Thanks to the whiskey and the pot I slept like a baby, once I finally crawled into bed. For once I wasn’t up before Summer. When I finally crawled out of bed and wandered out of my bedroom she was already up. Not only that, she was making breakfast. I smelled bacon. It smelled damn good, though anything would have smelled good at that point. Also, there was coffee, which I badly needed, being slightly hungover. Not hungover enough not to notice how good she looked in one of my plaid shirts – she must have borrowed it while I was still out cold - and little, if anything, more. I couldn’t tell, though it was short enough on her that if she bent over just a little I’d probably find out. Instant morning wood.
“Good morning,” she greeted me with a cheerful grin. She didn’t look any worse for wear. Her hair was damp, so I guessed she’d showered. Probably wanted to wash my cum off her… Fuck. That really happened, didn’t it. And yet, Summer didn’t seem to be acting weird or bothered. If she had any regrets, they weren’t obvious.
“Morning,” I mumbled, pouring myself a cup, trying not to ogle my insanely pretty, sexy niece and not worry too much about last night.
I sat, she served. I ate, she ate. It was good, though it’s hard to mess up eggs and toast and impossible to mess up bacon.
“Sleep well?” I asked, mostly because I didn’t want to get lost in my thoughts right now.
“I did. You?”
“Yeah. This is nice.” I motioned at the plate. I should mention she’d put out juice too.
“Figured it was my turn.”
We both cleaned up. It felt strangely domestic, her washing, me wiping and putting away the dishes. We didn’t talk much, but she seemed in a good mood. She had a nice smile that sort of lit up the room. I had a moment where I wanted to kiss her. Okay, more than just a moment, but… that would be weird, no matter how she reacted, either kissing me back or pushing me away, so I didn’t. Thing was, I couldn’t get it out of my head that she was my niece. It didn’t mean I was attracted to her any less. She was younger than me, too. About twenty years younger. That might have been part of it, too. I took a deep breath and continued putting away the silverware while wondering where this was all going to lead. God, if her mother ever found out I’d be roadkill…
“What are we doing today?” she asked once we were done.
“Taking suggestions.”
“I want to write. Later, though. Figured you’d want to paint?”
“Probably.”
“Road trip?” she suggested with a laugh.
“What do you want to do?”
“Laundry. And… I was thinking it would be fun to go shopping.”
“I could use some more groceries,” I admitted.
“That too. I meant for me, though. Clothes.”
I must have made a face. She giggled and made one back.
“It’ll be fun. I promise.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” I replied, half serious.
She just laughed and left me standing there after helping herself to the tin the cupboard and heading for the back porch.
Fuck.
I showered, taking my time, then dressed. The usual. Jeans and… she’d left the shirt she was wearing during breakfast on my bed. I wondered if she’d put something else on or was wandering around the house naked? I wouldn’t be surprised if she was. I put it on. It smelled vaguely of pot smoke and… pussy. Her pussy. I could only chuckle at that, picturing her out back fingering herself while smoking a bowl, coming on one of my chairs and using my shirt to clean herself up. So much for keeping my dirty thoughts in check.
She’d dressed. Cute loose green shorts. A sleeveless yellow blouse and matching hairband. Sneakers. Typical college-age girl-next-door look. She had on a pair of sunglasses that hid her eyes from me. I smiled at that, wondering exactly how stoned she was.
“You look nice.”
“So do you,” she replied. “Nice shirt.”
I rolled my eyes at her and she burst into giggles.
“Go get your laundry. We’ll drop it off first. Might as well do mine, too.”
A washer and dryer were pretty standard in the states, but I’d never bothered here. It was just as easy to drop it off at the laundromat and then pick it up later, all neatly hung and folded. Afterwards, I took her to the shopping district and dropped her off so she could shop to her heart’s content while I picked up groceries. She seemed a little disappointed by that, but then she got a mischievous look on her face, which should have worried me.
“I’ll be a while. How about I call when I’m done.”
“Fine with me. I can just take everything back to the house and put it away. Maybe we can have lunch at a café. My treat.”
