I closed my eyes, realizing then how dumb that sounded.

It was her brother. Even if they weren’t close, it was still her fucking brother.

Asshole.

I gripped the back of my neck, squeezing hard.

“We were, for the most part,” she answered, nothing in her voice but sweet tones and light.

She wasn’t upset about my offhand comment.

“He was seven years older than me so we didn’t do everything together. But he was awesome. Funny and loud and just, like, a cool big brother, you know? He had all these tattoos and drove a black 1970 Charger.”

“Nice,” I muttered appreciatively, then slid down farther on the bed and relaxed with my head on a pillow.

“So cool,” she added. “Barrett was the definition of badass. He was wild. Must be where I get my edge from.”

“How’d he die?”

“Alcohol poisoning. Happened his second semester away at college. My mom and I flew out to California when we got word, but it was too late. He was in a coma and died pretty soon after we got there.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“He your only sibling?”

She yawned and sighed.

I didn’t want her drowsy. Not right now. I was wired and burning, restless for more words and sweet, light tones.

I wanted her to be that way, too, and to want to give me that.

Mine. This was mine. Her voice in my ear in the dark.

“Yep,” she replied, sounding anxious to answer and silencing my discomfort. “Just me and him.”

“Must’ve been hard on your parents,” I commented.

“Just my mom. Dad isn’t in the picture. He never was. But my mom? Yeah.” She inhaled, then breathed out slowly. “She went a little crazy, which I guess is understandable. Barrett was brilliant. A good kid. Then one night he partied too hard, and that one mistake took him. It wasn’t fair. You’re eating popsicles on your porch with your daughter one minute and the next you’re getting a call saying your boy is dying. It was too sudden for her sanity, I think. Or maybe, even if it was slow, it wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t know.”

“She doing okay now?” I asked.

“Depends on your definition of ‘okay.’ She found a way to heal, a few months after it happened, and it started out great. The intentions were good. She joined this prayer group and it was really helping. I didn’t see her cry as much. She smiled when I smiled. Then weekly meetings turned into daily meetings, she was always at the church and never home with me, and when I did see her, the only thing she’d talk to me about was my relationship with God and how I needed to get on the right path. She was better, happy, but different. Not the mom who ate popsicles with me. That woman was gone and far too busy with her new spiritual family to eat popsicles.”

I felt something twist and wrench in my gut.

“Babe,” I whispered.

“And that is all the sad talk you’re going to get out of me tonight.”

Her voice floated with a hint of laughter.

She was trying to move forward and tread with amusement, possibly into dildo territory, where our conversations stayed the farthest from serious, but all I could picture was a sad little girl and her melted popsicle.

It fucked with my head.

“You have anybody after that happened? Any other family?” I asked, fidgeting in bed, adjusting and readjusting the height of my pillow until my upper body was bent and the weight of my edginess shifted out of my chest.

“I had Tori. She’s my best friend. And her family. I’ve always had them.”

“That’s good.”

“Then I had Marcus.”

My brows rose.

“Husband?”

“Yep.”

“You wanna talk about him?”

“Nope.”

I laughed. So did she.

“He hasn’t called,” she revealed a heartbeat later, her tone broken. “I left two days ago, packed up and walked out, and he hasn’t called. Seven years together and he doesn’t even bother to make sure I’m okay.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

I couldn’t be reassuring. I didn’t know dick about this guy or their marriage. I didn’t know if silence was usual for him. I only knew what she told me, that he wanted out. He ended it. Let her walk away.

He was the dumbest motherfucker on the planet.

“Even if he knew I was living with Tori now, he could’ve called,” she whispered, then with words too quiet I almost missed them, she added, “You called. Don’t even know me, I cuss you out, and you ask if I’m okay.”

I closed my eyes.

“You’re trouble,” she whispered.

I smiled in the dark.

She yawned again, sighed like she seemed to always do after revealing her exhaustion, and asked me with the smallest voice to tell her something about myself, something I’ve never told anyone.

Something she could keep.

“Please,” she begged. “Then I need to go to bed. I start my new job tomorrow and I don’t want to look like a redheaded zombie.”

I was reluctant to oblige her request, to share a secret and to let her go.

I wasn’t done. I wanted more.

But I also wanted to give her something. Something she could keep, ’cause I felt like I was taking and taking from this girl and she didn’t even know it.