this is a short story I wrote off a bit

I listened to Noah Kahan for inspo.

Happy fall. It’s almost Libra season so things will get even better soon. I’m in a great place, I feel light and excited and eager and sappy and exhausted and relieved. It was the summer of doing whatever the FUCK I want to do. I went places alone, saw a ton of movies, wrote in the notes app of my phone instead of a journal like you’re “supposed to” if you want to be a writer, ate fried food and liked it, started running for distance, not time, deleted all my social media apps and subscribed to newsletters. I thought about being 17 and 21 and 23 and how I love all those versions of myself even though she was rough around the edges in different ways. I think they’d be pretty happy with where things are.

I’m taking an improv class and this is a story about a scene I did with a fellow student the other night. It was a take over, meaning he initiated a scene from a line that another duo had spoken before us. I believe the line was “There aren’t many O’Finnean’s left,” and I took that to mean beers. It sounded Irish-y enough. Enjoy it, this is a work of fiction!

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The bottle of O’Finnean’s sweated in her palm.

The conversation went quiet. The dreaded pause. She kept her focus on the beer, hoping it would miraculously refill itself so she wouldn’t have to speak. The label curdled and she scrubbed it away, forming little white worms out of the paper. As she worked, her brother stared her down from the stool, western style. There was a greater than average chance he’d ask her again. She knew why they were here.

To stave him off, she lifted the beer to her lips, though it was nearly empty.

“Deborah,” he said. She had to look away from him. He asked again, but by then her head was titled back, savoring the last sips of shitty lager that their father always bought. She had grown up, way past the age of stealing alcohol from the garage fridge. She could drink different beers, maybe even cocktails now. But when she was with Daniel, she was seventeen again, drinking shitty O’Finnean’s out of bottles, like nothing ever changed for her.

“Deb. I need you.” She gritted her teeth. She couldn’t believe that was her name. Deborah. It sounded so mature. Deborah is a mom’s name, not her name. Deb was even worse. Daniel was the only person who could call her that.

She couldn’t believe she let herself come back again. She swore she wouldn’t. And it was unfair to her, of course. But somehow, here she was again, O’Finnean’s in hand, allowing her brother to ask her the one thing she couldn’t bring herself to do.

“You can’t.” That was all she could muster.

“Deborah. Please.” He looked eight again. His chin was trembling, just like it used to when he cowered behind her on the playground when she picked him up from school. Those dumbass kids from Lincoln called him poor and he cried about it for days, as if they weren’t and someone made it all up.

Like she always did, she considered it for a minute. Would it be okay? But the semblance of conscious she had left kicked in. Having him around meant late nights. Reckless driving. Bad men, hazy interactions. She couldn’t handle it, and they both knew it.

She exhaled. “Daniel. You can’t. You have to go home.”

He already knew she was going to say no, why did he bother asking? Why did he have to make her the bad guy? The enemy. The villain. Always the older sister who left.

“It’s different this time. Mom’s kicking me out.”

Mom was always kicking him out. This is how it went. Mom would yell and scream and throw a fit, and through no fault of his own, Daniel would really believe their mother was forcing him to leave. So he would call Deborah, begging her to make the drive to come home and pick him up. She’d bring him to the bar, and by the time they finished their O’Finnean’s, Mom would be waiting up for him, cowering by the window, her fear of the outside about to swallow her whole.

Deborah wished she was a better person and could take him away from all of this. From their mother, from the house, from the drama.

They were only six years and 40 miles apart, but lately it felt like there were magnets in their brains, and whenever he’d even think he needed her, her signal went off. She would climb into the Toyota and make her way back to the house and longingly wait for him to come outside through the garage door and join her on the ratty Camry seats.

“You know that’s not true. The phobia is consuming her and she’s just jealous you’re able to live your life. She needs you too much to kick you out.”

Daniel said nothing. They sat there for another minute, both of them reckoning with what faced him on the other side.

“I know you don’t want to come live with me, I’d force you to get a job, pay rent, be an adult,” she said, trying to make light of how shitty everything was.

He sat in the weight of her words. She pulled her wallet out and dropped a twenty on the bar.

“Come on,” she said. “Mom’s going to be waiting for you.”

Daniel hopped off his stool, making a beeline for the parking lot. Deb took her time, pushed it back and made her way out.

Her brother didn’t look back to see if she was coming.

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