Six days ago, their world hadn’t quite collapsed. Claire hadn’t fully trespassed the line delineated out in her vows, and Ephraim was still none the wiser; satisfied with his recent purchase of a 1967 Chevy Impala.
“As soon as I set my eyes on her, I knew I’d met the woman of my dreams,” Mateo professed like an infatuated school boy. Laura, his wife of three years, had given him permission to pull money from their savings to go in on half the cost and half the ownership with Ephraim in exchange for the renovation of their master bathroom. A project Mateo had been promising to complete since they’d first moved in two years ago. All he had to show for it was a stack of mossy lumber and bin full of empty beer bottles.
The boys had been gushing about the car for days, talking endlessly about upgrades and horsepower to Ellie’s annoyance. They had spent the night before drinking and planning into the morning while they waited for the seller to get back to them with their offer, using a hairbrush and a tv remote as makeshift microphones while they repeatedly sang Drive My Car off key to each other. Ellie could barely sleep. But even she couldn’t help getting caught up in their excitement when the seller agreed to their price, and Mateo pulled her into his arms and spun her around the living room.
“What is it about cars that turns men into idiots?” Laura wondered to Claire, watching in bemusement as the boys ran into the backyard and chest-bumped each other so hard that they knocked the other to the ground.
“Who says it’s only cars?” Claire replied, cooly sipping her ice tea.
By noon, Gavin Keats had shown up looking for Ellie, sporting a new polo top, a clean shave, and a Jansport backpack. He was tall and lean, but not skinny, and he had a pretty face that was considered strikingly handsome by most. Gavin knew it too and bore no compulsion for modesty. If anything, he was usually overconfident. But if Gavin was hyper-aware of his good looks, then Ellie was quite the opposite. She never seemed to take notice of his appearance or his style. It was this same hyper-unawareness that drove him to work harder for her attention. And perhaps explained why he reeked of aftershave and cologne; the mixture so strong that it lingered long after he and Ellie disappeared into her bedroom.
“That must be what desperation smells like,” Ephraim muttered.
The first time Gavin had come around, Ephraim and Mateo had two-teamed him in a round of badcop-badcop. Embarrassed, Ellie had dragged her brother out of the room, insisting that the two were no more than school friends. But Ephraim was unconvinced and claimed that he could smell the horndog off that boy. He’d been keeping a close eye on him since.
“Those two seem awfully close now,” Mateo observed after Ellie and Gavin left for the library. They’d been watching them get ready to leave from the back patio.
“They could be dating,” Laura suggested. “Have they mentioned anything to you two?”
“Not a word,” Ephraimed confessed. “But she doesn’t tell us much these days. I wouldn’t be surprised though. That little punk is always coming around.”
Claire said nothing, conceding with her silence as she often did.
Laura laughed as she got up and grabbed a twist-top beer from the cooler.
“You should probably stop calling him that. That little punk could very well become your brother-in-law.”
Ephraim groaned and buried his face in his hands, and Mateo gave him a hard consolatory slap on the shoulder.
“My kid sister’s being taken in by a horndog,” he whined.
“Sure seems like it,” Mateo replied, stuffing his mouth with a handful of corn nuts.
~X~
By mid-afternoon, Ephraim and Mateo had loaded up the truck and dropped Lauren off at home on their way to pick up the Chevy Impala. It was only a two-and-a-half drive over and back, but the boys were looking forward to stopping at a nearby casino on their trek back. The last-minute plan was to do a bit of gambling and spend the night. And maybe get up early enough to enjoy the breakfast buffet.
Claire was glad for the quiet.
With Ephraim gone until tomorrow afternoon, and Ellie out for the rest of the day, Claire could get a few chores done and tuck in after a long bath and a good book. She almost never had time to herself anymore. But she was mostly relieved not to be alone with Ellie, with nothing but the awkward silence festering between them.
Except it didn’t quite work out that way.
