“Chapter closed.” My sister let the book in her hand close. She is being clinical. This is her version of being strong. For my benefit, no doubt. But it isn’t working. She places the book in the box at her feet, and I feel a shiver ripple through me. I am standing in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee in my hands. The steam warms my face, my nostrils flare. I can only have a few sips. Then it will go down the drain. I don’t need the jitters that accompany this vice. I don’t need my mind wandering.

“Maybe you can live here?” I look at my aunt, standing in the hall with a hamper full of laundry sitting on her hip. Her eyes pull from Sasha, the same look of wonder there. One of wondering why she is being so stoic. She shakes her head, finds my eyes.

“No, Sev. This isn’t my town, and I’m just not up for finding my place in a new community again.” She turns and walks back down the hall to the laundry room. The silence envelopes me and my sister. I feel raw, my skin is pink and pulsing from my early morning shower. Pulsing from the way Bryan is pulling me.

“You got in late last night.” It’s a fact. There is no question there.

“Yeah.” I pull my old chair out, take a seat. “I was talking to Ben Winthrop.” I spend my nights with Ben when Bryan is busy with his daughter. Last night we drove two towns over to the drive-in movie theater. We ate popcorn and didn’t plug our headphones in; instead, we narrated the movie with our own stories. I laughed until I nearly pissed myself. Our friendship distracted me from everything. The sex with Bryan should have been a distraction from the heavy in my life, but it just added to my turmoil. My aching stomach and tense neck.

“Have fun?” Her little mask drops and I hear it.

“Yes.” I pause. “Are you okay?”

“No. I hate being here.” She places another item in the box. “And that makes me feel guilty. I miss my love, and my little girl, and I miss Dad but it’s like he isn’t even here. Just evidence of his existence.”

“I know what you mean. At night I replay our phone calls. I remember his handwritten letters. I brought them with me. They’re in my trunk. I want to put them in the hatbox, with Mom’s letters.”

“That’s a good idea.” She keeps placing books in the box at her feet. Books we will donate, books maybe I will take home. “I wonder if Mom would have been a worrier. All through our teenage years and when we bought our first homes. Suffered the latest heartache. Heard our children laugh for the first time.”

Sasha has been through the milestones a mother would worry over. More than me. “I think she would have been a worrier, but also would have encouraged us to take risks. The same way Dad did. I think he always had her in mind when he was guiding us.”

“I worry for you.” She places the large dictionary in the box.

“Why?”

“It’ll always be there, Sev. It’s what mothers do.”

I close my eyes over the steam of my coffee, quickly ghosting away. “I don’t worry for me. I’m not a little girl anymore. And you taught me to be strong. So did Dad.”

“Two boys? You’re not worried for yourself?” She smiles, and I laugh, throaty and squinty-eyed.

“It’s not how it looks. One is a friend.”

“And one is the boy you’ve loved for over ten years. Nothing to worry about, eh?”

“Yeah. Nothing to worry about.” I take one last warm sip of my coffee.

"Tell me about the things you're addicted to," I say to Ben as I sink one of my balls into a corner pocket. The jukebox at Falcon's Nest plays a One Republic song in the back room where two pool tables sit. We are the only ones there at 2 p.m.

"Running away from relationships. Avoiding my family. Folk music. New dark denim. Converse. Live music. Tiny little cigars. Blondes. Riding my bike with no hands on the wheel."

"Those are some nice things." I straighten, eyeing the table, looking for my next target.

"Those are some nice things, yes. Maybe we both stayed away from the bad shit for the same reasons. You had a ghost talking to you, and I had my father in the next room. Telling my mother she wasn't worth a damn and would never amount to anything if she left him. That no one would support the woman who left the town preacher broken-hearted."

"Shame is a powerful motivator." I listen when Ben tells me the truth about his pastor father and his mother. A truth I was never aware of. When I press Bryan for information, I get little in return. The only time I find him pliable is right after sex, which seems unfair.

"Yes. And another powerful drug. I wish he had just stuck to alcohol. Let it destroy him and only him." When Ben speaks of his father he is very matter of fact, almost clinical, but I can still hear it. The little hints of regret. Resentment. Rage.

"Sometimes when I am near you, or your brother, I can feel your feelings for him rolling off you like waves." I miss my next shot, my mind elsewhere, thinking of fading memories. Or the way the mind can wither.

"Are they the same?"

"No. Yours is anger. Bryan's is regret, sadness."

"He never could be as pissed as me."

"I think it was hard on him. Taking care of you and your mom and himself." I've glued together a story. Pieced their scraps into something readable. I need stories, true or fiction, it doesn’t matter, to distract from my own.

"I'm grateful. Don't get me wrong." He misses his shot. He isn't as good at pool as I am. My friends and I hung out here all the time. He was too cool for this place.

"Then what is it? Why do you hate him so much?" I've asked Bryan the same, and I am rewarded with anger. He closes down. The sex becomes more heated. He is easy to manipulate and I imagine that's how he saw me back then. He is right, perhaps. We have switched.

"I don't hate him. I never have. You don't get it. You have a sister, right?"

