The Break-Up Pact

by Emma Lord

When you have a sister, you don’t realize how much of the way you think, the way you exist, is framed not just by your own thoughts, but hers.

turning their blood into Red Bull.

back in my life because he thinks I’m broken. I wanted him back because he wanted to be back.

I shiver. Back then it felt like the grief would swallow us whole. It’s different now, more like the waves at our feet—constantly ebbing and flowing, swollen one moment and quiet the next. A tide I can dip my feet into and let myself feel, or a swell that will hit me from behind when I least expect it.

“I’ve reduced my Taylor Swift break-up playlist listens to once a week.”

“Haven’t the two of you ever watched a rom-com before? If you’re going for the fake dating trope, you’ll need a plan. You’ll need rules.”

“Fake dating aside, it’ll be nice to hang out again like we used to.”

Fake dating, it turns out, is a scam of a trope, because the effort of getting ready for the date part is still very real.

The kind that makes you linger on a page too long because he’s just put a hazy feeling into such concrete words that it pulls old memories from your own life into the text.

How I’ve felt so stuck, and even when I’ve known there are ways to unstick myself, the guilt of moving on feels worse than the guilt of staying in one place.

was. Not the way I was from the literal moment I was born, the way a sister can only ever belong to a sister, unique to any kind of belonging in the world.

“Literally every Hallmark movie heroine written into existence is ready to fight you right now.”

And there it is again, the word want, the double-edged sword. Because wanting something isn’t the same as committing to it. To understanding the reality of it.

I’m not upset because I’ve let Annie down; I’m upset because Annie isn’t around to let down at all.

We could buy so much Taco Bell with that money.