Page 94 of Before We Break

“Bring pizza,” Clio shouts into the receiver. “And breadsticks. I need carbs.”

“If we’re getting breadsticks, I want ranch,” Lexi adds.

“Did you get all of that?” I ask.

“Got it. I’ll see you soon.”

“Pass the ranch,” Clio says.

Lexi recoils, holding her plate close to her chest. “Excuse me? Get your own.”

“I don’t have any. If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?”

She dips her crust into the cup of ranch and takes an exaggerated bite. “It’s not my fault you didn’t plan ahead.”

Clio rips off a piece of her breadstick, tossing the nub at Lexi’s head.

“Hey!”

Auggie looks up at me through innocent eyes. “Why are Lexi and Cici so cranky?”

Emma snorts, spewing seltzer down her chin.

I wrap my arm around Auggie and pull him into a hug, palming his head. “You’ll understand when you’re older, bud.”

“I wanna be older now,” he whines.

“No, you don’t,” Emma says. “Responsibilities suck.”

He tilts his head to the side, screwing up his face. “Sponsabileries? What’s that?”

“Responsibilities are the important, sometimes boring things you have to do before you can do the more fun things,” Clio explains. “Like having bath time before story time.”

She smiles at me over Auggie’s head.

Auggie scrunches his nose and makes a disgusted sound. “Bleh. I don’t like bath time.”

Clio laughs. “But we don’t want a stinky Auggie, so it’s your responsibility to take a bath at night. Right?”

He sags back against the cushions, pulling off his ears, and pouting.

I stare pointedly at my sister. “Way to bring down the mood.”

“My bad.” She holds her hands up, palms facing out. “Wait. Why aren’t you turning on Clio? I’m not the one who brought up bath time.”

Lexi snorts. “Obviously it’s because they have a thing.”

“We don’t have a thing,” I deadpan.

“You totally have a thing,” Emma chimes in.

I look at Clio for salvation.

She shrugs. “There’s kind of a thing.”

Another denial lingers on the tip of my tongue, but I choke it down. There’s no use denying it anymore—there’s something happening between us, and I’d be a goddamn liar if I said I wasn’t petrified.

Halfway through an animated show Auggie picked out, something with a family of blue dogs, Clio’s pain flared. Emma offered to spend the night at my apartment so I could stay with Clio, and I didn’t hesitate to accept. I couldn’t bring myself to walk across the hall knowing she’d be left alone to suffer. My thoughts spiraled back to the night I found her trapped in a nightmare, and I knew I couldn’t leave.