Holiday Tension

This is a Winter Holidays Story Contest 2023 submission. I hope you all enjoy it.

V

***

"Marc?"

Raised eyebrows were all it took for the pretty brunette at the doorway to sigh and try again.

"Fine, Marco?"

"Gab?" I replied with a barely contained smile, waiting for the eyeroll that typically followed this exchange.

"Why must I always call you your full name whilst you get to shorten mine?"

I could have lip-synced in time with the response she gave me but that would have been pushing it. I placed my pen horizontally across the textbook I had been reading, marking my place. Carbapenem antibiotics were unlikely to be as interesting as whatever had drawn my older sister to my room. With a 90-degree spin and a slight pushback of the wheeled desk chair, I was facing her. "Do you want me to answer that, or should I ask Mum to?" I smirked and she smirked too, the annoyance dissipating.

She stepped into the room, reducing the risk of her voice travelling to the other occupant downstairs and donned an Italian accent that sounded nothing like our Mum. "When you speak to a man in your family, you address them with respect."

I nodded in mock-approval, pointing towards my bed and wheeled my desk chair to a distance close enough that we could chat quietly. In truth, I preferred Gabriella over Gab, and liked Gabby even less, but my sister preferred the latter and hated the former, so I went with Gab when I wasn't trying to piss her off. She drifted in, bare feet barely denting the plush carpets. Gracefulness to go with her slim figure.

She collapsed dramatically on the bed, her long black hair spread out around her, mirroring the sudden drama of her movements. A deep sigh followed between her full lips. With her eyes looking up at the ceiling, I was left to look at the side-features of her perfectly straight nose and the little dimple of her chin. She took a strand of her hair and wrapped it around her finger. It was straight with a hint of wave, falling to the middle of her back. She was about 5'5 so it was a feature that really stuck out. She had that just-washed look to her hair a lot of the time and with her olive skin and dark, hooded eyes, she was hot. She also did beautiful very well too and she could be understated when she wanted to be. Some people just have a combination that gives them something extra without even trying, and Gab had that.

I let her speak first because it seemed obvious that she would. "How's the books Mr Logic?" You clap after one Star Trek episode and suddenly you've got a nickname for life. It didn't help that it described me well.

"Not bad, Ms Fashion." A similarly uncreative nickname but it summed her up well too. She studied fashion, she looked trendy (I was reliably told ripped high-waisted jeans and crop tops were trendy) and now she worked in fashion, as a merchandiser for a high-street store. "It's Pharmacy. It's memory, rules and problem-solving with logic. Was I ever going to enjoy anything more?"

She laughed. "We're so different," she observed casually. She had a warmth to her voice that was always disarming. I was drawn to the aforementioned ripped jeans which showed off some of her tanned legs and then to the bare stomach that was on show around her naval area. Her pierced belly button was a constant reminder of the time she had finally revealed its existence to our mother and taken the lecture of her life about it. "I got all the creative, you got all the academic, huh?"

I smiled. "You got the looks, I got the glasses, yes."

"I miss your glasses," Gab pouted.

Everyone had at least one thing about them that they fixated on, and mine was my hair. How does that relate to my glasses, you might ask?

Well, I'd paid for laser eye surgery the previous year to sort my eyesight out as I couldn't handle the thinning of my hair on the sides of my head. Plus, genetics had told me I was going to lose the rest of my hair at a young age.

Losing hair at the top and the sides? No, thank you Satan.

I stood up and walked to the landing. "How long 'til dinner, Mum?" I waited for her response, sent with an English accent and not an Italian one, and then turned back around. "10 minutes until dinner. You have that long to tell me what's up and get my advice on it."

Gab scrunched her eyes shut - something she always did at my directness and to my mind, her way of staying patient. "I always feel like you're the older one out of the two of us and I gave up trying to pretend otherwise when you were first at university, and Mum & I suddenly needed to make all the household decisions."

She laughed and I smiled, thinking about the first year of study when I was living away from home and how much better I was living with my family. I moved back the following year and at 22, was still living at home. As was my sister at 24. We were close-knit and even though neither of us nor our parents were born in Italy, we both liked the more traditional approach of living at home until we had a family.

