Just Like in a Song

Her arm came around my shoulder, a brief hug, and then she was bracing herself against the wall behind me, pushing herself to her feet. Then she held her hand down to me.

"Come on," So soft as to be a whisper. "Let's go to bed."

Pushing up with my knee and my off hand, I tried as best I could to not let her take too much of my weight. Then as I got to my feet, my balance went to hell. She caught me but then she staggered a bit herself. Supporting each other we managed the short hike to the bedroom. We had never gotten around to putting the bed together so the mattress and box springs was lying on the floor. That was fine; I could find the floor easily enough. I lay on the bare mattress, then blinked and found myself in possession of a pillow. A sheet was covering me and I looked up to see Marcy walk into the room.

"Here, drink some. It will help the hangover in the morning." She sat down awkwardly on the bed next to me.

I took the bottle of water she handed me.

"It's already morning." I told her after a long sip. When I looked up, I noticed the edges of her gray and brown hair, where it framed her face, were damp. "Is it raining?" I asked, not knowing why.

She smiled.

"No, I just had to wash my face," she said pulling the sheet up over my shoulder as I laid my head back on the pillow. A pillow that smelled of her.

"Why?" I asked her as my eyes fluttering closed. I was too asleep to understand the answer, but I heard it.

"Too many tears had crossed my cheeks. Get some sleep, little brother." She leaned in next to my face and placed a gentle kiss on my closed eye lids.

"Love...you." I mumbled.

"I...love you too," she said softly.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"Oh, why the hell did I drink the rum?"

Waking up, with the dried-out, scraped-together remains of a pirate ship's bilge on my tongue; I slowly sat up in the bed, only to find that I hadn't really achieved much, since the bed was on the floor. Spotting the bottle of water next to the bed, I took a sip which was a mistake and it simply hydrated the foul taste in my mouth and made it twice as disgusting.

Resting my elbows on my knees, I pressed against my temples with my palms wishing the throbbing in my brain would stop.

I swear the only reason I didn't just lay back down and try to sleep this pain away was the fact that I had to go piss so badly my eyeballs were floating. With a groan, I finally managed to leaver myself to my feet. Stumbling over to the hallway door, I crossed into the plain beige bathroom, and debated a slight pause to wash my face. Nope! Bladder will not be denied.

I had to use the towel rack to hold myself steady so as not to fall into the toilet bowl. A good hour later, I finally stopped pissing and gave the sick looking zombie in the mirror a far too close inspection. Okay...well, I've looked worse. Like the time I nearly died from p-monia.

As I left the bathroom, I looked down the hall towards the living room and saw a foot hanging off the side of the couch.

"Oh no, she didn't." I mumbled and with a shake of my head went down the hall and confirmed that yes she had slept on the couch. With a sigh, I knelt down next to her. "Hey. Hey silly, wake up.

"Humm?"

"Go get on the bed," I told her my hand resting on her shoulder.

"Bet you say that to all the girls you're in love with." Her eyes opened, she looked into mine, and she took a deep breath, and then gave me a soft, quirky smile. "Yeah...I was sober enough to remember."

I had to shrugged, it was my only defense.

"How about breakfast?" she asked after a bit, when the silence got too thick and needed to be cut.

"You have no food," I reminded her.

"Was thinking Waffle House?"

I failed to suppress a gagging shudder, and then began to frantically shake my head.

"I'm having visions of watery coffee, greasy hash browns and an oily-feeling, vinyl-cover booth, with a shiny, plastic-covered menu. All of which is doing nothing to endear my stomach to you at the moment, sis. IHOP? I'll buy." I smiled at her eyes going the size of saucers. I've never been known to buy meals. "Yes, I'll buy. Oh, the things I do for the woman I love."

"We're going to have to talk about that you know?" she said softly.

"Yeah. But not on an empty stomach, nor with a hangover," I said, avoiding the belly dancing white elephant in the room rather nicely. "I need a moment to get the cobwebs out my head, and then I'll drive us to pancake syrup heaven."

"He's buying, he's driving...?" Marcy sat up and looked at me closely. "Where is my real brother and can you keep him longer?"

"Nice."

