He doesn’t want to answer this question either, but I don’t feel bad about it. I feel bad about myself. About all the things he just told me that now I have to contend myself with. Then, gritting his teeth once again, he says, “A green t-shirt and a pair of shorts.” He waits a moment before he continues, “You had a purple band in your hair and a pair of sneakers. Same color.”
“Purple is my favorite color,” I tell him because why not? The world is all upside down right now anyway.
“I’m aware of that.”
“You’re aware of a lot of things.”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “Apparently.”
“But you…” I give myself another few seconds before I can ask the real question. Then, I burst out, my heart racing, my head spinning, “You don’t even like me. You find me annoying. You think I’m pathetic and desperate and a schoolgirl and your little sister’s best friend who has this stupid little crush on you and?—”
“I do,” he states.
My heart clenches. “So then?—”
“Because every time you came around, for some insane fucking reason, I couldn’t stop watching you. I couldn’t stop staring at your red hair and your sparkly skin. And I hated it.” He moves his jaw back and forth, as if remembering all those times. “I hated that I wanted to fucking count the freckles onyour face instead of paying attention to my girlfriend. I hated that everything about you, your smile, your laughter, your voice, the little purple things you always seemed to have on, the way you watched me not-so-secretly, took up all the space in my head instead of the girl I should’ve been thinking about. So yeah, you are annoying because you’ve been my goddamn distraction since the moment I saw you when you shouldn’t have been.”
“Distraction,” I repeat, the thing he so desperately needs right about now.
That’s me. That’s always been me.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice low. “All I’m doing is fucking embracing it and making it official.”
“So then,” I keep going, my heart slamming in my chest. “I was… I was the other girl.”
I was, wasn’t I?
Not in action but in thoughts. I took up his thoughts when he should’ve been more focused on his ex-girlfriend, and I don’t think it’s a very good thing. I don’t think any girl wants to be the other girl, the other woman. So then why do I want to throw myself at him and close this distance? Why do I want to kiss him? Finally, at last, after years and after ages.
“Right about now you’re the only girl,” he says, breaking me out of my thoughts.
“Who can help you move on from the girl you?—”
“My problem,” he says, his voice tight, cutting me off as if he didn’t want me to actually say the words.
As if saying them might make it real. But it is real, isn’t it? He is in love with another girl and he’s trying to get over her.
I should say yes. I should tell him I’ll be his distraction. That he can use me to take his pain away. His rebound girl. I’ve always cursed at the fact that we have a connection. The kind that I never chose, that was thrust upon me, upon us by our parents. That I’ve had to lie about and hide. But this could be different.This could be a connection with him that I get to make of my own volition. Something private, just for me, for us. I’ve never really had anything for myself, have I? This could be it.
“No,” I find myself saying instead.
Because I can’t. I won’t. I’m not going to sleep with him without him knowing the truth about who I am. It’s purely selfish and it’s not right. Nothing about this whole thing is right but me sleeping with him without him knowing that I’m his stepsister is a special kind of wrong. So no, I’m not going to.
His jaw clenches in response.
“This is not the way. You can’t distract yourself from the pain, Shepard. It doesn’t work that way. You have to deal with it. You have to deal with your heartbreak, your problems, yourlifeor it’ll only get worse. It?—”
“You done?” he clips.
“But—”
“If I wanted to be psychoanalyzed,” he says, his face hard and unforgiving, “I’d go to a fucking therapist, yeah? But here I am, and trust me when I say lying on the couch whiletalkingto you is the last thing I want to do. And it’s not something you’d want me to do to you either, because what Idowanna do to you pays a fuck of a lot more than what a useless shrink would make in a fucking year. And you need that, don’t you. In fact, right about now money is the only thing you need.”
I fist my hands then, my nails threatening to cut my palms. It stings that he knows that. It stings that he knows I’m struggling. If I didn’t want my sister to know, you bet your ass I never ever wanted my stepbrother to know my dire state. So I repeat. “No. I don’t need your freaking pity money. I can handle things on my own.”
He watches me a beat before putting his palms on the counter, open and splayed wide, as he leans further down. I watch his corded biceps twitch and flutter with the movementsand I swallow with nerves. Then, in a very low voice, he says, “You work multiple jobs that you hate. Your apartment is in a shitty area of town. You do not have a fucking AC so you keep your windows open, putting yourself in danger every fucking night. You’re drowning in debt. Yet, you show up day after day on those same jobs just so you can take care of your sister. You fight day after day just so you can give her everything. And I bet you never make her and her condition feel like a burden. Because I saw those college brochures too. On your desk. I also saw how you had little things underlined and marked for your sister to go through. You’re giving her a future at the expense of yours. Pity is for people who can’t fight. Who’re too weak to fight. What I’m offering is admiration. A helping hand. You’ve never had that, have you? Because you’ve never had anyone handle things for you. You told me that, remember? So no, the money is not for pity. The money is so you can drag yourself out of the hole that you’ve fallen into through no fault of your own.”
It's embarrassing but I have tears in my eyes. I also have a big lump of emotions stuck in my throat. I don’t know what to say. Except I didn’t expect him to think that. I didn’t expect he’d see me struggling and view it as strength. He’d see me drowning and view it as a sign of me fighting. I only ever see it as survival. Something I have to do. But I guess it makes sense because he’s been through this too, right? His childhood might not be a mirror image of mine but we’re very similar in that way.