I thought for a brief moment that she might lean over and give me a kiss. Maybe just a peck on the cheek, but the moment passed and I wrote it off as wishful thinking as I watched her slip out of the truck and make her way down the sidewalk, almost mesmerized by the way her ass and legs looked in those short green shorts.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath as I drove off, trying to get my thought off of my niece. And out of the gutter.
I like grocery shopping. It’s kind of mindless, letting me think about other things while doing something productive. It also gave me a chance to socialize a bit. I’d been shopping at the same market for as long as I’d been living here and it was like almost like visiting friends. Today was no different. I took my time, talked about the weather, local gossip, got to hear about Lisette’s newborn daughter, and a myriad of other small and yet seemingly important events. Afterwards I drove home and put everything away and then, not sure how long I’d have, I got out my laptop, the one I’d loaded all of the shots I’d taken of Summer on, and started going through them, one by one. Again.
Yes, it was a little obsessive, but… there was just something about the photos that kept drawing me to them, more than how pretty she was, how… naked she was, how sexually charged it was to see her playing with herself. There was also an intimacy to them, as well as an innocence. They weren’t lurid or smutty or any of that. There was a beauty to them that only she could have brought to them, one that I wanted desperately to capture on canvas. She was right about one thing. I needed time to paint while she wrote. We’d have lunch and then I’d bring her back and I’d lost myself for the rest of the day, trying to portray her elusive spirit. When she finally called, I was still going through them, having lost all track of time.
I met her right where I’d left her, more or less, weighted down with bags. Maybe not weighted, but damn. She’d done some serious shopping. I suddenly wondered what that meant for the long term. After all, she’d been travelling with just her small suitcase and I wasn’t sure how she was going to fit… whatever, into that…
“Find some good sales?” I quipped.
“I even bought something for you,” she said, smiling as she put her bags behind her seat and climbed in.
“Oh? What?”
“Remember you used to wear that ugly driving cap every time you visited?”
“The red and white striped one? Yeah. Your grandfather hated it. That’s probably why I wore- no, you didn’t.”
“I did.” She couldn’t stop giggling after that and I couldn’t help laughing along with her.
“I’ll show off the rest of it later. I’m starving.”
I ended up taking her to a bistro that had pretty decent food, mostly because you could eat outside in a small garden with tables shaded by colorful umbrellas. We ate amidst small talk – mostly me answering questions about what it was like to live here (I loved living her. It was very much home, now.), what I liked about it (the food, the pace of life, the countryside, how inspired it made me feel), what I missed about Los Angeles (very little to be honest). That kind of stuff. We talked about music and she laughed at how out of touch I was with anything recorded after 1999 while I teased her about knowing nothing about anything recorded before that.
“I like the French stuff you played the other day. Wouldn’t mind listening to more.”
“Even though it has an accordion?”
“It was… charming and old fashioned. Like you,” she teased.
I just laughed. “At least I’m charming.”
Afterwards we picked up our laundry and headed back to my place where we went our own separate ways, so to speak- Summer disappearing into her room to write and me, into my studio to paint. To paint her, more specifically, neither of us emerging until close to dinner time.
“I have a craving for mac and cheese,” she admitted when I asked if she had any requests.
“You came all the way to France and that’s what you want? You want me to slice a hot dog and put it in too?”
“Would you?” she said, laughing.
“Absolutely not.”
She kept me company while I cooked, querying me about progress with the painting and just painting in general…
“What do you like best about it?”
I was thoughtful for a few moments before answering.
“That I’m creating something uniquely me, sharing something beautiful, but sharing it as I see it. Photos show you, more or less, exactly what is there before you. Paintings, though, and I’m not saying a good photographer can’t do this, but paintings are as much a reflection of the painter as they are the subject. It’s like sharing part of me with someone else. It’s intimate, in a way.”
“I feel like that too. I mean, when I write. I’m sharing a little part of myself. Sometimes it’s a part I don’t even know about until I find the words for it. It’s a way of sharing part of me without giving it away. Without losing it. Does that make sense?”
“It does to me.”
And then, because I’d been thinking about it all morning, I kissed her. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, although there was passion in it. It wasn’t a kiss between friends either. I felt her lips open slightly as she let out a soft, surprised sound, her eyes widening slightly in tandem. She didn’t pull away suddenly, which was a good sign, although she was passive, not kissing me back, which was, possibly not a good sign.
