I fell asleep tucked into Regi’s arms. The drama of the evening had caught up with me and sapped my strength. At some point in the middle of the night, he’d moved, pulling me flush against him and stretching out on the couch. It was a cramped fit for his tall frame, but he’d made it work. I was pinned between his giant ass body and the back of the couch, with a soft fleece blanket tossed over me.

Rubbing my cheek against his chest, I opened my eyes and listened to the apartment. It was after the witching hour, but not yet dawn. There was a darkness, thick and eerily still, in the early AM hours. My eyes strained into the inky black while my foggy brain tried figuring out why I was awake so much earlier than usual.

Then the noise reached me. The heart-wrenching sounds of sobbing. One of the girls was awake.

Regi barely moved as I crawled over him, trying not to hit his groin with a wayward knee, and then tumbled to the ground. I offered him a brief, admiring glance, drinking in the slight scruff which darkened his cheeks, and the wild appearance to his beard. Then I crept toward the bedroom. But it was the bathroom light spreading gold onto the hallway carpet which forced me to detour.

I tapped lightly on the closed pine door. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t know who would be answering me, or even if they would.

The door quietly creaked open and I came face-to-face with Licia. Her makeup was smeared beneath her eyes, and mascara dripping down her cheeks like a mask of sorrow.

“Oh honey,” I whispered, forgetting I was supposed to be mad at her, forgetting all the vile words we’d exchanged over the years. My little sister was hurting and needed me.

She dissolved into my arms, her curvy body drooping against mine. I held her close as she bawled her eyes out. She soaked my shirt, the same slinky peep-hole one I’d worn on my date with Regi. It had only been hours before, but it felt like days.

I offered her soothing, nonsensical noises; motherly clucking and whispered ineligible words. It was less for her to understand me, and more for her to just feel the love in my tone.

Once the worst of the tears passed, she shifted. Licia sank onto the closed toilet seat. I shuttered the door and joined her in the bathroom.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said. Her eyes were glassy, the effects of the drug made her pupil appear huge. Her fingers shredded a damp tissue, twirling and knotting it around her knuckles in an absent-minded manner. “I didn’t even drink that much.”

I might have witnessed her at her worst with Regi, but she was still so damn innocent. Naive. I’d been the same way my first time away from home. I hadn’t been prepared to find the big bad wolf hiding in the bushes on a big city campus. “It’s not your fault.”

She dragged her eyes away from their blank stare at the wall. “What happened?”

“You sent me texts asking me to come help you. Regi found you barricaded in a bathroom.” A kick of anger heated my gut. I wanted to find the man who’d made her this fearful, rip off his balls, and feed them to him.

“I remember that. I think. One of the guys got me a drink. I don’t really like the taste of beer so I was just nursing it.” She pulled a face. “I started to feel funny. By the time I got upstairs I couldn’t see straight.”

As she spoke she shredded the tissue, pulling it apart and then balling it together, and then apart again.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I’m not going to say it was stupid to take a drink from a guy you don’t know-”

“-But it was stupid. I thought I was safe. There were so many people at the party.” Her brow crinkled, and her lower lip trembled as if she were going to cry again.

“You weren’t the only one they tried to roofie.”

Her eyes swam with unshed tears. “Really?”

“Yeah. Jo’s roommate is in the other room. We found the both of you last night.” Her fingers relaxed slowly, dropping the tissue onto the ground.

Licia’s voice was small. “Is she okay?”

“Yes. Well, she’s like you. Are you okay?” I bit my cheek, searching her tear-ravaged face.

She inhaled deeply. “I don’t know. Physically, yeah I feel okay.”

“Do you want to go to the hospital or the police station? Do you want to report what happened?” I saw what Regi meant about not forcing a decision on her. She was delicate right now. One stiff wind may break her open. Her very foundation in the trustworthiness of guys had been shaken. It hadn’t been rock solid, to begin with. Now, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to let a man past her prickly thorns.

She shook her head sharply. Her eyes closed, and the tears overflowed. “No.” Her voice cracked. “No. I know I should, shouldn’t I? So that asshole can’t drug another girl. But I don’t remember what he looks like or even if he told me his name.”

