Carpooling With My Sister

As I watched the show, I wondered about what happened between Mia and Nathan. Mia never talked about her problems. Tonight was the most she had ever talked about the issues she had with Nathan and her feelings after the breakup. I didn't think the couch was the only reason they broke up. It sounded like there were other problems, and the couch was just a symptom. They had seemed so happy, then Mia was asking for help moving into Maria's. There had to be something else.

Once the puppies were all adopted, Mia sat up and started another "Too Cute!" episode. This time, it was kittens. And then she lay back down next to me.

I asked, "Having a good evening?"

"Yes. Very much so. The best evening since I broke up with Nathan. Did you and Ginny spend many evenings watching TV?"

"Some. Not as many as I'd like. She wanted to go to a movie on Friday nights and go dancing on Saturday nights. When she came over during the week and there wasn't a movie she wanted to watch, we'd Netflix and chill."

After we watched some of the kittens' antics, Mia said, "The sofa is yours. If you want to call it a couch, call it a couch."

"Thanks."

We both had spoken in quiet, relaxed voices. We were both very comfortable and getting ready for sleep. When the kittens had been adopted, I was ready for bed. Mia got up, I got up, she gave me a hug and a kiss goodnight, and off I went to my bedroom.

When I got in bed, I decided I was in the mood to jerk off. But I always jerked off at my computer, which was out in the living room. Unfortunately, my phone was out there too. I had been woken up too many times from a good sleep by a spam call or the notification of some random text message, so I left it by my computer.

I started stroking my cock as I ran through possible fantasies to jerk off to. I started imagining Ginny and I making out on my couch. My intent was for the fantasy to turn into Ginny and I fucking on the couch, but I couldn't picture us getting naked on the couch, and the fantasy just faded away. And then I had a picture in my head of Mia naked on my couch giving me a come-hither look. That freaked me out. How could I think of my sister like that? And it didn't help that Mia was on my couch at that very moment. I got out of bed disgusted with myself. I tossed into my hamper the underwear I had been using, put on a clean pair, and laid back down to go to sleep.

* * * *

When I came out of my bedroom the next morning, Mia was watching TV on the couch. "Good morning," she chirped.

I wouldn't mind more mornings starting like this. "Good morning. What would you like for breakfast? An omelet or pancakes?"

"Oooo! An omelet would be wonderful." My sister turned off the TV, came over, and sat down at the bar which faced the kitchen. "How'd you sleep?"

"Good."

Actually, I hadn't slept well as some wicked and cruel part of my mind decided to show me a slide show of my sister getting fucked in different positions on my couch. After showing me an image, it would ask me, Did your sister get fucked like this on your couch? I had watched enough porn that I could imagine a woman getting fucked in a LOT of ways on the couch. The wicked and cruel part of my mind showed me all of them. Did she get fucked like this?, and I saw an image of Mia making an 'O' with her mouth as she got pounded in the missionary position. Did she get fucked like this?, and I saw an image of Mia bent over sexily while being taken doggie-style. And then there was an image of her bouncing up and down on a guy's cock while he sat up on the couch and she faced him. Then Mia was bent over the armrest while being fucked doggie-style again. Image after image after image. Mia's face always showed her delight in getting pounded. It had been pure torture.

I shook off the memory. "Would you like bacon with your omelet?"

"I shouldn't," Mia said coyly. "But what the heck."

I went over to the refrigerator and started pulling out ingredients. Mia said, "I slept great. That's a comfy couch to sleep on. Would you mind if I slept here again the next time Maria has a party?"

"No, not at all. Would you like some orange juice?"

"Please! I wasn't expecting such a great breakfast."

I shrugged. "When Ginny slept over, I'd always make us a nice breakfast. She really liked that. She'd flirt a lot with me while I cooked, and then we'd go back to my bedroom after we'd eaten. Our little breakfast ritual was like foreplay for her."

Mia smiled at me like she could see the fun in what Ginny and I had done. "Do you miss her still?"

I handed Mia a glass of orange juice. I turned to pour mine. "Somewhat. I had fun doing things with her, but when she walked out the door, I didn't think much about her until the next time I saw her. We never had deep conversations or talked about our long-term plans. She was the kind of person who lived in the here and now. I was getting frustrated with the lack of depth in our relationship by the time she dumped me."

