Sole Sister

Two months later she had a baby girl, which she promptly put up for adoption. Over the summer and the next fall, she got a job caring for mentally challenged young adults, which she loved and was quite good at, and tried to cope with the embarrassment and shame of having to live in a small town where everyone knew all about her or at least what they wanted to believe about her. She had gone back to high school during the past spring and had graduated. Now, she was enrolled at Poly where she wanted to study Journalism and follow in her father's footsteps as a writer.

Hearing Dill's story left me at least a little bit in awe of her. She was a strong person. But even more than that, I could tell that she was a really good person, motivated to do the right thing, no matter how difficult. I could tell also that she and Jane were close, and if Jane cared for her, it seemed that I should care for her too.

We had a good time that day. I showed them around my hometown and took them hiking in the mountains. Then, we went to the beach, and afterward, I grilled them a nice dinner on the patio. That night Jane and I made love while Dill slept in the guest bedroom. The next morning Jane and Dill drove back north.

I had gotten the tickets for the show that Jane wanted to see, and a friend of mine, who owed me some money and worked at the Holiday Inn in town, made a reservation for me at one of their hotels near Union Square. Two weeks after her visit, I drove up to stay with her at the house she shared with Darcey on Friday night, and the next morning we drove up to the City, and checked into our hotel room.

Something was different that weekend. We made love both nights, but Jane seemed much more disconnected and distant. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. I thought that maybe she had just tired of me, but that didn't make any sense because we had spent only three nights together since school had ended in the spring.

When I called the following week, she didn't seem like she even wanted to talk to me. I was confused and disappointed. I really liked Jane, probably loved her, and I knew that she had really liked me. What had happened? What had changed?

The following weekend was the Fourth of July holiday, and I had Monday off from work. We had already made plans for me to visit for the long weekend, and so when I called a few days before, it was only a formality. But now Jane sounded like she didn't want me to come.

"Are you sure you want to drive all the way up here?" she said on the phone, "I have a paper due on Tuesday, and I'm gonna have to work on it all weekend. We won't have that much time together. Maybe you should come another weekend."

"But we made these plans a long time ago! Besides, I miss you! I've only seen you twice this summer, and it's nearly half over. I'm okay if you have to study during the day. At least we'll be able to spend the nights together."

There was silence on the other end of the line. I knew that wasn't good. Finally, she spoke, "Okay, if you really want to come." This annoyed me.

"What about you? Don't you want me to come?"

"Well... of course, I want you to come, but I just don't want you to be bored while you're here. I won't even be home most of the time!"

We continued like that for five more minutes, and even though we agreed that I would be driving up two days later, I almost wasn't even looking forward to it. Somehow I knew a disaster was imminent.

I arrived on Friday night around 8:00 p.m. to find Jane home alone. When I walked in the house, she hugged me, but when I leaned in to try to kiss her, she seemed to turn her head away from me at just the precise moment so as to leave me disappointed. She told me that Darcey was gone, that she was at a party somewhere, but that she had gotten the address in case I wanted to go. "I'm up for it, if you want to," I said smiling.

She looked at me for a long time, without saying anything. Finally, she said, "No, I have to work on my paper. I thought you might want to go meet Darcey there."

"You have to work on your paper at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night of a three day weekend?"

"Yeah! I told you; it's due on Tuesday!"

"But, Jane, why would I want to go that party by myself?"

"So you're not bored sitting here watching me write! I told you that I was afraid you'd be bored this whole weekend."

"I would rather sit here and watch you write, than I would go somewhere without you. I'll just read something until you're ready to go to bed."

"Okay. Suit yourself."

She sat down at her desk, and got out a bunch of research texts and began reading and occasionally writing some things down on a yellow legal pad. She didn't seem like she was really engaged in the paper. I'm not even sure she had one due.

Meanwhile, I was busying myself with one of Darcey's books, a collection of short stories called Cathedral by a guy I'd never read before named Raymond Carver. It was actually amazing. I was skipping around reading a story here and another story there. When I finished the eponymous tale that concluded the book, I was stunned. I think it was the best short story I'd ever read.

