One month goes by. My father’s health is like a rollercoaster, and I cling to my sister. I cling to Ben and his new friendship. It revives me. I lose myself in Bryan. It buries me.

“Did you dance like this with Mom?” I ask my father. It is a day when he remembers. We brought his old record player to the home. My sister is sitting next to it, rifling through the small collection of records we brought here. An Eagles song plays and I dance with my father.

“Yes. Your mother loved to dance.” I can’t help the happiness in my heart in this moment. I let it swell through me. I let myself have this. It is an easy escape, when everything else looks so grim despite the sun, the warping heat.

The windows are open and I hear the other residents outside. Normally we would be out walking. But my father wanted to dance. And anything he wants, we give him. I eye the pizza box on the tray table next to his bed. We have full bellies and laughing faces. I wink at Sasha when she looks my way.

My aunt is in the corner, tidying things. Stealing looks at me and my father. She looks both sad and happy. I wonder what she feels. How the twin connection pulls at her right then. I bring her into the moment. “Aunt V, did you go out dancing, too?”

“With them?”

“Yes.”

“I sure did. Though you didn’t want me to, right, Cassidy?”

My father lets go of me, the song ending. “It’s hard to dance with your girl and keep an eye on your sister at the same time. I didn’t want anyone pawing at you.”

“Pawing.” My aunt rolls her eyes and I imagine them in the previous century. Young and dancing. Far away from Kansas, where they settled. “You just didn’t like any of the boys I wanted to date back then.”

“I sure didn’t,” my father says, walking to his bed. “They wanted to keep you in the shadows.”

Fucking and forgetting the past, this is what Bryan and I are doing. Secret meetings, and when I am not with him, I obsess. I stalk his social media. I map his relationship with Aurora. I look at hers, too. I am a crazy person. I have a treasure in my hands and I am afraid it will be ripped away from me, so I hold onto every detail. This is my addiction now. This is my focus, my well, sucking up my energy. I ignore the roses being left at my house, on my windowsill.

Bryan and I run through the field in front of us at full speed. I don't remember ever seeing him look so free, so easy around the eyes. Not even in high school did he look this way. It’s beautiful and sad. I find the sadness in the way it is brought out. By me. The one who will leave, eventually.

He is anchored, now, in a way I never want to be. We reach the barn and the rain intensifies. I am soaked and he is soaked and I want to see everything inside of him. His cowardly parts and everything vulnerable.

Everything he thinks is not enough. Maybe it isn’t enough for me. I don't know how to be seventeen again. Free and looking at everything in rose colored hues.

There is moonlight shining through the large open window at the top of the barn, above Bryan’s head. The water in his hair looks like stars; he is so like the night. I wonder what I want more. This darkness or the light his brother infuses into my chest.

“What if I’m in love with you?” he asks, startling me.

I try to hide it. “What if that breaks your heart?” I walk to him, take one of his hands in my own. “I don't know what’s going on in that storm of a head up there any more than I know what that storm outside is going to do. But I know that you can’t handle any more heartbreak. You can’t handle any more disappointment.” It’s such a laughable thing. To want to protect the one who has wounded you.

“Maybe it’s my turn though.” He runs his thumb over the back of my hand, over my veins and the truth of me.

“For what?”

“Payback. For what I did to you. I broke your heart. Now it’s my turn to be the one who gets hurt. It’s my turn to be the one who loves more. I’ve never been that person.”

“The one who loves more?” I want him to stop using a word he does not mean. He’s been in love with one woman for over ten years of his life and he likes this thing with me, because it reminds him of the beginning. I can feel it. The way he wants to fall into me, so he feels redeemed.

“Yeah. You know, I saw where that got my mother.” He ignores my questioning tone. I do not stop him when he speaks of his family. I am tired of only getting tidbits from Ben.

“Do you think there is always someone who loves more?”

“I do. Yes.”

“Interesting.” I drop his hand, my mind on my mother and father. Who loved who more? My mother who fell first? My father for being in love long after she was gone?

“So, you don't believe me?” He reaches for my hair, rubs the end of a curl in between his fingers. It’s frizzing in the rain. I love when he plays with my hair, when he traces me.

“Believe that you think you may be in love with me? Yeah, I believe it. I believe you would give anything to have something to hold onto. The world has crumbled beneath you. I’m not a lifeline. I’m not a cure for the sadness you have been feeling.” I smell beer on his breath again. It was there when I picked him up. I want to know what he is hiding. Who he thinks he can fool.

“I hate when you say things like that. Because then I doubt myself.” He walks away, to the edge of the barn. The rain falls. He looks like he is standing behind a waterfall. The illumination is breathtaking. I will write about this moment. I walk to him.

“If you loved me. If you had truly fallen for me, you wouldn't doubt it for a second. And I’m looking for nothing less than that.” The truth is, I’ve never been in love. And I don’t know how to say that. I was so lost in the idea of it. And every echo of all my father told me is bubbling up.

