These Butterflies

It’s almost time for dinner.

I walk into the living room. My fingers begin to nervously fumble the inside of my pockets when I realize Matt is the only one here. I gulp as he approaches me, knowing that the rest of our family is only a few feet behind me. “Have you talked to Milan?” he asks quietly. I shake my head furtively, keeping my eyes on the ground. We both stand there silently for a few moments before he asks me another question. “Do you want to talk to her?” I just shrug, not wanting to talk, and then his tone changes. “Answer my question,” he orders.

I sigh. “Yes I do.”

He examines me. “How’s Melissa going to feel about all of this?”

“I don’t know. I broke up with her… She doesn’t mean nearly as much to me as Lani does.”

“You can’t just break up with her because of Milan,” he tells me. “Melissa is a better choice for you.”

“No she’s not. I don’t want her,” I argue, and it’s crazy. I never thought in a million years I’d be saying these words. When we first got together, Melissa meant so much to me. I wouldn’t have traded her for anything. I was so in love with her, but all of that has changed. Lani has changed everything. Nothing else matters to me anymore.

“What do you want from Milan?” he asks. “Because she sure as hell can’t be your girlfriend. She’s your sister for Christ’s sake.”

“I don’t know what I want!” I say suddenly. “I don’t even know how I feel about all of this, okay? I’m so confused.”

“How could you let this happen? How could you let this get out of hand?”

“You don’t understand. She was so sad. It was tearing me apart… She wanted me to prove that I loved her, and I did. I wanted her to know that I’d do anything for her… and now I’m realizing that I’m starting to feel the same way back,” I say, finally admitting to myself about what I really feel.

I see his eyes shift slightly to his left, fixating on something behind me. I know he’s looking at her. He looks back at me. “So you enjoyed making love to her last night? You’d rather be in bed with our little sister than with Melissa?”

“You’re making this all sound so wrong,” I mumble angrily.

“Are you being serious?” he hisses under his breath. I can tell it’s taking every fiber in him to keep from yelling. “You had sex with our sister and you think that’s alright?”

Is it alright? I ask myself. I begin to panic. He’s making me over-think everything when I know I shouldn’t. I’m going to tell Lani that I want to be with her, and he’s not going to change my mind. “It was all innocent.”

“Having sex isn’t innocent. I know you know that. Our little sister shouldn’t have experienced that yet.”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like… It was all out of love.”

My words make him upset. He tenses up and his lips press together tightly. He grabs onto my forearm, which is still sore from this morning, and he pulls me forward forcefully. He’s careful to make sure no one behind me becomes aware of what’s going on. “Listen to me,” he demands in a hushed but aggravated tone. “I don’t know care when or how this all started, but it ends today.”

“What if it doesn’t?” I challenge. His grip tightens.

“Don’t push me,” he threatens. “I will tell Mom and Dad if this continues, and I’ll make sure you two get separated.” My throat closes in at the mere thought of having Lani get taken away from me.

“You’re blowing this all way out of proportion,” I tell him.

“I don’t care what you think. If you don’t do what I say, I will do something about it.”

“I adore her,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t do anything that would hurt her.”

“If you truly love her, you’ll stop all of this.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I tell him.

“You’re just confusing her,” he says. “You’re both better off if you just go back to being her protective older brother. This… thing that’s going on between you two will never work. The longer this goes on, the worse the end will feel for her. She’ll be even more hurt and confused than she is now. I know you don’t want to do that… Just promise me you won’t touch her again.”

I want to say no but when I look over my shoulder at the dinner table and I see Lani’s little shoulders hunched as she waits for Matt and me to join the rest of the family, I don’t see a girl that I could see myself dating, someone I could have sex with. All I see is my vulnerable, innocent younger sister. It’s then that I realize how Matt can find me so disgusting because in those moments, I’m disgusted myself. It’s so hard, but I’d be crazy not to agree. If this all continues, feelings will escalate. There is no big picture for Lani and me. She’s my sister, and that’s all she should ever be. I turn back to Matt with a decision. “…I won’t,” I say.

*

I push around the food on my plate with no appetite whatsoever.

“Alex,” Chris calls suddenly, seizing my attention, “You and Melissa broke up?” My eyes dart towards Matt. He takes in a deep breath, and then I know he just told Chris the news. “That sucks, man. I liked her. What went wrong?”

“You two broke up?” our mother asks. “When did this happen?”

“I thought you took her out last night for her birthday,” our dad said. “How could this happen?”

“Can everyone just let me talk, please?” I interrupt. My eyes slowly float around the silent table. Everyone looks slightly taken aback by my exasperation. I sigh. “We had a…” My brain searches frantically for the right word, “…misunderstanding.”

“But they’re going to work things out,” Matt says suddenly. His eyes focus on me. “Right, Alex?”

His glare pushes an answer out of me. “Right.”