"Man of the house," I said with a shrug, not with any humour attached to my voice this time. "Decisions are my responsibility, right?"

Yep, it wasn't very progressive and yes, my sister was a feminist, but in our house, I took charge. That epic argument between my Mum and Sister over her piercing? It finished when I decided she could keep it. It would be strange to an outsider, and to be fair we didn't broadcast the running of our house to anyone else, but it worked for us. Despite the feistiness they both brought into conversation or, heaven forbid, arguments, both my mum and my sister were more passive types when it came to deciding things. They could make decisions, but it would mentally tire them eventually. Conversely, taking the lead energised me; always had. As soon as I had turned 18, I had told them both how I wanted things to work, and after some initial shock, they had responded positively. My mum gravitated towards that kind of role and while my sister pushed a little at first, she soon recognised how good it was for her. How it kept her focused and ambitious with her career. She let loose and had fun, but she cut out the noise and distractions of frequent clubbing, never-ending social media posting and dirtbag boyfriends.

Well, almost.

"On that note," my sister started, sitting up, "I was hoping you could do me a favour."

Here it comes.

She took a deep breath, "Could you pick me up from Jerry's studio later?"

What to ask first? I started with the where, given she was going to see that idiot. "Do you mean that little shoebox he calls a place to live, or the art studio he rents a corner of?"

"The art studio," she'd replied awkwardly. "I'm going to take some photos of his latest work so he can send them over to a few gallery contacts."

Jerry. I knew he was trouble minutes after she started talking about him. She liked a project, liked a maverick. He was the only thing causing tension in our house now. Not because I didn't want her to be happy and ironically, not because I didn't want her to make her own decisions. I was all for Gab supporting a partner and helping them achieve their dreams. But Jerry's dreams weren't of reality. He had no talent. Worse, he thought he was so talented that the rest of us just didn't understand the depth of his gift.

We set the time she wanted to be picked up and then went downstairs to dinner. Our mum was setting the table, with an Italian salad, warm bread and chicken waiting for us. The women in my house had the same type of hair - straight with some waves and a shine on it. They had similar features too in the shape of their noses and the delicate cheeks. My sister got the little chin dimple from our dad. I got his thick black hair and natural strong build, despite rarely working out. Think: stereotypical Italian man, and you were close to what I looked like, though less handsome for sure. I was a well-built geek. More Spock than Stallone.

But that was where the similarities between my mum and sister ended because in body type, they were drastically different. My sister was slim, almost with a dancer's figure. My mum had the curves my sister lacked, yet with a figure slimmer than her bum and breasts would have you believe. My sister was hot, my mum was sexy.

That was my life.

***

I was back to the books later that evening and had lost track of time when I felt the phone buzz.

"Hey," I answered. "I'll get in the car and be right over."

"Great, uh, can you meet me at the service station on the corner? I just need to pop in for something." Gab's tone was casual, but her request was unusual.

"Everything okay? I can bring something from home if you need it?" I kept my voice casual but was now on red alert as I put my trainers on. Mum shot me a quizzical look by the door, but I shook my head.

"All fine," Gab replied cheerily. Almost too sweet in her casualness. Something was wrong. That was her lying tone.

"Be right over, don't go anywhere else."

I drove over at speed, keeping just within the limits and was there in less than 20 minutes. A traffic diversion meant I approached the service station from the opposite way, and I saw Gab with a cigarette in her hand, looking in the other direction and checking for my car.

When I pulled in, she walked over and got in, with no sign she'd been smoking. "Before we go anywhere," I said, as soon as she got in, "am I going to want to go up that building and punch him?" I wasn't a fighter, but I'd be damned if a guy like that was going to dump my sister and have the last laugh.

She scrunched her eyes shut and took a deep breath. Her voice was that same type of casual when she answered. "That'd be two shit things to happen to him tonight since I also just dumped him."

I was elated but now worried. Fuckboys like Jerry rarely let go easy. "How did he react?"

"He was fine, can we go now?" She replied flippantly, with a wave of her hand to boot.

