Adrian

I've known her for seventeen years. I met her when I was nineteen, when her older brother became my best friend. Back then, she was the annoying little sister who stole my hoodies, interrupted our conversations, and followed us around like she belonged wherever we went. She was never supposed to become anything else. Then her brother died. And I became the person who stayed. I helped her family through the funeral. I fixed things around her house. I answered her calls at three in the morning. I watched her grow into a woman I had no right to want. For ten years, I've loved her in silence. Not because I didn't have opportunities to tell her. Because every time I looked at her, I remembered the promise I'd made to her brother during his final months: I'd look after her. And somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that loving her would mean betraying him. She doesn't know about the tattoo on my ribs. A small, delicate drawing of a paper crane, with a date underneath it. The date of the night she sat on my kitchen floor, crying, and told me she didn't think she'd ever feel happy again. She probably doesn't even remember that night. I remember every second. Now she's back in town after three years away. And she's bringing someone with her. Someone who thinks he has a future with her. I have spent ten years teaching myself how to stand beside her without touching her. Apparently, I'm about to find out how little I've learned. The first thing I noticed when she walked into my house was that she was wearing my sweatshirt. My sweatshirt. The grey one I'd left at her brother's house approximately seven years ago and had assumed was either lost or stolen. Apparently, she'd been keeping it.