Chapter 1

Paul Jenkins was a high school senior who lived with his mom and two siblings. A shy kid, the archetypal geek, smart but socially awkward. His mom, Martha, was thirty-eight and still a beautiful woman. His eighteen years old siblings, Mike and Emily, were fraternal twins. Their father died in a car accident when Paul was ten. All of them lived in a nice house in the suburbs, and with the life insurance payout and her job, they had enough to live a middle-class life. When factoring Emily’s cheerleading scholarship, it was also enough for the three siblings to go to college.

Also, this was a special family. Martha had introduced her husband to the family love lifestyle, and later she had prepared her children for it.

Several cousins had already told Paul what to expect: Whenever a member of the family turned eighteen, he or she would be initiated into the Circle and was allowed to attend the monthly parties and orgies, as well as to have individual encounters with their relatives, including mothers, fathers, siblings, and every other family member that was willing. The only caveat was that such encounters had to be consensual and to respect a “no” was paramount.

When his siblings turned eighteen, he saw them leave with their mother for their first party. After their return, he spent many nights listening to his brother having sex with his sister and mother, sometimes one on one, sometimes in a threesome. He was envious, but he knew that his time would arrive when he turned eighteen himself, tomorrow.

“Paul, we need to talk,” said Martha, his mother.

“Yes, Mom?”

“Paul, you know about our family lifestyle, don’t you?”

“What kind of question was that?” he thought. “With you being so noisy, how can I not know!? I mean, yes, Mom, and I’m so excited about it. I can’t wait to join.”

His mother sighed. It would not be easy to break the news to him. “Well, that makes it harder for me to say this, so I’ll just come out with it. You won’t be allowed to join.”

Paul felt like the walls of the room were closing in on him.

“What? But, why!?” he asked in anguish. “Mom, if I did something wrong, I won’t do it again, I swear!”

“That’s not it, Paul. You’re a great son, and I’m very proud of you. Your Dad would be very proud of you.”

“Then why?” he asked.

“Because I think you deserve a chance to be normal. To have normal relationships, with normal girlfriends, to break the Circle.”

“But I don’t want to be normal! I want to join the family!” he insisted, almost in tears.

“Please, Paul, don’t make this harder than it is. You won’t join us, and that’s final!” sentenced his mom.

Paul ran out of the room and went to the garden. There, he fell on his knees and threw up his breakfast.

Martha saw him leaving, but she didn’t move. “It’s better this way,” she thought.

After some time, Paul stood up and went to the bathroom to wash himself. He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. Burying his face on his pillow, he sobbed until falling asleep.

Paul woke up hearing Martha calling him to dinner. He came down the stairs at a slow pace, trying to act normally. He didn’t want his siblings to see how shaken he was. He sat in silence.

Mark and Emily were sitting next to each other at one side of the small square table. Emily looked at him, amused. She thought it was time for some fun teasing.

“Do you like my tits, bro? A pity you won’t ever touch them,” she singsonged. She was the archetypal cheerleader: Blonde, slender, and big-titted. Her eighteen-year-old body was barely covered by her uniform.

“A pity indeed,” said her twin Mike, putting his hand on their sister’s breast. Mike was a jock, lettering in football and other sports.

“Kids, stop teasing your brother!” barked their mom. It was already hard for Paul to accept that he wouldn’t be joining the Circle, they shouldn’t make it harder for him.

Paul didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t say a thing, just turned and ran to his bedroom.

“Paul!” called Martha, to no avail. She looked at his retreating back and again wondered about the wisdom of her decision. “It’s for the best”, she thought.

The next morning it was Paul’s eighteenth birthday. Martha knocked on his door with one hand, the other holding a birthday-themed cupcake, but there was no response. “Paul! It’s late, wake up!” shouted Martha while opening his bedroom’s door. “I swear, this boy is worse than a hibernating bear. He will have to skip breakfast if he doesn’t want to be late for...” She stopped. Paul wasn’t there. In fact, the bed still looked like it did when she made it the day before.

“Paul?” she called out. No answer. “Perhaps he left early, maybe to avoid his siblings’ teasing,” she thought. But then she saw the closet door standing ajar. She opened it fully and saw that a lot of clothes were missing. With greater concern, she opened his drawers. No underwear, no T-shirts, no socks. The travel bag they stored in his closet was also missing.

