This is an entry in the
750 Word Project 2025
.
Creaky eyed and hazy I stood in arrivals at the Honolulu airport waiting to get picked up. My parents had started this New Year's tradition of flying me and my sister out for a vacation in mid January- missing the holiday crush for a few dollars less. Sure, it fucked with school- but I would never turn down a free trip to the tropics.
This year though I did have some hesitancy.
I had just started seeing someone special right before Christmas, someone whom I'd had this flirtatious back and forth with for sometime.
It was my sisters best friend Claire.
And it was my understanding that my sister Michelle had gotten wind of this.
Now I was 21, with my sister and Claire 26 so we were all consenting adults. Objectively very, very stupid and impetuous but still of legal thinking age. Michelle had always been the wild one, the loud and abrasive friend who'd get you into a fight at a bar, but also smash a bottle over someones head to get you out of it. SHE was the crazy one, not me- so the notion her bookish little brother had started sleeping with her bestie was unexpected to say the least.
So for the last couple weeks I kept waiting for the flurry of texts, or the midnight phone call and screaming. I'd no idea how Michelle had taken the news. Its not like Claire and I had done anything to her, but there was no telling how she was going to react.