Always Us

sister's keeper pt. ii

Staring up at the ceiling, Gianna drew out her sigh until her lungs were depleted and aching. For several seconds, she held her breath, waiting. But nobody looked up. Not even a fleeting glance thrown her way. Gasping for air, she sucked in another gulp to start all over.

"GiGi," Caleb cut in before she could kick off another whistling groan.

Gianna snapped out of her reverie to address the room. "How come Caleb gets to have his girlfriend over, but I'm stuck here rotting in the dust?"

"Audrey came to drop off his assignments." Olivia didn't bother to look up from her work. Highlighter in hand, she swiped the fluorescent yellow across a line of text.

"This isn't the stone age, mom. All our assignments are online. Who even uses paper anymore?"

Olivia's eyes met her daughter's over the top edge of her printed article.

"Oh, and I brought this for you," Audrey said, smiling. She left the nook of Caleb's arm to lean into the backpack at her feet. She handed Gianna her school iPad. "You left it in class last Friday."

Gianna snarled under her breath. "You were more fun before you started fucking my brother."

Audrey smiled, rolling her eyes. "I love you, too, GiGi."

The two of them used to be best friends. And when Gianna wasn't being dramatic, they still were. Audrey lived down the street from them. When they were ten, Gianna had seen her biking along the sideway on a neon pink bike. Her elbow pads were a shiny green color that caught the James girl's eye. Excited at the prospect of a new friend, she had run all the way from the garage until her body slammed into the front gate, her fingers gripping the iron, her cheeks squished between the bars.

Panting, she introduced herself. "Hi, I'm GiGi."

The girl had looked at her, cautious for a second, before letting a smile break through. "Hi, I'm Audrey. I just moved in with my mommy and daddy."

"You want to be friends?" That's how simple it had been back then.

"Yeah, okay." Audrey beamed. "We live in the big gray house over there."

Gianna strained to look down the road, but couldn't with the way her face was wedged. "We live here," she offered instead.

"Who's we?" Audrey's eyes drifted behind Gianna.

"This is Caleb."

And that had started it—the biggest and only crush her twin brother ever had.

"So, Audrey, have you decided on a school?"

Gianna's gaze unlocked from the nuzzling couple on the opposite side of the couch. "They're going to end up in LA, mom. Both of them."

"We don't know that, G," Caleb said. "Audrey's still waiting on acceptances."

"Okay," Gianna retorted.

"I may end up elsewhere, too."

"Be for real. You're daddy's little protégé, following in his footsteps. We all know what's gonna happen. You're gonna marry your high school sweetheart and play for the Rams." Gianna paused. "You think you're going to have five kids, too?"

At the same moment, Audrey's eyes widened and Olivia capped her highlighter.

"Two. Max." The words slipped out without a thought, and Audrey immediately wished she could swallow the words back up.

A smile remained stretched across Gianna's face, her eyes bouncing between the people in the room. It was clear from her brother and her friend's faces that they've had this conversation before. It was even more clear from her mom's face that she was seeing the same thing. A giddiness rose within her.