Alone Time: Jean and Lou

Lou was sitting at his desk looking at his computer screen when he heard his phone buzzing. It was a message from his step sister Jean telling him to go downstairs to talk to his step mother. Rolling his eyes he put his computer to sleep and descended the stairs very slowly, making as much noise as he could on his way down.

When he entered the kitchen he was met with the sight of his step mother standing on her tiptoes as she reached for something in the cupboard above the sink. She was wearing green yoga pants that showed off the shape of her legs and butt quite nicely. Lou rolled his eyes in annoyance. He and his father were definitely two of a kind. They both liked their women to be shapely.

After watching her struggle to reach something for a while, Lou finally spoke up. “Let me help you.” He pushed her out of the way and grabbed the item she had been searching for.

“You’re so tall, just like your father,” she praised him.

“Jean says you want to talk to me?” he grumbled while averting his eyes from the front of her shirt. Her v-neck was quite low cut, revealing her large cleavage. She always looked like she was about to burst out of her clothing. Was there anything she wore that was the correct size?

“Jean? Oh, was that today? I forgot.”

“Was what? What’s going on?” Lou was utterly confused.

“Jean asked me to bring some of her things over to her flat downtown. I said I’d make a trip of it tomorrow but she demanded you bring them down today.”

Lou rolled his eyes again. He knew what his step sister was planning. She wanted to get him out of the house so their parents could be alone. His father, Bill, was just coming off of a long work week. The two honeymooners had little to no time to themselves since their marriage a couple of months ago. Lou could not honestly care any less but Jean was different. She wanted to give her mother as much space as possible, which prompted her to move out on her own when their parents got married. Her excuse was she did not want to move uptown to live with Bill and Lou like her mother. Instead she moved in with one of her friends from college.

Lou wished he could do the same, not to be friendly to his father, but to get away from the annoyingly loving couple. Every day he had to deal with watching them making out in the mornings at breakfast. Jean’s mother, Joyce, loved to cook. She would stand in front of the stove talking to the father and son pair as they ate breakfast. Bill would always finish quickly and go to hug his new wife from behind and hold her waist. Lou tried to ignore it but he was sure he saw his father pinching her rolls of fat often too.

Calling Joyce fat was not exactly true. She had a wide butt and breasts that could flatten a tin can. Lou’s friends that had met her said they could hear her thighs squeak when she walked. That was exactly what Bill liked though and his tastes definitely rubbed off on his son. Bill was extremely skinny but his first wife had been just as plump as Joyce. Lou was tall and lanky but less of a stick than his father. Jean took after her mother but only in shape. She was not plump but the word thigh gap did not apply to her at all.

Thus was Lou’s dismay at having to visit her. She was, after all, a college girl 3 years his senior whom he had no real relation to; yet he was going to have to spend a whole day in her apartment pretending not to be attracted to her perfectly proportioned body.

After receiving a box of useless things that Joyce had kept for Jean when they both moved out of their apartment last year, Lou boarded the ground rail passenger train for downtown. It took nearly an hour with all of the stops along the way. All the while he cursed himself for not getting a head start in order to catch the express train that only made one stop before downtown. Since he was going to have to stay all day to give Bill and Joyce time together, he planned to catch the express back at least.

Though he had not been there since helping Jean move her things last year, he still remembered the way to her apartment. She answered the door wearing a towel and with her dyed blonde hair dripping with water from the shower. The towel was tucked into itself right above the nipple line of her breasts, leaving little to Lou’s imagination. “Where do you want this?” he held up her box, pretending he was going to just drop it off and leave.

“Get in here, silly,” she laughed as she yanked him into the apartment by the wrist.

“Shouldn’t you wear something more modest?” he asked. “Doesn’t your roommate’s boyfriend live here too?”

“They’re both out at the moment,” she assured him. “You can just dump that anywhere. I’ll probably toss it all anyway.”

“Thanks for letting me know how useless my time is,” he grumbled.

“Oh don’t be like that, little brother. Don’t you want Mom and Dad to have a good time?”

“Call him Bill,” Lou ordered her. He did not like Jean calling his father so familiarly.

“You can call Joyce Mom if you like,” she jumped on the opposite end of his complaint. “You already look like a mother and son.” She was referring to the fact that Lou had black hair and glasses like Joyce, although his hair was somewhat gray while hers was shiny; probably due to her taking better care of it. Jean tilted her head as she pondered on the similarities between her mother and her step brother. “Maybe you’re actually the product of an affair our parents had when I was a babe.”