“No, Paul!” Martha cried, dropping the cupcake. “Emily, Mike! Paul is gone!”

“What do you mean gone, Mom?” asked Emily. She and Mike had come running upon hearing their mom’s cry, Mike inadvertently stomping on the cupcake.

“He’s not home, and his clothes and the travel bag are missing. He’s gone!”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Mike waved her off. “He’s probably trying to guilt us into letting him join the orgies.”

“Yes”, Emily nodded. “He can’t attract a girlfriend, so he’s trying to get sex with us instead.”

“What do you mean he can’t attract a girlfriend?” Martha asked, bewildered.

“Come on, Mom. Have you seen him!? He’s short, chubby, and friendless. My friends call him ‘Tubby’”. Last summer, he asked Shirley Blake out, and she laughed in his face. Why do you think he never brings any friends home?”

Martha was shocked. “How come I never heard of this?”

The siblings looked at each other, puzzled.

“What do you mean, Mom?” Emily looked at her, incredulous. “Has he ever brought home a friend, whether male or female? Has he ever mentioned having a crush on a girl?”

Martha tried to remember, but came with nothing.

“You’d need to be blind not to notice it!” Mike laughed.

Martha felt a shiver down her spine. “Yes, I’d need to be blind ... but I’m not blind!”, she thought. “But he never said a thing!” She had always been proud of being a ‘cool mom’, a mother always open to listen, to give sage advice, to guide her children in their travel through childhood and adolescence. But now it was clear that she had missed something crucial regarding her youngest child. “And you didn’t say anything, either!” she accused the twins.

“Well...” Mike started, “There are things you won’t share with the parents, you know?”

“But he’s your brother!” Martha cried.

“Yes, but we’re so different, can’t you see? We ignore each other at school. I have my friends, and he doesn’t have his.” He looked pleased with his pun.

Martha sat on Paul’s bed, aghast. As every mom since the dawn of time, she saw her children with mom’s eyes. She saw a smart and caring young man instead of the chubby reject everybody else saw.

Then she looked at her other children. She saw indifference, even sneering. That wasn’t how siblings should act. Suddenly it was like some scales had fallen from her eyes. “You really don’t care, do you?” she asked, taken aback by the sudden realization.

Both teenagers suddenly fell silent and smiles left their faces.

“So,” said Martha softly, “he’s a reject at school. He’s a reject with the two of you ... And now he’s a reject with the whole family.”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Emily said appealingly. “I’m sure he will come back as soon as he finishes his tantrum.”

“No,” Martha sighed, looking at the cupcake remains on the floor. “He won’t come back. He has nothing to come back to.” And a single tear ran down her face.

Chapter 2

Everything had started a few months ago, during the monthly family party. The female cousins were talking during one of the breaks, and Emily had mentioned Paul’s upcoming initiation into the Circle.

“So, Tubby's turn is coming,” Lisa said, a smirk on her face. At 21, she was the oldest of the new generation of cousins.

“Yuck!” quipped Karen, another cousin. “I wonder who’ll draw the short straw.” All the girls giggled.

“What do you say, Em? Ready to take one for the team?” sneered Lisa.

“What do you mean?” Emily asked, confused.

“Come on, Em!” Lisa laughed. “I, for starters, have no intention of allowing Tubby to touch this,” she pointed at her own body. The other girls made sounds of disgust. “Oh, please! he’s my brother and all, but ... ewww!” She made a gagging gesture, which was mirrored by all the other girls in the room. “I don’t know why he’s so different!” she complained. “Mike is a hunk, you would think some of that would rub off on him, but ... that belly! yuck!” she threw her hands in the air.

“Just thinking about his hands touching me ... blegh!” Lisa added.

“Count me out, too.” Karen stated. “Let somebody else do it.”

“I’m out, too!” Tina, the newest initiate, announced.

From there, it was like a cascade effect: Seven girls agreed on something: When Paul’s turn to join came, none of them - including his sister - would have sex with him.

When the older ladies of the Circle heard about this, they convened an urgent meeting to discuss the problem.

“Well ... they have the right to say no,” started Karen’s mom, Kate.

“Yes, but he’s family and he has the right to be a part of the Circle!” Martha answered defensively.