Leaving her to wake up, I went to the bathroom again. A much longer washing of my face-okay I tried to drown my head under the tap-helped tame the throbbing to a dull hammering that I could abide with till the half-dozen Advil kicked in. Leaving a blurry reflection, I went on a hunt for my missing glasses. Why they were sitting in the empty refrigerator I don't have any memory of, but I'm sure there was a good reason at the time.

And of course Marcy had hidden my keys in the empty cookie jar on the counter. Even as dead drunk as I had been last night that would have been my first place to look for them since our mother used to hide them in the same damn place. Shaking my head...

"Oh, shit that was a bad idea." I mumbled as the room spun.

"You okay?" my sister called from down the hall.

"Yeah. Just the hangover headache from hell, is kicking my ass." Stepping out the kitchen, I glanced left down the hall and caught just a brief moment of my sister pulling her t-shirt past a soft looking white bra, and down to cover a delicately pale stomach with just a hint of a rounded pooch around her navel. My imagination was just beginning a wonderful fantasy where I was nibbling her there for my breakfast when her eyes cleared the collar and she saw me watching.

When she blushed and turned away I felt like finding another bottle of rum and crawling into it. There it was-the exact thing I had feared—the very reason I never spoke to her about what I felt for her, and it just slapped me in the face. Feeling gut punched, I turned away from her in shame and fled the apartment.

"Hey? Hey, wait!"

If not for a fumble of my keys, in the damn U-Haul's door lock, I would have been in the truck when she caught up. Her hand caught at my arm, but I didn't let her turn me around. Then the warm heat of her body was pressed up against the back of me. Her arms came around me and she hugged me tight.

"I love you, I'm sorry if I upset you. It's just—when I turned around and saw you, the look in your eyes, on your face. It embarrassed me. I'm not used to a man looking at me like that." I felt her lay her head against my back "Like I'm sexy, or something."

I leaned my forehead on the cool glass window. "I was—just enjoying the view. That...and I was thinking some very naughty thoughts about you. Sorry, I can't help that. I've never been able to."

Her arms went a bit loose for a moment then she hugged me again, just as tightly.

"When did that start?" she asked. "You were always such a brat to me, when you were younger. Forever, doing stupid shit to get attention."

I shrugged and sighed.

"Think ahead a few years. Right before high school, when you did that typical girl gone boy crazy, crap. I can remember how I felt seeing you with that first pizza-faced...punk! Todd...Todd what's his name?"

"Winston. Todd Winston," she purred. I sucked at my teeth as she began to chuckle against my back. "He was the first boy to ever tell me I looked beautiful." She giggled, "Then he stole a kiss when I wasn't looking."

Turning in her arms I found myself looking down into her beautiful face, so very, very close to my own. Her eyes went wide as she realized this herself, but by then my arms were holding her in place against me.

"He told you that in a note," I said with confidence.

"Yeah, he did!" Her face took on a shacked look. "How did you know? Did you find it, and read it?"

"No. He bragged about it." I smiled, ruefully. "And, about kissing you. Boys do that. Tell other boys about their 'conquests' of the female gender. My friends let me know he was talking shit about you."

"Yeah, well that was kind of why I dumped him. I was hearing the same thing from my friends." She shrugged. "He was cute, but stupid. But what does that have to do with you?"

"Todd wasn't the first to tell you that you looked beautiful. I was. I told you that! The night of your grade school prom, when you came down in your dress and Mom was helping you with your corsage..."

"You were standing in the hallway, by the kitchen door, just looking at me." Marcy looked down her eyes on the center of my chest, but the sight she saw was decades ago. "You just kept starring, till finally I got mad at you. I yelled at you. Asked you what you what were you starring at?"

"I could hardly even talk." I smiled when she looked up at me. "Kind of like now. But I told you then what I will still say now. My god, you look beautiful Marcy."

I watched a tear roll from her cheek till my sister leaned her head on my chest and repeated what she had said all those years ago.

"Thank you."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

With my belly full of New York Cheesecake pancakes, and enough coffee to float my eyeballs, the very idea of continuing this moving day was repulsive. I could tell from the expression on her face though that Marcy wanted this over and done. Can't say I blame her for that. Her soon to be ex-husband, Rodger, was an ass when they were married.

And as I turned the U-Haul around the last corner and headed down her street I saw that all the impending divorce has done was make him an even bigger ass.

"THAT FUCKIN, PRICK!" yelled, my sister.