I sighed, loud enough for her to know it was a warning. "I saw you smoking, tell me what happened Gabriella."

"Uh, I fucking hate how observant you are." I let it go as clearly, she was hurting. "He told me I'm fake and I'm a shit lay, and he wouldn't miss me. And some other hurtful shit. Happy? Can we go now?"

I should have known not to ask anything else, but I didn't, because I frequently don't know when to stop probing and I was searching for reasons to go up there and say goodbye in a different way. "Fake how?"

She bit her nail as we sat there in the parking spot, engine off. "How did he phrase it? That I look like I should be wild but I'm just a cock shrinker in reality." She laughed humourlessly.

I however, laughed hard. "That's the best he could come up with?" Gab moved her hand from her mouth but before she could argue the pointed, I added, "You're a fucking stunner and you've been wasting your time. He's not even worth the police caution I'd get. We're going." That brought a small smile.

We drove back in silence until I turned the radio on and let some hard rock wash over us. Let out any anger we both felt, for slightly different reasons. When we got home, Mum was up and waiting for us. "All okay?" We both nodded though Gab went straight upstairs. "I guess not then?"

I shook my head. "Great for us: they've broken up. Though he said some nasty things at the end."

Mum sighed, drawing her gown around her - more for comfort as opposed to preventing a chill. Her legs were on show, with the night gown stopping at the knee. "Yes, they typically do. Hot chocolate?"

"Sure," I replied, watching her for a second. I emptied my pockets on the counter, took my trainers off and joined her at the dining table, away from the stairs. "Dad was an idiot," I told her when she walked back over, a mug in each hand. He'd left when she was 21 and raising two young kids as a stay-at-home Mum, suddenly realising a wife and kids at that age wasn't what he wanted from life. Asshole.

She smiled but ignored me otherwise. "What time's your first class?"

"1pm," I replied by memory. "Independent study before then. I'll leave at lunch."

"I'll make you lunch in the morning before I leave."

I nodded. My Mum was a successful chief of staff at a local authority. It was her job to bring in change to the business, manage performance and deliver a good service. She'd won awards for it too. 'Employee of the Year: Emma Rossi' sat on the mantelpiece. I'd gone to her office during my teenage years, when school was shut for the holidays, and Gab & I had nowhere else to go. Kick ass good was an understatement. I regularly reminded her of it when she needed a boost or in response to her praise of my own work ethic.

We spoke about the next few days at her job and then my classes, over the hot chocolates. I was drawn to the hint of cleavage that had appeared as we relaxed and spoke. She was easily a D-cup, and it was hard to ignore. Looking at her lips as she spoke was just as challenging, so I settled on maintaining eye contact as often as I could.

Eventually, the close proximity of a sexually available female, freshly clean and dutiful, got to me. I felt myself becoming aroused. Evolution hadn't eradicated some behaviours, no matter who the cause was. Faced with the dilemma of shifting in my seat and adjusting, or hoping it would pass, I chose the latter. The nature of my role in the house aided my calmness too. There was something about being in charge that brought with it calmness and confidence for me. It also wasn't the first time I was aroused by the women in my house. Summertime when they were both sunbathing in the garden was a very stressful time for me.

So, I relaxed and maintained eye-contact as we spoke, aware that the heightened stress of studying was likely leading to a higher need for release, and a heightened libido. Clearly this growing pattern was problematic and leading me to lose my subtlety as after glancing below the neck, I looked up to see my Mum looking away in shyness and then after a deep breath, in a moment of unashamed confidence, directly at my crotch.

"I thought I wasn't imagining the tension," she breathed, with eyes threatening to stare a hole in my jeans.

A part of my brain intended for self-preservation urged me to close my legs and maybe even stand up. But I didn't. For the longest time - and it may only have been 10 seconds - my mum stared back up at my face, and I stared at her.

"Are you having a silent freak out?" I asked eventually. I was probably more freaked out about how calm I was, in honesty.

She shook her head and looked down. She held her gaze for a second more and then tore her eyes away. She picked up the mug and drained the last of the contents. "Words," she said at last, with a gesture as if to say: I can't find any.