“I know what the guy who drugged Angela looks like. He might know who was doling out the drugs last night,” I said.

She shook her head again. Her honeyed hair clung to her wet cheeks. “I can’t. If I go here next year I don’t want to be known as the girl who cried rape.”

Licia’s face crumbled as she verbalized that brutal four-letter word. “Oh, my God. I was almost…”

I quickly sat up, rising to my knees, and pulled her into my arms. “Shh. Shh. Let it out.”

My eyes teared up as I rocked my baby sister. Her shuddering breaths caused her to hiccup against my neck. The second crying jag didn’t last as long as the first. But this time she didn’t pull away, she just let me hug her.

“I’m sorry,” Licia murmured against my chest.

“For what?” I stroked my hand down her spine. Her skin was cold and clammy beneath the low-back cut of her blouse. The stink of stale beer clung to her. Or maybe it was me. I faintly remembered getting doused last night during my rampage.

“I’ve been a bitch to you for…a long time.”

I froze. Why was she bringing all of that up now? Didn’t she have enough emotional trauma to handle without scraping the bottom of our sisters-at-odds barrel?

I pulled back enough to glance into her face. Curiosity gnawed at me. “Why have you been?”

She sniffled. Her nose was bright red, swollen from how hard she’d cried. She wiped her nose with the Kleenex and stared miserably down at her feet. “I was angry, jealous, scared. A lot of things. Mom is sick.”

There were no accusations in her tone, but I still flinched. Mom was sick, but not in a way medicine could cure. It was a soul-deep illness that pitted her against us. “I know.”

“And you left me with her, and Dan.” God hearing that sonuvabitches name caused me to see red. Had I done right by leaving Licia with them? Doubt swelled through me.

“Did he…did he ever…” I couldn’t bring myself to complete that thought, to give voice to that sickness. While I’d lived with them it had been a constant threat, a shadow which stole into our house and made us afraid in our own bedroom.

She shook her head subtly. “No, you taught me how to push the chair under the handle. He never made it in. He looked, though and tried, and mom didn’t care. She’s never cared. She’s always put them before us. Dan has just lasted the longest.”

“What would you have wanted me to do,” I whispered. Therein was the crux of the problem. I could have given up my future to protect my sister. Was I a horrible human being that I chose not to? That I decided the best thing for all of us was for me to go to college, and get a decent job?

Licia curled a strand of hair around her finger. Her voice was small, and for one tiny moment, she was my little sister. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want to be left behind.”

I let out a small sigh. There was no good resolution. A sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over me. This weekend had been trying, and all I wanted was to just forget about it all.

“Can we start over? Go back to before you and…Regi at the Alehouse. Back from before I left and you loved me.”

Licia darted a surprised look up at me through her clumpy lashes. “You’d do that? You would forgive me?”

Could I forgive her? If I forgave Regi, and that was a big IF, I wasn’t sure how I felt about everything, I would have to forgive her. I’d been holding onto the past, and terrible things, for far too long.

I wanted free of this crushing weight of past wrongs. Still, the wound was fresh and raw. “What you did hurt me a lot,” I whispered. I was weak. My voice quivered.

Licia curled her fingers against mine. “Do you believe in karma?”

I thought about Regi and all the hurt I heaped on him. “If I do, and karma is real, I have a lot of bad shit coming at me.”

She grimaced. “Well, so do I. So how about right here, right now, we both decide to stop with the bad karma, and begin with the good? I would love to start over with you. I know I’d hurt you by making a move on Regi. He didn’t even hear what I was saying he was so focused on you. It really wasn’t his fault, but it is mine. And I’m sorry.”

I exhaled sharply. “I don’t know if I can fully forget, but I promise I’ll work on forgiving you. I want us to be closer. I want us to have the relationship we should have had.”

Licia leaned into me. Her voice was a wisp. “Thank you for saving me.”

I laid my head atop Licia’s and let the walls surrounding my heart come tumbling down.