been along those lines. You know I didn’t mean it. Is it why you left without saying anything?”

“Partly. I figured you couldn’t stay in the town – you’d have to move, and that you wouldn’t want me because it would happen again wherever we were.”

“But why didn’t you say goodbye?”

“Because I loved you.”

“That’s like saying you rape to save virginity.”

David shook his head. “Hardly. I left because I thought everything had happened because of me, and you had been the one to suffer because of it. If I hadn’t seen you naked in the bathroom… if I hadn’t done what I did, you wouldn’t have been hurt. I knew you couldn’t stay there, and I knew that if we stayed together it would happen all over again. I thought it was better to go, to spare you the pain of having to tell me to go.”

Jen nodded. “I was angry with you for a long time, but I finally figured that out.” She was quiet for a few minutes. “And how do you feel now?”

“I’ve thought about you every single day we have been apart.”

She smiled. “Every day? That’s a lot of days.”

“Yep. Well, every day except for Thursdays and Sundays, when I had a couple of tarts visit me at home… and Mondays and Wednesdays when I stayed over at the nurse’s accommodation block near me.”

“So that left Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays to think of me?”

“Yeah. Except Friday was my fishing day, and on Saturdays I usually had a hangover.” He laughed. “So Tuesdays I thought of you. That’s still nearly 600 days.”

“Wow. I’m really flattered. It didn’t answer the question though, David. How do you feel about us now?”

” I was nervous about today, Jen – not at the thought of seeing you again, but at the thought that we might not be able to connect… you know, that time might have changed us both and we really would be strangers.” He squeezed her arm. “But it wasn’t like that. For me at least the connection is still there – it was as if those empty years had never happened.” He paused for a moment, aware that her grey eyes were watching him with that peculiar intensity he remembered. “So, to answer your question – I feel good about us. I feel…” he struggled for words “… as if I’ve come home.”

She stopped walking and regarded him, a long searching look, and then she reached a decision. “Speaking of home,” she said, “here is mine. Would you come in for a few minutes, David? We could have another coffee, or something.”

They were stood at the gate of a little cottage on the outskirts of the village. He looked at her in surprise. “You live here?”

“Yes. It’s very modest, I’m afraid, and I’m only renting. I couldn’t afford much.”

He opened the gate and ushered her though. “Speaking of money, you probably don’t know you have about half a million in a savings account I set up for you.”

She stared at him. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Mum’s house. For some reason her will was made out to me, not to both of us. I guess she was a traditionalist at heart. I initially rented it, just to keep it going whilst I sorted things out… and a year or two later I got an unsolicited offer of a ridiculously low price.” He glanced at her. “Like, it was such a ridiculous offer it made me wonder why anyone would even bother to ask. Anyway, I did a bit of research and found it was a property developer buying up big in the street… wanting to build new townhouses, trying to get a cheap deal. So I hung out until it was the very last second and got twice the market price.” He laughed. ” I couldn’t find you to tell you, so I set up an account with your share in it and did a bit of investing. It’s there when you want it, but you’ll need to speak to the Trustee.”

“But you did all the work, David. I shouldn’t get all of that.”

“It was the only thing of value Mum had – of course half of it is yours. I just got lucky with the price.”

Jen opened the door to the house and they went in, through the narrow hallway and into the little kitchen. She opened the cupboard to fetch the cups, wondering why she had invited him in, not knowing how this would progress, or even if she should.

David sat on one of the kitchen chairs, and he looked around. “This is just like Mum’s kitchen,” he said, and he looked at his sister and longed to be back there with her – to capture all that they had lost, even if it was only for a day.

Jen turned towards him with the crockery in her hands. She hadn’t made the connection with her mother’s house, but he was right – it had the same outlook and furnishings and atmosphere. She saw that the sun was streaming in through the window to fall on the figure of her brother, and she perceived an expression of desperate longing on his face. Her mind tumbled back to another time, when David was sitting in that kitchen the morning after their first night together, and their mother had just left to go shopping. She remembered the motes of dust hovering in the sunlight and the glints of red and copper in his hair, and the way his skin was burnished to a marvelous gold in its light; and she recalled how she had run to him on long bare legs with her heart bursting with love.

And in that instant of time Jen realised that everything was the same and eleven long years of their lives had been wasted because neither of them had found the energy or courage to capture what they had lost. The emotional walls that she had carefully built crumbled in a second and she was swamped by an irrepressible need to hold him again, to be one with him.

She dropped the cups and they shattered on the floor as she ran to him, holding his face, pressing his lips to his startled mouth. She was seized by a wild recklessness – to abandon the safe and cloistered existence she had built and to live again, to laugh and to weep and to take her chances in the crazy tumbling circus of love; and if it happened to be with her brother then so be it, for the rest of her life was too short to waste a single moment more.