I spent two years caring for her and I wouldn’t change my decision to stay home for anything. But I thought that this internship was going to be a fresh start. A step toward figuring out me, my life, and what I want to do with it. Now it feels like a failure. I spent two years being my mom’s nurse. The years before that, I was “Amy’s brother,” or “loser.”
This was my chance to figure out who I want to be.
Now, I’m just Corrine Blunt’s assistant.
A scream, a strangled, tortured sound, comes from behind Amy’s door, ripping me from my sullen mood.
“Amy?!” I yell, turning the knob and shoving my shoulder into the door.
“Get out, Wesley!”My sister screeches but Ican’tmove, my body locked in abject horror.
Hovering, her lily-white ass in the air, completely naked, in between the brown legs of another girl—who is also completely nakedoh god—is my sister. I slam my eyes shut, scrub my fists into the sockets. Maybe if I do it hard enough I’ll wipe my eyes clean.
But no, there are some things I can’t unsee.
“Ahhhhhh!” I yell, because my nervous system is having a hard time dealing with how exactly to react to seeing my grown sister’s bare ass. “Why?WHY?”
“What the fuck, Wes!” she shrieks.
I think a pillow hits me in the face but I don’t open my eyes to check. This tableau of my sister’s sex life will be burned into my corneas forever.
“I need an eye transplant,” I moan, turning in the doorway. Pain slams into my cheek as I stumble into something—the doorframe—in my blind hurry to get out of there and it’s kind of a balm. For three seconds I get to worry about whether my cheekbone is broken instead of my sister’s...no.
I want to go back to a time when I never considered whether my sister might have privates.
“Oh my fuck, Ihateliving with you!” Amy screeches from behind the now-closed door.
“Ditto,” I yell, taking the stairs two at a time. I can’t get back to my beer fast enough, placing the still-cold bottle to the throbbing spot on my cheek.
Amy comes downstairs a few minutes later. She shoots past the kitchen with her friend in tow. The only glimpse I get of her friend—other than the one she probably never wanted me to see—is a pile of brown and golden dreads twisted up on her head.
I try to close my ears to their whispers at the front door but still hear my sister call her Katie, and the distinct sound of two people kissing. A few moments later, Amy walks into the kitchen with her eyes closed and her hands over her ears.
“Don’t say anything! We are never speaking about this.Ever,” she yells.
That is abso-fucking-lutely fine with me.
She stumbles toward me with her hands out and her eyes still closed. The goofy smile on her face pulls an identical one from mine, and I push a beer bottle into her hand when she gets close enough. Opening her eyes, she taps the neck of her bottle to mine. Settling back against the counter beside me, she asks, “So, how was your first day?”
All the anger and frustration I felt earlier today somehow pales in comparison to the sheer discomfort I felt at walking in on my sister and her...girlfriend? I open my mouth, half turning, to ask her if she’s dating someone before deciding against it. Amy has banned commitment of any kind until her restaurant is up and running.
“Not as bad as what happened up there, actually,” I say, taking another sip. The bottle is still cold but the beer doesn’t have the same effect it had before.
Amy makes a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “I told you we’re never speaking about that again.”
“I know.” I sigh and set down the three-quarters-full bottle. “How’s the restaurant coming?”
Amy shrugs. “We interviewed servers today. Some were better than others.” A slow smirk spreads across her face.
“Amy,” I say slowly. “You can’t sleep with your employees.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, good thing she’s not my employee yet.”
“I...that... Amy...”
“Oh, relax, you priss. We know each other. It’s fine.”
We settle back against the counter, both sipping our beers in awkward silence. The house feels cavernous with just the two of us here. There only used to be one other person but she filled the space with so much more.
