Chapter 6: Further
Morning arrived gray through the blinds and Lydia woke with her hand already between her legs.
She pulled it away like she'd touched a stove. The taste was still in her throat, faint, bitter-sweet, and the memory assembled itself piece by piece before she was even fully awake. Claire's breast in the streetlight. The shadow between her cheeks. Her own fingers working while she knelt there, a foot away, holding two people in her mouth.
Oh God. Oh God, oh God.
She sat up so fast her head swam. It wasn't a game anymore, it wasn't a task with edges she could feel, it had happened, she had done it, she had looked at her sister's asshole while she came on her floor. Her sister. Claire, who left sticky notes on the fridge with smiley faces. Claire, who had eaten the yogurt and said it was richer and smiled at her across the table.
Lydia pressed both hands over her mouth. Her stomach heaved once, dry, nothing in it but the swallowed loads. She thought she might actually be sick and for a second she wanted to be, wanted her body to reject it, some clean physical punishment she could point to.
Then she noticed the wetness on her thighs.
Not from the shower she'd skipped washing with. New. Overnight, in her sleep, her body had gone on wanting without her permission, and now she lay there with her hand over her mouth and her cunt aching and the shame and the ache arriving at exactly the same speed, fused at the root, impossible to tell which one came first.
"No," she said into her palms. "No, that's wrong, that's wrong."
It came out muffled and thin, and her hips shifted on the mattress while she said it, a small involuntary roll that made everything worse. She got up, wrapped her robe tight to the throat, and sat at the kitchen table with her hands flat on the cool wood, trying to be a person. The fridge hummed. On the shelf behind the milk sat the raspberry yogurts, three left, and she looked at the middle one and remembered Claire's spoon and had to close her eyes.
Her phone lit up on the table. Liam.
You okay? Agathe said you'd probably be a mess this morning. No pressure to reply. Just checking.
She typed with two fingers, slowly. I'm a mess. I keep seeing it. I feel sick and I feel horny at the same time and I don't know which one is real.
Both, he wrote back. They're both real. That's how it works. Do you want me to call?
Yes.
The phone rang and his voice filled her ear, low and even, the bookish steadiness of him, and just that helped. "Question time, right now, real answer. Are you scared of what you did, or scared of how much you liked it?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Down the hall, Claire's door stayed shut, light under it now, water running in her en suite. "The second one," Lydia said. "The first one is just there. Like weather. The second one is the problem."
"Okay. That's honest. Hold that thought, Agathe wants to talk."
A rustle, then Agathe's voice, warmer and sharper at once. "Morning, cumslut. Did you punish yourself?"
"No. I tried to and then I got too wet and stopped."
Agathe laughed, one short breath of it. "Good girl. Listen. Here's your Thursday report moved up to now, over the phone, because I don't want you sitting in that shame alone until Thursday, that's how it rots. Say out loud what you looked at."
"Claire's breast. And her ass. Her asshole." Saying it to a voice was different from typing it. Her face burned and her nipples hardened under the robe at the same time, and she heard herself keep talking. "I keep thinking about her mouth on the spoon. I think about her constantly. I told you."
"You did. And you haven't run away from it, have you."
"No."
"Then we're not treating it like a crisis. We're treating it like an appetite." A pause, paper rustling, and Lydia pictured her at the kitchen counter, red hair damp from a shower, planning. "New order. A small one. A starter. You don't touch her, you don't say anything, you don't do anything she could ever actually notice. You just let her see you."
Lydia's breath caught. "See me?"
"See you," Agathe said. "You walked around this apartment in a sports bra and shorts for three years and never once thought about it. Now every inch of skin is a sentence you're writing. Small ones at first."
"I don't understand what you want me to do."
"I want you to be slutty with your sister, quietly. Push your breasts up when you reach for a cup. Let your robe fall open when you sit across from her. Stretch where she can see. Nothing she could name, nothing she could report to anyone, because there's nothing to report. Just her eyes moving when they shouldn't." A beat. "You looked at her in the dark and she never knew. That wasn't fair, was it. You took. So now you give back. Show her something and watch what she does with it."
Lydia's pulse was in her ears. "And if she notices? If she says something?"
"Then you're a clumsy girl in a robe and you apologize and fix it. But she won't say anything. People never say anything about the things they're not supposed to look at." Agathe's voice dropped, pleased with itself. "You'll know by how long it takes her to look away. That's your data, cumslut. Collect it like you collected me last night."
