It's just so wrong.

R,

Here is part two. From Thomas’s point of view.

--S

II

Who expects to ever have to break up with their sister? How can you possibly prepare yourself for something like that? It’s not my fault. She just waltzed through the front door one day, snow in her hair and eyelashes, carrying overstuffed bags, and my dad walking behind her, introducing us. “Beth, this is your new family.” He said.

“Hi.” She said, looking me right in the eye. And that was all it took.

I’d never felt anything like that for anyone.

Bethany moved out of the house last spring, after her senior year ended. She just drove off ten minutes ago in the Volvo Dad got her for graduation.

And I’m up in my room staring at the only real photo I have. You know, the kind that are actually printed out. Not something saved on a phone.

It’s a picture of my sister, Bethany. She hates it when I call her that. She says we’re not really brother and sister. That it doesn’t count.

But trust me, it does.

In the picture she is looking at me out of the corner of her eye. There is snow on her long lashes, like the first time I saw her. I took it before anything had ever happened between us.

I don’t understand how you can love someone like a sister and in another way too, at the same time, and I don’t really know if I even understand the difference, because who the fuck expects to be put into a situation like this? I know that life is unfair. But this? How come the person that I decide to love had to be my dad’s daughter?

We’d come home from school, make Katie a snack, get homework out of the way, and then Mom and Dad would come home.

And while my parents fought upstairs, and Katie watched TV, Beth and I would kiss for hours, locked in the hall closet. Coat hangers falling down around us like rain, and nothing but breath and love between our bodies.

It was like a game. Exciting and terrifying all at once. And so wonderful, to be that crazy about someone. Knowing that you could do anything as long as you had them by your side. Knowing that they made you infinite.

I run my thumb across the glass frame of her photo.

I’ve never in two years told her that I love her. I should have, but I just sort of figured she already knew.

It’s wrong. It is really wrong. We’re not even step siblings. We are full blood relatives. It’s not the kind of thing anyone would ever accept. I don’t even think that I can accept it. Because it is fucked up.

But God, I love that girl.