Because She's My Sister Chapter 2

Well, this was already written so I figured I'd stick it up too. This chapter is just one big flashback, explaining what Elijah was asking about.

Chapter Two

Last Tuesday, Mom had invited Elijah, Tom, and Sergeant Grey over for a kind of thank-your-local-police-force dinner. She’d made her famous turkey pie, with blackberry cobbler for desert. After dinner, they played a movie in the living room. It was The Notebook, which I’d seen already. Believe me, once is too many times for me, with that kind of movie. So I went out on the back porch to stargaze, instead. I love watching the night sky, especially when it gets cold in fall like was then. The stars seem brighter, the sharp smell of wood smoke drifts over from the Averys next door, and all seems right with the world.
It wasn't long before Elijah wandered out there, too. “Not enjoying the movie?” I teased.
“No explosions or car chases yet… I’m giving up.” He shrugged in mock disgust, coming over to lean against the porch railing next to me.
“Welcome to reality… I gave up on that stuff ages ago.” I laughed.
“On romantic movies?”
“Movies, books, the real thing… all of it. It’s so fake.” I sighed. “I mean, girls grow up expecting Prince Charming and then you keep thinking that he's coming, when he's not. It’s messed up.”
“Is there something wrong with prince Charming?”
“With the concept, yes! You think, oh this guy’s gonna be perfect and we’ll fall in love and it’ll be happily ever after. But in the end it turns out he’s a jerk. So you move on to the next one, over and over, always thinking, ‘Oh, this one will be different.’. But they never are. You never end up getting your heart’s desire and becoming a princess. You end up getting your heart broken and becoming bitter.” I let out a long breath, then felt blood rush to my cheeks. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to unleash my anti-fairy tale spiel at you.”
“No worries. I get what you’re saying. But you know, just because Prince Charming is never going to come riding up in a Ferrari doesn’t mean you should give up. There might be a Duke Pleasant with a Prius just around the bend.”
“On the other hand, it could be a pirate. On a Harley.”
“Would that be so bad?” Elijah laughed. I couldn’t help laughing, too. Elijah’s just always had that kind of laugh. The contagious kind.
I’d known Elijah pretty much my whole life. He was five and a half years older than me- an eternity away. When Angie was born he had just turned eleven. When she was two, Mom started dating again and hired Elijah as our babysitter. I know now that most people don’t leave their kids with adolescent boys, but I’ve come to accept the fact that my mother is a bit of a flake. And anyway, Elijah lived next door to us, so it was convenient. Most of the other kids lived on the other side of town, close to the school. They weren’t available on short notice like Elijah was. It worked out fine in the end, Elijah being who he was. He was always responsible for his age. He was Angie’s favorite sitter because he played with her. Our other babysitter, 15 year old Alexis from two streets over, would turn the TV on
and spend the whole time talking on the phone with her boyfriend. Elijah brought board games, played hide and seek, built forts outside, told stories, and even played barbies. Angie called him Lijee, and he had names for us, too. Angie was Angel and I, a bit growth stunted at seven, was Little Bit.
Nobody ever called me Tabitha. Mom and Angie called me Tabby, which I didn’t like because it made me sound like a cat. I was generally known as Tabs, but also went by Bitty for a while, just in time for sixth grade and the inevitable nickname “Bitty Titty”.
In her fleeting brat stage at 8, Angie would scream incessantly if Mom even suggested having anyone else sit for us. I always thought that Mom should just leave me in charge instead of paying someone, but for some reason she never trusted me to take care of Angie (even though I was the same age then than Elijah had been when he first sat for us). So until Angie was 14 and declared old enough to watch herself, Elijah came over whenever Mom had a date. Once Angie passed 10, she lost interest in games and mostly wanted to paint her nails glittery colors and have her friends over. By then, Elijah was well into college, so he usually just did his homework and ate everything in sight.