“Nobody denies that, but just imagine ... he comes to the next meeting and nobody wants to have sex with him!” chimed Bridget, Martha’s younger sister and Lisa’s mother. “Can you imagine the humiliation?” she asked, a gesture of concern on her face. None of them dared to answer.

“So, what can we do?” Martha asked, at last.

After a heated discussion, they decided to spare Paul the humiliation by excluding him from the Circle. Using “the chance for a normal life” as a pretext, they expected him to be hurt, but that was better than knowing nobody wanted him sexually. It was not a perfect solution, but it would have to do.

But it hadn’t.

A couple of days after Paul’s disappearance, another meeting took place between Martha’s older brother, John, his wife, Bridget, Martha’s younger sister, Kate, and Martha herself.

“So, you tried to spare him the pain ... and messed up,” sighed John. The other three nodded in shame.

“It’s not fair,” Martha complained. “I ... we had no idea of how shitty his school life was. The same for his life at home. I thought it was just normal family rivalry, not that he was being ignored by his siblings.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” John asked.

“What?” Martha’s voice conveyed confusion.

“You said ‘we’. Who are you talking about?”

“Well, I meant Mike, Emily and myself.”

“I can certainly affirm that those two did know about it,” John stated. The question would be, “why didn’t you?” his voice now did have an accusatory tone.

“I...” Martha tried to articulate an answer. “I mean, Paul never said anything about school, he should have said something if there was a problem.”

John shook his head. “Wrong. The very fact of never talking about school should have been a huge red flag. I’m sorry to say that he was not only ignored by his siblings ... but also by you.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault that Paul left?” Martha countered, indignantly.

“I’m not saying nothing of that sort,” John placated her. “I’m saying that you, and I mean all of you -he looked around, the other women flinching upon his gaze- didn’t think of getting all the information you needed before making such a life-changing decision for him.”

“Any idea of where he is now?” Bridget asked, changing the subject. She was worried about her nephew, but at the same time she didn’t want John to continue that line of thought. Something told her that they had royally fucked up.

“None. When he left, he took all his money. His phone number is disconnected, I assume he has a new number now. He’s not answering my emails either. My poor son, he could be anywhere...”

“Well, today he turns eighteen, and we know he left willingly,” John replied. “So, we can’t report him as a missing person. I assume that, at some point, he will get his GED since he didn’t finish school.”

“You are talking as if he will never return” Bridget said in an accusing tone.

“Well, if I were him, I wouldn’t,” stated John. He had been abroad on business, so he hadn’t attended the previous meeting. “Of all the possible solutions, you chose the worst one.”

“But what other solution did we have?” Bridget asked.

“As I see it, the girls didn’t want him because he’s shy and fat. But we all know shy and fat guys who have girlfriends, sex, and relationships...”

“Why can’t Paul be like that?” Kate interrupted.

“Can’t you see it, really?” John glared. He blamed himself, too. He loved his nephew, but between work, his own family and the Circle, he had neglected Paul. “When his father died, he needed a father figure ... that was my job. And I blew it,” he realized. He had assumed Paul was like his siblings, but evidently this was not the case.

The women remained silent, like schoolgirls waiting to be scolded.

“Oh, well,” John sighed. “I will explain it in simple words.” He looked at the women, hoping to reach them. “Did you ever date a not-so-physically-attractive boy?”

“Oh, yes!” Kate said, reminiscing. Billy Smith, he was a short guy but I had a crush on him in ninth degree. We dated for a while.”

“Ok. Why were you attracted to him?”

“That’s easy. He had the gift of the gab and oozed confidence. He was so...” her eyes made clear that she remembered him after all those years.

“That’s right,” John pointed out. “An unattractive guy can compensate for it with self-confidence. But self-confidence is something Paul doesn’t have.” He looked at Martha. She squirmed in her seat, uncomfortable.

“The girls didn’t like him? Well, so what!?” He made a wide gesture with his arm. “In our Circle, we have at least four or five mature women who could have taught him how to please a woman. Wouldn’t you say that such a thing would have boosted his self-confidence?”

Murmurs of “yes” answered his question.

“Also, who knows? Perhaps, if the girls saw one of you enjoying sex with him, they would have been curious enough to try him out. That would have given him even more self-confidence, right?”

There was another round of sheepish “yes”.

“But none of you thought of it, right?”

“Well, if you put it that way ... no, we didn’t think of that,” Bridget admitted.

