Goodnight Kisses

There was a light rapping on his window that caused Matt to stir from his slumber. He was in the middle of a rather pleasant dream and was reluctant to let go of it. He was making love to someone, but he couldn't quite tell who it was in his dream. It wasn't his girlfriend, Alison, he was sure of that. If only he could see this wonderful girl that was bringing him such pleasure. She was just. . .

TAP TAP TAP.

"What the Hell?" he mumbled. He sat up and flipped on the lamp beside his bed. The alarm clock stated that it was five minutes past five in the morning. It was still a few minutes before dawn, at this time of the year.

TAP TAP TAP.

Matt stumbled out of bed and raised the blinds on the window that was facing the back yard. There stood his sister, Lisa, shivering in the cool morning air. He stood there, just staring at her for a moment while his mind tried to register just what the heck was going on. It took some frantic gesturing on his sister's part to snap him out of his trance and get him to open the window. The cold air drafted in and helped wake him up a bit. Lisa immediately began to climb in, landing on her belly on the floor.

"What in God's name are you up to? You could have used the damn front door, you know," he berated.

Lisa rolled over into a sitting position and slid across the floor with her back to Matt's bed. She sighed heavily and leaned against it. She was dressed only in shorts and a tee shirt, and was still shivering. Her eyes were puffy and red as though she had been doing a good deal of crying recently. Matt shut the window and studied her with a disapproving eye, noting that she smelled as though she had recently taken a bath in stale beer.

"My keys are in my purse at Katie's house, along with my phone. I left my jacket there, too. I didn't want to wake up Grandma by ringing the doorbell, so I was hoping you would let me in."

"What happened?" Matt asked.

"I don't want to talk about it right now."

"Did someone, uh, hurt you? Are you OK?" he asked. His tone changed from one of irritation to concern.

"I'm OK. No one touched me," she replied.

"Here, let me help you up. You look like you spent the night in the freezer. Did you walk here all the way from Katie's house?" Matt asked her, taking her hands and pulling her from the floor gently. She was such a little thing, about five feet four and couldn't have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. He sat her on the edge of his bed and draped his blanket across her shoulders. She pulled the blanket tight and sort of half-smiled up at him.

"Yeah, I walked home," Lisa admitted.

"Jesus, Lisa. Couldn't you have gotten to a phone and called me? You know that I would have come to get you! You can't be walking ten miles in the dark. Some freak could have grabbed you or something," he said.

"I know. But I had a lot of thinking to do."

It had seemed like during the past year or so, Matt had been doing a lot of worrying about his little sister. She was almost nineteen but still acted as though she was in middle school. Her grades at community college were barely passable, and he suspected that she spent more of her time partying than studying. It was hard to tell exactly what she was up to because they rarely spoke to each other for any length of time anymore. Now here she was crawling through the window at five in the morning.

"I just don't want anything to happen to you. I'm going to make some coffee. Do you want me to get you a cup of tea?" he offered. Lisa wouldn't drink coffee, but would sometimes have a cup of tea with her grandmother.

"That would be nice, Matt," she replied.

"OK, I'll bring it in. Be right back."

Matt made his way to the kitchen and started the coffee maker. He also began to heat up some water for Lisa's tea. It was horribly early for him to be up, especially on a Sunday. Still, he thought that he would have a hard time going back to sleep. He thought that he could possibly lend some emotional support to his sister. Maybe get her to talk to him for a change. Short of slapping her upside the head and telling her to straighten up, he wasn't sure exactly what he could do to help her, though. For the millionth time over the last couple of years, he wished that his parents were still around. Their grandmother was OK, but she was in her late eighties and there was a huge disconnect between Lisa and her. They got along fine, but grandma would never be a shoulder to cry on, so to speak.

Matt carried the coffee and tea back to his room only to find Lisa snoring softly. He sighed and set the cups down on his desk. She looked as though she had just tipped over in the position that she was in when he had left the room and fallen instantly asleep. She was half on, half off the bed and didn't look like she could be very comfortable. She must have been totally drained after spending the entire night walking home in the dark. She was such a pretty young woman, didn't she realize any of the terrible things that could have happened to her? Didn't she realize the amount of stress it was putting him through to have to worry about things like that?

