The Good Sister (12 page)

He nods. “That's cool. I'll be right back.”

I watch him disappear into the master bathroom, and he returns with a plush burgundy towel.

Then he takes my hand again and leads me to the bed, where he spreads out the towel on top of the white duvet.

“You scared?” he asks as he slides his hands beneath the waist of my shirt.

I am hyperaware now. His touch gives me gooseflesh. He smells like weed and beer, and he hasn't shaved in maybe a few weeks.

“No,” I say, though I'm not sure it's true.

I want this to happen, but a nagging something is in the back of my mind. Is this what I've been imagining? What I've been waiting for?

His hand ventures farther north, exploring virgin territory. I want his touch everywhere, and in a few specific aching places, all at once. I slide my own hands up his bare arms to his shoulders, his neck.

There is the sensation of falling, falling fast. I am on the bed. He is on top of me. I am burning all over.

His beard is alternately rough and silky against my face when we kiss, depending on the angle. I wonder how it will feel on other parts of my body. But when he pulls my skirt up, along with my shirt, I wonder if we're going to bother getting undressed for this at all.

I don't hear the door open. I am only aware of it when I hear footsteps. Both of us stop and look toward the sound, just in time to see Tristan being pulled up and a fist smacking into his face.

I look up to see that the fist is attached to Sin's arm.

Tristan goes sprawling backward on the bed, and there I am, my denim skirt hiked up around my waist, my rainbow unicorn panties exposed. I start tugging my skirt down.

I didn't even know Sin was capable of punching anyone. I am too stunned to make sense of it.

“What the hell?” Tristan bellows at his brother.

“What the hell? Yeah, what the hell, Asha? You said you'd stay away from him.”

My face burns, nothing like the burning I felt before. Now I am horrified, humiliated, wishing I could crawl under the bed and hide.

Tristan is tugging at the towel underneath me, trying to wipe his bleeding nose, and I move off it.

“You left,” I said dumbly.

“I was outside. So that's a good excuse to screw my brother?”

Tristan stands up and heads for Sin. I know they're going to fight if I don't stop it. Jumping up from the bed, I fling myself between them.

“Stop it!” I cry, but I'm not sure whom I'm hoping to defend.

Sin? He's the one being a jerk here. Tristan? He hasn't exactly done anything wrong, has he?

And neither have I.

I think.

Well, except for the lying part. And the sneaking part.

I narrowly avoid a punch in the face myself when I grab Sin and drag him toward the door, but before we make it out, Tristan pushes past us.

“Screw it,” he says. “You two can have the room—I'm out of here.”

I stop. Watch him walk away. Part of me wants to go after him, and part of me is relieved to see him go. He slams the double door as he leaves.

I turn to Sin, and he's looking at me as if I have something nasty oozing from my eyes.

“It just … happened.”

“You
just happened
to fall underneath my brother and your skirt
just happened
to get pushed up to your armpits?”

“Why are you being like this?”

“You promised you'd stay away from him. You
promised
.”

His arms crossed over his chest, he is looking at me as if I disgust him, and I can't take much more of it. I just want to leave, storm out of here, get away from him.

But I also don't want to face the party again—or the rest of the world—without Sin.

“Just because I'm attracted to your brother doesn't mean I'm betraying our friendship.”

Sin looks at me with an expression of utter disgust. “What friendship? We're not friends. Just stay the hell away from
me.
” He turns and storms out, leaving me alone in the big bedroom with the church ceiling.

I sink onto the edge of the bed, put my face in my hands, and cry—really cry—over more loss than I can measure.

Twenty

Rachel

Me and Asha have never been friendly, as far as sisters go. From the time she was old enough to walk, she was grabbing my hair, taking my toys, and generally getting on my nerves in the way only little sisters can.

People say the middle child gets ignored—and that's in a normal family. Now imagine how ignored the middle child gets when the oldest child has cancer and the youngest child is the matching donor. There was no room for me in that medical drama.

Oh, poor me, right? At least I had my health, right? At least I didn't have to get poked with needles or anything like that, right?

That's not how I see it.

If Asha had shown even the slightest kindness, had been even a little bit nice, things might be different, but she's always been a brat, and I've always been the odd sister out. I guess I got along better with Sarah—sometimes—but only because Sarah had so perfected the sainthood act that it was hard to find anything to be mad at her about.

When she was still alive, her and Asha were tighter than tight, always ready to defend each other, always ready to make stuff my fault.

And that's how it was.

But how is it now?

Asha, as a rule, knows better than to ask me for favors, which makes it pretty out of the ordinary that she called and asked me to come get her from this stupid party. I almost said no, but she was crying over the phone, and Asha crying is such an unheard-of event, I came to get her mostly out of morbid curiosity.

When I've parked in front of the house with the address she gave me over the phone, I can see kids inside, talking and dancing. It's a big cedar-siding place that is sort of a Marin County version of modern, with a slanty roof and lots of windows. I scan the front lawn, looking for Asha, because she said she'd be waiting out front, but I don't see her.

Then my gaze lands on a shadow in front of the garage, and I realize it's her. She steps out, her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulders hunched, totally not dressed for the chilly night in a miniskirt and short-sleeved top. She is shivering, and her face is a wreck, all red and puffy from tears, I see as she crosses my headlights. A few seconds later, she's sitting in the passenger seat beside me, putting on her seat belt.

“So what happened? You lost your virginity unwillingly? Drank too much and barfed in front of everyone? What?”

She makes a loud snuffling sound. “Can we just go home? I don't want to talk.”

Suddenly, though, I do want to talk. I can't think of anything I'd rather do. I've got her captive here, her only way home, and I have never seen Asha like this.