Claire had started the third load of laundry in the wash, careful to put her delicates in a mesh bag, and had begun folding the second load out of the dryer when she heard the slap of the screendoor echoing loudly in the house. She froze, her feet cementing to the floor beneath her as she nervously wrung the shirt in her hands.
“It’s me,” Ellie called out as she removed her shoes and placed them on the rack in the entryway. “I’m back and I’ll be staying home for dinner.”
~X~
Awkward silence would have been preferable.
Claire could not remember what had started the argument. She could not even remember who had spoken first. They had barely exchanged more than a few words since they’d returned from their day trip to Sutter Woods with Ephraim and Gavin the week before. Not that anyone had noticed. Claire had been careful to never be left alone in her company, and it had not been difficult with so many visitors coming in going during that time.
“You can’t be serious.”
Claire searched her eyes, wondering if the girl was playing games or willfully seeking to shock her.
"What if I am?" Ellie snapped back defiantly as she leaned forward, her chin slightly raised and her hands firmly gripping the edge of the washing machine where she sat even as her bare legs swung listlessly over the washer door.
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At almost twenty she still had the gangly arms of a pubescent girl, and a slender boyish figure that often came with youth. Her freckled, sun-kissed rosy cheeks and brilliant blue eyes were like a homage to rustic feminine beauty. She had always been this lovely, even as a child, and was made only lovelier by the messy twin braids that fell over her shoulders. The fiery hues of her hair only a shade lighter than red. But for all her loveliness, the girl walked a fine line between open hostility and sullen civility.
Especially to her.
"You're not," the wife insisted, but it was a tepid reply. There was nearly a ten-year difference between them, and yet experience had not given Claire the confidence that was lacking in her voice. She seemed unconvinced of her own words when she spoke, her restless hands fidgeting with her husband's laundered shirt. Her denial nothing more than a thin veil over her unyielding fears. Fears that had festered since that day she professed her vows before an entire congregation.
"Well, I think you're afraid."
Her husband's sister was sitting closer to the edge of the washer now, a tiny smirk curled up at the corner of her lips, the intrepid look in her eyes shimmering with something like accusation and smug satisfaction. It was the same sort of look that a seven-year-old Ellie had often reserved for her whenever the child stole away her brother's attention from his undeserving girlfriend.
Ellie and her anger. She clung onto it the way a newborn fastens to its mother. The remnants of a vestigial, and likely imagined betrayal long forgotten, with the same ferocity of a cornered animal. As the girlfriend, Claire understood she was an outsider. As a wife, she was constantly seeking out her patience, especially as the girl became less of a child.
"I see right through you," a thirteen-year-old Ellie had declared away from the prying eyes of others, practically hissing her words, and her face twisted in vexation. Never mind that they were in the middle of celebrating hers and Ephraim's engagement party. "You're a fraud, and a phony."
"Am I a fake too?" It had taken all of Claire's efforts not to submit to the haughty derision simmering beneath her stilted smile.
"You're making fun of me."
"Is that why you hate me so much? Because you think I'm a phony?"
"My brother thinks you're so perfect-"
"I'm not perfect."
"I know you're not. You're a liar." So dramatic. Her disdain was practically palpable.
And always, always so angry.
She was more subtle now, virulent but coy, like caustic words on rose-scented parchment. The steel of her cool blue eyes lured her into an almost fervid temptation, a path almost certainly laden with thorns.
There was no discernable difference from the acerbic girl before her now, and the one whose lips she'd tasted just a week before. Supple lips, tart and tangy lips, the bittersweetness juxtaposed by crushing mouths, and warring truculent tongues impassioned by unspoken indignation. The moment had been fleeting, but it had left her agitated and stupefied by the evocative dissonance that swelled her thoughts.
She was afraid, and no words would form on her lips to articulate otherwise. Her own body rejected the denial of this very fact.
"I'm not wrong, am I?" Ellie persisted, leaning forward with ease, despite how dangerously close she was to slipping off the edge of the washer. She was near enough to touch, and Claire was left with strange nascent stirrings as Ellie reached an unprovoked hand and tugged at the hem of Claire's shirt.