Matt took a sip of his coffee, walked over and as gently as he could, he removed her shoes. Without waking her, he lifted her legs onto the bed and made sure that she was covered up. He wanted to crawl into bed with her and just hold onto her. He wanted to some how get her back from whatever path it was that she was headed down. Maybe he would try to get through to her later after she had some sleep.

*****

Lisa came into the kitchen sometime during late afternoon that Sunday. Both Matt and her grandmother were sitting at the table. It smelled as though they were baking something.

"Something smells good," Lisa stated.

"Yeah, Grandma's baking a pie," said Matt.

"These days, I think that Matt did most of it, but I can still tell him what to do. Are you feeling better, dear? Matt said that he thought that you may have been coming down with something," her grandmother wondered.

Lisa's eyes darted to her brother, then to an empty chair at the table where her jacket and purse sat. The same jacket and purse that she had left behind the night before. She thought that Rick or Katie had probably dropped them off.

"I feel all right. I think all that I needed was some rest. Matt took care of me. I'm going to go take a shower, then I think I'll have a piece of that pie if it's ready," Lisa said.

"Oh, heavens yes. You're too skinny, dear, what you need is a nice slice of apple pie. We'll find out how good of a baker your brother is."

Matt just smiled and didn't mention the purse and jacket.

"I don't think that you'd let him go wrong, Grandma."

Lisa took her time in the shower and to get dressed afterward. By the time that she got back to the kitchen, Matt was the only one there. He was finishing up a few dishes at the sink.

"You finally made it back. I thought maybe you had gotten lost or something. You better have a piece of pie while it is still warm. It's not too bad, if I do say so myself," he said over his shoulder.

"OK, I guess I'll try it. It smells good. Hey Matt, how did my stuff get here?" she asked. She wasn't in any hurry to get into a discussion about the events of the night before, but she was curious.

"I had to go to the store to get some things so I stopped by Katie's house and picked them up for you," Matt replied.

"Did you talk to her?"

"Only as far as to say that I came to pick up your stuff. You don't have to tell me anything, but I wish that you would. I worry about you Lisa." Matt dried his hands and grabbed a paper plate off a rack and proceeded to cut Lisa a large slice of pie. He set it down on the table in front of her. Lisa took a seat and gave her brother a guilty look.

"I'll tell you what happened, but later OK? Maybe after Grandma goes to bed," she stated.

"Fair enough. But eat your pie. Grandma's right, you're too skinny. If someone wanted to kidnap you, they could do it with one hand."

Lisa had to smile.

"You think I need to get fat so I don't get kidnapped? Why are you so worried about someone trying to kidnap me anyway?" she asked.

"Because I love you and I don't want anything to happen to you. I know that you're an adult, you remind me all of the time. You're also a beautiful girl, and you'll always be my little sister. It would be easy for some asshole to take advantage of you. I don't have a whole lot of confidence that Rick is sober enough most of the time to protect you. As for getting fat, I don't know if that will help you or not, but it can't hurt," he explained.

"I'll try, but you'll have to keep making pies. And maybe some chocolate chip cookies," she said. She took a forkful of pie into her mouth and nodded in approval. Matt's little speech was affecting her a lot more than she was letting on. She wanted nothing more than to run to her room and cry.

Matt put a hand on Lisa's shoulder, causing her to stiffen in her chair. She wasn't really used to him touching her. She paused with her fork in mid-air.

"I've got some stuff to do, but don't run away. I still want to have that talk with you later, OK?" he asked.

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise," she replied.

When she was sure that her brother had gone, she pushed her plate aside and rested her head on her arms on the table in front of her. It was good pie, but the way that her stomach was feeling, she didn't quite trust it enough to put any food into it. On top of that, she felt guilty as hell that she had caused so much worry for Matt. He was dead-on about Rick, he probably didn't care all that much about what happened to her one way or another. Matt had said 'I love you' and more nice things about her in a couple of minutes than Rick had said to her in the two years that she had been seeing him.