I look over at her, keeping my expression as serious as I can, and try to sound … if not caring, at least not hostile. “I'm your sister, you know. You can tell me what happened.”

She looks out the window, shivering and sniffling, and I see her for the first time in years as a scared little girl. I almost feel sorry for her.

“I got in a fight with Sin, that's all. He left me here.”

Two drunken teenagers wander past the front of our car, a guy and a girl, heading off toward the backyard, their bodies leaning into each other as they walk. The girl stumbles, lets out a screech, and they descend into laughter.

“Drive,” Asha says. “
Please.”

I back up out of the driveway, then head north toward home.

“What were you fighting over?” I ask once we are away from the house and she's stopped sniveling so much.

“Nothing.”

“Doesn't seem like nothing.”

She sighs. “What the hell do you care?”

Good point. I don't have an answer at first. I have made it my mission not to care about Asha, but I guess sister stuff is more complicated than that. I have never once in my life thought of Asha as a person aside from who she is in my family—the little sister, the heroic bone-marrow donor, the royal pain in the ass—but seeing her tonight, emerging from the shadows of a strange house, looking like a freaking wreck, she is suddenly this other person I don't know.

And somehow, that tugs at me.

Who is this lost-looking version of my sister?

In the silence of the car, she finally says, “Do you know Sin's older brother, Tristan Tyler?”

“Sure. Who doesn't?”

“Sin caught me making out with him and got mad.”

Pulling up to a stop sign, I slam on the brakes too hard. Asha has surprised me yet again. “You and Tristan Tyler? Seriously?”

She says nothing, only glares at me for a moment and looks away.

“What does your little gay friend care if you make out with his brother?”

“He says he's just a big user or whatever.”

“What guy isn't?” I try to imagine my little sister with Tristan Tyler.

Maybe she's just convenient, since she's at his house all the freaking time anyway, but she has a lushness about her that I've always envied, if I'm being honest. Everything about her overflows. And the attitude of not giving a damn that she has perfected, it makes her magnetic.

I've always liked to think of myself as the sister who gets all the guys, but I know that in one way Asha has always had me beaten, until tonight. I care if guys want me, and she doesn't.

But this wrecked version of her—she clearly does care about something.

“I hate going home now,” she says out of the blue.

“What?”

“Since Sarah died, I don't want to go home anymore. I just wish our whole house would disappear.”

I don't know what this has to do with Tristan Tyler and his lame-ass brother, and I definitely don't want to talk about Sarah.

“Is that why you've been staying at Sin's?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he likes you,” I say, realizing for the first time that Sin doesn't seem all that gay. He's just not all that manly, either.

“Maybe who likes me?”

“Sin.”

“What?”

Her dumb act annoys me, and I totally lose interest. We are only a few blocks from the house now, but I don't want to go home either. I can't stand the thought of being in that house right now.

“Never mind,” I say.

I can feel her staring at me. “Can we, like, not go home?”

“Where the hell else am I going to take you?”

“I don't know. Denny's?”

“I don't have any money,” I lie, knowing she doesn't either.

A minute later, I pull up in front of the house, and it takes all my willpower not to kick her ass out onto the curb and speed away. This sisterly bonding shit is not my thing.

We are sitting in front of the house with the car idling, me waiting for Asha to get out.

“Aren't you coming in?”

“No.”

She gives me a look, then gets out and slams the door.

I watch her walk up to the empty house, with its one lamp lit in the window that I left on a little while ago. I know what she wants from me, and I can't even begin to give it. It's not what our family does, right?

We leave each other alone. That's how we are.

Before she has even gotten the front door open, I am driving away. I don't want to watch her walk in, don't want to feel tempted to go in after her, to offer any of the comfort no one has offered me. I have none to give.

I wonder who is out downtown, so I drive down there, not exactly wanting to see anyone, but not wanting to be at home either. I park and wander toward the sound of a band playing at a bar down the street. My fake ID has been proven fake at this particular bar, so unless they have a new bouncer, I have no hope of getting in, but I am drawn to the sound of partying nonetheless. I pass couples leaving a late movie that has ended, and I stop and peer in the window of the bar, seeing no one I know especially well. The bouncer is indeed the same jerk who's denied me entrance in the past, so I sigh and lean on the window ledge.

At times like this, when I don't want to see any guy exactly, I wish I had some close female friends, but I don't. I never have.

There are sort-of friends. Girls I know, hang out with occasionally, but not anyone I'm close to.

The band playing inside is some kind of bluesy rock group that wishes it was still the 1970s, and I get sick of hearing them, so I wander down the street farther to the Blue Diva, a restaurant-bar combo that will let me sit and drink a freaking Coke while I listen to whatever lame band they have playing.

I hear the sounds of tribal dance beats as I near, and sure enough, at the door I see people dancing to a group onstage that's having a serious cultural-identity crisis—didgeridoo, congas, some kind of little Middle Eastern guitar thing, and a singer dressed in sort of Gypsy clothes.

There's no cover, so I go in and sidestep the sweaty dancers, making my way toward the dimly lit bar. I am about to sit down when I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Rachel!” a male voice says as I turn to see that it's Krishna, smiling and sweaty.

If I had only ever run into Krishna once randomly on the street, I would count it as not exactly eventful, other than that he's freaking gorgeous. Running into him twice though in this town where I thought I knew every hot guy starts to make me wonder what the hell is going on with the universe.

Is it trying to tell me something?

Now I'm starting to sound like my fucking mother, which has to stop.

I am thrilled in spite of myself. Thrilled to see him and thrilled to have the distraction. “I didn't know monks were allowed to go out dancing.”

“Maybe not every night, but I believe in getting outside my head and into my body as much as possible.”

If only he'd get out of my head into
my
body …

“I don't even know what that means.”