Cindy was my favorite cousin and had been since we were little kids growing up in Maryland. We just clicked, always did. If she was around, even a dull weekend get together with our relatives was fun. She was a tomboy and liked to do things outside so we would ride ponies in granddad's pasture and climb trees, look for frogs and all those fun things you did in the country place we grew up in. I was so comfortable with her that I pretty much forgot that she was a girl.
We ended up going to separate high schools and then off to college and didn't see much of each other for a few years except at Christmas time. She spent her summers in a beach town in Maryland where she waited tables, and I spent mine working in New England where I went to school. One summer I decided to work in my dad's campground business at home and to my delight Cindy had decided to stick around to take some courses at a nearby junior college. So, we started to hang out together. She took tennis lessons in the early morning so I would meet her over lunchtimes of after work to play tennis and then go party in town. It was so much, fun because it was so non-threatening to be with her, I could be myself and talk about other girls and she would talk about problems with her out of town boyfriend. It was all so easy and maybe that's why I enjoyed it so muchโฆand there was something there sometimes, I could feel it. Maybe it was our common observations about people, our fondness for sick jokes, I don't know, but every once in awhile I would look at her and wonder what it would be like to like to be sexually involved. At first, when I has these thoughts, I would quickly try to think about something else. It was strange to think that I was imagining my cousin like that, after all it was like she was my sister. I couldn't help but wonder if she saw me look at her that way and if she had those thoughts about me, too.
One of the events of the summer was my brother's wedding in his fiancรฉ's hometown Pennsylvania. Since so many friends and relatives of ours were going, a bunch of us decided to rent a house close by for the fun and convenience of it. The wedding was followed by a huge party and we were all very hammered by the time the bride and groom took off and everyone else wandered away. Somehow the very drunken crowd all ended up at the house and since we were still wired from the party, someone suggested we go night swimming in the pool. Nobody bothered grabbing their swimming suits, we all just grabbed beers and went. One of the more nimble party goers in the group climbed the fence and unlocked the gate from inside. Soon, everyone was down to their underwear or less and swimming in the pool. Cindy was modest and a little reluctant to undress all the way, as was I.