Liam's voice came back on. "Check-in before you start. Real answer. Do you want her to look?"
Lydia stood in the kitchen in her robe, morning gray on the counter, and made herself say it. "Yes. God, yes. I want her to look and I want to know if she likes it."
"Then go be careless," Agathe said. "Text us after. And Lydia. No touching her. That rule hasn't moved."
The call ended. Down the hall the water shut off, and a minute later Claire's door opened.
Lydia made herself busy at the counter. Coffee, the grinder, the ordinary noise of a person. Claire came out in a towel, damp-haired, cheerful, and the sight of her did the thing it now did, a hot drop falling through Lydia's stomach.
"Morning! You're up early." Claire padded to the bathroom mirror down the hall, calling through it. "I have that shift at noon, can you believe it. Did I use all the good coffee?"
"Maybe." Lydia reached up for the tin on the top shelf, and she did it the way Agathe had told her to, slow, up on her toes, robe climbing her thigh, and she let her chest push forward as she stretched, the sash loose, the collar gaping. She knew what the gap showed. She'd gone without a bra last night's clothes were still on the bathroom floor, and the robe fell away from the swell of her breast, the side of it, the curve, all the way almost to the nipple.
Claire came to the kitchen doorway for her coffee.
Lydia counted. One second. Two. Three. Claire's eyes were on the open fall of the robe, on the pale shape of her, and her face did something small and complicated before it went back to morning-bright.
"Top shelf has a whole system," Claire said, coming in, taking the tin from her. "You have great reach." Her cheeks were pink. The shower, probably. Probably.
They ate toast at the table. Lydia sat across from her and let the robe do its work, knee drawn up, the fabric parting to mid-thigh, and she watched Claire's gaze flick down once, twice, and return to her plate with the toast pushed around. Claire talked about the shift, about a customer who'd yelled about oat milk. Her eyes kept making the trip.
"I spilled on this robe," Lydia said, testing her own voice. "It's shorter than it looks when I sit."
"Mm." Claire wasn't looking at the robe anymore. She was looking at the neckline, where Lydia had leaned forward on her elbows and let the collar hang, her breasts heavy and barely held, the inner curves bare to the sternum. "No, it's. It's fine. It's your robe."
The silence after that lasted four full seconds, and Claire filled it by standing too fast and taking both plates to the sink.
Lydia rose behind her and stretched, arms overhead, a real yawn-stretch, and felt her breasts lift and press against the thin fabric, nipples visible through it, and caught in the dark window over the sink Claire's reflection, watching. Not the dishes. Her. Claire's mouth slightly open, then closed, then the tap turned up loud.
"I'll do those," Lydia said.
"You're in your robe, you'll get splashed." Claire was scrubbing a plate that was already clean. "Anyway I gotta dry my hair. Don't let me forget my badge." She left quickly, bare feet quick on the hall floor, and her door clicked shut.
Lydia stood in the kitchen alone, heart slamming, nipples hard, thighs slick under the robe. She picked up her phone.
She looked. A lot. At my chest, at my legs. She watched me in the window reflection and then scrubbed a clean plate. She's acting normal but she flushed.
Three dots, then Agathe. Good girl. Same time tomorrow?
I don't know if she liked it or was just embarrassed.
That's what tomorrow is for. Push it one inch further every day until one of you breaks the rule of not mentioning it. Report Thursday. And Lyd. How wet are you right now?
Lydia looked down at herself, at the robe and the proof of it, and typed honestly. Soaked. I'm soaked and she's ten feet away drying her hair.
That's my girl. Wear it. Go put on the shortest thing you own for the afternoon. She has today off too, doesn't she.
Lydia checked the shared calendar on the fridge, the smiley-face magnet, and her stomach dropped and warmed at once. Off until six, written in Claire's round handwriting, a little sun drawn next to it.
Yes, she typed. All day.
The shortest thing she owned was a pair of gray cotton shorts that had survived three washings too many. She put them on at two in the afternoon and walked into the living room where Claire was watching TV with her feet up, and Claire's eyes went down once and came back and stayed on the screen for a solid minute without blinking.
"Cute shorts," Claire said finally.
"Old ones." Lydia sat on the arm of the couch, legs crossed, and let the hem ride up until the curve of her ass touched cushion through thin cotton. "They shrunk."
"Mm."
Lydia left them there for the rest of the afternoon. She cooked dinner reaching high and low, bent at the waist over the oven with her legs straight, and when she turned with the tray she caught Claire's face mid-look, no mask at all, open hunger before it shut like a drawer. Neither of them mentioned it. Claire ate two helpings and barely spoke.