“You deserve nothing less than that.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

“I like you,” he says.

“That,” I smile, taking his hand again, bring it to my lips, “that I do believe. And there is nothing wrong with it being just that. Don’t force things and don't rush things. And don’t forget the other thing.”

“It all sounds romantic until I remember that I am just a stepping stone. Someone to pass time with while you pass the time here.”

“This isn't a vacation. Some fun holiday. And you know why we could never work. The other part of that sentence.” I think of my day with my father and my sister and my aunt. He is sick. Dancing and laughing cannot hide that. There is a cough that will not go away. I stayed in bed all afternoon, feigning fatigue. Instead, I cried into my warm pillow. I pulled a sheet from my closet and tacked it up on the wall, blocking out the sun. Eventually I was able to sleep. When I woke, I texted Bryan. Telling him I needed him. I ignored a text from Ben. He couldn’t give me the particular medicine I was in search of.

“What other part?”

“The reason you have to stay here.”

“I love her.” He is a good father. This I have learned. I watch them, he and his daughter.

“I know. You make me happy when I need to feel happy, I hope you know that, too.”

“I don't think I’m the one who makes you feel happy,” Bryan says, as if he can hear his brother’s name in my head.

“I know, I know. You say it’s your brother. We are friends.”

“Maybe all good things are built from that.”

“And here I thought you hated the idea of he and I even being in the same room together.”

“I don’t like it. I can’t compete with it. With him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He's the one who laughs.” Bryan sticks his hand into the rain, closes his eyes. “The one everyone loves. Because he just has fun, and he doesn't worry about anything. He doesn’t care about responsibility or the future. It was always so easy for my mom and him. He didn't ask her about the hard things. He just laughed and he made her laugh and it was easy.”

“That was his way of coping.” My sister and I handle things differently, too. She catalogues things, organizes. I find a new obsession. Because I can’t sit in a room alone with my thoughts.

“Is that something you’re assuming or something he said?” His voice has an edge, so I walk away from him.

I am pulled in too many directions. My shoulders feel heavy and I can feel a headache coming on. I wish I had time for reassurance. I wonder how my sister does it. How she did it for years. How she could be responsible for her own happiness and mine, too. Always the hand on a shoulder, even miles away. “Listen,” I start, “I don't want to get in the middle of this family thing you guys have. It’s between you two and I just, I can’t get into this back and forth. Things that you two need to hash out yourselves.” I rarely have to spell it out for Ben. He doesn’t act like the younger brother, in that way.

“You're right,” Bryan says, groaning.

“I know I am.”

“Doesn't mean I like it and it doesn't mean I am happy about any of this. Of this situation and the way he takes and takes.”

“Try again.” I suppress my own groan. I just want to touch him and feel better. It hits me then. Maybe the boy I loved is nothing but my Band-Aid.

“What?”

“You're boring me.” I want to get a rise out of him. Turn the blue away.

“I hate you sometimes.” He laughs, and it seems to be for my benefit. Almost like a little “lol” at the end of a text.

“And here you thought you loved me. Glad we cleared that up.” I wrap my arms around his waist, place my ear on his chest. I want to hear him. I want to remember it. I want to write about him in a way that will not wound him. I owe him that. “Do you still carry regret?” I ask, as he rests his chin on my head.

“Over high school?” he asks.

I slip my hands under his shirt. He is so soft. I never forgot that. “Yes,” I say. I don’t let him answer. “I don't know why I did it. Why I let myself be someone I never thought I would be. And here I am. So it makes me wonder. Was it a mistake? An error in judgment? Or is this just who I am? Forgetting moral rules and just taking what I want?” My father would have been ashamed of me back then. He would be ashamed of me now, if he knew.

“Now is different though. We are separated. Broken up.” He pulls away so he can look into my eyes. I am not sad, so I don’t show him sadness.

“She still has your last name and you’re still legally bound. It doesn't seem right.” It’s the first time I let this wall down. The first time I don’t pretend I still hate Aurora because of everything that happened in high school.

“I can't be in purgatory, waiting for our house to sell and for the divorce to go through. I can’t just, wait.”

“Funny. That’s how you have described your entire life here. Purgatory. I guess it doesn’t feel like heaven when you touch me?”

“I’ve never heard you be cheesy. I don’t like it.”

“I wish you could tell when I’m being a smart-ass.” Ben would have gotten it. I shrug the thought off. Bryan moans when I kiss him, when I bite his lip. He pulls my hair and it’s what I need.

“Fucking hell, woman,” he says, when I let him pull away.

“Yeah. I’m more like that, I guess.” I close my eyes as he tastes my neck, looking away from the open cornfield, blocking out the past that filled the space under the old barn roof.