Campus had emptied out for winter break. I took the weekend to sober up. Polo was coming to visit me for the holidays, and I needed to protect my little brother from myself.

Tara: Distraction.

Jay: Hey, love. What’s going on?

Tara: Trying to sober up before my brother gets into town.

Jay: Haha, oh dear. And how is that going?

Tara: Not too terribly. I’m just drowning my sorrows in Chipotle instead.

Jay: Tsk, tsk. What sorrows?

Tara: Blah, a boy.

Jay: :D

Tara: Stop laughing at me!

Jay: I’m not laughing at you. Well, I am, a little.

But only very fondly and not a little bit in exasperation.

Tara: I know, I know.

Jay: Sigh. Me too.

Tara: What’re you up to?

Jay: Packing.

Panicking.

Tara: NYC?

April?

Jay: I know, I know.

Tara: Sigh. Jay.

Jay: It’s the last attempt, dear girl.

Tara: And what if it doesn’t work?

Jay: Then it doesn’t work?

Tara: Really? Just like that?

Jay: Not at all. But the consequences are rather too awful for me to think about right now, if you don’t mind.

Tara: Oh, I’m sorry!

Jay: Nothing to be sorry about

Tara:

Okay, I’ll let you get back to packing. Thanks for the quick talk—it always brightens up my day

Jay: Haha. Mm. You remind me of a song.

Tara: A song?

Jay: A good song.

Tara: Which one?

Jay: I try so hard to be good, to be good I wish, I wish, if only I could

Tara: Mm. What song is that? I’m googling it to no avail.

Jay: Haha, you won’t find it on Google. They only play it at this one shady little bar in London.

Tara: Who’s they?

Jay: A ragged bunch of guys. Bad doctors, good ones, plumbers, painters, bankers, priests.

Tara: I’m going to go looking for it, someday.

Jay: You should

Polo and I are both fond of being plonked into the centres of great, dirty, busy cities, so we went to Chicago. It was nearby, and it wasn’t New York.

He is five years younger than me. He had always been a nice kid, and I think he might grow up to be a great man. I spent our childhood bullying him mercilessly, believing it an elder sister’s birthright. Ever since I left home, though, some sort of distance-activated change had manifested itself, growing over time. Now, my insides twisted with affection when I watched his little head bobbing about in the pool and felt a fierce maternal instinct rise to panic when he came home nursing tennis injuries.