The three of us were quiet during the walk back. The biggest change wasn’t our lack of conversation, it was how we walked. We walked together, side-by-side. Finally, we reached The Canyon. Once we crawled up the opposite side, I handed over the backpack. Holly wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me deeply before I headed off in a different direction to maintain our ruse. I was glad for a bit of time to myself. I needed it to walk off the hard-on I had from kissing her.
Every evening of the reunion there’s a big barbeque at the pavilion giving everyone a chance to mingle with their relatives. Dad had a beer buzz from spending the afternoon pitching horseshoes and drinking beer. He didn’t approve how Maggie was dressed. Dad didn’t approve of much. When Holly and her family paraded by, I guess turned my head, because I got another mini lecture from Dad, “Looking at her is like checking out your sister,” he growled.
“Yeah, I get it,” I said, biting back a smirk. He had no idea how I much time I was spending checking out Maggie, too. She was still my sister, but something had changed, too.
After dinner, I lost track of Maggie and Holly. With dozens of kids to wrangle, the older teens were expected to help out while our parents drank, laughed, and carried on. I had the job of showing a movie again. Afterwards, I took a lap around the camp, hoping to run into Holly or Maggie without any luck. Frustrated, I gave up, headed back to our tent and with nothing better to do, I fired up my tablet and tried losing myself in an action flick.
Though there were car chases and gunshots a-plenty, I couldn’t keep my mind off what had happened that afternoon. I knew Maggie and I crossed lines brothers and sisters weren’t supposed to approach. Then again, we crossed even more lines playing with Holly, too. Had Maggie crossed more lines than me by kissing our cousin? Hell, maybe Dad had it right along, maybe it didn’t matter whether Maggie had kissed a girl or if I had gotten a blowjob from my sister while our cousin helped. If one drop of what had happened was wrong, didn’t that make all of it wrong?
Near the end of the movie, Maggie finally came back to the tent. I popped out my headphones the moment I saw her.
“Watching porn?” she asked, which is exactly what she always asked me.
“No,” I said in same exasperated tone she got every time she asked that question. It’s funny life has little scripts we follow without thinking about. It was gloomy inside the tent, if you had to do anything detailed, you’d need a flashlight. After staring at the bright tablet screen, I could make out her silhouette and nothing more as she moved to her cot.
“Mom and Dad still getting drunk?”
“You know it,” I said, smiling whether she could see it or not. “Did you get lucky?”
“With Holly,” she whispered in a even lower tone than before.
“You are so lying!” I challenged, though that wasn’t how I felt. Truth was, just the suggestion that she might have fooled around with Holly was making me hard. I rubbed the growing lump inside my shorts.