REGAN CARTER PLAYED the violin, and at a point, he had been one of the most talked-about performers in America’s classicist music circles. He graduated with honors from Julliard and even had an article in the Times referring to him as a 20th century Niccolo Paganini, until the accident that left him with a hand that looked alright outside but began to hurt excruciatingly if he played for longer than ten minutes as a bone inside had healed the wrong way, and an inability to play pieces like the Violin concerto in D minor. 

He also used believed in Love at First Sight, and for him, First Sight was a flight attendant he met on a flight to Boston during his orchestra days, Emmeline Hernández―whose surname used to be Carter, known to all and sundry as Emilia. Now he worked as a music teacher. 

Albeit a well-paid one.                     

On good days he was level headed and managed to show an almost obsessive amount of investment in Wyatt’s life, but when the melancholia set in he got drunk on his favorite bottle of pinot, blocked out the rest of the world, and silently binge-watched old romantic tragedies like Titanic until he’d fall sleep in front of the living room TV.

Wyatt was seven when he first walked in on his mother kissing the man who would eventually become her second husband, Robbie. His father had been on one of his many trips, Wyatt couldn’t remember where, and he had been alone with his mother and sister, Vivian. It was raining and Viv had fallen asleep in his bed. 

When he heard sounds coming from his mother’s room, he assumed the man he’d watched her let in earlier from his hiding spot from the top of the staircase was hurting her, and he rushed to her bedroom in all his seven-year-old fury, sharpened pencil in hand. The sight that greeted him would forever change his life, and when Emilia noticed what was happening she’d told Wyatt that it was all a mistake and that if he told his father she would die of a broken heart. 

Of course, Wyatt had started to cry because he didn’t want her to die, and it was never spoken of again. It took exactly almost three months before his father did the walking in. The screaming that ensued was so loud that Wyatt had started to cry, to Viv’s confusion, who did not understand what was going on but began to calm her older brother down. 

It took Emilia and Regan a year to realize that they were not soul mates and ten years later, even with their parents separated, he’d managed to remain close to his sister.

“I’m done,” Viv said. “I can’t believe that Rashad would do something like that. He broke up with you in front of his friends and then confronted you in the bathroom? Jesus, he needs to suck my dick.”

Wyatt could hear a child on her side of the screen asking her to drop a dollar in the swear jar, to which she asked him to get the fuck out of her room and he agitatedly began to whine at her to drop two dollars instead because she’d sworn again. She stood up, chased him out of her room, and then returned to plop down her mattress.

They were on FaceTime and meanwhile Me Before You played in sync on both of their TV screens. After their parents’ divorce, Emilia had retained custody of Viv and now the both of them lived together with her new husband, Robbie―who happened to be this Family Law expert―and his family in Alabama.

Personally, Wyatt felt offended, because divorces were almost always messy, but he figured that if you were going to go through with it and remarry then at least Hubby 2.0 had to be a switch up from his prototype. Robbie was plain-faced and middle class. And then there was the added irony of having a family lawyer play home wrecker.

“I mean,” he paused to blow into the handkerchief, “I don’t know why I’m surprised that things didn’t pan out the way I expected them to. It’s like I’m cursed to be single forever.”

Viv considered him, green eyes taking him in as she chewed on microwaved popcorn.

“Probably,” she shrugged.

“No, I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Like, things never work out for me… and I hate my face.”

Viv tucked wisps of curly black hair behind her ears. Apart from hair texture and eye color, Wyatt and his sister had nothing in common when it came to how they both looked: where he was light enough to pass for white, she had inherited their mother’s brown skin―which led to her sometimes calling them blanquito and morenito respectively.

“C’mon, we both know you’re fishing for compliments to get your self-esteem up again.”

At that point, Unsteady by X Ambassadors came on and Wyatt felt his eyes well up.

“Jesus you’re going to cry again, aren’t you?” his sister muttered, sighing.

“Shut up, Louisa is trying to keep Will alive,” he countered weakly, throwing a popcorn kernel at his phone screen. She retaliated by grinning as she ate her popcorn and then opened her mouth to show him the chewed remains.

“I bet none of those southern boys know how disgusting you are,” Wyatt shuddered.

She snorted, replying in an exaggerated cowboy accent, “I bet none of those New Yorkers know you’re a self-obsessed cry baby.”

“I’m not. And stop trying to shame me for being in control of my emotions.” 
He made a sign of the cross.

“Which probably explains why you’re always single,” Wyatt threw a betrayed look in her direction as she gulped her can of soda. 

