This house, and everything that’s in it now, is so unfamiliar.

In the corner where a white overstuffed armchair sits, there used to be a scotch cart. Patrick, her father, used to measure all of the bottles to make sure we hadn’t stolen anything from them.

Where there is now a blue and teal striped rug on the floor, I see the old maroon and olive one that Joel and I would race toy cars over as Blake pretended she didn’t like Barbies.

She’s taken all of the pictures down … there used to be tables and walls full of them when this had been Patrick’s house. I don’t need to ask why they’re gone. Just stepping foot in here is painful for me. I can’t imagine living in it.

Walking across the room, I spot one thing Blake did keep. Her father’s old record player. Memories of him setting classic vinyls on the thing, teaching us about music, fill my thoughts. Not that my old man didn’t have good taste in music, but Patrick Sayer regarded it as a religion. He would speak of songs and records as if they were sacraments. My very first Pink Floyd album, which sits packed in my boxes at home, is from him.

I set the needle on the record player, ensconcing the room in the melodies of Frank Sinatra. His crooning voice fills the blank space between us, the silence of words unspoken almost bearable.

I hear her cross to a counter, the sounds of her pouring the steaming water into two tea cups, adding the bags and swirling them. I watch each motion in my head, wanting so much to round the wall and grab her up into my arms. On a deeper level, down to the soul that I know has been torn in two. Because of me.

And then a few familiar chords strike up as the next song floats into the air. I’m transported back to a night I’d snuck into the Sayer household, and in a far off room this song was playing behind a closed door.

A crystal tear had slid from her eye when she’d confessed it, and I could practically hear her father’s heart breaking from rooms away.

Sinatra laments the room with “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and if she only knew.

If she only knew how many times I’d played this song over the years, hoping beyond hope that maybe that night, my banishment would end. That she’d send one word, at least call and hang up.

Blake stumbles as she comes into view, her body frozen as the twinkling melody laced with sadness penetrates both of us.

“Turn it off.” I know she’s trying to make her voice steely, but it’s not working. There is too much emotion laced into it.

I shake my head, watching her as Frank sings the song of our storied history.

At this point, I can’t not touch her. The song fuels me, moving my feet until I’m standing beside her, moving her into my arms. The minute her skin touches mine, we both gasp, the contact something so akin to pain, that it’s euphoric in its burn.

I gently move us, swaying as the flood breaks over our heads, cascading to our hearts.

I whisper the words into her ear, the sad soft melody invading our joined limbs, ducking my head so that I can fit our cheeks together. I’m nearly choking on the past, on the slicing heartbreak that has coursed through me for ten years.

“I can’t.” Two words bring the moment crashing down, and Blake looks up at me with tears rolling down her cheeks.

She stalks away from me, and I wish I could hold her against me almost the instant she leaves. “I know how hard it has to be for you. I know because there are nights that the grief literally drowns me.”

Blake whirls around, fire and pain mixing like a deadly cocktail in her eyes.

“It doesn’t get easier. The pain. I’ve read all of the self-help books, done all of the online chat groups. They say it’s supposed to, that these stages of grief act as a tool to pull you out of the misery. If they are, they never helped me. Nothing has lessened, the agony in my body from missing Joel everyday has not waned. You don’t understand, Carson. Sure, you lost someone. But he and I, my brother, we started together. We were created together, in the same moment. Do you know how rare that is? To share every single second of your life with someone? And he left it, way before I thought I’d ever have to live without him. Moving on isn’t possible.”

I’ve done the self-help books too. I’ve done the drinking and the drug-hazed stupors. I’ve done the other women, not many, but enough to know that there is no one in this world for me but her.

“I can’t begin to understand what it feels like for you, because you’re your own person. Your pain is real and so is your heartbreak. But take a second, Blake. Just take a goddamn second to consider me.”

My blood flares in my veins, and anger I didn’t know I held towards her rears its ugly head.

“Take a second to consider what it’s been like for me. You two were my world; you were the air that I needed to breathe. And in five minutes, I lost you both. I see Joel’s face in that car every time I shut my eyes. I bare the scars to remember it. And you, God … in the one moment I needed you most, you turned against me. Blamed me for it all. Left us so hurt and torn that it caused a rip in the fabric of our lives. You lost someone that day, but I lost two people, Blake. The two people who mattered most.”

The room is silent with what we’re not saying, and the tension in the air is so palpable that it’s got its hands wrapped around my neck. I want her to say something, anything. Fight with me, throw a vase at me, punch me … anything.

But instead, her eyes go dark like a moon too out of orbit to see. “You should go call the tow truck from your car. I don’t want you in my house anymore.”

My hands shake from where they just touched her skin. “Blake, we have to talk about this.”

“I’m not ready.” She turns her back on me, just like she did a decade ago.

“It’s been ten years, when will it be enough time?”

She turns, the record getting stuck on the vinyl, stuttering on the needle. Such a perfect metaphor for our relationship.

There is no use pushing her more today. Twice I’ve actually spoken to her since I’ve been back, and twice she’s let me in a fraction only to shove me out a mile. Hopefully, I’ll be able to break her all the way down with more time.

“Thank you for the phone number, and for the time to dry. I hope that I’ll see you again soon.”

Blake doesn’t speak as I walk out of the room and down the stairs that are so familiar, I remember the creaky one towards the bottom.

The tow truck doesn’t come for another forty minutes because of the storm. Every second of which is spent sitting in front of the Sayer house, looking up at the windows to see if Blake is staring down at me.

She never once looks.