I gently knocked on Sue's door.
"Sue," I called, "do you fancy coming for a ride?"
"Just a mo," she called back.
A few seconds later, she opened the door and peered at me through her plain reading glasses.
"Yeah," she said, "I'm bored shitless. Where do you fancy going?"
"I don't know. Somewhere with a cool breeze? It's so bloody hot in here."
Sue pondered for a few moments.
"How about Eden Hill?" she suggested. "It's high enough to get any breeze there is, it's got some trees to give shade and it's not very far to ride."
"Brilliant. Spot on! I'll go and get changed."
"OK, " she said, "meet out front in ten minutes."
I rushed back to my room and changed into cycling shorts and a half-sleeved shirt. It was such a fiercely hot day that I didn't want to risk sunburn on my exposed thighs and upper arms and the shorts would also prevent chafing from the saddle.. Eden Hill would take us over half-an-hour to get to, so it was worth taking a little trouble.
I rushed downstairs and out the back to get our bikes from the shed. As I wheeled them past the back door towards the side passage, Mum stuck her head out and smiled warmly.
"Where are you two off to?"
"Eden Hill. Hope we'll get a bit of air up there."
"Yes, you might be lucky and there's some shade up there if you're not. Enjoy yourselves. Text me when you're on your way back and I'll sort out something to eat."
I carried on out to the front and waited for Sue. I reflected once again how lucky I was to have a friend such as Sue. Although she was my younger sister, that didn't necessarily mean that we would get along. However, we did more than that: we were best friends. Although we had our own friends, very few of them were shared between us. Sue and I were quite different in personalities, but, underneath it all, we were both quite shy and I think that made our bond even stronger. We confided our thoughts and feelings to each other, even seeking the other's opinion on current boy- or girl-friends. We skirted around sexual matters, however, ostensibly because they were too 'personal' for siblings to discuss, but actually because there was little to report on either side.
At nineteen, I was, by my own admission, woefully inexperienced in sexual matters. I'd had girlfriends, but I'd never got much past the 'holding hands' stage. One girl had allowed me to feel her breasts through her jumper and bra and had, in return, stroked my bulging jeans, but we had been interrupted and the opportunity had never arisen again. Although I had the appearance of an outgoing sort of bloke, my shyness prevented me from asking girls out. The dates I did have usually came about from the girl asking me.
At eighteen, Sue was a 'nerd'. She looked very studious in her glasses and, I suspected, put some boys off even asking her out because of her earnest appearance. Perhaps they thought they would be bored by explanations of the General Theory of Relativity. In fact, she could make a passable attempt at explaining it, but I think she would not have inflicted it on a boyfriend. As she was very shy, she tended to encourage the myth that she was boring. Any boys who braved the first step and were gentle enough to befriend her on her terms would find that she had a delightful way of talking about non-academic subjects.
In both of our cases, such girlfriends and boyfriends didn't last long. We just drifted apart from them, too shy, perhaps, to progress the relationships.
"All right, then?"
Sue appeared from the front door clad in similar gear to mine. We were fairly experienced cyclists and knew the risks of being under-protected from painful experience. I handed Sue her helmet and put mine on. She handed me a water bottle and I put it in the holder on my bike as she did hers.
Out of habit, I took the lead as we set off and I set a modest pace. It was bloody hot and we didn't want to arrive too knackered to make the journey back! Again out of habit, Sue took over the lead after about a mile just so I could slipstream and ease up a little. Sue's bum, as usual, attracted my attention as any girl's would have done. Nothing particularly sexual in my mind; just enjoying the view. For all I know, Sue looked at my bum in the same way when I was leading. The cycling shorts we were wearing were rather tighter than normal shorts and rather accentuated our bums.
After a few more swaps, we could see our destination ahead. A few minutes later and we had arrived at the beginning of the track leading to the summit. As the track was rather steep, we dismounted and pushed our bikes to the top. As we had hoped, the trees there afforded a decent amount of shade and it was appreciably cooler.
We put our bikes down and threw ourselves down in the grass with a slightly triumphant feeling from having arrived without too much effort and it having been a good idea to do it.
"Whew! That was a good idea to come here!" I exclaimed.
"It was a good idea to get the bikes out," she retorted. "One-all!"
"Do you want a drink?" asked Sue. She was nearer the bikes than me.
"Please," I said and she rolled over to get the bottles from the bikes. My eyes were once again drawn to her tightly-clad bum. I felt slightly ashamed that I was looking, but couldn't help myself. I must have lost my concentration for a moment because, as Sue rolled back with the bottles, I was still looking in the direction of her bum - but it was not her bum any more.
"Here," she called, throwing my bottle to me and then noticing where I was looking.
"Oy, what's your game, mister?" she asked in a fake Cockney accent.
I blushed heavily, making it impossible to pass it off with a joke. "Sorry," I blurted.