I hear Lani’s soft voice next. “What?” I turn to her and regret it the moment I meet her sad eyes. It makes my chest sink and I can’t get myself to respond. She rips her gaze away from me and clears her throat. “Excuse me.”

The legs of her chair screech against the floor as she pushes her seat back. She rushes out of the dining room. I bury my face into my hands before deciding to go after her. “I need to talk to her,” I say, careful not to meet Matt’s eyes. I get up quickly and jog upstairs. I catch her in the hallway.

“Lani, wait,” I call.

She turns to look at me. “What do you want?”

I want us to have some privacy so I slip her smaller fingers in between mine and tug in the direction of my bedroom. “Come in here first.”

When I close the door behind me and turn back around, her eyes are pasted to my bruised forearm. The tips her fingers run softly down the purple marks my brother created. “What happened there?”

I push her hand away and pull my sleeve back down quickly and self-consciously, covering the minor wounds. “It’s nothing,” I respond. I gulp nervously before looking into her big, sparkling eyes. “Look, I didn’t mean to make you upset during dinner.”

“Are you really getting back with Melissa?” she asks in a shaky voice. I take in a deep breath. “Please tell me it was just a lie.”

“I have to do something about this,” I tell her. “I can’t just let myself give in.”

“But last night-” she starts to say.

“Forget about last night!” I interrupt.

“I can’t,” she whispers, and I feel like I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand to see her unhappy. It kills me that I’m the reason she’s very confused and in so much pain. “I’ve been waiting for the longest time for something like that to happen… and you have absolutely no idea how much it meant to me when you told me it was amazing.”

She pulls my face closer to hers with her hands. Her touch makes my heart beat clumsily… but I can’t give in. I can’t just forget everything Matt and I discussed. I close my eyes and force the next words through my lips. “You’re never going to make me happy,” I lie.

“I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.”

“It’ll never be enough. I want to meet a girl and fall in love. I want to get married. I want to be a dad… You can’t give me any of that… but Melissa can. She can give me everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“You’re confused,” she says quickly. “It’s okay. I was confused at first too. You just have to trust me. It gets easier.”

“Nothing is going to get easier,” I say. “I was confused last night but right now… I know exactly what I’m doing.”

And it’s killing me, I think to myself.

“You can’t just take back everything you told me,” she says. “You can’t take back the fact that you made love to me.”

I can feel my chest sinking, but if I don’t do this now, I never will. “When I saw the heart-broken look in your eyes, I couldn’t take it… but that doesn’t mean I’m in love with you, Lani.”

“No,” she says, as the tears in her eyes spill over. “You can’t do this to me.”

I’ve never done anything so hard before in my life, but in the end, it will be better for the both of us. If she thinks I don’t feel the same way, she can move on and then I’ll be forced to move on too. “Listen to me. I have a weakness for you because I love you so much, and I gave in to the love I have for you last night… but I’m not in love with you and I never will be.” I’m shocked at my own tone… I’m almost starting to believe myself.

“You can’t tell me that I could feel so strongly about you and that you don’t feel the same way back at all. Alex, I’m so in love with you.” I want to tell her that I’m starting to feel the same way, that I just need a little more time to figure everything out. I want to tell her that I will never forget last night either and that if it wasn’t for Matt, I wouldn’t be questioning this at all. I can’t tell the truth now, and it’s killing me. I just stand there as the words ‘I love you too’ linger on the tip of my tongue. “Just give this a chance,” she begs.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say. It’s getting harder and harder to keep this façade up, and I’m afraid I’m going to break.

“We could have something great. Please just trust me.”

My heart is pounding. With every word she says, I just want to stop fighting these urges and tell her that everything is going to be alright, but I continue to push myself to say things I don’t mean. I’m doing it for her. “Enough, Lani!” I shout. “Why can’t you get it through your head that this stupid, completely absurd fantasy is hopeless? We’ll never be able to be together… I’m not in love with you!” I take one look at her face, and I know she believes everything I just said.

She opens her mouth to respond but she changes her mind and says nothing. I can feel myself falling apart as I look into the sadness in her eyes. She starts to cry. She looks at the ground and then tries to rub the tears out of her eyes. I take a step towards her, unsure of what I plan to do next, but before I get a chance to figure it out, she pushes me away and runs into the hallway.

My head pulses and I feel like my body is going to give out. I stagger over to my bed, none of my senses completely in tact. I’m overcome with anxiety, then fear. What if she does fall out of love with me? It’s what I want… I think. What if I can’t do the same? I didn’t want things to go like this. I’m processing everything that just happened and trying to convince myself it’s the best I could have done in our situation, but it’s only making me feel worse. I can’t think clearly at all anymore.

“Lani just ran out of the house. What the hell did you do?” I hear Matt’s voice, but I’m so disoriented that I don’t even know what direction it’s coming from.

“I told her I wasn’t in love with her… and she believed me.”