“That’s rude to my real mom,” Lou argued.

“I forgot. That sumo wrestler still doing drive bys or does she not fit in the car anymore?” Jean pulled no punches when talking about Bill’s ex-wife. Carla was always a large woman but she had gained a lot of weight in her later years. Bill had done everything to get her to take better care of herself. He even first left her in order to motivate her to get fit in order to win him back. However, she instead became obsessive and began sending horrible threats to all of the female workers at his company. She used Lou to try winning Bill back multiple times until Lou just had to cut off all ties with her.

When Joyce and Bill first started dating, she used to drive by the house and take pictures of Joyce’s car in the driveway. All the while she kept putting on more and more weight. According to her the stress made her eat more. Last time Lou was in contact with her she was in the hospital for gout.

Lou sat down on the couch while Jean left the room to change. When she came back she was wearing extremely short cargo shorts and a thin tank top. One look is all it took for Lou to realize she was not wearing a bra underneath. “Could you wear something more?” he asked.

“Why?” she acted confused. “Are you worried about your big sister? Thanks for the concern, but I’ve been without a little brother for a long time. I don’t need you to suddenly force me to be all modest.”

“That’s not…” Lou stopped himself short of admitting his true opinion. The last thing he needed was for Jean to make fun of him or call him disgusting. She had fallen into the role of a big sister much more easily than he had of a little brother. “Are you really happy this way?” Lou asked a different question.

“You mean the fact that I moved out?” Jean tried to guess what he meant. “I miss my mom but I’m not going to be a child forever. If I’d gone to another college, I’d have already been living on my own. I can’t very well force Bill to look after two full grown women.”

“And it’s fine for your mom to look after me?” Lou asked.

“I never said it was. Hurry up and get older, little brother.” She ruffled his hair as she sat down next to him. He had thick and dusty looking hair that always bunched up around his ears and the bows of his glasses. With her touching it, some of the bunches sprung out and covered the lenses of his glasses, forcing him to take them off and put them back on just to see properly. Jean laughed at him as he tried to straighten them, causing him to blush. He hated being treated like a child by her.

When he could finally see again, he noticed Jean staring at him with her feet propped on the edge of the couch and her knees under her chin. He quickly realized that she wanted to watch TV. It took him a while to get used to her quirks. Jean was used to living alone and therefore always acted like she was a guest in anyone else’s presence. To her that meant she would not touch anything without being given permission. Once they had sat on the couch at home for over an hour as she watched him play on his phone. She was smiling the whole time though, which confused Lou.

Feeling bad, Lou reached for the remote and turned on the TV. The glow of the pixels reflected in Jean’s eyes as she turned to look. Lou sighed as he examined her excited expression. She was really a simple person. Though he still felt this whole situation was forced on him, this was the one thing he liked about his father getting remarried. He would have never met Jean and definitely would have never sat this close to her if their parents had not gotten married.

Lou quickly switched his attention to the screen, chastising his own brain. How could he have admitted to something so embarrassing, even to himself? Jean was being selfish by dragging him all the way here. If he let himself, he would forget that. Why did he want to let her off so easily? Everything about her should have annoyed him. Just by humoring her he was spoiling her.

“I’m leaving.” He stood up suddenly.

“Wait, where are you going?” She grabbed his hand. “Is it the TV? I’ll turn it off.” She reached for the armrest on her side where the remote would normally be, only to remember that he was the one who turned it on. She had been watching it so intently she had forgotten.

“You just don’t want me to go home, right? I don’t have to stay here then.” He walked in front of her toward the door.

“But…” She gripped his hand tighter. “Shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we hang out once in a while too?” she suggested.

“Why?” he was confused.

“Isn’t that what siblings do?”

“No, they hang out with their friends or their girlfriends. They might stay home if it’s raining or they may watch TV when it’s late at night but they don’t really enjoy each other’s company.”

“Okay, let’s pretend it’s late at night.” She pulled him back down onto the couch again.

“We’d have to pretend we even live together first,” he argued.

“Fine, stay over tonight, no this whole weekend. I’ll text Bill right now.” She grabbed her phone. Lou watched her type out the message and send it. He himself was confused why he did not stop her. “What?” she asked when she noticed him smiling at her.

“You’re sure you’re the older sibling?” he chuckled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She puffed out her cheeks in annoyance.

“Nothing,” he hummed as he laid down on the couch, placing his head on her feet. She stared down at him in confusion. “This is how siblings act. They hog the whole couch to themselves,” he made an excuse.

She cautiously scooted to the side so she was barely occupying any space.