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She flew here for me.

“You’re not okay,” my sister says simply.

“No, I’m not.”

Gingerly, she asks, “Can we talk about it?”

I know I have to. I know that. But right now, all I want to do is curl up with her and feel something normal, so I say, “Tomorrow?” and she nods.

With my sister cuddled beside me, emanating way too much heat, as she always does, it’s the first time I’ve slept even moderately peacefully in weeks.

* * *

The next morning, Hannah forces me to shower, and then we run downstairs to grab some pastries from next door.

Talha greets me with a wide smile. “It has been too long,” he says, and I nod.

Upstairs, we sit cross-legged on the floor of my room, mouths full of pistachio baklava, and Hannah finally looks at me. “It’s time, Nor. What happened?”

“You were right,” I admit.

She raises her light eyebrows in a question.

“I couldn’t do it. I failed you, and Mom. Kristine.” I take a long breath. “Him.”

“But what happened?” Hannah asks again. “I don’t understand.” Then a little quieter, “He doesn’t understand.”

The knowledge that Hannah has been in touch with Henry nearly wrecks me. I feel the tears threatening to make an appearance behind my eyes. Hannah senses them too, and puts her hand on my arm.

“He must hate me.”

Henry once told me that he couldn’t, even when I’d hurt him in the past, but he’d never looked at me then the way he did when I walked away from him.

“He doesn’t hate you, Norah,” my sister assures me. “He’s just confused. Look,” she continues, “I’m not here to get answers for him. I hope you know that. I’m on your team. Always. But can I be honest with you? I don’t think you can tell me what happened because you don’t even know yourself.”

My sweet, insightful little sister. Having it put into words like that is a relief. Because no, I don’t know why I did what I did. Why I can’t just go see him and fix it. Why I can’t let myself be the person for him. Which is exactly the reason I don’t deserve to.

“I think I’m fucked up.”

“You’re not,” Hannah says simply.

“I mean, I am, though. I can’t be with anyone. It freaks me the fuck out. I couldn’t even tell Rob I didn’t want to be with him—I just disappeared halfway across the country for a week.”

Hannah nods slowly, listening intently.

“And now Henry’s gone—”

“He’s not gone,” she interrupts, and it feels like a knife in my side.

“It doesn’t matter, Hannah. It won’t work. It just won’t. We’re too different. We got caught up in vacation and sex and pheromones and fantasy, but when it comes down to it, when I really think about it, our worlds are just too different.”

Hannah thinks for a moment before opening her mouth. “But you come from the same place.”

We do, but she wasn’t there on New Year’s Eve. She doesn’t know. If the whole mess back in high school had never happened, if we’d figured it out when we were kids, then sure. Maybe that would have superseded reality. But our paths to New York, to this moment and place in time, diverged too much. We’re not the same.

I’ll never be the same.

“The same place. You mean the childhood home we’re losing? Mom and Kristine are moving to the city. Home will never be home again. I feel like I’m floating in space, like I can’t grasp onto a tether to bring me back down to earth.”