"Yes." I walk to our booth, grab a fry, and bite into it. It's gone cold.

"Do you guys ever fight?"

"Not like you two do. If she takes my curling iron, I get a little snippy, maybe. But she was like a mother to me. She helped raise me, and she’s a bit older than me."

"Maybe it's a guy thing."

"Don't be typical. Don't be a cliché. It's so boring."

"I'm sorry I'm boring you." He laughs, not rising the way Bryan would at the word.

"You're not boring, but you're sure acting boring. I need you to surprise me. I'm addicted to surprises." I watch him walk to me, take his seat. He leans forward and rewards me with his wide smile.

"Two boring addicts walk into a bar..."

I cut him off. "Don't call us that. We don't suffer. So many suffer. We are fucking lucky, you hear me?"

"I do. And I know it."

"Let's get out of here." My voice sounds strange. Like I'm suggesting something. And maybe I am. I'm tired of the games Bryan and I play. With Ben, it's easy. It's fun. It isn't torturous, and I don't want to cry when I leave him, I don't want to shower off shame, and I don't want to pull my brain from my skull, smash it on the curb.

"Where to, Sevvy?"

"Did you do all the things popular kids did in school? I wish I could say I knew what you were like back then. But it's just a glimmer. You were younger, and I was walking around with my head in the clouds or halfway up your brother's ass."

"It's nice to see things have changed." Ben grabs his wallet and fishes out a twenty, dropping it on the table next to our check.

"Oh, shut up. I have the upper hand now, maybe." I wink at him.

"Denial looks good on you." He musses my hair, and I wish then that I had more guy friends. I've never really had one.

"Okay, maybe I don't. But seriously. Tell me." I walk out of the Falcon's Nest, and it feels good to be seen with a Winthrop boy. To be out of hiding.

"Like what kinds of things?"

"Parties, sex, alcohol, cruising." He raises his hand to his mouth like I am being scandalous, so I punch him in the arm.

"That, yeah, I did those things. Why?"

"I don't know. I guess I wanted you to show me one of those things, but now that I've listed them all out, I realize I've done those things. Maybe it was later in life, but I see now that I wasn't missing it then. You know, I can't even fathom teenagers having sex. It horrifies me. Because I know I wasn't ready back then. Who did you lose it to?" I reach the passenger door of Ben's Jeep and open it, staring through to the other side. Ben hops in and looks over at me. I am wagging my eyes like an idiot.

"Farrah Gustaf. Get in, weirdo."

"Oh, she was cute!" I slam the door and reach for my seat belt.

"Very. And experienced. Willing to teach my dumb ass a thing or two. Want me to show you what she taught me?"

"Shut up. C'mon. Let's go. Let’s get out of here." I grab his keys from his hand and push them into the ignition.

We end up down by the creek. I shiver, and it's not just the water that makes me reach for the jacket I have in his back seat.

Ben skips rocks and seems oblivious to my body tremors.

The first time I was here I was a shy virgin. And I was with his brother. The second time I was here I was having sex against a tree. And I was with his brother.

I am playing with fire. I've always known it, but it hits me full force.

I like them both, and I have been trying to deny it. They say the heart wants what it wants, but I'm not sure what she is saying right now. It's more like my fucking loins. I want them both, and the fact that they are brothers makes me seriously wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. Is this what kinky is? No. I’ve never considered myself that word. Maybe I am just a little...selfish.

They clearly have their issues, and I am becoming one of them. Or maybe that's my arrogance talking. My newfound arrogance that Bryan says I have acquired.

He is an ass. It's not arrogance. He just can't handle the fact that I grew a backbone. That being away from this small town and the cliques and cheerleaders made me realize that none of that shit matters.

I am pulled from my thoughts when my situation gets a little shittier. I see Ben taking his shirt off by the end of the bridge.

"What the fuuuuuck are you doing, bro?"

"I'm not your bro." He starts taking his shoe off, hopping on the other.

"As long as you call me whatever the hell you want, I'm doing the same, Benjamin."

"Hey, I like that. It's sexy. Makes me sound smart." The other shoe is gone.

"You are smart."

"Marry me." His pants come off.

"I'll marry you if you stop taking your clothes off."

"Okay, I know you've never been married, but that's the opposite of how it works."

"Seriously though. What are you doing?"

"I'm unburdening myself. One sock at a time." He throws a sock in my direction, and I dodge it, barely.

"What are you unburdening yourself of?"

"Clothes. Expectations. Hereditary traits. Dreams. Lies. False hope."

"Do you feel lighter yet?" I walk in his direction.

"Yes. Just speaking it out loud. You should try."

"To unburden myself or to take my clothes off in front of you?"

"Whatever makes you feel better."

"You should have taken me here after prom. I would have cried less." I remember the night, his attempts to make me smile. The burn of alcohol down my throat. He succeeded then. He succeeds every time I see him now.

"It was the rainy season."

"Would have been a great reason to take that dress off." I reach for the hem of my shirt, pretend I am going to take it off.

"Don't do that." Ben's face is serious.

"Do what?" I drop my shirt.

"Rewrite the past in your mind, in casual conversation. Don't pretend it was different. The sooner you see things for how they are, the better."