"Why didn't you dump her first?"

"She never gave me a reason to break up with her. It was fun going out with her. The sex was really good. And when I first started dating her, I liked the lack of relationship drama." I changed the subject by asking, "It's hard for me to believe that you and Nathan did it on the couch. He always seemed so...square."

"Have you ever had sex on a couch?"

"No."

"Any place beside the bed?"

"No."

"Then you're much more square than Nathan."

Mia's eyes twinkled at getting the best of me. It annoyed me, but I had stepped into it. Still, there was a broader point I wanted to make. I struggled with what exactly it was as I got the bacon out. Once it was frying, I said, "I suspect that the reason that Nathan is less square than me on this issue has to do with you and not him. You're a very fun person, and Nathan isn't."

Mia gave me a knowing smile. "You're not the first person to make that observation."

I focused on the bacon. I knew I should move on to another topic, but I wanted to know more about Mia and Nathan's relationship.

After I flipped the bacon, Mia said, "Nathan was unimaginative when it came to sex, but most guys are. Variety with my prior boyfriends meant position number two or three instead of position number one. Nathan encouraged me to be imaginative or silly. And he always played along whenever I did."

"And you liked that?"

"Yes."

"What else did you do besides have sex on the couch?"

"I'm not going to tell you!" Mia said in a tone that was both light and firm. "It's embarrassing enough that you know about the couch."

"Fair enough." I never discussed the details of my sex life with anyone. But as we were talking about Mia and Nathan, I decided to ask, "How serious were you and Nathan?"

Mia looked uncomfortable for a few moments, and then she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Serious. When I moved in with Nathan, I was expecting to marry him someday. He was the one. We were..." Mia froze for a few seconds. "And then it turned into a disaster. It still shocks me how wrong I was about everything."

"I'm sorry to have ruined your relationship." I continued to feel a lot of guilt about it.

Mia looked at her hands for a while and then shook her head. "I'm sure I would have married him if I hadn't taken the job downtown. And then when things blew up, it would have been much harder to walk away. What if we had had kids by then? It really hurt breaking up with Nathan, but it was best to end early a relationship that wasn't healthy."

"Not healthy?"

"Yeah." Mia shifted uncomfortably. "A relationship needs trust, doesn't it?"

I was confused by her question. "Yeah. Absolutely." That was true for any type of relationship. I once had a coworker who would regularly lie to shift blame, and everyone hated working with him even though he was a smart, funny guy.

"Nathan didn't trust me. I didn't recognize that at first. The first time you worked late after I had moved in with Nathan, he asked me a whole bunch of questions when I got home." Mia folded her arms. "When did your brother tell you he'd be working late? What did you do after five? Who was there?" She paused for a moment before unfolding her arms. "He wasn't hostile or anything. I didn't get upset about the questions. I just felt...he was...overly curious. I had told him before I accepted the job that you had told me you'd stay late once every week or two. Why should he ask me a bunch of questions when you did work late?"

Mia stopped to take a drink of orange juice. I took the bacon out of the pan and put it on a plate with a paper towel. I poured the egg mixture for the omelet into the pan.

Mia continued, "It was like that every time you worked late. It wasn't a big deal, but it was annoying."

"Then Janice took over, and I started working late consistently."

"And Nathan started questioning me more aggressively. Where did I go out to dinner, and who did I go with? Why didn't I want to drive to work myself? Did I go out to lunch too? If so, who with?"

"This is starting to sound scary."

Mia nodded. "It was. And it kept getting worse. I drove to work a couple of days, hated it, and then went back to carpooling with you. But Nathan couldn't accept how much I had hated driving myself." Tears were running down her face now. "He kept pressing me for the real reason."

My stomach was feeling queasy. "But there was no other reason."

"Which I told him over and over." Mia put her elbow on the bar and rested her forehead on her hand. Her story seemed to be exhausting her. "I put an app on our phones so we could see where the other was. I thought that would reassure Nathan. But it made things even worse."

"How so?"

