A bit of an explanation

At this point, you may be wondering why I was so worried about her being here. She was nice, funny, and while we weren’t inseparable, we got on about as well as two stepsiblings in their early twenties possibly can.

We liked each other. It’s just that I didn’t like her in the same way that she liked me. In other words, she saw me as her little brother. Whereas I’d been crushing on her since I was eight years old.

So yeah, there it is.

Now, I realized pretty early on that liking your sibling in that way, biological or not, is not exactly ideal. Even if I did have the self-confidence to tell a girl I liked her, and even if Charley wasn’t as far out of my league as she was, this was never, ever going to be something that I could pursue. But I was so far gone that it didn’t matter. I tried to hang out with her whenever I could, and she was nice enough not to be like most of my friends’ older siblings, who wanted nothing to do with them. When we were younger, we were actually really close.

Like I mentioned, I wasn’t the best-looking guy growing up, but it wasn’t like I had no attention from girls whatsoever. Unfortunately, I was genuinely so infatuated with Charley that I either didn’t notice it, or didn’t care.

It was only later, after a trip to Seville back before she left, that I fully felt the shame of it. And so, I resolved to do my best to distance myself from her as much as possible, to try and move on. We ended up growing apart a bit as a result over the rest of the year, and by the time September came around and she was off to Stanford, we were nowhere near as close as we had been when we were younger. I did miss it, of course – but I knew it was for the best. And I was hopeful that once she had moved to the other side of the world, I could finally get her out of my head, at least in that way.

And I was right – a few months after she left, I could my crush began to subside, and I felt like I could move on. Now, I didn’t suddenly become a player or anything – I was still an introvert, and one who spent a bit too much time playing video games at that. But I could actually start to go after other girls I liked, and by the time I started university as well, I was going on dates here and there, and drunkenly getting with girls in clubs like everyone else.

I’d never gone all the way with anyone though. Maybe you could attribute that to me not being over her, but in my humble opinion, I’d honestly disagree. I’d actually come close a number of times and it just hadn’t ended up happening.

Every time she would fly over to visit during the holiday, I would feel stirrings of my old feelings coming back up. But before it could actually become a problem, she would always be gone. And with it seeming more and more likely that she was going to stay in America after graduating, I had thought I could go on with my life, maybe see her at a family reunion or cousin’s wedding every once in a while, but generally just not have to think about her.

But here she was. Back home, and not going anywhere. And that’s why, despite how amazing she was (or maybe, as a result of how amazing she was), it was not at all good news that she was back.

Okay, Luke. You just have to make it through a month of living in the same house, easy.

And then there will be years of living in the same city, seeing her whenever she feels like dropping by the house, and then even when you start living alone, every time Mum and Dad invite you over, she’ll probably be there too.

Fuck.