I was drunk when the phone call came that Talia and Tara had gotten in a car accident on the way home. I sobered up too quickly after that.

When I got to the hospital, Talia and Tara's parents were there. They had seen me, smelt the stench of beer on me, and looked at me as if I were dirt. Then they'd told me that Talia was dead and Tara was out cold.

I stayed long enough to make sure that Tara woke up. But when her eyes opened and I saw the same green eyes that Talia, just earlier that night, had used to look up at me and say, then you drive us home, my lungs froze up. I couldn't stand there and look into those green eyes and know that Talia would never open hers again.

Talia was dead.

Talia was dead because of me.

Because I had stomped away, like a petulant child, instead of driving her home.

Because she had broken up with me.

Because Tara had kissed me.

Because Tara had somehow, somehow gotten it into her head to screw up my relationship with her sister – the sister she had always been jealous of.

And because it was easier than hating myself, I started hating Tara.It didn't occur to me until later, much later, that Tara could've been telling the truth.

---

I love you, Tara had said that night.

I love you.

Two sisters falling for the same guy. That's every guy's dream, right?

It was a fucking nightmare.

The first time I had an inkling of the truth was the first time I stayed after the sex. I'd fallen asleep and woken up to the sight of her cuddled against me. She had her arms around my neck, her cheek against my chest. I pushed away a lock of hair to expose her spiky eyelashes, still wet. She had been crying.

"Dyl," she whispered. I froze, but she didn't wake up.

Shit, I remember thinking, tracing the path of her tears with my thumb. What have I done?

But for a moment, I was almost happy.

Maybe it was selfish. But that, I think, is what loss does to you. It makes you realise, all too acutely, just how little you matter in the grand scheme of things. That death can come and touch the corners of your life at any time. That if someone so close to you could be gone so suddenly... you could be next.

And it is this realisation that makes you selfish.

Talia was dead. Gone. But Tara... Tara was here. She was the closest I could ever get to being with Talia again.

And if she loved me...

I needed... I needed someone to love me.

And then in the next vein of thought, self-preservation kicked in – No.

She couldn't love me.

I needed to believe she didn't love me. I needed to believe she had lied.

Because if she hadn't lied that night... It would've been all my fault.

I knew Tara slept with other guys. I never found out how many for sure, until that day at the diner. I admit, I had brought Annie to piss Tara off. I wanted to push her away. I wanted to hurt her.

I also wanted her to care.

She hadn't cared. She'd thrown the number in my face – sixteen. She had slept with fifteen other guys in the few months we had been fucking. I was just a number to her.

That assuaged my guilt for a while.

Until that day, at yet another party, in that storage room with her. The moment she had tried to plead with me, I had known. She hadn't been lying the night Talia died.

The truth had sunk in then.

It was my fault.

It was all my fault.

---

I know what people say about us, when they see Tara and I walking together now, down the same streets where Talia and I used to walk hand-in-hand. And I know how it makes Tara feel. She pulls her hand quickly out of mine every time someone so much as glances at us. She turns away from me, mid-conversation, when someone walks past. And, although I know her relationship with her father is slowly improving, she has never, ever brought me home to dinner.

I know people – my own parents, specifically – think this is a summer fling. A special mourning of sorts. The kind we used to do. The kind that stops when we go back to college for the new semester.

They don't remember that our colleges are just thirty minutes apart. They don't know that the apartment I'm renting is just fifteen minutes away from her dorms. I almost ran into her, twice, in our first year away at college. I crossed the road to avoid her, both times. They don't realise just how easy it is to run into your past in the city, even with four-million-to-one odds.

They don't understand that if we don't last, it will not be because of geographical distance.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking that we should just end it. Cut our losses and run, far, far away. Find something new, something – someone that isn't a constant reminder of this chapter of our lives.

Yet... I can't stay away.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with her. Ironically, she doesn't believe me. I see her casting quick glances at me sometimes, wondering. I know she goes back and forth in her own mind, making lists, making excuses. Hating me one moment, loving me the next. But she stays with me. Just like I stay with her.

I know she wonders how long love born out of guilt lasts.

I don't know, but I wonder how long guilt born out of love lasts.

---