Page 2 of Friends with Benefits

The twins still had another couple of hours at school. Mom was probably off with whatever bum she’d hooked up with over the weekend, and my father, who didn’t seem to care who she slept with, was no doubt glued to a barstool down the road at his favorite haunt.

I was alone.

I doubled over as the implication stabbed through me.

I was alone.

I had my family, but they were more of a responsibility than a comfort. I’d get through this for them. I had my friends, but they had their own lives, and I didn’t want to burden them–not yet. It wasn’t in my nature to lean on others. I provided for my family, working myself to the bone without any help from my deadbeat parents. I would survive this, even if it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

For now, it felt like the pain encapsulated everything, blotting out my surroundings until it contracted to a dull ache in my chest. I staggered to my bedroom with a towel wrapped loosely around my body and water dripping from my saturated hair onto the worn wood floors. I didn’t care. I couldn’t scrounge up the energy to do more than throw myself onto the bed and pull the mussed covers around me.

My phone was hauntingly silent, which only made the tears fall harder. There were no social media notifications. No emails. I knew, somewhere deep down in my soul, that he wouldn’t try reaching out that way.

He’d found someone else.

I’d supported him through his father’s death the year before. When he didn’t think he could pass his finals after the funeral, I stayed up after two double shifts and helping the twins through a stomach virus to quiz him. For his birthday, I’d driven down and taken him to his favorite restaurant, even though I was barely making enough money to pay rent and support my sisters.

I would have done anything for him.

I did do anything for him.

Was that where I went wrong? Had I made it too easy? Was I one of those women who got boring in a relationship because I wasn’t exciting or sexy enough?

My thoughts spiraled down a black hole, and I covered my face with a pillow until I’d cried myself dry. I must have dozed off at times because a sudden realization would jerk me awake, and then it would start all over again.

One day, I told myself. I’d give him one day of being upset, and then I’d push it away, bury it deep, and never think of this—or him—again.

It was wishful thinking, considering we’d been together for a long time. But the thought of feeling this way forever, of giving in to the temptation to give way to a despair so all-encompassing, was overpowering. I was afraid I wouldn’t survive it.

The front door slammed, and pattering feet bounded into the apartment. The twins were home. I shot to my feet and winced as a headache throbbed insistently behind my eyes.

“Ember!” one of them called.

“Shh!” said the other. “What if she’s sleeping?”

The first scoffed. “She’s never sleeping.”

It made me laugh. They always made me laugh. Raising them never should have fallen on my shoulders, but it had. Even with the burden of taking care of my sisters, they were the lights of my life. The sound of their innocent debate drew me from the shelter of blankets, and I glanced at my phone to find it blinking 3:24 p.m. I must have fallen asleep after my crying jag.

“Do you think we should check on her? What if she’s sick?” the second asked.

“Maybe we should get the therbombiter, Tillie.” Which meant it was Molly speaking.

“Do you know how to use it?” Molly asked with clear interest.

“Sure. All you do is stick it in her mouth and push the button. I’ll get it from the medicine cabinet. You get a glass of water and the throw-up bowl in case she’s stomach sick.”

Matilda Leanne was the oldest of my twin sisters—by a whole twenty minutes. It may as well have been twenty years for how she bossed around her younger sister, Molly Elizabeth.

The patter of their feet echoed down the hall, and I decided to wait for them to return to see what they would do. Besides, I didn’t have the energy to get back to my feet quite yet. As I contemplated getting up, I heard them return.

“You knock, Tillie,” Molly said.

“No, you knock,” Tillie replied.

“You always tell me what to do,” Molly whined, but a rapping sound followed anyway.

“Ember, are you ‘kay? It’s us.”