I had to nod my agreement, as I saw the large pile of her things sitting on the front lawn by the trash cans. From what I could see it was most likely everything of hers left in the house that we didn't take yesterday. Marcy kept up a litany of cussing till I pulled into the driveway and shut off the motor. She jumped out the truck with energy born of fury and stormed to the front door. Her foot stomp, while I was getting out and walking around to the other side told me everything.

"The bastard changed the locks! That fucker thinks he can cheat on me, and then throw me out." She pulled her phone from her pocket, and began to punch keys like a woman possessed.

With a shrug, I walked to the back of the U-Haul and rolled up the door. From my point of view all Rodger had done was getting the stuff outside and closer to the truck for me. As she went on the war path, her foot stomping so much as she walked a circle in the front yard, she truly looked every bit of our (one-third, on our mother's side) Native American heritage. With a shake of my head, I just started loading her stuff into the truck.

"He's maggot-scum, Charles, and I want you to make him know that I think this was just childish-ass-shit what he has done, and I hope that this shit bites him in the ass! Yeah...yeah, I will. Yeah, thanks." She hung up the phone and tucked it backing her back pocket. "My lawyer is going to call his lawyer and we may file a legal protest. A Motion for Sanctions. Rodger has no right to lock me out, I still own half of this house till everything is finalized and he might have just lost himself his half for this crap. I'm not at all in the mood to play! I was willing to let him just prance off into the sunset with his cotton tailed little slut, but if that fucker for a second thinks that I'm willing to sit back and let him turn me out my own damn house that stupid son-of-a-bitch has another god damn thought coming."

"Ah, huh," I mumbled tonelessly. Just nod, keep the smile off my face and load her stuff in the truck.

"I'll burn his ass for this one. I know just who to call, I sic his sister on him. She doesn't know a damn thing about the affair; I've been helping that bastard keep the reason for the divorce from his family. Well, if he thinks after this I'm going to keep up that fucking sham just so save his fucking pride with his damn family, I show him. I've fucking had it. I've fucking had it. I gave him two children and half my damn life and just because he thinking I don't put out like a two dollar whore from the strip he's going to leave me and kick me out of my own damn house? I just wanted out of the marriage, now I want to take his ass to the fucking cleaners! I'll leave him sitting on a street corner with a tin cup, and little Miss Cotton tail will see him for the cheap ass piece of shit he really is. That fucker thinks I'll just be walked over!"

"Ah, huh." Load boxes. Head down, don't look her in the eyes. If she see just how close to giggling joyfully I am-oh fuck it's on.

"I'll make him fucking wish his dumbass was never born if he thinks I'll take this shit lying down."

I listened to Marcy storm for the next hour. Twice she got on her cellphone to deliver long scathing messages to Roger's answering machine. Then she began to help load for a bit, too pissed to even talk. For fifteen minutes she did stopped to talk to one of her neighbors. That led to an even longer, and far more heated, phone call when Marcy learned that the young secretary had helped to move all her stuff out here to the curb.

While that rant was blistering the parrot mural paint job off the side of the U-Haul, I got the last of the taped up boxes loaded and the door pulled down.

"Hey, slave driver," I called to her.

Marcy looked up from the staring contest she was having with her I-Pad's screen.

"It's all loaded." I nodded my head towards the truck. "Want to get the fuck out of here? To me this place reeks of cotton tail pussy, and that not the one I want to smell at the moment."

"Yeah, we can go..." Her head shot suddenly around to look at my face and then she turned a dozen shades of bright red. Still blushing, she put up her phone and walked around to the other side of the U-Haul. When I climbed into the driver's side she shot me only a half glance, blushed even deeper and looked out her window.

The ride over to her apartment I thought was going to be quite, till I heard a sigh.

"So you are in love with me." I looked over to find her looking at me. At my nod she shook her head "You realize how impossible that is on so many levels, right?"

"Yeah, I do. Doesn't change how I feel."

She sat quiet for a mile or so.

"What do you think is going to happen? I'm going to jump madly into your arms?" She gave a half chuckle. "Oh take, me take me now...brother? Ah, no. Sorry, not just no but no way in hell."

I gave a shrug. "Still doesn't change the way I feel."

"I'M. YOUR. SISTER! How the fuck can you look at me and think about sex?"

