Just when I’d decided not to care about anything anymore, he’d shown up, and I couldn’t get him out of my mind. Turns out I still did care about something. Or rather, someone.

A loud knock on my front door distracted me from my thoughts. Shit, at eight o’clock in the damn morning. Really? They could go to hell, I wasn’t ready for visitors.

The knocking turned into loud banging and then I was stunned to hear a female voice I knew well yell out, “Evie, are you home?”

My sister. Who I hadn’t spoken to in years.

“Yeah, give me a minute,” I yelled back and hurried into my bedroom to put some clothes on.

When I opened the door to her a couple of minutes later, I was surprised to find a woman who hardly resembled my sister staring back at me. Julie had been a thin, well-kept blonde the last time I’d seen her, which was about five years ago. Today, she was overweight, brunette, and had aged more than the five years she actually had.

“Hi,” I said, hesitantly. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms, and Julie was a bitch at the best of times, so I’d learnt to hedge my bets as to her mood over the years.

She glared at me. “I know you’re judging me already so just quit it,” she snapped as she pushed past me to stalk down my hall.

I shut the door and turned to follow her. “I see you still haven’t learnt to use your filters.”

When we reached the kitchen she dumped her bag on the table and graced me with her glare again. “I just say it as I see it. And you can’t tell me you weren’t standing there staring at my fat, judging me.” She placed her hands on her hips and waited for my reply. Almost as if she was ready for a fight.

“I wasn’t judging you, Julie, but I won’t deny I noticed it and wondered how you’d gone from where you were to this.”

She moved her hands off her hips to hang by her sides, her body easing out of its tense state a little. Only a little, but that was a lot for Julie. “Thank fuck someone can be honest with me.”

My tiredness and grief mixed with the absurdity of this whole scenario and caused laughter to bubble up and escape my lips.

She commenced glaring at me again and demanded, “What’s so funny?”

I shook my head and threw my hands up in a defensive gesture. “Well, you come to see me, and rather than saying hello and starting a conversation like any normal sister would after all these years, you have a go at me and barge into my house. How screwed up are we? Seriously, it’s fucked up, Julie.”

She thought about it for a moment and then nodded and gave me a slight smile. “Yeah, I guess it is. But hell, with our family, you can’t blame us, right?”

She had a point. “Right.” I took a breath and asked, “So why are you here?”

Her whole face softened. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Julie’s face soften like that. “I heard about Jeremy.”

My stomach rolled and my breath caught at the mention of his name. I reached out to hold the chair to steady myself.

This is too hard.

I worked to catch my breath again and the nausea passed, but I remained silent. What was there to say, anyway?

“I’m sorry, Evie. I know how much he meant to you.”

I met her gaze and found only concern there. She had no ulterior motive for being here which I would have suspected in the past. “Thank you,” I said softly and sat at the table.

Julie sat as well and kept talking. “Have you seen Kick?”

“Fuck,” I muttered, “do we have to talk about him?”

She shrugged. “Any discussion of you and Jeremy is pointless unless Kick is involved. The three of you were almost joined at the damn hip.”

“Jeremy and Kick had a falling-out five years ago, Julie. And Kick and I went our separate ways three years ago, so any inclusion of Kick in this discussion is pointless.”

“Shit,” she murmured, connecting the dots in her head. “I’d heard you and Kick broke up but I just figured you would have stayed friends like you did the first time you broke up. And I never would have thought Kick and Jeremy would ever stop being friends. What happened?”

I sighed. It seemed I couldn’t escape Kick today. “I don’t know. Neither of them would tell me.”

“And you never pursued that information?”

“I did, but you know those two. Stubborn to the bitter end. Neither would crack, so, in the end, I just let it go.”

“That must have been hard. To stay friends with Jeremy while you were with Kick, I mean.”

Nodding, I agreed. “Yeah, it was, but I made it work. I did try to make them see sense, but neither would give in.” Sadness wrapped me in its arms while I remembered how amazing Jeremy had been throughout that time in my life. He’d never walked away from me, even though it was clear he couldn’t be around Kick any longer. And Kick had even managed to not be an asshole about my friendship with Jeremy. It was almost as if the two of them had some agreement about it all but I’d never managed to work it out. I’d just gone with the flow because it had broken my heart that they’d fallen out in the first place. I’d done my best to bring them back together, but that had been a waste of time.

Julie looked at me. Really looked at me, as if she was trying to work something out. “Are you going to be okay? I know it’s shit right now, but I want to make sure you’re coping.”

I considered her question, and I also considered her presence here today. “Why today, Julie?”