Why can’t we just be together?
“Shhh.” I brush her dark hair back gently out of her face and brush my lips against her forehead. I resist the urge to drag my lips down the slope of her nose, kissing her for every cute freckle against her warm brown skin. “I know.”
“I thought you were mad at me.” She slowly pulls away, and only then do I really drink her in. It’s one of those days in October that makes you think it may still be summer and not slowly trickling into fall. She’s wearing a short black dress that clings to her curves. Curves I’ve explored with my hands and mouth so many times, I know them by heart. Her hair barelybrushes her shoulders after a recent chop that I learned from my weekly—read, daily—stalk of her Instagram, falls around her in waves more likely brought on by the humidity than a curling iron. The fire-engine-red lipstick she always wears paints her lips, and I run my fingers over my neck, wondering if she marked me when she ran them over the skin like she’s been known to do.
She sits down, and I follow suit, pulling my sunglasses off and setting them next to the glasses of water I’d ordered us even though I know in a few moments she’ll order a dirty martini and I’ll order bourbon.
“When am I ever mad at you?” I ask because it is rare for me to be. I can recall a handful of times, and they all involve her being reckless. A few times, she tried to entertain another guy when we were younger to make me jealous.
She fusses with her hair, pushing it behind one of her ears, and my eyes flit to the movement, wanting to see the tattoo behind her ear. It’s small, but my eyes could see it from a mile away due to how many times I’ve touched, kissed, and licked it. A small “W” meant for Wild that I’d taken her to get on her eighteenth birthday to match the half a dozen tattoos I had for her at the time. In the year we've been apart, I’ve gotten three more that reminded me of her. I can already picture the look on her face when and if she ever discovers them. I rub the S on the inside of my wrist for Saint, and I watch her eyes drop to the movement.
“I hate it when we don’t talk.” Her eyes are watery again, and she shakes her head.
We didn’t talk much this past year. Growing up, we talked all the time, every day, all day. Throughout high school and college, there was never more than a few hours between messages, phone calls, or FaceTimes. But over the past few years, communication has dwindled to spans of weeks or even months without speaking. It crushed me just as much as it did her. Butit’s like I told her before: sometimes it’s just too hard to talk to her and know that it can never be more thanthis.
But even when we weren’t talking, we’ve spent every October seventh together since that initial day, and this year marks the twentieth anniversary. Tomorrow, it will be twenty years since Halle’s father was killed while we hid between the aisles in a convenience store. Twenty years since I held my screaming stepsister in my arms, trying to shield her innocent eyes away from her father on the ground, dead from a gunshot wound, all while trying to dial 911 on the convenience store phone. I’d only been five years old when I became Halle’s protector and safe space and the only person she talked to for months while she tried to deal with the trauma of becoming an orphan at the age of four.
I’d probably taken those jobs a little too seriously, and our trauma bond transitioned into a codependency that, years later, we still haven’t been able to shake.
“You know you can always call me when you need me,” I tell her.
“I always need you. That’s the problem.” She wipes at the tear threatening to move down her cheek. “According to you,” she adds, and I remember how shitty I felt saying that to her once during an argument. I told her she needed to learn to stand on her own and that I couldn’t always fix everything for her. I couldn’t be everything for her all the time.The problem is, I want to be everything for her.
The bigger problem that I have trouble admitting out loud is thatIbarely know how to stand on my own without her.
“I’ve apologized for that. You know I didn’t mean it, but I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, Saint.” I reach across the table and place my hand over hers before running my thumb gently over her knuckles. “I was just…frustrated.”I am always fucking frustrated when it comes to her.That was alsothe problem with getting into a fight with someone who was embedded in your bones. You know what to say to destroy them, and sometimes you do just that. Halle and I are so intertwined that I wouldn’t be surprised if, with enough effort, we could read each other’s minds. I know the depths of her heart and her soul and the darkest parts of her mind because we grew together, and those dark parts matched the same ones in me.
The ones we shared when she crawled into my bed every night until my mother told us that it wasn’t appropriate. That we were too old to share a bed or for her to sit on my lap or cuddle with me on the couch.
It didn’t stop us from doing that and a whole lot more.
The server comes to our table to take our drink order, and to no surprise, she orders a dirty martini. “So tomorrow…” she starts once he departs the table. Before I can respond, she continues, “Are you staying over tonight?”
“Is that a good idea?” I ask her even though I already know the answer.
“Are you seeing someone?” Her brows furrow, and I can see the jealousy and hurt unraveling all over her gorgeous face.
“No,” I say. I’ve yet to tell her that I’ve never really been able to entertain anyone because of how much she still consumes my thoughts.What’s the point?Everyone who knows us considers us siblings, and neither of us knows how to tell people that we are probably the only two individuals in the world whodon’tconsider us that way.
“Then…why?” She bites down on her bottom lip. “It’s what we do, and it’s the only thing that gets me through the day.”
My heart squeezes painfully in my chest, thinking about how hard tomorrow is for us both, and the coping mechanism we’d discovered when we were teenagers that bloomed out of feelings we shouldn’t have had for each other in the first place. “Remember what you said last year?”
“Well, yeah… but I was just upset that you were leaving. I didn’t mean that I don’t still need you… orthis.”
“Yousaid we couldn’t keep doing this, Halle.” I give her a look that I know she can read, and it more than likely pisses her off.
Her chocolate eyes widen in annoyance, most likely at my use of her full name. “You promised.”
“I promised I’d always be there with you on October seventh,” I tell her even though I’m sure I promised her more than that in the moments just after coming inside her, but I’m trying to do the right thing. “You’re right, we can’t keep doing this. It’s just… impossible, Halle.”
“Stop with the Halle,” she grits out, and I can see the fire in her eyes that has the power to make my dick hard if I focus too much on it. I look away from her, trying to disassociate from the tingling feeling shooting through me brought on by her irritation, and I let out a breath through my nose.
“It’s not healthy for either one of us.”
Those sexy red lips form a straight line, and she raises her eyebrows. I can already tell I’m not going to like what’s about to come out of her mouth. “Funny, neither was becoming an orphan at age four, but you roll with the punches.” She purses her lips, and it’s the first glimpse of her dark sarcasm that I’m very accustomed to.
“That’s not fair, Saint. I was there too.”