"Every time I went out to lunch, or to dinner, or out shopping, Nathan would call and demand to know what I was doing. And he wouldn't believe me when I told him." Mia swallowed hard. "The last straw was when some friends of mine from college came into town. I met them at a bar. Nathan called several times, asking when I was coming home. It was so embarrassing having to try to calm him down over the phone in front of my friends. He even showed up at the bar to check on me. It was so humiliating. When I got home, I told him it was over between us. Nathan got really ugly then. It was like breaking up with him was confirmation that I was cheating on him. He demanded to know who I was sleeping with. I got so afraid he'd hit me that I ran out of the apartment and slept in my car."

"I'm so sorry, Mia. I had no idea." My heart was really going out for her. "No one should go through that."

"The next morning, I started calling for places to move into. Once I found one, I called you." Mia left her place at the bar and came around to the kitchen. As she did, I smelled something burning and realized that I had paying so much attention to Mia that I had let the omelet burn. I moved it off the hot burner and gave Mia a hug when she got close to me. "Thanks for helping me out when I broke up with Nathan, for buying the furniture neither Nathan nor I wanted, for moving me to my new place, for being my rock when my world was falling apart."

Mia hugged me tightly, pressing her head hard into my chest. I said, "I was glad to do it. I love you, Mia, and I want to see you happy. I was glad to do whatever I could to get you into a better situation."

"I love you too, Jackson."

We held each other for a long time. Mia quietly cried, letting loose her grief over what she had thought had been the perfect relationship. I tried to think of something to say, some words of comfort, but nothing came. At times life sucked, and there was nothing that could be said which could change that; when loving support was far more important than words.

We were emotionally leaning on each other so much. Mia was my emotional support as I dealt with my job situation. I hadn't known how much she was leaning on me after her breakup with Nathan, but I was realizing it now. During our struggles, we had found a deep love for each other, a kind of love that was very different from what we had felt for each other for so long.

When I felt her tears had stopped, I said, "Let me check on the omelet." I turned back to the stove with one arm around Mia. The omelet was an overcooked mess. "I'll have to make us a new one."

Mia stepped back from me, and I turned to face her. She said, "Go ahead. I'm hungry."

"You sure? I don't mind hugging you some more."

Mia gave me a small, grateful smile. "I'm fine now." Then she darted to me to press herself against me while giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thanks for being here for me."

Mia left the kitchen, and I went back to the refrigerator to get another batch of ingredients. I dumped the dead omelet in the trash and made another as Mia watched. When the omelet was done, I cut the omelet in two and put Mia's piece on her plate.

We ate quietly for a while. I felt we were both processing our newly expressed feelings. Mia finally said, "I keep thinking about what went wrong with Nathan and what I could have done differently. I don't want to go through that heartache again." Mia played with her food for a bit. "That's why I've been so slow to resume dating. I've been asked out several times, but I've always said no. I want to figure out what I did wrong, so I don't do it again."

I said gently, "I don't think you did anything wrong. You were up-front with Nathan with everything. You did everything you could to reassure him. It sounds like he was never going to trust you. Maybe he was so suspicious because he was a cheater himself?"

"What?" Mia asked in surprise.

"People project on others. Maybe Nathan was the type of guy who thought about cheating when he was away from his girl and thought you would do the same to him."

Mia's mouth dropped open. She obviously hadn't considered that Nathan might cheat on her. She shook her head and said, "Enough about Nathan. Let's discuss something fun. You haven't watched 'The Masked Singer' yet, right?"

Mia talked about the show all the time in our drives to work, but I preferred movies to TV shows. "Correct."

"Oh! We have to watch it after breakfast. I love that show."

"Okay. Just one episode though. Then I'll need to shower and go to work."

Once we finished breakfast and put the dishes into the dishwasher, we headed over toward the couch. I sat down, allowing Mia to pick up the remote. I said, "I'd prefer sitting up this time." I felt like after all the hugging this morning, I wouldn't be able to resist pulling her to me if we lay down on the couch together again.

"Fine but sit on one end." I sat on one end as Mia pulled up the show and started it. Then she turned to me and said, "Put your leg up on the couch." I didn't know what she was planning, but I went along. Mia then sat down between my legs and leaned her back into my chest. "Please hold me. I want to be held this morning."

I wrapped my arms around Mia, and she put her head on my shoulder. We chatted as we watched the show. I felt like our conversation was on a much deeper level where the lightest comment was an expression of caring and the need to be cared for.