“And why is that?” John asked, looking into her eyes. He had a knack for getting to the core of the problem.

“Because, unconsciously, we didn’t want to have sex with him, either,” Bridget concluded.

Martha was dismayed. Her son, her precious son, rejected by all the women of the Circle, herself included. No wonder Paul thought there was nothing for him at home.

“I’ve been a piss-poor mother,” she said. “I ignored his needs, I let his siblings tease and pick on him, and when it was time for me to be there for him, I chose not to.”

None of the other women said a word, each lost in their thoughts. John remained silent, agreeing with his sister but not wanting to add to her distress. After some time, he spoke.

“So, we wait until Paul contacts any of us, and try to convince him to come back.”

“What do we tell the Circle?” Kate asked. After all, they were not only a sex Circle, but a family sex Circle. Perhaps it was time to draw on the ‘family’ part of it.

“Well...” John started, “I think, somehow, the purpose of the Circle has been lost. Our parents created it so everybody in our family had a safe place to go for sex, a place where they knew they would be accepted and loved, a place where they would be sheltered from the outside world. Ironically, the family Circle failed the one member who needed it the most.”

A silent sob was heard, but nobody took notice.

“Well,” Martha said, “right now, I have no wish to attend any more meetings. I don’t want to see all those superficial bitches...” Bridget winced at that. “... who rejected my boy. And yes, I’m including myself and his sister.”

Chapter 3

“What a shitty birthday,” Paul thought while looking at his food. He was in a small diner next to the building he was renting a room in. He had used one of the various message boards he frequented to find it. It wasn’t much, just big enough for a bed, a small bathroom, and a kitchenette, but it was cheap and, better yet, anonymous. He also had spent his morning opening a new bank account and transferring all the money from the savings account he had with his mother as co-holder. One of the perks of being a geek was that he had been coding for money since he was sixteen. And, since he didn’t date, he had no need to spend much of that money. So, he had several thousands available, which he expected to last for a while.

He had tried to cope with the disappointment, but, when his siblings started mocking him, he simply couldn’t bear with it. Emily teasing him with her breasts while reminding him how he would never touch them - or anybody else’s breasts, while at that - was simply too much.

He wondered again what was wrong with him. ‘A normal life’, his mom had said. As if his ‘normal’ life wasn’t bad enough, with bullies abusing him at school, knowing that he couldn’t count on his big brother to defend him while his own sister was part of the clique that loved to play humiliating pranks on him.

He had waited years to join the Circle. To be able to touch and kiss those lovely female bodies, to be touched, to be able to look in a girl’s eyes while being in her. But no. His mom had decided those pleasures, shared by everybody else in his family, weren’t for him.

Normal life, indeed.

“Happy birthday to me ... happy birthday to me...” he started to sing quietly. Very soon, the words morphed to “I’m a loser, that’s right ... I’m a loser, that’s right ... I’m a loser, real loser, I’m a loser, that’s right.”

Having lost his appetite, he asked the waitress to box his food and returned to his room.

Before going to bed, he checked his emails and saw several from his mom. He trashed them unread, but there was one from his uncle John. The subject line simply said “We need to talk”.

Paul looked at the mail for a long time. Then he clicked on the “Delete” button.

Emily couldn’t sleep. Her aunt’s words kept haunting her: “What if my nephew is dead in a ditch somewhere?”

When she heard that, something came to her, something dark. Emily suddenly felt sick. She felt like she was drowning, a primal panic almost engulfed her. Her whole body had started to tremble. A sob escaped her lips, but no one seemed to hear it.

She was supposed to be at a sleepover with one of her fellow cheerleaders, but a sudden bout of high fever caused her friend’s mom to take her to the ER, forcing her to return home, where she arrived on time to overhear the last part of the meeting. She had used the back door, so nobody noticed she was already home.

She recovered and listened until the end, then tiptoed to her room, and fell asleep on her bed.

Suddenly she woke up in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat. Her nightmare was so vivid that it had unlocked a certain memory that she had buried in the deepest part of her mind for years. Her thoughts came back to a bright summer afternoon when she was fourteen years old. The entire family was spending their holiday at their lake house in Wildcat Lake. Following her family’s playtime at the little beach, she had decided to explore the surrounding area. She spent some time exploring until coming across a bank of lily pads in a little pond. She was drawn to their beauty and yearned to touch them. Since she was wearing her swimwear, she simply removed her sandals and strolled on the silky mud. Suddenly she slipped and discovered that the pond was far deeper than she had thought. Her whole body underwater, she attempted to swim out only to find her feet firmly embedded in the muck at the bottom. Out of desperation, she made futile attempts to extricate herself.

