It was like Whitney didn’t care.
Clay knew she did. Deep down, he knew his sister had a heart. She cried when his goldfish died, she held him when he came home a weeping mess after Marissa broke up with him, she comforted him when kids at school bullied him. But it was like she’d already seen this movie and had no interest in playing along.
He tried to commiserate with her when Mom told them her diagnosis—lung cancer, stage four, six months to live—but it was like Whitney was in another world. She got a boyfriend three days later, one who she refused to take home to meet the family, but he supposed he couldn’t fault her for not wanting to put something so heavy on him so fast. Whitney didn’t like heavy, she didn’t cope well with loss, and Clay was sure he’d get farther talking to a brick wall than her.
She loved him, he knew that much, but she started staying over at her boyfriend’s, stopped coming home for dinners and didn’t take Clay’s calls. He wondered if he’d ever see her at all, but maybe Whitney just couldn’t bear to see their mom waste away. Clay would have liked it better if he didn’t have to watch her die all alone, though.
Six months became five, became four, became three before Whitney came home again.
Rattled was the best word to describe her. She bit at her cuticles and avoided eye contact while she stood in the foyer, soaked to the bone. Whitney had walked, probably from her boyfriend’s apartment, in the rain. Her makeup was smudged and she looked like she’d been crying. She held herself and asked if Mom was in bed yet, wide, frantic eyes locked on him.
Clay nodded, struggling to find the words he wanted to say to her. Actually, that was a lie: he could think of quite a few words he wanted to say to her, venomous accusations that he wouldn’t allow past the back of his teeth. Whitney was here now. He wasn’t alone now.
Mom was already in bed, visiting hours over, but she wasn’t there to confess her sins and self-flagellate to their mother. She was there for Clay.
“He doesn’t get it, you know?”
What it’s like to watch someone implode like a dying star. There’d be no supernova when Mom died, though. Just a cessation of all she was, all she ever could have been if they’d caught it in time. A lifetime’s worth of what if’s that would never be solved. Clay wouldn’t say that to her either. He didn’t want to make his sister cry.
“I wouldn’t wish that knowing on anyone.” That felt good, that wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass if Clay had to meet and play nice with Whitney’s newest one true love. But he wasn’t bitter.
Whitney looked down, maybe it was a lethargic nod, and sniffled.
“I’m sorry I was gone. It sucked trying to come to terms with it alone and I wish I hadn’t shut you all out.”
She followed Clay to her bedroom, grabbing out clean clothes and disappearing into her bathroom to shower and change out of her wet ones. He stood in her room, pale purple and covered in pictures of herself and her friends. Whitney had pictures of herself and Clay, they were just hidden in the sea of faces he vaguely knew, but couldn’t confidently put names to. Not like he was the type to hang out with his sister’s friends, not like he was the type to hang out with anyone, really. It felt like he didn’t need to seek out friends when he already had Whitney right down the hall. He didn’t need to break the ice with anyone new, didn’t need to get to know them and share every pertinent detail about himself. Whitney already knew him, and he already knew Whitney.
It wasn’t something he’d say out loud, but he needed her more than he needed anyone else in this world.
Clay sat down on her bed, rubbed his thighs uncomfortably. She needed him, he knew that much. But he knew that not every feeling between them was mutual, not if she was sane, at least. Even with her prolonged absence, the room smelled wholly like her. Her vanilla sugar body spray, her warm sunshine smile, the worn flannel shirt she’d stolen from him in high school. The constant reminders of Whitney, Whitney, Whitney only cornered him, left him with no choice but to confront the one memory they both didn’t talk about.
Dad only left a few years ago. Decided that he had enough, threw in the towel and ran in the middle of the night. Only Whitney saw him go, he touched her face and kissed her on the forehead before he took his car and drove off to God-Knows-Where, still missing. Clay knew she had a heart because she came to him first.
She stood in his doorway, shaking in her seasonally-inappropriate pajamas, and went to his bed when he asked her what was wrong. Whitney wouldn’t say until morning. She closed the door behind her and crawled into his bed, too old to be doing so, and the touch of her cold skin nearly shot him through the ceiling. Whitney buried her face into Clay’s chest and cried. Dad hadn’t said a word to her, but she knew from the heaviness that had become him that there was nothing else he could mean by that touch and that kiss: Goodbye, I love you, jitterbug.
She was always the favorite, but Clay couldn’t hold that against her.
Whitney slipped into the doorway, holding a towel over herself and watching Clay with dark eyes. She hid her body behind the door, and he was thankful for her discretion.
It was like she knew what he was thinking, could read his every thought, twins separated by two years.
“Do you mind sleeping with me tonight?”
He shook his head. Clay was too big for her bed, but he didn’t mind if his feet stuck off the edge.
“Thanks.”
She slipped back into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar as she redressed.
Clay dug his nails into his jeans, stormy thoughts clouding his reason. If he touched her tonight, he wouldn’t be able to stop, and he wouldn’t be able to put her through that even if she happened to want it. Not like she would—she liked boys who weren’t anything like Clay, even if he wasn’t her brother she wouldn’t look at him twice on the street. She wouldn’t want him bodily, she wouldn’t want him like she wanted her boyfriend.
His jaw tightened as she left the bathroom. He could see just how much of a mess she’d left it in before turning the light off, towels and wet clothes and personal hygiene products strewn everywhere, and Clay felt a twinge of something that it was his Whitney in there, after all. She came through to the eye of the hurricane as herself.
She settled into bed with him, wordless, wedging herself against his front and folding her hands underneath her head. Her damp hair left warm, wet trails where it touched his shirt, his neck, his jaw, smelling like white flowers and clementines. Clay placed his mouth on the crown of her head and resisted every urge flooding his body to kiss her.
He hadn’t resisted last time, but he felt like he had no choice when it was Whitney who gave him that first needy, clumsy kiss on his mouth. She’d stared with terrified eyes, knowing she’d done something wrong but unwilling to say anything until he responded. Confirmation that she’d crossed a hard line that siblings did not cross, no matter what.
Clay guessed that Dad’s leaving was more than enough “what” for her to ditch that unspoken, unbroken rule. And he agreed, the way that he kissed her back like it was his first time breathing air. There was nothing pure about the way he took her mouth against his and siphoned every confused, what he’d assumed was misdirected, feeling of intimate affection directly into her. She’d held him close as he touched her, kissed her, but went no further.
She was impatient in his arms. Clay loosened his grip to let her turn, facing him with a plain look of exhaustion. With her life, with the world, with him. Whitney took control and caught his mouth with her own, one trembling hand grabbing the back of his head and knotting itself into his hair.
“I hope you never cut it.” She said it when she stroked his hair, wet after they’d gone swimming in the pond just past the trees in their backyard. His chest swelled with her compliment.
Her bed wasn’t meant to hold two people and it creaked and moaned underneath them, their kissing nowhere near desperate and heated. It was more like reassurance: I’m here, and even when I’m gone, you know where to find me.
Clay wouldn’t be sure if he’d dreamt it in the morning, her soft mouth on his, her warm body fitted against his, her hair filling his lungs with memories of solitary visits to the pond and a tear-filled night in his bed. But he treasured it, because what else could he do?
Whitney was gone in the morning, the bathroom tidy and not so much as a note left on the pillow. Clay wasn’t sure if he’d dreamt it, even with his bruised lips and the floral clementine stench clinging to his shirt.