That night Lydia texted the report. She watched me bend over the stove. She didn't even pretend that time.
The reply came fast. Tomorrow: the shirt.
The shirt was white and old and she wore it without a bra the next morning, and while pouring juice she let the faucet splash her and soaked the front of it on purpose, cold water, nipples rising sharp and dark against the cloth. She stood there drying it with a tea towel, rubbing, and Claire, halfway through her cereal, stopped chewing entirely.
"You're dripping," Claire said.
"Am I?" Lydia looked down at herself, slow, and made no move to cover anything. "Oh. Yeah."
Claire looked for four full seconds. Then she got up, rinsed her bowl, and said something about laundry, and her door closed, and Lydia heard the lock turn, which it never did.
The week built in small steps. Tuesday she left her bedroom door open while she changed, a full minute of it, naked back to the hallway, and heard the floorboard in the hall creak and stop, creak and stop. Wednesday Claire came home early and found her asleep on the couch with the blanket off, top half bare, and instead of covering her, Claire stood there; Lydia felt the stillness through her eyelids and kept breathing slow until the warmth of a hand almost, almost touched her shoulder and withdrew. Thursday Claire started dressing differently. Tighter things. Crop tops Claire had owned for years and never worn. Neither of them commented on the other's wardrobe, and the silence around it got louder every day.
Friday her mother came home.
Diane had been at her sister's for three weeks, helping after the surgery, and she arrived with a suitcase and a bag of oranges and her usual noise, calling hello from the hallway before the door had finished shutting. She was forty-nine and built like Lydia, the same heavy chest, the same wide hips, and she hugged both her daughters at once in the kitchen and said the apartment smelled like toast.
Lydia felt the hug and hated that she catalogued the press of the body against hers.
That evening she almost behaved. She put on real clothes, jeans and a flannel, and sat through dinner like a person. But the machine Agathe had built in her didn't turn off just because the audience changed. Halfway through the meal she reached for the salt and caught herself doing it, the arch, the slow lift, and she put her arm down and passed the salt normally and sat on her hand.
Diane talked through the rest of dinner, work, the drive, the cousin nobody mentioned anymore, and Lydia sat on her own hand and watched the machine she'd built run without her. Because Claire wasn't eating. Claire had stopped eating when their mother came in and sat down, and now she sat with her fork flat on the plate and her eyes on Lydia's collar, on the two buttons Lydia had left undone without thinking, flannel open a sliver over the skin of her chest. Claire swallowed when Lydia swallowed. Claire's face had a flush on it that didn't move, high on both cheeks, and under the table, Lydia could hear the small restless sounds of a body that couldn't settle, chair creaking, knees shifting, the thin scrape of a thigh against thigh.
Diane asked Claire twice about her shift and got half an answer both times.
After dinner Claire cleared the table faster than she'd ever cleared anything. Dishes crashed in the sink and then her door shut, and Lydia heard the click of the lock, the new lock, and then, very faintly, through the wall by the fridge, a low buzzing hum that stopped, started, stopped again. She stood in the kitchen with a dish towel in her hands and her whole body went hot. She knew that rhythm. She knew the stopping because you couldn't hold the angle.
"Your sister's tired," Diane said, from the table. "Long week?"
"I guess." Lydia's voice came out level, which felt like a miracle.
Diane had changed too, and Lydia only saw it now, sitting there with the oranges in a bowl and her hair still travel-flat. Three weeks of hospital chairs and bad sleep, but her eyes were awake, tracking, and they'd been tracking all through dinner, Lydia realized. Not at Claire. At her. When Lydia had reached for the salt and caught herself, Diane's gaze had already been there, resting on the lift of her chest, and it had moved down to her waist, her hips, unhurried, the way someone reads.
Lydia told herself it was nothing. Mothers looked. Diane used to cut her hair as a kid, used to hold her whole body in a towel after baths. It was nothing.
She dried the dishes anyway with her back turned, and felt the look on her anyway, a pressure between the shoulder blades like sun.
Diane went to bed at ten. Claire's hum came back at eleven, longer this time, and ended on a small sound Lydia pretended she hadn't heard, a bitten-off breath through a door and a wall, and Lydia lay in her own bed with her hand pinned under the pillow and refused herself, because Agathe hadn't ordered this, none of this was a task, and doing it unsanctioned felt like something she wasn't ready to name.