Emily trembled again, recalling the pain in her lungs and the agony that she had experienced. Just as she was about to pass out, a hand had grabbed her hair and jerked her violently out of the mud. Almost to the point of hysteria she opened her mouth to cry, but what she swallowed was clean air rather than soiled water. Only after they were both on solid land did she realize who had saved her.

Recalling the first words she heard following her ordeal, “It’s all right, sis, it’s all right,” brought tears to her eyes once more. “You’re safe now, hear? You’re safe.” She had glanced at Paul’s beaming face. He had seen her walk into the water and vanish from view. With no time to call an adult, he had sprinted and dived close to where her head had disappeared in the water, just on time to rescue her.

Afraid of being punished by her carelessness, she had never mentioned the incident to her parents. Ironically, Paul never mentioned it either. If any of them had done it, perhaps a counselor or a psychiatrist would have explained her later attitude towards her brother.

When such a trauma occurs, one of the most common defense mechanisms of the mind is to forget. In Emily’s case, she had buried the memory in the deepest recess of her mind. However, a person never truly forgets. For example, a child may forget that he has been bitten by a dog but will remain afraid of dogs for years, not knowing why. Unfortunately, in the case of Emily the anguish and pain she felt at that time were not dealt with, but instead unconsciously transferred to the other party in the incident, i. e. Paul. So, from that moment on, she started to dislike him.

“How could I forget it?” She wondered. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today,” she chastised herself. “And how did I pay him back? by bullying and demeaning him.” It troubled her conscience. She had been saved by Paul. Any other sister, or even any stranger, would have been eternally in debt. Rather, she had quickly moved on from the incident and made a special effort to break her brother’s spirit.

She wasn’t happy with what she saw when she peered in the mirror.

Her mind was awash with images of Paul, of some of the pranks she and her friends played on him, of Shirley Blake’s laugh when he asked her out. Actually, that was also her doing. He would have never dared to do it if Emily hadn’t fibbed to him that Shirley had a secret crush on him.

“Needed it the most,” she recalled again. Certainly, Emily and Mike didn’t need the Circle. With her great body and his hunky good looks, they had no problem attracting partners. In fact, Mike was at his third girlfriend this year. And Paul was ... just Paul.

“Safe place ... accepted and loved...” Her uncle’s words resonated with her. Certainly, Paul had not gotten much of those. Why didn’t she defend her little brother when their cousin Lisa made that ‘Tubby’ comment? Why didn’t she mention all his good traits, like his intelligence and his good heart, and instead joined the nobody-likes-Paul fest?

She liked to think of herself as a good person. Now her actions belied that belief. “I failed him,” she repeated to herself. “I failed my little brother”. Silent tears ran down her cheeks until she fell asleep again.

The next morning, she was dozing in her bed. With her eyes closed, she heard her door opening, and felt Mike entering her room. “Hi”.

She opened her eyes and looked at him in silence.

“Em ... wanna fuck?”

“Sorry, I’m not in the mood,” she answered.

“Come on Em, just a quickie,” he insisted. “Mom isn’t in the mood either.”

“She’s upset and worried about Paul. What about you, aren’t you at least a bit worried?”

“Who cares!? Come on, it’s been what, two days? Let’s fuck,” he proposed and started to caress her breast.

“I said no!” She sat and looked at him in fury. “You are complaining after two days without sex, while Paul has been going without for, what, forever?”

“Emily, what...”

“He’s our brother, dammit! We were supposed to be there for him, to be his safe place, but instead we made him a pariah! He’s been a pariah in this house, a pariah at school, and now we turned him into a pariah with the whole family!” She started to cry. “Please leave.”

“But...”

“I said LEAVE!”

He ran out of the room.

She had another thought. Prior to their formal introduction to the Circle, all of her cousins had begun having sexual relations. Prior to Lisa’s eighteenth birthday, she and Jack had been engaging in sexual relations for almost a year. Mike and her had begun when we were both sixteen years old. She was content to wait for Paul, however. Even though she was aware that Paul was eager and impatient, she finally followed the guidelines. Just waiting for his eighteenth birthday, Paul had just accepted it. His expectations were dashed right before it arrived.