I sat and thought about it, after I finished reading. It was really that thought-provoking, but Jane seemed annoyed that I was sitting there doing nothing, like I was somehow bothering her by sitting and not saying anything. Finally, she spoke, "Okay, let's go to bed. I'm tired."

"Okay, baby," I said.

We had sex. I won't say we made love. Jane was obviously doing it because she assumed that I wanted to. Of course, she was right about that, but quite frankly, if she didn't want to have sex with me, I would rather have had her tell me so. It is awful trying to be intimate with someone who has no interest in you. It was the last time.

When I awoke the next morning, she was gone - not just from bed; she had left the house! I got up, went out to the kitchen and made some coffee. I was drinking a cup when Darcey got up.

"Jane gone?"

"Yeah, she left really early. Like incredibly early. I was still sleeping. I guess she's working on her paper." I think I was trying to convince myself. Darcey sat down in a chair facing the couch I was sitting on. She stared at me for a long time without saying anything.

"What?" I said. She obviously had something she wanted to say.

"Did Jane talk to you last night? Did she tell you?"

"Tell me what?" I sensed that I was about to have the world fall on top of me.

Darcey shook her head. I took it to mean that she was both sad and a little disgusted.

"Billy, I'm going to tell you something that is absolutely none of my business, but I like you too much to see you get hurt any more than you already have been. I'm sorry that I'm the messenger. Jane should have talked to you - a month ago, or when you went up to San Francisco, last night or any of a hundred chances she's had since she met you, but has avoided."

"Billy, before I introduced you to Jane, she had a boyfriend - Chip. Actually, his name is Patrick, but everyone calls him Chip. I know it's a stupid name." I thought for a moment. I think I knew who she was talking about. I think I may have met this guy sometime. I seemed to remember that name.

"Chip's a good guy, so don't be mad at him. He didn't do anything wrong. He never knew about you. Anyway, he and Jane had been seeing each other for over a year. They were really close, Billy. I think they were in love with each other. I mean really in love! Like marrying 'in love.' Anyway, about two weeks before we saw you at that party back in May, something happened."

"I still don't know exactly what, but that was it! They were both done with each other, except that when you're that in love with someone, you can never really be done. I kept thinking they'd get back together. Then, Jane met you, and Billy, she really did like you, maybe even loved you. But the bottom line is that that didn't really change what she felt about Chip."

"I told Jane that she needed to tell you about Chip. Obviously, she didn't do that. I didn't want to see you get hurt, Billy, and once you two were together, I sort of knew that was going to happen. I sort of blame myself. I shouldn't have introduced you."

"Anyway, shortly after you went home for the summer, Jane went back to Chip. I think it was right after she and Dill went to visit you. Whenever it was, once they got back together, they were even closer than they'd been before. I think last night was the first time Jane has slept in this house for almost a month."

Darcey stopped talking. She had this look on her face like she had already said too much and should quit while she was still ahead.

"Chip, huh?" I shook my head. "Darce, don't beat yourself up. It's not your fault. It's probably nobody's fault. I mean I just came along a little too late. Maybe a lot too late. I just wish she would have told me before I started falling for her. It probably wouldn't have made any difference. I would have fallen for her anyway. But at least if I had known, I wouldn't have been so gullible. Maybe I would have known when to walk away. Now I feel like an idiot!"

"You're not an idiot, Billy!" Darcey said. She stood up and walked over to the couch and sat down next to me. She put her arm around my shoulder.

"Oh, I beg to differ!" I said. "Until five minutes ago, I thought Jane was actually working on a paper this weekend. That's pretty fucking idiotic, wouldn't you agree?'

"Billy, Jane's like my best friend, so as much as I may want to be, I'm not very objective about assessing her strengths and weaknesses. But Billy, I can tell you this - she may be beautiful and funny and charming and smart, but one thing she's not is completely honest. Not to you, not to me, and not to herself."

"She didn't intend to hurt you, and her hurting you doesn't change how much she liked you, that I know. But she's had almost two months to tell you that she's back with Chip, and she still hasn't done it. That doesn't make you gullible; it makes her dishonest. And then just leaving this morning! Not even writing you a note! That makes her cowardly. I hate to tell you this, Billy, but she's not coming back this weekend!"

