It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was bullshit in the purest form of bullshit. Aston was not my brother! He would never be my brother! Goddammit it all to hell, but he was now. In everyone’s eyes – in the eyes of the law – we were now deemed siblings.
It was wrong.
So, so wrong.
Because it meant I was officially in love with my brother.
*
Aston came to me the next morning. My eyes were swollen and sore from the tears I’d shed last night. I was outside, sitting on the porch swing, staring numbly at the empty, quiet street. He sat down next to me and the swing swayed under us.
“Elise,” he whispered, staring at me.
I blinked and turned my head to him. We looked at each other for several long moments without speaking. He appeared so gentle, so caring. Like he wanted to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be alright, but…it wasn’t. It couldn’t be after last night.
“Everything is going to change, isn’t it?” I asked him quietly, my voice hoarse.
He frowned and looked away. “I…I don’t know.”
I swallowed and glimpsed down at my clasped hands. “I don’t want things to change, Aston. Please, don’t tell me you’ll look at me differently.”
He sighed. “I’m not going to treat you differently just because you’re my sister now, Elise. We’re still best friends. We’ll always be.”
That wasn’t good enough.
“You’ll have other friends,” he then added, and I understood what he was implying. Other friends meaning other boys. But I didn’t want other boys.
“You…want me to move on to other friends?” I asked him, my meaning obvious.
He hesitated before responding, and I already knew what the answer was before he said it. I could see it in his face, and it killed me. “Yes, El. I do.”
“I won’t.” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked toward the street, my defiance loud and clear. “And you’re not my brother. You’ll never be my brother, Aston.”
I wasn’t trying to be nasty. I was telling him how I felt loud and clear.
“I know,” he softly whispered, his voice pained. “But I have to be. For now.”
I took deep breaths, trying so hard to keep those tears at bay. Then he wrapped his arm around me and I sagged against his side. I shut my eyes as he held me. I felt like I belonged there, and goddammit, it was because I did. I did belong in his arms, but the world was messy and it didn’t want us together.
When I heard the sound of footsteps and the chatter of my parents approaching the door, Aston immediately withdrew his arm and I shuffled over, away from him. Platonic positions, nothing more, nothing less. This was how they had to see us.
With time, we’d become experts at this.
*
Eventually, that moment on the porch was shelved and forgotten. We were the best of friends, together every chance we had.
Grade school was easy. It was small and familiar, and I was constantly able to rescue Aston from social humiliation when he purposely ostracized himself from the kids. But high school was filled with obstacles. While I flourished in social situations, Aston struggled to care. He was always hiding out in the library with college level textbooks spread open. He filled his head with numbers and math problems, and his intelligence was startling.
On the outside, he didn’t show emotion. His face barely cracked when he was around my friends. They didn’t know him the way I did, and I was exhausted playing two people at once. I loved him, but when he was focused on his books, he just wasn’t there mentally.
His study sessions were so intense, sometimes I wouldn’t see him for days. Even when he was around, he wasn’t really there. I hated those times because I needed him to feed me attention. It was the only way my obsession tapered off and made life bearable.
“I’m talking to a wall,” I’d tell him sometimes when I ate with him in the library. I always had my food hidden under my bag and my eyes all over the place in case Mrs Thompson, the librarian, caught me eating where I wasn’t allowed to. She was a fucking grizzly bear that woman, a king atop her mole hill.
Once, Aston actually heard me and looked up. “What do you mean? I’m right here.”
I turned to him in surprise. Then I glowered. “But you’re not really, are you, Aston?”
He frowned. “I’m not trying to ignore you.”
“Then talk to me. I’m bored.”
He sighed and slammed the textbook shut. “Okay, I’m talking to you. What do you want to talk about?”
I smiled brightly. “Anything.”
“Like?”
“What’s in your head?”