"Cause you have an incredible personality, a decent sense of humor, and a truly spectacular body." I gave her breasts a quick glance. "You are a smart, beautiful, sexy woman, and one of the better people I know on this earth." I looked over at her, then back at the road. "Since I hit my teens, I've had to watch you get dumped by boyfriend, after boyfriend and now by your husband. Men have treated you rather shitty and I might like to be at least given the chance to treat you like you deserve to be treated."

Again there was silence for a mile or so.

"And how should I be treated?" she asked.

"With tenderness, care, love and affection," I answered, as I turned the truck into the parking lot of her new apartments.

"You can do all of that and still be just my brother."

"Yes I can and will." I parked the truck in front of her apartment and turned to look at her. "But as just your brother I can't keep the men that want you for that sexy body away forever. Your own needs, before long, would work against me doing that. You will meet someone and he will sweep you off your feet and then into his bed. And I will once again be on the outside, having to watch the woman I love being cared for by another man and feeling sick with jealousy."

She just sat looking at me.

"What?" I asked.

"I just can't believe you think of me that way. I...I can't wrap my head around it. You're my brother, I shouldn't be a sexual object for you."

I had to laugh at that one. "Do you have any idea how many times I've moaned your name while playing with myself?"

"AHHH! No! No! No! TMI!"

I laughed as she bailed out the side of the ruck and all but ran to open the door of her apartment. Still chuckling, I opened my door and walked around to the back. When I rolled up the door I sighed at all of the stuff that I had to take inside. Where the fuck was Rodger's dumbass now when I needed him to move shit?

"Probably hip-deep in cotton tail ass." I muttered and started toting boxes.

Marcy didn't say a word or look at me for the next half-hour as I walked past her carrying her boxes inside. As I got the last of the boxes inside she walked up next to me, tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention, and when I turned she gave me a hug. Just a sisterly hug but it put her in my arms none the less. I leaned my head down till my cheek rested in her soft hair, breathing in the scent of her, a hint of her shampoo still lingered but there was more just her scent, a slight dusty smell from all the moving, and the scent of a woman who had been sweating. All of these mixed in those silken locks to deliver to me a mixture I could have breathed for the rest of my life.

Then her hand pushed on my chest and I turned her lose.

"Thank you." She looked around at the apartment with the piles of boxes. "I've got this now. Thank you."

"Sure?" I nodded. "Call me if you need anything."

"I will."

The ride back to turn in the U-Haul was awful lonely. And god awful quiet.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

The phone call from my niece Sandra woke me at two in the morning. The tears that were making her hard to understand annoyed me till I made out her mom's name among the sobs. That sent me flying out the front door and blazing my way through two dozen red lights as I crossed town at record breaking speeds.

The first thought I had, when I got to the apartment complex, was that the police had beaten me there to arrest me for those red lights, but when I saw the officers standing by her open apartment door I disregarded silly things like being arrested. I had been before after all and had lived through it then. After answering questions about who I was they let me through the door and into the destruction that was her apartment.

The furniture was overturned, the pictures I had carried in, that I'm sure she had hung with precision, were lying in corners askew, some torn. Broken glassware was all over the place.

"Mrs. Dempsy? Your brother is here," said one of the female officers, who was knelt on the carpet by my sister's side. I looked past that blue uniform to the tear wrecked face of my beloved Marcy. Kneeling down, I took my sister's hand but then she was in my arms-sobbing into my chest.

"It's all gone. All gone. That fucking prick, it's all gone." I held her as she cried and looked to the officer next to me. My lifted eyebrow asked what I had yet to hear.

"We got called by the apartment's manager. A loud disturbance." She looked around at the destroyed room, and then nodded her chin at Marcy. "Apparently her husband cashed out a lot of their combined saving and transferred the money."

"It's gone." Marcy was rocking in my arms.

"Shhh." I hissed a whisper. "We'll let your lawyer get it back; he'll take Rodger's ass to the cleaners. Come on, I'm here. I've got you, sis. It will be okay."

"MOM?"

I turned my head hearing my niece's Belinda's voice. I held Marcy for a moment longer then turned her lose to let her oldest daughter hug her. I nodded my head to the male officer that signaled me and walked out the front door to the sidewalk to talk to him.