“Oh, Paul...” she cried. “What have we done?”

Chapter 4

After one more night of sleep and self-pity, Paul went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His reflection showed a round face with a bit of a jowl, unruly curly hair, and a general air of neglect.

“Enough!” he thought. “I have to think about the future. My future.”

After showering and shaving, he went to the small desk next to his bed and started to make a list. First order of business was to check school. He thought he had enough credits to graduate early, therefore negating the need for a GED. Then contact his clients and inform them that he was available again. He saw more messages in his inbox, this time not only from his mom and uncle but also from his sister. Curious, he opened the latter.

Dear Paul,

First of all, I want to tell you I’m sorry for everything. Sorry for the way I treated you, sorry for not being a good sister, and sorry for all the things I did or allowed others to do that caused you pain.

Finally, I want to ask you to forgive me for failing you at the Circle. As your sister, I should have been the first one to welcome you, but instead joined the others when they decided not to have sex with you.

“WHAT?” Paul called out in shock. “So, that’s why I wasn’t inducted ... all that ‘normal life’ bullshit was just that, bullshit. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“The others...” Paul repeated another line from the email. Although Emily had meant only their cousins and her, the unintended vagueness of her words caused Paul to understand it in the widest sense which, ironically, was also the truest. “So, nobody wanted to have sex with me. Neither Emily nor my aunts or cousins ... not even Mom.”

Again, the porcelain goddess got a visit. This time, it was mostly bile, since he hadn’t had breakfast yet. And how things were, he doubted he would have an appetite for a long time.

Gathering his courage, he forced himself to keep reading.

Dear brother, please come back. I promise to give you all the love you deserve and didn’t get before, to be a good sister, to make you part of the Circle. I can’t bear the thought of not seeing you again.

All my love,

Emily

“Words,” he thought. “Empty words and the promise of a pity fuck.”

He started to remember the nights he had spent hearing his siblings going at it. One night stood out, when he had arrived from one of his D&D meetings and saw his family watching a movie in the den. Emily was sitting on Mike’s lap, obviously joined in lazy intercourse. She was rocking slowly on his cock while watching the TV screen. Their mom was at the other end of the couch, reading a book. With her legs stretched out, her toes were touching Mike’s leg, and his hand was caressing her feet. The familiar charm of the scene almost moved him to tears, and he couldn’t wait for his time to come.

He suddenly thought, “Wait a second. That was two years ago.” Both of his siblings were seventeen at that time. His mind flew to another scene. Emily, chuckling at his request: “Sorry, Paul, but rules are rules. We wait until you’re eighteen.” The unavoidable - although erroneous - conclusion was that they had already decided to not accept him, years earlier, perhaps, before informing him of that fact.

He felt it clearly. Every good word, every happy memory, each and every conversation with his mom or his siblings became suspect, tainted. On the other hand, every malicious prank, every smirk, every putdown was amplified and filled every nook and cranny of his being. Whatever love he had for his family died at that very moment.

He decided Emily deserved a reply.

“Sorry but your apology waited until I was eighteen. It’s too late now. Goodbye.”

He didn’t hesitate on clicking ‘Send’. After that, he blocked all his family.

“Ok, boy,” he told the mirror. “From now on, you’re alone. Move your ass and make a life for yourself!”

Back in his old home, Martha was cooking dinner when a wail broke her concentration. She ran upstairs and found Emily curled up on her bed.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked.

“He’s not coming back, Mom. And it’s my fault,” she heard Emily answer almost inaudibly.

“What do you...” She fell silent when she saw the email on the screen. She started to read it but suddenly turned towards her daughter. “You told him that nobody wanted to have sex with him!?”

“I just wanted...”

“Em, he didn’t know that.” She wanted to shout, but knew that Emily was too fragile right now. “We told him that he needed to have a normal life, and you knew that.”

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted him back.” Her crying intensified.

“So, now he knows the real reason, and probably feels that we were just playing him. But what does he mean when he says ‘the apology waited until he turned eighteen’?”

“Well...” Emily hesitated. “Some months ago, Paul came to my room and asked when we could start having sex. I told him the rules said we should wait until he turned eighteen.”

