A young man's life changes when he goes to visit his eccentric aunts at their rural manor for a month of erotic exploration. Content warning: Features incest between aunts and cousins.
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"Ugh. Fine, Will." My cousin Angie said in an exaggerated groan into the phone. "If you really need me to be your date to the wedding, I'll do it. Again."
"I don't want to be a burden." I teased her back. "If you're trying to pick up a guy at Maisie's wedding, I don't want to cramp your style."
I knew she wouldn't be trying to pick anyone up at our other cousin's wedding. Although Angie was my cousin, and I was three years older, we are basically twin flames, and she's always been just as socially awkward as I am.
"Yea, totally." She laughed sarcastically. "I've had my eye on Uncle Winston for a while now."
After we finished laughing, we fell into a silence over the phone and I felt my depression setting back in. I let out a deep sigh. I was relieved that Angie was going to our cousin's wedding, and that she'd be without a date and able to keep me company, but I was still in pain over how my own date had fallen through.
"You doing okay?" Angie asked more seriously. "I know going through a breakup sucks."
"It wasn't a breakup," I said, "so much as I was dumped."
"I know this isn't entirely helpful, but fuck her if she cant see how wonderful you are." Angie said which, aggression towards the long term girlfriend I still loved aside, always helped to hear coming from her. If anyone could make me feel better in my life, it was my cousin Angie.
"Thank you for sacrificing the potential one night stand of your life to babysit me at Maisie's wedding." I said sincerely.
"Nonsense." She said. "I was actually planning on asking you to be my date eventually."
"I figured." I said. "No offense."
"I know you're hurting right now," Angie said more seriously. "But one upside to you being single now is maybe we can spend more time together like we used to."
"I know." I said, a feeling of guilt and regret settling into my gut. "I know I've been a bit of a ghost. We live in the same city and haven't seen each other in months."
"It's okay." She said sweetly. "I understood. I love you."
"I love you."
We got off the phone and I again found myself alone in the cramped hotel room I'd been staying in since Julie, my girlfriend of one year, kicked me out of the apartment we shared on the Upper West Side. I can't say the dumping came entirely as a surprise -- we'd been fighting more and more lately -- but I had remained hopeful until the bitter end that we could work through our issues.
Of those issues, one the biggest was Julie's jealousy over my closeness with my cousin Angie...which Julie referred to as a "weird infatuation." Which was why I'd been neglecting my relationship with my cousin in recent months. But even without Angie around, Julie and I found no shortage of things to fight and yell about, and when the smoke cleared I was shown the door. Although we had lived together for six months, I was the one to move out because, well, it was her apartment to begin with. I couldn't afford it on my own with my inconsistent income as a novelist...which was another of our issues.
And there I was, a 32 year old struggling writer living out of a hotel room I would only be able to afford for another week.
So, as my oldest cousin Maisie's wedding approached, I suddenly found myself without a plus one. Luckily, Angie, who had been my date to countless weddings, school dances, and other events throughout our lives, once again was there to step into the role.
Laying down on my uncomfortable hotel bed, I felt my mood start to shift. Like the incoming tide erasing away all of the holes and footprints in the sand, my depression eroded away and in its place was a refreshed sense of excitement for the wedding.
I feel a little family history is necessary to orient:
Angie and I had grown up pretty close. Our mothers were two of four children, three sisters and a brother. My mother was the oldest of the three sisters. She died when I was ten years old, and I grew up with my father in New York City.
Angie grew up a short train ride away in Connecticut with her mother -- my Aunt Stefania -- and the third sister, our Aunt Rebecca. They all lived at Morningwood, the family manor, which at one time was a large and elegant estate in the New England hills but was now a dilapidated, sagging heap.
Before I was born, my mother along with my two aunts had run what they referred to as a "relaxation retreat" at the manor, basically a private inn that rich people go escape to to relax, or play tennis, or whatever rich people do to escape their lives. That ended when my mom fell in live and moved to the city to have me.
Aunt Stefania and Aunt Rebecca stayed living at the manor, along with Angie when she eventually came along during Aunt Stefania's very, very brief engagement. When we were in our 20s, Angie had moved to the city to be closer to me.
Finally, our Uncle Winston was the youngest of the siblings. Angie and I were never very close with him or his daughter, cousin Maisie, as our mothers had not been either. I don't exactly know why this was. I grew up in upper Manhattan, while my uncle's family lived a short distance away on Long Island, but we rarely saw each other. I got the impression that Winston looked down on his sisters, and thus on Angie and I, as if disapproving of something I was never aware of growing up.
Typically, I hated weddings. They always felt so forced. All of this preparation and stress and money spent by two people for a supposed celebration of love for each other, but really it was all in celebration of themselves and their egos. I like to party, drink, dance, and of course eat. But...I don't know...maybe my own history of failed relationships was beginning to turn me into a cynic about love in general. Despite all of this, while seeing Winston and Maisie and that side of the family was always awkward, I was excited to see Angie, Aunt Stefania, and Aunt Rebecca. I don't think the four of us had been together in a few years.
I wondered what my aunts were like these days. They must have been in their 60s at this point, did they look the same? Was Aunt Stefania still statuesque and voluptuous in a way that could make Sophia Loren jealous? Was Aunt Rebecca still fit and petite, with the lithe body of a professional tennis player?
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The wedding came the following weekend. I donned the one suit I owned and stood outside of the luxury midtown hotel nodding and smiling silently as expensively dressed guests (some of whom I vaguely recognized) made their way from cabs and private cars to the entrance. The ceremony was scheduled for five p.m., and by 4:45 neither my cousin nor aunts were anywhere to be seen.
At 4:55, I'd just about decided to call it quits on waiting for them. Before I turned to walk into a room filled with hundreds of people I didn't know, I craned my neck to look up and down the sidewalk one last time. That's when I saw her.
Coming across the street at a jog, holding her dress up off the ground, Angie dodged slow moving cars like a game of Frogger. Angie has always been on the curvier side, taking after her mother, and my eyes settled on her shapely pale breasts bouncing in her strapless dress as she approached. Just as she was reaching the sidewalk, she looked up and caught my eye with a beautiful smile. I remember thinking 'damn, my cousin really was gorgeous. If she weren't my cousin, I'd probably...'
"Fuck!" I yelled as I darted forward to try to catch her before she hit the ground. As she tried to step up onto the curb, the heel of her stiletto caught and she tumbled forward like an out-of-control avalanche of red-headed woman and black chiffon.
Luckily, I got to her in time to get my arms around her torso and keep her from doing too much damage. As I caught her, she dug her fingers into my arms desperately.
"Did you just get your nails done?" I winced as I pulled her up to her feet safely on the sidewalk and we stood face-to-face wrapped in each others' arms. I brushed a few strands of her long, red hair from her face.