“No way. She’s the disposable ditz. It’s gonna ‘be head chopped off.’ It always is.”
Rachel had fallen asleep before the flick reached the predictable, overacted conclusion. Her head was slumped against my arm, and I took that moment to admire her angelic face, wondering if she would notice if I stroked her cheek.
Putting the tablet on her nightstand and turning off the light, I slipped out of bed, covered her up, then went to my drafty room and empty, chilly bed.
~~~~
Sometime during the night, Rachel slipped under the covers.
“I keep waking up. You know I’ve never slept in that bed alone? It’s spooky. Will you play with my hair like you used to? So I can sleep? Please?”
Rachel’s hair was so thick and so beautiful it should have been on billboards and in shampoo ads. Mine was just as thick, though I kept it short. At an early age I discovered running my fingers through Rachel’s hair, stroking her head, or just tugging gently nearly put her into a coma.
She sighed happily while I combed fingers through her sumptuous mane, snuggling her sleepy body closer.
When she was asleep and breathing evenly, I didn’t resist. I ran the back of my hand over her smooth cheek and kissed her forehead. Settling beside her, I also fell asleep.
In the gray morning light, I woke to find us laying on our sides, face-to-face. Rachel’s eyes were closed. Without thinking, I stroked her hair, admiring her again.
Rachel snuggled close, then her lips brushed across mine.
Suddenly I was wide awake, heart drumming. Did she mean to do that? Was she awake?
Once more her lips lightly touched mine. So soft, so warm. Tentatively, as lightly as I could, I brushed back, going across and up. Rachel murmured and lifted her face, as if inviting more.
My breath caught. Was she asking me to kiss her? That was crazy—we were cousins. But again, she moved and just barely touched her lips to mine.
From below came Uncle Fred’s yell, informing us breakfast was ready and for us lazy kids to get the hell downstairs.
Rachel’s eyes opened. We stared at each other for a moment before she flushed and looked away.
“Never need an alarm clock with Foghorn Fred around,” she sighed. “We’d better get down there.”
~~~~
All of us chatted and passed food around the dining room table just like our summer breakfasts together.
Uncle Fred announced they were going into town to check out the indoor farmer’s market and craft fair.
Rachel and I shared a look. When they did that in the summer, they were gone all day, returning with far too much cheese, baked goods, and shoddy handcrafts the locals sold to gullible tourists.
We grinned when they drove off. For the first time ever, we had the entire house to ourselves: no parents, no Uncle Fred, no brother, and no sister.
We explored every nook. We chased each other up and down the stairs. We explored the creepy basement where, as kids, we never dared go and discovered Uncle Fred had brought cases of his craft beer.
Rachel got her portable speaker and we blasted our music in the living room, dancing and rattling the windows.
When the novelty wore off, we watched another cheesy horror flick while sitting on the living room floor sharing junk food. Rachel produced two bottles of Uncle Fred’s beer.
“Oh, you’re bad,” I said. “He’ll kill us if he finds out.”
“There’s lots down there. He’s never gonna miss two. Or four.”
We sipped the strong beer, laughing at the rubber masks and pink blood in the low-budget movie.
Our sides were aching when it was over, feeling buzzed from the beer.
“I wish we lived closer,” I said. “There’s no one else I can do this with.”
Rachel gazed at me strangely. “I wish we did too. I’d love to be with you more. Think of all the trouble we could get into.”
I pictured the trouble I wanted to get into with her right then.
“Uh, want to visit the bower?” I asked.
Rachel scrunched her face. “We have the house to ourselves, and you want to visit the bower? In frigging winter?”
She agreed only because the bower was special. It was the name we gave the spot far behind the house where a stream bent, forming a pool almost deep enough to swim. Shaded by overhanging trees, all of us kids went there to cool off every summer and splash around unsupervised.
In summer the bower was a quick bike ride along a path that traced the edge of the woods behind the house. In winter it turned out to be a long trudge through shin-deep crusted snow while the wind whipped and swirled.
Rachel held my hand high for balance as we high-stepped, breaking the icy crust to gain footing in the powder underneath.
I began thinking we should turn back when the crusted snow became drifting powder. Rachel still held my hand as we kicked through it. Occasionally, I stole glances at her. Once, I caught her glancing at me, too.
Snow roofed the branches arching over the bower, shading it in soft bluish-white and blocking the wind. The stream had iced over, though we heard it trickling underneath.
“It’s really weird here in the winter,” she said.
“Yeah. So quiet.”
Rachel pulled out bottles of water and some snacks from her bag. We crouched, looking around and trading stories of everything we did there: swinging into the water from a rope, Matt trying and failing to jump the stream on his bicycle, or just laying on the cool ground before going off exploring again.