* * * *

Tuesday evening while Mia and I were eating dinner, one of my coworkers walked into the break room.

"Hey, Jackson."

"Hey, Matt."

Mia said, "Hey, Matt."

I was used to coworkers joining us occasionally. I spent so much time with my coworkers that I didn't want to have dinner with them, but sometimes one of them felt the need to vent, and the break room on a different floor was considered a safe place to do so.

I said, "Missed you yesterday after lunch. You went home sick?"

"Yeah, man," Matt said in a tone I recognized as being frustrated and angry about work. "Eye problem. I couldn't see coming back to work after lunch."

I snickered. "I hear you. I totally hear you."

"I goofed off the rest of the day. Felt great. In the evening, I went to a bar by myself. Guess who I saw there?"

My hunch was that it was a female former coworker. I thought over the possibilities and answered, "Susan?"

Matt shook his head. "No. I wish." Susan had been good-looking and had flirted a little with Matt. "I was scanning the bar and saw this woman in a white Abercrombie & Fitch hoodie."

"Ginny." Ginny had always worn a white Abercrombie & Fitch hoodie when it was the least bit chilly.

"Yeah. I couldn't remember her name. I had seen her a few times with you but hadn't talked to her. I worked my way over toward her. When I got close, she was doing some serious bitching to a friend about some guy she had just broken up with. The guy kept telling her how much he cared about her, but he never did anything to show it. She thought he was only interested in her for the sex. Blah, blah, blah. I could tell it wasn't a good time for a guy she barely knows to try to strike up a conversation with her, so I just listened for a while. She mentioned your name a couple of times. Very positively. Sounded like she regretted breaking up with you."

I shrugged. "I, too, regret that she broke up with me. But she dumped me because I wasn't able to spend the time with her she wanted, and that hasn't changed."

"You never know with women. Give her a call."

It was an interesting idea. "I'll think about it."

"It can't hurt, man. All she can do is say no."

I knew that Matt was trying to be helpful, but I didn't want to commit to calling Ginny. "Or I can give her a chance to call me. It'd be better if she made the first move."

"Don't wait too long." Matt gave Mia a big smile. "And how are you doing?"

Matt tried chatting up Mia, but she wasn't receptive. Unusually, she seemed in a bad mood.

I finished my dinner and went back to work. A half-hour later, I called Mia. "Let's go. I'm not getting anything done here."

Mia and I were both quiet on the walk to the car. Once I got on the freeway, Mia said in a slightly angry tone, "You aren't thinking of going out with Ginny, are you?"

"She hasn't called."

"And if she called you, you wouldn't go out with her, right?"

"I...um...it'd be nice to go out on a date again."

Mia said angrily, "She dumped you when you really needed her. She's not seriously interested in you; you said so yourself. You'd have a shallow relationship with her until she dumped you again."

Suddenly, I was furious. "Maybe she'll be serious this time! Maybe dating the loser she broke up with taught her to appreciate what I had to offer!" The last few words came out as a yell. "It's none of your business whether I get back together with Ginny or not."

"It's none of my business?" Mia asked lividly. She added in a higher pitch, "It's none of my business? It's my business you've been mooning over her ever since she dumped you. How many times have I had to cheer you up because you missed her, even though all you were to her was a boy toy?"

That got me even angrier. "I was not a 'boy toy' to her! We had a lot in common! We had a lot of fun together!"

"And when you couldn't go out with her whenever she wanted to have fun, she cut you loose and moved on to the next boy toy!"

"And she--"

The car next to me honked its horn. I had drifted well into its lane. I realized I hadn't been paying attention to the traffic. I swerved back, shut up, and concentrated on the traffic for a while. It took several minutes for my heart rate to return to normal.

Once I got my emotions under control, I said as evenly as I could, "I liked Ginny. I enjoyed her company. It's been a long time since I had sex, so going out with Ginny has a lot of appeal even if the relationship wasn't serious. But maybe we'd both take the relationship more seriously this time."

"I feel like if you go back to Ginny now, you'd be rewarding her for abandoning you when you needed her the most." She let out a big sigh. "And I'm sorry about the rest of the things I said."