"While we're away, Will's in charge. Do what he says, Jill."
In my mind, I was smashing things and yelling, "Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" For seven years, when our parents went away overnight or longer, they'd put our brother Phil in charge. (Some parents give their kids the same initial. They gave us names that rhyme.) The last time they'd done this, he was 20 and Will and I were seventeen. We're not Irish or twins-If I told you my last name, you'd figure out that Dad's family is Armenian-but we're what they call Irish twins. I didn't really hold it against Phil the last couple years. I could tell he hated the responsibility as much as we hated him having it. That was a year and a half ago. Now that he'd joined the Navy and shipped out, Will and I both figured we'd be on our own. No such luck. Knowing that Phil didn't like being responsible for us, I was ready to give Will the benefit of the doubt. I'd assume he wasn't going to be a jerk until he gave me a reason to.
Wrong again. They'd barely been gone an hour when he told me to make dinner. I picked up the phone to call our favorite pizza place. He took the phone and hung up. "I said make, not order," he said. "I could go for spaghetti." Luckily, spaghetti's not difficult. (It's the meatballs that are a pain.) He even dug the breadsticks out of the freezer and had them ready when the spaghetti was. Afterward, he complimented me on it.
The trash we created put the garbage pail past the tipping point. Will took the trash bag out and told me to replace it, which I did. He took it to the trash can outside, making a big show of how heavy it was, and he took both trash cans to the front of the driveway because trash pick-up was the next morning, Friday. When he came back in, he sat on the couch in the living room, turned the TV on and put his feet up. "Hey, Jill, bring me my slippers."
I went to his room and found a pair of sandals. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a proper pair of slippers. Just to gross him out, I carried them in my mouth and dropped them in front of him, panting like a dog. He patted me on the head and said, "Good girl." Still on all fours, I turned around, lifted my leg and made a sound like I was peeing on the sandal he hadn't put on yet. "Bad dog! Bad dog!" he shouted. The community college's flier listing the upcoming extension courses was sitting on the coffee table.He wrapped it up like a newspaper and swatted my butt with it.
I turned around and put my head on the ground with my hands over my face. I said, "You're right. I'm bad!" in a voice that sounds like a half-dozen different cartoon dogs. "What else are you going to do to punish me?"
Will looked at me for a moment. "I got nothin'," he said, and we both laughed. We've been teasing each other sexually for months. I hoped he'd take this chance to do something, but he didn't.
Will had class the next day, and I had to work. When I came home, he had the latest season of his favorite action series on Blu-Ray, and he was changing discs. "What do you wanna do for dinner?" I asked.
"Look in the kitchen," was his answer. He'd gotten our wok out, along with a bag of rice and some vegetables. "I've got a taste for fried rice."
"You dumbass," I told him. "What if I'd had to work late? The pork would have been contaminated."
Will opened the refrigerator. "That's why I didn't take it out," he said. "Give me some credit." He pulled out a medium-size slice of ham and put it on the chopping board. He went back to the den.
I could have put up with making me mix the ingredients, but they weren't chopped. With every cut, I tried to imagine my revenge. Most of them involved his dick and the cleaver. "Ready for your vasectomy?" I'd say. "You're Jewish now!" Or, "You have a new job, guarding the harem."
I tried to think of poisons I could slip into the rice, but I wasn't sure I'd be thorough enough at cleaning the plates afterward. My next thought was to take it down a notch. Instead of killing him, I just wanted to make him sick so I could enjoy watching him suffer. There had to be something in the house that would have him either sitting on the toilet or kneeling in front of it for an hour. The trouble with that was, he might not get there in time, and he'd make me clean it up. I decided to make the food itself uncomfortable. When the rice was about ready, I took a serving out, put it in an ordinary frying pan and added some wasabi.
I put his serving on a plate that was in good condition and mine on a matching plate that has a nick on the edge. I know I could have just used plates that don't match, but one thing we have in common is that we both get fidgety over things like that. In hindsight, I could have used plates and glasses that don't match either, if I could tolerate it myself. I put the rest into a bowl and brought the food out. I went back for the drinks and fortune cookies. (He bought those, too. He may be a jerk, but he thinks of everything!)
