Page 75 of Mr. Match

I push past her and go for my door. I unlock it, step in, and I really am going to slam it on her face… but she puts her foot in the door jamb and it just bounces back.

“You have something else to say?” I ask her, my anger overflowing now. She is so ungrateful.

Calm down, Kat. Just breathe and calm down.

I left to give her a different life. I left so she didn’t have to know the life I had. I left so she’d never have to think about the past the way I do.

“I’m sorry,” Lily says. “Seriously, I am. OK? It’s just… I was calling and calling. I just wanted to have coffee like we always do. And then you didn’t answer. So I came over and there was no answer at the door. And the doorman said he hadn’t seen you. And just… I got all these ideas in my head. Like you were gone. They came and—”

“Stop,” I say. I can’t bear to hear this. “Just stop. I’m fine. I was out with a guy. I have a boyfriend, OK? Are you happy now?”

“Since when?” She looks crushed. Like I just told her something horrible. “Who? You’ve been in town for like two weeks. How could you already be spending the night with a fucking guy? You’re not even allowed to—”

“I’m allowed to do whatever I want.”

“Yeah, OK.” She laughs. “Fine. And then they will come in and kill you. Do you think I want to lose you, Katya? For Christ’s sake. You’re all I have right now. And you’re treating me like I’m some nosey stranger instead of your sister.”

We stare at each other. At an impasse.

“Well,” she says, blinking first.

“Well?” I say, answering but not backing down. I’m in control here. She thinks she’s so tough? Please. She has no idea what it means to be tough. She thinks she’s so wounded? I don’t see a scar on her neck.

“I meant it,” she says, her voice soft and conciliatory. “I didn’t mean to come off that way. Do you want to get coffee?”

“I really don’t,” I say. A little surprised at my honesty. I just want to close the door and be alone. Think about what’s happening a little more carefully. Maybe take some of my own pictures of Oliver’s words, and then spend the morning lost in my head as I make it into art.

But her face crumples. Like she was just barely holding things together over this fight and my snub was the last straw. Her eyes fill with tears.

I sigh and roll my eyes a little. “Fine. OK. I’ll have coffee with you. We can go to the Fort Collins—”

“No, no, no,” Lily says, stopping me mid-sentence. “That’s why I was so upset. I got invited over to the Antimony house.”

“House?” I ask. “They have a house?”

But Lily shrugs me off. “It’s a dorm, not a house. It’s just small. Just them.”

“So… a house?”

“Kat, don’t be a paranoid freak. They’re having a brunch in like thirty minutes. And I want you to come. Please?” She bats her eyelashes at me. “Please, please, please? Everyone is bringing a boyfriend and I don’t have one.”

She doesn’t say the rest, but I can read her thoughts. I don’t have one… because of you.

Because I am a paranoid freak and I’ve been telling her since she was little all the bad things that can happen if she gets mixed up with the wrong guy. I’m the poster child for poor man choices. Not that mine was a choice, but it’s still a good lesson. One that should scare the ever-loving shit out of her.

I hesitate anyway. I do not want to go spend time with college kids. Least of all these Antimony girls.

“Come on, please,” Lily begs. “We can walk over right now, get there just in time, and then we spend one hour there. That’s all the time I have anyway. I have class at noon.”

“One hour?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” she says, trying not to smile because she knows she’s gonna get her way.

Well, maybe I can use this to my advantage. “OK,” I say. “Stop clapping like a three-year old.”

But she is clapping. That tiny little clap she’s been doing whenever she gets her way for as long as I can remember. The one where she keeps her palms pressed together and only claps her fingers.

“On one condition.”