“But that’s almost never enforced,” Martha ... questioned, confused.

“I know, Mom. Mike and I started to have sex when we were sixteen, and you joined us when we were seventeen. I suppose Paul thought it would be the same for him.”

“But it wasn’t,” finished Martha with a sigh before looking back at her son’s email. “I can’t imagine what he’s feeling right now. It is also my fault. I was so content with the two of you that Paul just slipped my mind. But he should have said something.”

“He did, Mom. But we didn’t listen.”

Just at that moment, Emily’s WhatsApp message pinged with a notification. It was her cousin Lisa.

“Hey Em, I have some ideas for the next party. Call me!”

Emily read the message and said, “Mom, do you mind if I skip the next party? I’m really not in the mood for it. I will probably never be.”

“It’s ok, Honey. I wasn’t planning to go, either.”

Her lips suddenly touched her daughter’s cheek. Emily’s lips were drawn to her mother’s. A few moments later, the two women were touching, kissing, caressing, and hugging each other while getting naked. It was not an unusual event in their home, but this time, instead of being just lustful, it was more of a quest for comfort and confidence from one another.

Chapter 5

Paul Esposito, Former Paul Jenkins. Age: 22 Studies: Community College Current Employment: It Support Specialist Lives Alone, No Relatives Known. No Girlfriend Known.

“No relatives known”, John read. After four years and thousands of dollars spent on private investigators, he had found his nephew. He studied the picture included in the file. He was still chubby, but not as much as before. His face was a bit less round, and his clothes, although clean, looked somewhat worn.

“Paul Esposito” thought John. An apt name, since ‘Esposito’ is the Spanish word for a ‘Foundling’, a child without a family.

After Emily’s letter, Paul had cut all contact with the entire family, him included. “If only he had answered me,” he thought for the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time, he thought: “Then, what?” There never was a good answer to that question. “Tell him that everything was a mistake, that the Circle wanted him?” Not after Emily’s letter. Despite her good intentions, Emily had closed that door herself. “Ask him to work out, to become buff, to change his hairstyle in order to become attractive to the girls?” That would have been worse: Those things not only take several months at least, but having to work only to get what all the others got just because of their birthright would be a humiliation by itself. Anyway, his numerous emails remained unanswered.

Long conversations were held in the Circle, and the whole fiasco was attributed to teen immaturity and callousness, combined with an emphasis on the physical gratification aspect of the Circle. A big change then was that the older members started to highlight the ‘love’ and ‘safe place’ aspects of the parties. New members would be coached by their parents and older siblings, and they tried to highlight the ‘affection’ side of their gatherings. It was not always successful but, with some exceptions, the general atmosphere became more welcoming to those members who were somewhat lacking in the physical attractiveness side. However, all these changes would come later and at that time Martha and Emily had already left the Circle. One of those exceptions was Mike, who was still a regular attendant to the parties, but knew better than to try to humiliate or demean the least attractive members. That was not strange because, since the day Paul left, neither Martha nor Emily had sexually touched - or allowed to be touched by- him at all.

---

“Hi, Uncle John!” Emily greeted him upon opening the door. “Hi, beautiful! Is Martha home?” “She should arrive any time now.” Martha worked as an assistant manager in a local bank, and her hours were pretty much set.

“Great. How’s the job?” “Same-o, same-o.” Emily was a clerk in the city hall. Not the most exciting job in the world, but it was a steady one, which, considering the economy, actually was not so bad.

“Your aunt wants to start planning Lisa’s baby shower, so make sure to call her this week.” Although Emily and her mom weren’t part of the Circle anymore, they were on good terms with their relatives, especially with aunt Bridget. In an ironic twist of fate, Lisa, the cousin who had started the fiasco, had married an almost clone of Paul and brought him into the Circle. She was five months pregnant now.

“OK. Why don’t you sit and I’ll bring you a soda?” “Thanks”.

He sat on ‘his’ couch to wait. It used to be Emily’s father’s couch, but, after his death, John was the only older male visiting them. When Martha was in the Circle, she had no need for a boyfriend and, after leaving it, John was the only man she had intercourse with, generally one or two times a week. He also serviced Emily when she was between boyfriends.

That was a preview of The Broken Circle. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «The Broken Circle» to Cart