Tense, I lift my arm from my eyes and find Morana lying on my pillow, staring at the ceiling. Her hair—silken, dark, perfect—rests around her face like an ocean of ink. She toys with a lock, coiling the strand around one pale finger.
“I don’t know how to explain myself,” she says.
I don’t know how I’ll get the scent of her hair out of my pillow.
“I’m not interested in a romance. But I do want you in my life. If that’s hard for you, though, I’ll try to find a different job. We’ll still have to see each other at family things, like Crisis’s and Crimson’s wedding to your brothers in the spring, but it won’t have to be every day.”
I quite utterly would die if I cannot see her every day. “Am I not your type?”
Her pupil cuts to the corner of her eye, fixes on me, then darts back toward the ceiling. “It’s not that.”
“So I am?”
“It’s not important.”
“I’d like to know.”
Her nostrils flare with a breath. Her chest fills, rises, falls. She says, “Yes,” between gritted teeth. “You…are.”
I am. I’m her type. I have never been more delighted in my life. “That information is better than a sandwich.”
Her pupils roll. “Sandwiches, your first love.”
“You’re my first love, Morana,” I say.
She freezes, staring unblinking. Snapping out of the trance after several long moments, she shakes her head. “I lost my train of thought.”
“You were trying to explain why you don’t want to romance me even though I’m your type.” I imagine she’s having a hard time on account of it making no sense.
“Oh.” She grimaces. “Right. That.” She sighs, letting her eyes close. “Someone I trusted left me, and it’s been years, but I’m still hurt. It’s still raw. I am, how you say…emotionally unavailable. I don’t want to be unfair to you. That’s just how it is. I like you as a person. I’m sure that’s obvious.”
“What, with all the constant bickering, how could it not be?”
She winces. “Sorry. That’s just…”
“I’m joking. It’s very obvious. To me, anyway. That’s also how I show love.”
Her face warms, and her eyes open. “Family’s never betrayed me.”
“Wow. Flex.”
She exhales a laugh. “Sorry your family sucked.”
“Most of it doesn’t. That’s what matters.”
She nods. “I want more not sucking. Which means more family over a friend or a lover.”
My heart quiets, growing more stable. “Morana. I can’t be your brother. I can’t. Not with how I think about you. Not…not with how you blush for me. It doesn’t work.”
She turns her head, facing me,flushedeven now. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Wing beats flutter in my chest. “You won’t. I promise.”
“I’ve been lied to before. I’ve heard these promises before. But I’m nothing special. I don’t have anything to offer you that you won’t grow tired of. You evolve, constantly. You grow. You attain new heights, while I remain static. I can’t picture how we’d work.”
“We’d work, because we care about each other.”
“For how long? How long will you be able to care about me if I don’t do anything for you?”