In the morning it got worse.
Claire was in the kitchen in the crop top, the one from Wednesday, and she'd stopped pretending it was casual. She moved around Lydia constantly, reaching past her for the same mugs, brushing against her back at the counter, and once she stood behind Lydia at the sink for a full ten seconds with her chest an inch off Lydia's shoulder blades, breathing, not moving, until Lydia stepped aside and Claire said something about tea.
"Claire." Lydia turned. "Are you okay?"
"Fine." Too fast. "Why?"
"You keep touching me."
Claire looked at her, and her face was doing the complicated thing again, want and panic in the same drawer, and Lydia watched her sister decide to lie. "I'm tired. Ignore me."
That afternoon Claire disappeared into her room for the third time since breakfast. Lydia found a text screen, typed with shaking thumbs. Claire's acting different. She keeps coming near me. She's locked her door three times today. I think she's masturbating. I think it's because of me.
Agathe's reply took minutes, which meant she was writing carefully. Good. This is exactly what we said we wanted. Her eyes finding what they shouldn't, and her body following. Do nothing. Don't touch her, don't close the distance, don't close your own door. Let her want and not know what to do with it. How does it make you feel?
Lydia sat on the couch in the gray shorts and answered honestly, because that was the rule now, honesty even when it condemned her. Wet and horrible. It's my sister. She's squirming because of me and I did it on purpose and I want to do it more and I feel sick.
Both things, Liam wrote, joining. You know this one by now. Sick and wanting are the same muscle.
Except. Lydia typed it and deleted it twice and typed it again. Except it's not just her anymore.
She didn't send the rest. She didn't have to. Because Saturday evening Diane came out of the bathroom in a towel to get her hairbrush from the hall closet, and Claire was in the shower, and Lydia was on the couch, and the apartment was small and the closet was six feet from where she sat. Diane passed in front of her, damp, the towel tucked over her heavy chest, her full soft hips bare to mid-thigh, and she glanced over, and the glance caught on Lydia's bare legs and stopped there longer than a glance, and Diane's step actually slowed.
"There's my brush," she said, casual, and she bent to the lower shelf, and the towel rode up, and Lydia sat frozen with her phone lit in her hand.
Diane straightened and smiled at her, a warm mother's smile, and went back to the bathroom, and everything was normal, and nothing was normal, because Lydia had seen her mother's eyes snag and stick the same way Claire's had. The same pull. The same four seconds too long. And then, worse, when Diane came back out dressed and they ate leftover pasta at the table, Diane sat angled toward her, knees toward her, and at one point reached over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Lydia's ear, fingers dragging along her jaw, and said, soft, "You've gotten so pretty, Lyd. When did you get so pretty?"
"I don't know," Lydia said. Her voice barely worked.
"You're glowing lately. Both of you girls are, honestly." Diane laughed, a small strange laugh, and looked down at her own plate like she'd said something wrong. "Living alone makes you notice things."
Claire's door opened. Claire came out, flushed from another locked hour, crop top, bare legs, and stopped dead when she saw their mother's hand still near Lydia's face. The three of them sat in the kitchen and nobody spoke, and Lydia sat in the middle of it, her daughter's body on one side and her sister's want on the other and her own cunt swollen and aching under the table, and understood with a flat falling feeling that the thing she'd built in this apartment didn't stay where you put it.
She excused herself to the bathroom, locked the door, and typed with both hands.
It's Mom too. She looked at me. She touched my face. She slowed down in a towel. Agathe, it's spreading, it's spreading and I don't know how to stop it, and part of me doesn't want to stop it, and that part is so much bigger than I am.
The reply came after a long time, three dots running and stopping and running.
First question, Liam's name on it, which meant they were both there. Real answer, check-in. Are you safe? Physically?
Yes. Nobody has touched me except her hand on my jaw. It was nothing. It was a mother thing. But it wasn't.
Then breathe. We're coming over tomorrow. Both of us. You don't start anything and you don't stop anything until we've talked. And Lyd. One more question, and I need the truest thing you have.
She waited, forehead against the cool door, water running on the other side of the apartment for Claire's second shower of the day.
When you say you don't want to stop it. Do you mean your sister, your mother, or both?
Lydia looked at herself in the mirror over the sink, wrecked, bright-eyed, lips bitten pink, and the answer was already in her body, in the pull low in her belly that didn't distinguish, and she made her thumbs move anyway.
Both. I think I mean both.