*****

Matt was gone for much longer than he had originally planned to be. He didn't tell his sister what the 'stuff' was that he had to do. It involved his girlfriend and the fact that he didn't want to see her anymore. He didn't hate her or anything, but she was starting to become a strain on him. The girl just wouldn't leave him alone. He started to feel like she was some sort of a parasite sucking the life out of him. Between college, his job, and trying to take care of the house, he just didn't have enough time for her. She didn't take the news very well, and he found it difficult to get away.

Matt wasn't used to breaking up with someone, usually he was the one that was getting dumped. By the time he had gotten home it was late and he was mentally exhausted. Kicking off his shoes, he walked toward his room. He was halfway there when he met his sister in the hall.

"Alison called," she said, rolling her eyes. "Twice."

Matt put a hand to his forehead.

"Ugh. I was just with her about twenty minutes ago. I was trying to break things off. I don't have a whole lot more to say to her. I kind of hoped that things would have went a little more smooth than what they did. It was like some sort of a damn nightmare. You would have thought that we had been married for twenty years or something."

"Yeah, well, she'll just have to suck it up. You can do a lot better than her, and she probably knows it," Lisa said, following Matt to his room. He plopped down heavily into a ratty old recliner that he refused to get rid of.

"Aw. She didn't do anything wrong. I just don't have time for her. I can't go out every night. Hell, I have a hard time staying up past ten o'clock. Between work and school, I need some time to rest you know? She wanted to take like every second of my free time. God, I feel like an asshole," he explained.

"You're anything but an asshole, Matt. Don't give in to her, though. It would be easy to feel sorry and the next thing you know, you'll be back together and worn ragged some more. She'll get over it."

Matt flashed a weary smile, marveling at how his little sister so readily dished out relationship advice. She still looked like a little girl in her pajamas and her hair back in a pony tail. It didn't seem possible that she was all grown up.

"Well, Dear Abbey, you know my problems. You feel like sharing yours?" he asked.

"Oh man. OK," she took a seat on the bed. She took a deep breath and swallowed hard.

"Well, you took me to Katie's last night, you know that. Our boyfriends were coming over, they always hang out together. You know Rick, but you don't know Ryan, I don't think. That's Katie's boyfriend. We all had a bunch of beers and were having a pretty good time. I guess that I must have had a little too much to drink and ended up going to sleep pretty early. I woke up on the couch later on and went into Katie's room. They were in there having sex." Lisa stopped talking and looked down at the floor.

"Who was having sex?" Matt asked.

"All three of them. They wanted me to join in, but I'm just not into that. Rick didn't even stop when he saw me standing there, he just kept going. I didn't know what to do so I just left. After I was walking for a while, I thought that Rick would come after me, but he never did. He was probably too tired from fucking Katie the whore than to worry about me." Lisa's gaze remained pointing toward the floor as she spoke. Matt could tell from the sound of her voice that she was fighting herself to keep from crying.

"I just never saw that coming, you know? They were my friends, but I'm just not like that. If I would have known what was going to happen then I never would have went over there. Now I lost my boyfriend and my best friend. I don't even want to look at them again," she sobbed.

Matt got out of his chair and went over to sit next to his sister on the bed. He put his arm around her shoulders and tried to comfort her.

"I'm proud of you, Lisa. Not the drinking part, but the walking away. You don't need to be hanging out with people like that. It's too bad that you didn't think to take your phone with you so that I could have come and gotten you. You can call me anytime at all, you know? I don't want to let anything happen to you. I don't care how old you are, you're still just a little girl to me," he whispered.

Lisa turn and rested her head against her brother's shoulder.

"I wish I really was just a little girl so that you could take care of me. I wish I could just redo the last couple of years."

"I'll always take care of you," Matt responded, holding her a little tighter.

"Rick and I never talked about it, but I just assumed that he loved me. I thought that he probably never said it because that was just the way that he was. The truth is I'm probably just someone that he could drink with and fuck when he got bored. And I never thought that Katie would do that. I guess I'm not as smart as I thought, huh?"

The thought of Lisa having sex with anyone made Matt kind of sick, let alone being involved in a drunken orgy. He didn't want anyone touching his little sister.