Her first instinct was to back away, but something in her brain had shut down, and her limbs became useless and inert to her own commands. Another easy tug from Ellie, and her limbs were innervated once more, compelling her forward, and negating the space between them.
"You're so easy to read," her sister-in-law whispered, the heat of her breath teasing the short hairs on Claire's neck, just below the hairline. Her ears tingled and her florid cheeks grew hot, deepening to a near ruddy red. Anger and embarrassment filled her, clenching her jaw and tensing the muscles in her arms and shoulders. It was only when she tightened her hands into trembling fists that she noticed they were now empty, and Ephraim's shirt lay tracked on the floor, crumpled under her feet.
"You're such a brat, you know that?" They were the first honest words that had crossed her lips since the impulsive kiss they'd shared.
"Is that so?" Ellie simpered, sliding a hand up Claire's arm, tracing fingers along the veins, and stopping at the soft crease of her elbow. "Is that what you were thinking when you had your tongue in my mouth?"
"Don't do that," she croaked, her throat growing arid and tight.
"Don't do what?" Ellie replied with feigned innocence.
"Whatever this is."
Claire's arms were trembling now, her fingers aching as she clenched her fists, as if the act alone would fetter her diminishing resolve.
"And just what is it that I'm doing?" Ellie pressed on, running the tips of her fingers along the waistband of Claire's jeans, and teasing the soft area of her stomach just above the fastened button. "Am I making you wet?"
With those words, her mind emptied all cogent thoughts, and her impetuous hands reached for Ellie's thighs, clasping possessively as they tugged forward, seemingly acting independent of her own intentions. But she wanted Ellie's legs sealed around her hips, and her body pressed against her own. Ellie seemed to want it too. There wasn't a vestige of hesitation when she coiled her legs around Claire's waist and clasped her fingers on her bare shoulders.
Conjoined as they were from the waist up, their lips remained just breaths apart. Ellie's contentious eyes locked with hers, her gaze suffused with an efflorescent charge, enthralling and licentious, and baiting her to submit to the very thing Claire had wanted to avoid.
And she did.
Their lips came together, drawn in by the gravitational pull of their incensed bodies. Claire's hands shifted up Ellie's thighs, curving along the rounded cheeks of her backside, flexing her tremulous fingers on the firm flesh as her tongue sought out the deepest places of Ellie's mouth. Her tongue pressed deeper still, twisting and curling around Ellie's, siphoning a soft groan of ecstasy. She was dimly aware of the hardened nipples teasing her own, just two thin layers away from skin to skin contact. And her shoulders aching; a soft gasp escaping her as Ellie's hands clawed impatiently, digging fingernails into soft bare skin.
The laundry room swelled with sounds of their wet lips coming together and apart; moist smacks of tongues and mouths, and the rustle of fabric tousled by restless hands. In their frenzy, the struggle for air became unbearable, and their earnest lips eased into soft, languid kisses.
Ellie's arms draped over Claire's shoulders, her fingers caressing the wisps of hairs along the nape of her neck, enclosing her in a tender embrace. Their eyes fluttered open just enough to remain entranced, but their breaths grew strained as hips stirred, rocking in slow, rousing rhythms, and igniting a deeper longing. It was easy enough to ignore at first, but the tempo of their hips deepened, sweeping her into an aching sweetness of heady intoxication. Within moments, her sex spasmed, and she tensed, pulling Ellie flush against her, her hands clutching and trembling as she buried her face in Ellie's sweat-glistened neck.
"I'm a terrible person, aren't I?" Claire rasped above a whisper, nearing tears, and reluctant to pull away. Unable to face the look of contempt awaiting her even as she wondered why those scornful blue eyes made her so weak.
"The worst," Ellie asserted cruelly, still struggling to catch her breath, but making no effort to pull out of their embrace. And then in a strangled voice she uttered, "But so am I."