Early adolescence was not a good stage for me. I was just a little too tall for any of the boys my age, built thick and sturdy like an athlete with none of the reflexes. I still took tae kwon do, but that was the extent of my extracurricular activities. I had no close friends at school. What I did have was unfashionable large boobs, acne, and a hopeless killer crush on anything male. I skulked around the house, my nose always buried in a book, sneaking furtive glances at the babysitter, acutely aware of the cruel irony now when he called me Little Bit, yet deathly afraid he’d stop. Like a large spider skittering from shadow to shadow, equally terrified of being invisible and being seen.
By the time I again became human enough to interact with Elijah without swallowing my tongue, he had left for police academy two cities away. I left town too, last year. I tried to go to a university two states over and hated it. I rationalized my flight back home- I’d get a job, earn some money, go to community college and avoid the huge loans. Mom and Angie were running low on money, they needed me. Those weren't the real reasons, though. The truth was stupid. A bad relationship I couldn't face another year. So now I was home, and Elijah was back as well. Still male.
“But seriously.” Elijah cut through my little jaunt down memory lane. “You’re too young to give up on love yet.”
“I never said I was giving up on love… just romance. Not the same.” I smiled. He smiled back, not saying anything for a minute. “So, Miss Not Giving Up on Love. Got a boyfriend?”
I checked my pockets. “Not on me.” I shook my head and he laughed again. “No, I just got out of a relationship with this guy from college… I’m ‘taking a break’.” I made air quotes and a face.
“Awesome. So the chances of you being busy tomorrow night are slim?”
“Uh… slim to nil. Why?”
“My friend’s band is playing at Jonesy’s. They’re pretty good and they want to spread the word… you wanna go?”
“Um... sure.” I shrugged. When I was a kid, Jonesy's had been a bar, but lately it had made the transition to diner/ music venue. Angie and her friends were always hanging out there, but I had never been.
“Cool. I think you’ll like them. So… I’ll pick you up at 9.”
I swallowed. “Uh, wow… I’m such a spaz, I totally forgot. I can’t. I have a… um… thing. Meeting. With… interview. Job thing.” I backed towards the door. Elijah turned around, leaning back against the porch railing. “At 9 o'clock at night?” he raised his eyebrows.
“Uh, yeah. It’s a night shift.”
“That doesn’t make-“
“Well, goodnight!” I hurried inside and upstairs to my room, feeling like an idiot.
There actually was a halfway decent explanation for my freak-out. The thing was, the “relationship” I’d come out of in college was actually only a relationship in the sense that it had been a friendship. I liked the guy, he didn’t see me that way... which would have been fine, except he didn’t bother to inform me of that. We went out on several dates… or at least, what I call dates. Dinners, concerts, dancing, movies… we had fun. But on our fifth date, I tried to kiss him and he pushed me off, acting very surprised. He said he only liked me as a friend, and he hoped we could stay friends. I laughed it off and said of course we could, fully intending to avoid him for the rest of my life.
Instead, I got sucked into this weird little non-thing. He’d flirt with me, compliment me… we had great times. But then, every two months or so, I’d start to think he was finally developing feelings for me… and then he’d start dating someone. He’d disappear from my life for two weeks, then break up with her and come tell me their sad tale. I was like the long suffering wife to his philandering husband, the band aid to his cut, the aspirin to his headache. He started being the insult added to my injury. The salt in my wound. Basically, I was miserable. When school let out, I ignored his calls, his texts, his email invite to come up with him to Hawaii, and his final angry letter. It had taken a lot of will power to cut that boy loose, and I wasn’t about to get sucked into another confusing “Thing” with Elijah. I knew he wasn’t asking me out. I knew he just wanted to hang out, as friends. But no matter how much I knew that, there was always going to be part of me that wondered, or hoped, or wished. I believe whole heartedly that men and women can just be friends. But not Vincent and I.
And not Elijah and I.

Thanks for reading! You'll need to join in comment :(
Just in case anybody's thinking anything, nothing in this chapter is even remotely based on any of my actual experiences.

*Edit* Hey, does changing his name help, or does it still sound too much like my own experience?