“Ok, Lisa, the next round, you’re going to try and actually get the car to go straight, right?” I teased. She gave me a playful shove but didn’t tear her eyes away from the TV screen.

“Yes, enjoy it, the more you boast now the sweeter it’ll be when I beat your ass later,” she said, the control clutched tightly in her hands.

We were three siblings all together: my twin brother and I, and little baby Lisa who came a few years later like the family’s cherry on top. My brother Max was only a few minutes older than me, but as we’d both learned the hard way, sometimes a few minutes makes all the difference. It was cool, though. He was happy to play the big brother, and I was happy to do my own thing. It was kind of the big talking point in our family. Identical twin boys who both became Navy SEALs? Doesn’t happen every day. But the truth was that for most of the time growing up, it was really Lisa and I who were thick as thieves. I loved Max to death but to be honest, he was the person least like me in all the world. Dude was good looking, though, I had to give him that.

Lisa and I did another lap on that cheesy PlayStation racing game she always picked when it was her turn to pick games. It was just like old times, being here at mom’s, goofing around while Max fretted about… oh, I don’t know, the economy or something. Mom had us over this Sunday for lunch, but she had decided to occupy herself with spring-cleaning the basement, and Max was pitching in by helping her haul out old boxes of Christmas ornaments.

“Lisa, oh my god I finally figured it out. You do realize you’re supposed to cross over the finish line, right? Even though you’re doing a great job playing in the trees over there though,” I said as she clipped a street lamp and spun off the road, leaving me to zoom past her in my bright pink monster truck.

“Shut up! Besides, I was just hanging back so you didn’t feel too bad when I have to beat you later.”

My pink truck went too hard over a ramp and I spun too wide around a corner, losing seconds and giving Lisa just enough of a chance to come skidding past me again.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, what? I can’t hear you over the cheering,” she laughed while her car sped ahead.

“You little shit.”

“Since you’re the expert, tell me, what does it mean when confetti falls out the sky and they wave a banner that says winner at me?” she said, smirking sweetly at me.

“It means you’re a little shit. Best of five?” I said and tossed the controller aside.

“Hey kids, hate to break this up, but could you both make yourself useful here?”

We both turned to see Max trudging up the stairs with a dusty cardboard box in his arms.

“Useful? I’m too beautiful to be useful,” I said.

“And I’m too smart,” Lisa chipped in.

“Very funny you two. Come on, help your brother carry all this crap out, the dust is killing my allergies,” mom said, following closely behind him with a box of her own.

“Last one to win mom’s heart back is a rotten egg,” I said and sprang off the sofa and down the basement stairs, with Lisa running after me.

“Too late!” she cried after us. “You’re both horrible disappointments. Come Max, my favorite child, let’s have a look at what’s in here.”

Lisa and I grabbed some boxes and joined the procession.

“I really need to convince your father to just spend a little on some proper shelving down there,” mom said and grasped her aching back.

“Hey, that’s my inheritance you’re spending,” I said and placed my box next to hers. She swatted my shoulder.

“By the way, funny guy, you’ll be interested to know who I bumped into today,” she said. We all sat around the boxes and began examining the contents.

“How much you wanna bet I’m not interested at all?” I teased.

Now it was Max who thumped my arm and gave me a stern look.

“Just kidding, who?” I said.

“That sweet girl, you know, what’s-her-name. Your old girlfriend. Becky.” Mom kept on untangling Christmas lights but everyone else froze and looked at me, waiting for my reaction.

“Mom, it was his fiancée,” Lisa said quietly. Now Max gave her the stern look.

“Well, yes, fine. Fiancée. You have to marry though for it to be a fiancée, right? If you didn’t marry her… then it’s just a girlfriend.”

“Mom…” Max looked like he was gearing up to go into one of his big brother mediator modes.

“It’s okay, yeah, she wasn’t really my fiancée,” I said and tried to smile. What were the chances? I hadn’t seen or heard from her in years and now all of a sudden it felt like I had a red-haired, pouty lipped demon crawling all over my life.

“Why’d you let such a sweet girl like her go anyway, baby? I saw her at that furniture shop next to Joey’s, you know the one? Do you know she’s working at Hybrid Golden these days?”

“Good for her,” I said, and hated how they all seemed to be looking at me like they expected more. I shrugged and began fishing out broken Christmas tree baubles.

“She’s single, you know,” mom said.

I stopped and looked at all of them.

“Can you guys not? We broke up for a reason.”

“Yeah, you went on deployment. Now you’re back…” mom continued, her gaze unrelenting.

“So? We’ve both changed since then,” I said. “I mean, I’m guessing” I added, feeling all at once that all the separate threads of my life were getting way too close to one another these days.

“Maybe you could give it another go, though? You guys really were so wonderful together.”

“Mom, thanks, but can we drop it?”

“Of course, baby. But who knows. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe you’re meant to try get her to take you back…”

“Wait wait wait, I’d be the one taking her back,” I said. Mom laughed, shook her head and went down the basement stairs again. Lisa turned to me with obvious mischief in her eyes.

“She works at Hybrid Golden? Dude, she’s probably raking it in. I bet she got hot too.”

I gave both her and Max a thin smile and pretended to be deeply interested in the crumbling paper decorations at the bottom of the box.

“I’m sure she’s lovely. I wish her all the best,” I said.

Max was chuckling under his breath.

“Why would I want a girlfriend again, anyway, huh? Why is that always the assumption? I’m enjoying my life. I have my freedom.”

“Hugo’s too beautiful to have a girlfriend,” Lisa teased.

“Damn right I am.”

“Still, she was pretty cool, wasn’t she? I remember Becky,” Max said.

“She was awesome,” Lisa added.

“Well, great, why don’t you two both marry her then?”

“You know what I liked about Becky?” Lisa continued. “She was the only one who could ever keep you in line, you know that? She took no bullshit from you.”

“Oh, spare me.”

“No, it’s true. One of a kind, that woman.”

I scowled.

“Come on, Hugo, don’t be mad. It’s not our fault you let such an awesome woman get away.”

The rest of the day carried on like this, in the same way Sunday afternoons at the folks’ always do. But my heart wasn’t all in it. Lisa and Max meant well, but I didn’t know how to deal with them just then beyond the jokes and banter. My family, in their characteristic way, had bluntly said what I hadn’t really had the guts to admit to myself: Becky was successful. The few moments I had seen her were enough to confirm that she was as beautiful as ever – maybe even more so.

But what did I want, for her to disappear now just because we weren’t together anymore? Had I really expected that her life would just stop progressing simply because I wasn’t in it anymore?

My instincts never let me down, on anything. But when it came to thinking about Becky it’s like all of that just short-circuited. Were they right? Did I make a huge mistake? I would never have become a SEAL if Becky and I stayed together. I would never have met all the brilliant men I did, never have achieved what I did, if I had agreed to settle down with her and play house.

Wasn’t that fate?