I came back and sat down. I tasted a little bit from the plate in front of me and asked him, "How is it?"
He had a strange look on his face. He took a bite, tried to swallow and spit it out. "I can see time!" he shouted. He drank the entire glass of water that I'd brought. "Damn it! I saw the wasabi out, so I switched the plates."
"I left it out knowing you'd see it. I gave myself the plate with the wasabi in it, because I knew you'd switch them. You forgot-Never tangle with an Armenian when your taste buds are on the line."
"I guess I can forget about kissing you goodnight," Will said.
"Yeah, like that was gonna happen." Will didn't even hear the end of my sentence because he'd darted to the kitchen to get a beer. He got us each a beer, implying both a surrender and a bribe not to tell Dad what he'd done. I implied that I was accepting both by drinking mine. Naturally, he drank his with a little more urgency. He continued to hog the TV, so I went upstairs and streamed shows for a couple hours.
Around ten, Will walked into my room. "My mouth has recovered," he announced gleefully.
I didn't take my eyes off the computer screen. "Good for you," I said.
"Time to kiss my sister goodnight," he said cheerfully.
"Good luck with that."
"I'm in charge for the weekend, remember? You have to do what I say."
"Oh, shit," I said. I turned to my right, and Will was standing there, bent down. I halfway expected him to do the thing where you spray your mouth with breath freshener. It occurred to me, though, if he'd done to me what I'd just done to him, leaving my breath as is might be part of my revenge. I raised my head, but he gestured with his hands for me to stand. I did. I should have turned my head so he'd only be kissing my cheek, but I figured if he wanted to play around with me, I'd go along with it.
Will opened his mouth, and I could tell he'd actually rinsed his mouth out. Then I noticed he'd put cologne on. I recognized the scent. A year or so ago, he wanted to get my friend Imani into bed, and I was on board with it. I found out the kind of cologne Imani liked, though not the brand, and I helped him find it. It didn't work, but he still uses it. It disarmed me enough that he could put his arms around me. When his hands touched my lower back, I couldn't help opening my mouth. He hadn't used the generic Scope knock-off; he'd used the high-end brand. "So that's what a tie baseball game feels like," he said.
"Huh?"
"Some manager once said that a tie is like kissing your sister. I think I like ties." He put his hands back around me.
When I opened my mouth again, he moved his hands to my butt. He'd mastered the underappreciated science of applying just the right amount of pressure. His hold was firm enough that I knew he meant it, but not so hard that it felt like he was trying to push my groin into his. I put my hands on his back, and I felt him get hard between us. "I'm sorry for all the jokes I made about you not knowing how to kiss," I said.
"And I'm sorry for all the jokes I made about you having small tits."
"I know you didn't mean it," I told him as I ran my fingertips down his back.
"Oh, I meant it about them being small; I'm just sorry I made fun of you. I didn't want to admit that I actually prefer small ones."
I took off my T-shirt and Will kissed me all over the fabric of my bra. He put his hands behind me again and did to my back what I'd done to his. It made me point my little tits toward him. I reached back to find the hooks on my bra. As soon as I'd undone one of them, Will took over and undid the rest. "You've had practice," I observed.
"Yeah, but bigger girls' bras feel different somehow. I've never freed anything smaller than a C cup."
"Poor baby," I told him.
He pulled my bra off and handed it to me. "Hold this up in the air for me." I looked at him curiously. "Don't make me remind you that I'm in charge," he pleaded. I put the center of the bra in the space between my thumb and forefinger. "Sorry, I meant hold one end and dangle it." I laughed as I did. "There, you remind me of the vintage pin-up girls I see on the 'net sometimes."
I was enjoying this. "What else do they do?"
"Well, I remember one where the excuse for being topless was that she was taking her laundry off the clothesline and hadn't gotten to the shirts yet."