"I don't think that anyone is as smart as they think they are, Lisa. Just do me a favor. No matter what that asshole Rick has to say, no matter what, don't go back with that guy. If I see him around here, he's going to end up buried in the back yard," Matt said.

"I'm never going to see him again, I promise," she said into his shoulder.

*****

The next few days were uneventful for the most part. Except for the occasional irrational phone call, Matt managed to avoid Alison. Katie and Rick stayed away from Lisa. Lisa rode to school in the morning with her brother, and walked straight home when she was done. Matt had to work during the week after his classes were over, so he wasn't able to give her a ride home. It wasn't a bad walk, though.

Matt worked five hours a night during the week in an Italian restaurant. Sometimes he helped cook, sometimes he washed dishes. Normally he would have to leave work and spend what little was left of the night with Alison. These days, he was able to go home. He was thinking about how great that felt when he came home to find Lisa on the couch in front of the TV. He went and took a seat next to her.

"Hi," she greeted.

"Hi. Did you do your homework?" Matt asked. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Yes. And I did your stinky laundry. I folded it, but I didn't put it away. It's on your bed."

"Well aren't you just a little angel? Want to do my homework, too?" he kidded. She slapped him playfully on the shoulder.

"I could if you want to fail. I think you're better off doing it yourself. I could get you something to eat, though if you want. Are you hungry?" she asked.

"Seriously, thanks for the laundry and thanks for the food offer. I ate at the restaurant, though. I don't have much for homework, just a little reading to do," he said.

"Oh, it's no problem. I'm going to take a bath and get ready for bed. Don't stay up reading too late. You need to get your beauty sleep," she advised, rising from the couch. Matt chuckled.

"What are you trying to say? You think I'm getting ugly?" he asked. Lisa wanted to smile, but managed to keep a straight face.

"No. I don't want you to work too hard. And just because you don't want a girlfriend right now doesn't mean that you shouldn't stay handsome for all the girls. Some girls probably enjoy looking at you. You should get your beauty sleep so you don't disappoint them.," she explained.

"Oh." Matt was left wondering if she was serious or not, and what exactly she meant either way. He switched off the TV grabbed his books.

It was almost an hour later what Lisa came out of the bathroom, fresh from the bath and in her night clothes. Matt often wondered how it could possibly take so long to wash herself and put on pajamas, but he assumed that was going to be one of the mysteries that he would never find the answer to. She walked over to him and gave him a light kiss on the temple. Matt put down his book and looked up quizzically at his sister.

"What was that for?"

"I was just kissing you good night. Did you not want me to?" she asked.

"No, it was nice. You just haven't ever done it before. It was very sweet. And you smell very sweet, like a vanilla cupcake," he replied.

"A cupcake, huh? Well you smell like spaghetti sauce. You better take a shower in the morning," she giggled.

*****

Matt was liking the way that things were going for the next couple of weeks. Without having to worry about keeping his girlfriend happy, he was able to keep up with his schoolwork no problem. He and Lisa were getting along probably better than they ever had before. She had been staying home and focusing on her schoolwork, while at the same time helping with the household chores. She had also been giving him his goodnight kiss every night without fail. He found himself looking forward to it a little more than he should, perhaps.

Maybe it was a combination of not having a girlfriend for a couple of weeks and his sister's new found affection for him, but he found himself having an awfully hard time concentrating on the book that he was trying to read. His problem centered on Lisa who was laying flat on her stomach on the living room floor in front of him. She was doing something on her laptop in front of the TV. She was wearing short shorts and Matt couldn't keep his eyes off of her amazingly well-defined ass. Depending upon how she adjusted her position, he was getting some rather revealing glimpses of her anatomy. He felt kind of guilty, but not enough to stop looking. Finally, he set his book down and muttered under his breath.

"Jesus."

"What?" Lisa asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

"I'm trying to read, but you're distracting me. Do you think you could sit someplace else, maybe?" he asked. Right after the words left his mouth, he realized that he should have just kept quiet and went into his room.

"OK," she agreed. She proceeded to slide over about three feet to her right, and stay in the same position on the floor. "Is this better?" she asked innocently.