“You know,” she began out of the blue, “we need to thank Mom and Dad for the genes. I mean, we constantly pig out―”

“Stop projecting. My body is a temple.”

“―and still, we don’t add weight. That’s the motherfucking eighth wonder of the world. If your body is a temple, it’s the Temple of Doom.”

She snorted at her joke.

“Haha, very funny. Speaking of, how is Emilia?” Wyatt enquired conversationally, fully aware that if they continued on this path he would cry, even without Louisa’s pitifully helpless efforts to make Will want to fall in love with life again.

It was tradition to watch Me Before You after each of his breakups because the very first time he was dumped, he and Viv had rented the show after reading a couple of non-spoiler reviews, and by the end, they’d both been crying so hard it was difficult to remember why he’d been sad earlier.
 
“She keeps trying to pull me into conversations about her college classes, and yesterday she got into a fight with Bea… about cutlery.”

Wyatt snorted. Beatriz was Robbie’s twenty-three-year-old daughter who also hated Emilia with every fiber of her being. Wyatt had met her once briefly, but he liked her.

“That’s like, so extra of her.”

“Extra is Emilia,” Viv corrected. “Anything else would be unacceptable.”

A comfortable silence descended on them, punctuated only by the loud crunching noises they made while chewing.

By the end of the movie, Wyatt was sure that he looked like a mess. His handkerchief was wet with snot, and even then his nose was clogged, his head hurt a little bit too.

“Well,” Viv said after they’d both cleaned up. “Is he out of your system?”

Wyatt nodded, still feeling like a wreck.

“Now you’re going to go and get something to eat―junk food doesn’t count―and after that, you’ll take painkillers for that headache―"

“I do not have a headache, thank you very much,” Wyatt said, still sniffling. The weight on his chest had eased off for the most part. All that remained was the last part of his routine with Viv, and then he would feel as good as new.

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved at the air in front of her through her screen as if to ward off his weak attempt at lying. “It’s not like you don’t get a headache every single time you cry.”

“I’ll have you know that I’m seventeen, and you’re almost sixteen,” he paused for effect, flipped his hair, and struck a pose. “And I’m the more attractive sibling, so tread with caution because you can’t give me orders, peasant.”

“Girl, bye.”

“You don’t want to cross that line, henny.”

“The category is,” Viv said in an announcer-type voice, “Femme queen realness.”                     

They both began to strike a series of poses, which quickly evolved into a sequence of laughing fits that made him feel better. It was never the same, but always she found a way to make him laugh.

“We watch too much Drag Race,” Wyatt commented. His feelings from earlier in that day had now become a distant memory.

“I’ll stop if you do.”

A brief pause, and then they both said, “Never.”

When the laughing subsided Viv looked at him, a somber expression suddenly settling on her face.

“Look, Wyatt, I just want you to understand that you’re strong and smart and that there’s someone out there just waiting for you.”

Wyatt, feeling the seriousness of the situation nodded, even as he forced himself to hold back a snicker.

“If you laugh I will never speak to you again,” she said and her green eyes shone fiercely. 

Viv had never been the kind to let her emotions get in the way of her logic, and she hardly ever allowed herself the luxury of being vulnerable in front of people, so Wyatt sobered up quickly.

“Sorry.”

Viv nodded, adjusting the hem of her crop top as she sat up. Wyatt marveled at how much growing she seemed to have done since they’d last seen. Contrary to what she’d said earlier about not adding weight, Wyatt could see how curvy his sister was becoming and it was almost hilarious watching her try to valiant effort at ignoring this tidbit of information.

“Maybe try to take a break from dating. You won’t die you know. I’m a fifteen-year-old who has never had a boyfriend.”

“As you should,” Wyatt muttered under his breath.

“I mean―”

Her words were cut off when Emilia suddenly entered the room.

“Viv, did you do your—is that Miguel?”

Wyatt rolled his eyes at this, recalling how special it’d made him feel when he was young each time she referred to him by his middle name. The fact that she happened to be one of the only two people (the second being Abuela) had made him feel special. 

And now it was all a steaming pile of crap.

“No mom,” Viv said, moving the screen away from her vantage point. 

He sighed gratefully. Wyatt usually chose to go with avoiding his mother if he had any choice in the matter because of how awkward and drawn out conversations between the two of them could get.

“It is him,” she declared, moving as she spoke. “Mijo.”

Wyatt caught only a glimpse of his mother as she reached for Viv’s iPad, and then he cut the call. 

A feeling of emptiness settled into his bones, with loneliness following swiftly after it too. He flung his device away and slumped on his bed.

Love, he thought to himself, we’re through.