"And how are they? How are things?"

"I think you know. But the lie is sweeter." He blows me a kiss.

"What's the lie?" I am no longer distracted by Ben's body, his mouth. I am focused on his words.

"He likes you."

"You don’t think he does?" I cross my arms, widen my stance.

"He likes parts of you. He likes the parts of you he wishes he had in himself. Traits he thinks will wash all over him, and he thinks he can absorb you."

"Maybe that's okay?" I want to convince myself, but when he says it like that, I know the truth.

"If you want to be his personal good mojo scrub, okay. Go for it."

"Maybe I do. It's just for the summer, right?"

"It doesn't take long to scar someone. And it'll just be one scar right over another one. At least let someone new take a crack at it."

"I can't tell if you are hitting on me, if you just want what he has, or if this is just the way you talk. I don't even know you, if you think about it. I didn't know you then, and I don't know you now."

"You know me now. Don't worry about little sixteen-year-old Ben."

"Okay."

"And don't worry about teenage Bryan and teenage Severin. Stop this obsessing."

"Okay."

"It creeps me out when you agree with me."

"Okay." I bite my lip.

"Stop it."

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, that just turns me on."

"Stop! I don't want to see it!" I let go of my angry stance, raise my palms, so they are blinding my line of sight to his dick, covered in nothing but tight boxer briefs.

"Okay, okay. Let's just relax and quit talking."

"No matter what you say it just sounds like you're hitting on me now."

"Get in the water. It'll feel good to get wet."

"I hate you." I strip.

The water feels good. My skin is still a little sunburnt, and it soothes when nothing feels soothing these days.

Ben spins in the water, his mouth just under the surface.

"Do you feel unburdened?" His cocksure grin makes me warm again. I like his friendship. I expected to come home to a friend, but I was wrong. I love my sister, but I don't want to burden her with any of my worries or sadness. She carries too much on her shoulders.

I shrug. "I feel...warm."

"Warm is good, right?"

"I don't know. I feel like I've been living in fucking hell here. Did you know my old house doesn't have air? I am literally sweating off precious pounds." I had already lost enough weight when I found out how sick my dad was, and I couldn't make it home fast enough. I blamed myself and hated myself. When stress hits, I don't eat, I close up.

"How does it feel to stay in your old room? I couldn't bear to go back to mine. I'd rather not choke on nostalgia."

"It feels, weird." I don't tell him about all the nights I have been spending at the school, with Bryan.

"I like weird. It brings out the truth in us. How's this feel?"

"I told you. Warm."

"Not the water."

"I missed the stars. Everything is quiet here, and maybe it's not all bad. Where do you think you'll end up when you settle down?"

"Maybe someplace like this. Maybe a city. I'm still trying things on. It's nice not to be tethered to anything."

He makes it easy to remind myself that I can't get caught up in that smile. In his voice. Not that I want to be tethered to someone. Or maybe I do. I confuse myself, so the last thing I expect is to make sense to anyone else.

"I love the city. I love to disappear,” I say. I miss the sound of horns blaring and voices in the streets. Sometimes silence is too much. My addiction seeking mind wants to fill the void. And maybe that's what I'm doing with Bryan. "Have you ever lost yourself in someone?” I ask.

I hear the water rustling around him. I turn to see if he is coming toward me. He isn't; instead he is running his hands through his hair.

I watch his skin, the light playing with it. I don't know why I ever thought he wasn't as beautiful as his brother. He may be more beautiful. Because he is untamed. He looks like the sun. Tan skin and a smile that burns you.

"I had a pretty crazy affair with this girl a few years ago."

"Affair?"

"No. Sorry, not the right word. Relationship, I guess. It was like a six-month thing, but it was intense. The kind of thing you think you'll never recover from. But I did. I did, but she's still there." He points to his chest. "You can move on from something, but always have this piece of a person in you."

I envied him. Had I ever had that? No. A high school crush hadn't altered me. It was the fantasy of it. Not anything real. Not anything real between me and Bryan.

"I think that's a beautiful thing to think."

"To know. So, yeah. You love my brother."

"No." I cross my arms over my chest, rise from the water. I am not surprised by my answer. Teenage Severin always wondered, then convinced herself she was in love. But I knew the truth now. "I've never been in love. Can you believe that?"

"Yes."

"What? Why can you believe it?"

"I don’t know. You're all spark. All smart-ass comments and 'trying to make up for lost time' and that can lead to the tallest walls around someone."

"You always have all the answers." I splash some water at him.

He lets it hit him in the face. “Fake it ‘till you make it, that's what I say."

"Can I tell you something without you letting it go to your head?"

"I can't make that kind of promise." He wipes the water from his face.

"Okay. Whatever."

"Spill it."

"You're my only friend here."

He doesn’t laugh at me. I expect a joke. Something to make the moment...less. But it never comes.

"You're not my only friend here, Sevvy. But you're the one I like the most."

The moment reminds me of something my sister said once, about intimacy. About opening yourself up to vulnerable moments and words that want to open you up, belly first.

"This is, weird," I say.

"I can be nice."

"I know. Just don’t get too nice."