I think I already knew that, but hearing it from Darcey hit me like jab to the nose.

"So that's that! I guess I might as well go home. God bless America! Have a happy 4^th!"

"I'm sorry, Billy," Darcey said, and she hugged me tightly.

I got in my car and drove home. It's not how I wanted to spend the holiday weekend. It's not how I wanted to spend any weekend, but I guess it was better than being strung along like I had been for the past month.

The rest of the summer went fast. I finished my job at the VA. Then, I packed my things back in my car and moved back to school. I wasn't going to live in the dorms any more, so that was an improvement. Pete Mills, Tom Lannon, and I had found a house off campus.

But going back to Poly was going to be a challenge. I knew it was inevitable that I would see Jane, and I knew that would be incredibly awkward, not to mention painful.

But when classes started up again, I didn't see her - not for a long time. Instead, one of the first people I ran into on campus - in fact on the very first day of school - was Dill.

We were walking toward each other on the campus green, and I saw her from a long way off and knew immediately that it was her. When we reached each other, she didn't say anything. Instead, I walked right into her arms, and she hugged me really tightly. "Oh, Billy!" That was all she said, and it was all she needed to say. She conveyed everything that she wanted with those two words and that hug.

And somehow, she had me right then and there, because emotionally, there was nobody that even came close to Dill Kaminski. She may have been a year younger than her sister, but when it came to emotional maturity, she was light years beyond Jane.

But physically Dill wasn't her sister either. Not that she wasn't pretty - in fact, she had a face that seemed more appealing every time I saw it. But her body was simply not as voluptuous as Jane's.

Her eyes were dazzling, a deep azure hue, speckled with tiny dark dots. They were really unusual looking and beautiful. She usually wore glasses - these slender metal frames that rather than hiding her stunning pupils only seemed to enhance them. They gave her a distinctive intellectual quality.

She was much slighter and shorter than Jane too, and she didn't have the impressive breasts jutting out from her chest. Hers were smaller, though they were shapely and attractive. Her body was lithe, and her movements were lissome and graceful.

And then there was her ass. It was pear-shaped and fell from her slender waist, terminating at her round, soft buttocks that looked like they were made to approach from behind - the proverbial "cushion for the pushin'."

Unlike her blonde sibling, her hair was light brown and shoulder-length - really fine and the softest tresses I have ever had the pleasure to touch. She wasn't into her sister's hipster hairdos or her penchant for a million fashion accessories: bangles, earrings, necklaces, et. al.

In short, she was much more conservative than Jane, maybe even a bit conventional. But she carried herself in such a relaxed manner that she managed an air of independence every bit as impressive as her far more rebellious sister. It's not that Dill was oblivious to style; she just didn't give a shit about it, and that made her that much more appealing to me.

She was clearly sympathetic to Jane's treatment of me, but she wasn't one to express disgust or even disappointment in anyone else, much less someone she was as close to as her only sibling. Instead, she was more interested in soothing me.

She broke our embrace, but continued touching my forearm with her soft, warm hand, so I decided to change the unspoken subject. "How have you been, Dill? How's school so far? Did you get settled into the dorms? Where are you staying?" I realized I had asked too many questions in too quick a succession, but I knew we couldn't talk for long. We were both on our way to classes.

"I'm good, Billy! Glad to be out of Chowchilla! I've only had two classes so far, so it's hard to say, but I like it here. It's nice, nice and cool. I'm happy to be out of the heat, both literally and figuratively. And I'm living in Trinity Hall."

"How are you, Billy? I've thought about you a lot." She said it with such empathy that I didn't even think of it as an invitation to something more between us. It was just Dill's way.

"I'm hanging in there, I guess," I said. "Just not looking forward to seeing your sister."

"Yeah, I guess I understand that. I'm sorry, Billy!" I could tell she felt bad, but I knew she didn't want to open that can of worms. Besides, I could she was in a hurry.

"Listen, I've got to run. I've got my first Journalism class right now, and I don't want to be late, but why don't you come over to visit me in the dorms some time? Here's my phone number." She grabbed my right hand, and using a ball point pen, wrote the number on the top in big, flowing numerals.