Sue looked down at her crotch and then back at me. After staring at me for a few seconds, she undid the cap on her bottle and took a long drink. Gratefully, I did the same.
The awkward moment passed and we were back to normal, chatting about inconsequential things and just relaxing in the pleasant surroundings.
At the back of my mind, however, had been planted a seed. I'd looked at Sue's bum just as I would have any other girl's, but, not only had I liked what I'd seen, but I had wanted more. I hadn't really thought of Sue in any sexual way before. She was, after all, my sister and such feelings are generally not acknowledged. Of course, most siblings go through phases of fantasising about their siblings in either romantic or more explicit scenarios, but they usually remain locked up in fantasy. My feelings , I realised, were more about Sue than a girl's bum; the taboo feelings that were intruding on my mind were making me feel vaguely uncomfortable.
Sue had already noticed me looking at her in an inappropriate way, albeit rather accidentally. She didn't seem to be too upset by it, but had given me a rather old-fashioned look.
Just as she was giving me now.
"Earth to Planet Dick."
Oops!
"Sorry!" I blushed again.
"Where on Earth were you?" asked Sue. "It didn't look a bad place, but it wasn't with me."
Well, strictly it was, but I didn't feel I could tell her that. And that was literally the first time I had ever felt that I couldn't tell her something. Not avoiding answering one of her direct questions anyway. Of course, as I said before, there were certain things we didn't discuss, but we never raised questions about them. This time, Sue was asking me what I was thinking about and I couldn't answer her truthfully. I would have to avoid the truth and possibly even lie. I felt dreadful. Our whole relationship was crumbling because of an inappropriate thought on my part. The size of my problem grew exponentially as I racked my brains for something I could tell her.
It was too late to pass it off with a flippant remark; she was already looking at me in a peculiar way. This was ridiculous. I was tongue-tied with my best-friend sister!
"Dick, whatever's the matter?" Sue had a very concerned look on her face. "Calm down."
This was stupid. I had quickly turned into a gibbering wreck in front of her eyes and no wonder she was worried. I was worried too; just an idle thought of Sue's bum had brought this on. I had thought of it before, admittedly not in any remotely lewd way, but this had not happened before.
The enormity of the spiral I was in was overwhelming me. I had thought of Sue in a way I reckoned I couldn't talk to her about and that was causing me to become increasingly flustered and for Sue to become increasingly concerned; this, in turn, made me want to allay her fears about my sanity and made me realise that I was unable to do so.
Tears sprang to my eyes and I wiped them hastily away.
"Jesus, Dick!" She was alarmed now. "Tell me what's wrong!"
I suddenly thought that running away might solve the problem, at least temporarily, and started to get to my feet.
"Oh, no you don't!" shouted Sue and she grabbed my arm. "Tell me what's wrong. You can tell me."
"I can't," I whispered and tears came again.
Sue stared at me intently. "Dick," she said gently, "we can talk about anything."
I shook my head dumbly. I wanted the ground to open up. I felt thoroughly ashamed of my thoughts, but Sue had no clue.
Sue continued to stare through my eyes into my brain. "We can talk about anything," she repeated, "except..." and she trailed off thoughtfully.
She blushed in turn. I could see that she understood my situation. Inexperienced as we were in dealing with sexual matters, we were old enough and intelligent enough to know the facts of them. We both realised that I had had slightly sexual thoughts about my sister and I at least knew that it had not happened before. I suspect that Sue could judge by my outlandish behaviour that it was a first for me.
I began to calm down, now that I realised that I was hiding nothing from Sue. How, though, was she going to handle it? She could laugh it off, as I should have done, or she could ignore it, but neither was the way we usually dealt with things that were troubling one of us. In such matters, we usually confronted them in a fairly light-hearted manner and brought a kind of joint learning experience to them so that we could both learn from it and grow up a bit more.
"Hmmm!" she grunted, "do you think my bum looks big in these?"
My heart went out to her. She had got it spot on. I dared to look up at her face and caught a wicked twinkle in her eye.
I was still uncomfortable, but she had given me a reasonably easy way out of the mire my mind was in. Our relationship was, in my mind, forever changed, but we could, perhaps, advance in an orderly manner.
"Not big exactly," I offered, with a deliberate hesitancy.
She launched herself at me and hit my upper arm quite hard.
"Take that back," she said threateningly.
My confidence returned somewhat now that we were getting back to a familiar bother-sister interaction.
"More... shapely," I dared. I held my breath waiting for her reaction. Having used that word, I suddenly realised that I was looking at Sue as a whole and admitting she was ... shapely. This was new: admitting I regarded her as shapely. I knew she was shapely through simple observation, but I was finding her shapeliness attractive and I had dared to tell her, or imply it at least.
Long seconds passed and Sue looked at me.
"Stand up," she said firmly.
"What the...?"
"Stand up," she repeated, more as an order this time.
Intrigued, I did so slowly. Sue remained kneeling on the grass.
I stood facing her.
