Tonight, she’s making pasta. I can hear her singing in the kitchen—still badly—and the rain has finally stopped. I’m sitting at the table, watching her dance around the stove with a wooden spoon in her hand, and I think: This is it. This is what it feels like to be alive with someone who loves you.
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Not the gentle kind that patters on rooftops and feels poetic. This was the angry, sideways kind that turned gutters into rivers and made the whole world smell like wet concrete and regret.
“You don’t seem scared.”
That was three months ago. Three months of living with my younger sister, and I still hadn’t decided if it was the worst or best decision of my life. The first week, I hated it.
The milkshake was cold and sweet and perfect. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel quite so alone. Living with Vicky is chaos. It’s finding her hairpins in every drawer. It’s her borrowing my sweaters without asking and then acting offended when I complain. It’s her watching reality TV at full volume at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday. It’s her burning popcorn and setting off the fire alarm and laughing so hard she can’t help me open the windows.
I was standing in my kitchen, staring at a leak under the sink that I’d been ignoring for a week, when the doorbell rang.
She drove us to the 24-hour diner on the edge of town, the one with the cracked vinyl booths and the waitress who calls everyone “hon.” We sat in the back corner, and Vicky ordered us both milkshakes—strawberry for her, chocolate for me—and then she didn’t say anything for a full ten minutes. She just let me sit there, stirring my shake with a straw, watching the rain finally stop outside the window.
Tonight, she’s making pasta. I can hear her singing in the kitchen—still badly—and the rain has finally stopped. I’m sitting at the table, watching her dance around the stove with a wooden spoon in her hand, and I think: This is it. This is what it feels like to be alive with someone who loves you.
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Not the gentle kind that patters on rooftops and feels poetic. This was the angry, sideways kind that turned gutters into rivers and made the whole world smell like wet concrete and regret. living with vicky
“You don’t seem scared.”
That was three months ago. Three months of living with my younger sister, and I still hadn’t decided if it was the worst or best decision of my life. The first week, I hated it. Tonight, she’s making pasta
The milkshake was cold and sweet and perfect. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel quite so alone. Living with Vicky is chaos. It’s finding her hairpins in every drawer. It’s her borrowing my sweaters without asking and then acting offended when I complain. It’s her watching reality TV at full volume at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday. It’s her burning popcorn and setting off the fire alarm and laughing so hard she can’t help me open the windows. This is what it feels like to be
I was standing in my kitchen, staring at a leak under the sink that I’d been ignoring for a week, when the doorbell rang.
She drove us to the 24-hour diner on the edge of town, the one with the cracked vinyl booths and the waitress who calls everyone “hon.” We sat in the back corner, and Vicky ordered us both milkshakes—strawberry for her, chocolate for me—and then she didn’t say anything for a full ten minutes. She just let me sit there, stirring my shake with a straw, watching the rain finally stop outside the window.