When Rosie shot of my bed like she was on fire, I knew that her call had to be important. I gave her space. But when I heard her sobbing in the other room as I passed by a few minutes later, I couldn’t stay away.

“Rosie?” I asked, pushing the door open. She was face down on the bed, sobbing like her heart was breaking. I approached hesitantly. “Are you ok?”

The answer was obviously ‘no’. Still, Rosie sat up, rubbed her tears away and tried to put on a brave face. She was such a stubborn little creature. “Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

I compared her reaction now to the way she broadcasted ‘go away’ at me twenty-four hours ago over pancakes. I decided to gamble and ask: “What happened? Who called?”

Rosie stared down at the phone in her hands. “It was my mom. My great-great aunt Soon Yi has passed away.”

I blinked. Not what I expected. To be honest, I expected it to be her father that caused the tears. I sunk down next to her on the guest room bed. It sagged under our collective weight. Well, mostly mine. I probably outweighed Rosie by a good fifty pounds. She was tiny. “Oh, Rosie. I’m so sorry. Were you very close?” They must have been, because Rosie looked completely heartbroken. The tears made little tracks down her face.

Unexpectedly, she shook her head no. “I’ve actually never met her. She lives in Korea.” Her voice was soft. “Well, lived in Korea I guess.” She dashed her tears away again.

I was now deeply confused. Still, even if Rosie hadn’t been close to her aunt, everyone reacts to death differently, and losing family always sucks. Plus, Rosie was a lot more sensitive than she wanted the world to know. I reached out my hands and took both of hers. They were so small, so fragile. I squeezed them, trying to impart some strength to her. In response, Rosie leaned her head on my shoulder and the little show of trust made my heart slam against my ribs.

I wanted her to trust me. For the first time in my life, I wanted a woman to depend on me, so I could protect her. It was a strange, vulnerable feeling to want to be strong for someone else. But at the same time, I liked it.

“I’m really sorry, Rosie,” I told her again. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

She sighed. “I’m not even really sad about auntie Soon Yi. I mean, it sucks that she’s dead, but we’ve never met. I’m sad because my mom hates me and only speaks to me now if someone in our family dies. That’s what it takes to get her attention—the death of a family member...” she trailed off in dismay.

The last time I’d asked Rosie about her family, Rosie had bit my head off. I hesitated. But as always, curiosity got the best of me.

“You mentioned yesterday that your mom wasn’t speaking to you. How long has that been going on?”

Rosie bit her lip, turning it a deeper, darker pink around where her white teeth dug in. “Basically, since the moment I started talking to my dad.” She shook her head in frustration. “I thought she was bluffing. Clearly, I was wrong.”

The extraordinary insecurity and immaturity exhibited by Rosie’s mom made me angry on Rosie’s behalf. I couldn’t imagine a world where my mom just straight-up didn’t speak to me. Literally. It was beyond my powers of imagination. If anything, I had the opposite problem. I shook my head in disbelief.

“She must really, really hate your dad to do something like that.”

“Oh, she does.” Rosie smirked. “And he really, really hates her right back.”

“Do you know why they hate each other?”

She sighed. “I don’t think they even know why they hate each other. They’re both extremely dominant, stubborn personalities. They don’t like to talk about their feelings, hate sharing details about anything, don’t feel burdened by empathy, and genuinely enjoy a good fight. When two people like that get together, the result is inevitably horrible.”

She was ridiculously wrong. “The result was you, Rosie. You’re not horrible at all.”

She rolled her eyes and frowned. “You’re sweet. But you know what I mean.”

I did. I knew the apple hadn’t fallen far from the trees when it came to discussions about feelings, which was clearly just about Rosie’s least favorite thing to do. I could tell this conversation was emotionally exhausting to Rosie. She ran her pale hands through her hair in frustration. It was still mussed from our lovemaking the night before and hung around her hair in a dark, wild cloud.

“Why can’t they just get along?” she wondered out loud. “I mean, how hard could it possibly be to for them to just be civil to one another”

Pretty damn hard because they’re textbook narcissists and total imbeciles, I thought to myself. Considering that the woman who raised her seemed like an emotional dumpster fire and immature jerk, and her biological father was possibly an actual psychopath, Rosie was incredibly well-adjusted. She’d really defied the odds by being a normal, nice person.

I hugged her to my chest and she wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face against my throat. She clung tightly to me and it made my heart throb. “I’m sorry your parents create so much drama in your life,” I whispered.

The sad truth was that there was nothing that I could do to fix any of it for Rosie. There was no fixing it. People like Rosie’s parents couldn’t be fixed by outside forces. Unless they wanted to change and put a lot of effort into things like therapy and attempting to be empathetic, they were probably never going to be any different. But if there was something I could do for Rosie, no matter what it was, I’d do it in an instant. As it was, all I could do was hold onto her. So that’s what I did.

“Hugging me helps,” she told me after a moment. Her voice was thick with tears of frustration. I hugged her tighter.

“You got it.”