She hugged me again, holding her embrace longer than I expected. "Bye, Billy, I hope to see you soon." She smiled really warmly, and then, she released me and walked on. I watched her pear-shaped butt as she walked away from me. I was attracted to her, on a whole lot of different levels.

I stared at that phone number through all of the rest of my classes that day. I couldn't avoid looking at. It was probably a good thing that the phone company hadn't hooked up our phone at the house I was sharing with Pete and Tom. The installation was scheduled for the next day.

So when I got back from my classes on Tuesday, I gave Dill a call. She was studying. She was always studying. She mentioned that her roommate was something of a party animal, but rather than that being a problem, it was turning out to be a blessing.

The girl was friends with a whole bunch of juniors and seniors that lived off campus, and according to Dill, she had yet to spend a night in the dorms. Dill assured me that if I came to visit her, we would have some privacy. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but I guessed it was a good thing. We made plans for me to come over to visit her in Trinity Hall on Thursday night.

I walked over to campus about 8:00 p.m. on Thursday. It wasn't very far, maybe a little more than a mile. I knew which room was hers from her phone number; the room numbers all corresponded to the last three digits of the phone number. When I knocked, I heard Dill's voice respond from within, "Come in, the door's unlocked."

I stepped into the now extremely familiar, but in this case decidedly feminine environs of a college dorm room. Dill was sitting up in her bed, with the covers pulled up to her waist and all of her books, notebooks, etc. spread out in front of her on the bed. "Hi, Billy!" she said warmly, "Thanks for coming over. Sorry I look like I'm ready for bed!" I didn't realize it until she said so, but she was wearing a white, satin robe with a purple, lace negligee underneath it.

"Once I've had dinner, I usually get comfortable. My roommate is never around, so I can pretty much do what I want at night." She smiled, like she was happy and contented.

"Your roommate is never around? God, you're lucky. My roommate last year never left the damn room!"

She laughed. It was one of those delicate, feminine laughs that are somehow impossibly sexy for absolutely no reason at all. "Never ever around! Get this, she doesn't have classes on Friday, so we're four days into the semester, and she's already gone home for the weekend! She only lives like forty minutes from here. But still!" She started picking up her books and notebooks and setting them on her desk behind her bed. I sat down on the other bed.

"You should probably count your blessings," I said. "One of the hardest parts about freshman year is getting along with your roommate."

"Yeah, I know you're right, but it would be nice to have somebody to do something with occasionally. I guess I do have my sister." She stopped herself; she knew that was a subject I didn't want to discuss. "Sorry!" she said apologetically.

"Dill, it's okay. Look, if we're going to be spending time together, Jane is going to come up in conversation. That's inevitable. Don't avoid mentioning her on my account."

She smiled really brightly, expectantly. "I hope we are - spending time together, that is." Then, she got this really coy, innocent look on her face, like she was a little ashamed at what she'd said.

She quickly changed the subject. "Would you like a glass of wine? I guess I haven't been a very good hostess."

"Sure, but only if you're going to have one," I answered.

Then, I started teasing her, "Drinking in the dorms during your first week in college!" I said, playfully shaking my head. "You're a naughty one, Dill Kaminski!"

"Oh, you have no idea, Billy Maxwell!" she said smiling devilishly. Then she pulled the covers off of her and got up out of bed. Her robe wasn't tied shut and the negligee she wore was short, barely covering her round ass and exposing most of the thighs of her slender legs.

She walked over to a small refrigerator that sat on the floor between the room's two desks and pulled an already open bottle of Chardonnay from the bottom shelf. When she bent over to reach for it, her robe and negligee hiked up her legs, and I could see her tiny purple panties barely covering her pussy. I looked away to the other side of the room, hoping she wouldn't catch me peeking at her.

Then, she reached for two wine glasses that sat on the shelves above her desk, and filled each about half full. She put the bottle back in the refrigerator, bending over again, and exposing her panties a second time, and then straightened up, turned, and handed me a glass. "To new beginnings," she said, offering a toast.