I drained the rest of my mug too. "The logical part of my brain is just telling the rest of my brain to recognise this is an unplanned reaction to being around a beautiful woman and not thinking about anything else."

"Are you thinking about other things then?" She probed. She normally spoke in what I could best describe as a motherly tone, even at work. But right then, there was a heat to her voice, almost unable to finish her question.

I realised for the first time that she hadn't covered up when she saw my reaction. I looked at her again, emboldened by that, even though a growing part of my brain was reminding me who this was. I paused. Did I want to say anything more? "No," I replied finally. "Which is why I should say nothing else."

An understanding fell between us, and we went upstairs to sleep. Between Gab, Mum and I, I doubt any of us slept well.

***

Gab threw herself into work over the following weeks and when she was finishing work early enough to do anything with us, she instead opted to be out with friends. We never got any further explanation of what had caused the sudden breakup, though I pondered it in the moments after she left the house, always in a rush, always eager to get out. I was certain it was driven by Gab, and her careless behaviour spoke of someone in rebellion. What she was rebelling over was anyone's guess. Certainly, Mum & I hadn't a clue.

When she was around, my compliments increased to accommodate the assumed level of upset and self-consciousness I thought she had. It gave me reason to properly look at her too, which was pleasant. Who was I kidding? The chance to look at the beautiful woman I'd avoided looking at for the last couple of years, now with some level of justifiable reason for doing so? Pleasant was an understatement.

I knew I really needed to work on being subtle but at the same time, my sex drive felt like it was going through the roof without release. A girlfriend would just be a distraction from studying, I had reasoned after a distracted year with a couple of steady girlfriends and lots of sex. I chose to ignore the other significant reasons closer to home.

To help justify my decision in those hornier moments, I was studying hard and doing well with my grades. I was also limiting my social life to a maximum of two activities a week until Christmas. Mum was also busy with work, reminding us both where we got our work ethic from. Between seminars, lectures and lab, I was out of the house almost as often as Gab. This increased space was good for all of us, as I felt some unrecognised tension had dissipated some, during the times we were together.

Mealtimes remained a frequent time of overlap. Mum continued to cook up a feast, with leftovers aplenty for warm lunches in the colder months. Gab was sometimes on hand to help with the prep and set the table, her normal tasks. I did the drinks and sat at the head of the table with food served first. Life was normal in that regard. For us.

Conversations were a little more forced at times when Gab was around, with that underlying tension present. The best way I could describe it was compounds waiting to react and create. We all felt it; none of us dared stoke it. I did notice Gab had become somewhat more withdrawn at mealtimes. Less engaged in conversation, less keen to catch our eye.

"What do you think it is?" I asked my Mum one evening, as we sat together by the fire, slowly working our way through glasses of Baileys.

She took a sip of the Irish cream liqueur before she answered. It was a sign of Christmas approaching, when the Baileys turned up in the weekly shop. We had started to spend more evenings together than we'd ever done before, chatting by the electric fire with the television playing lightly in the background.

"I have my thoughts," Mum admitted slowly. "Just thoughts, at this point."

"And feelings?" I teased, given both women in the household were feelers, compared to my logical brain. It had taken much work with Gab and my Mum, to get me to look at things in that way, so it was now a running joke.

Mum smiled and winked to tease me back. I was immediately struck by the heat in my cheeks and a stirring in my groin. She was so sexy; constantly hidden by the proper mask she wore. I was certain there was something under the surface that wasn't what she allowed people to see.

Being driven by feeling here, Marco? Your brain is disappointed.

"Yes, feelings. I was young once too," she replied eventually, lost in thought.

"You're hardly old," I added quickly. "You're doing better than women half your age."

That wasn't a lie, I had no clue how she continued to look so good.

"You're a flatterer," she blushed, as I hid my cheeks behind the glass. "I've raised a man - don't think that's lost on me."

I could have interrupted that several ways. A combination of the alcohol in the glass, the stirring of familiar tension and the glow of her cheeks, drove me in a riskier direction.