I handed Sumiko a box of tissues from her nightstand. She blew her noise then tossed the snot rag off to the side. Personal cleanliness was never her strong suit. When we’d shared a room, I divided the two spaces by a piece of blue duct tape. My side looked immaculate while hers looked as if a tornado blew in.

“It’s over now,” I said soothingly. “I give Big Ted the remaining money and he promised to stay away from us. It goes both ways though. You can’t return to that hellhole no matter what. I don’t care if zombies invade and that is the only non-infected area. Don’t go back there.”

Sumiko rolled her eyes like she did when she thought I was being over dramatic. “Jesus, I’m not a glutton for punishment. I know I can’t. How did you get the money?”

I wasn’t comfortable with Sumiko knowing Andrew gave me a loan because that’s exactly what it was. A loan. I fully intended to pay him back as soon as I could. Sumiko wouldn’t understand though.

“That’s none of your concern.” I fiddled with the skull ring on my finger. “It’s done. We can both move on and hopefully get a fresh start. The doctor suggested you check yourself into a drug treatment facility and I agree with him. You have to kick this habit once and for all.”

Sumiko analyzed my expression to an uncomfortable degree. A smile tilted up her lips. “It was that man you were with the night I stopped by.”

“Broke in, not stopped by,” I interjected.

“Whatever, same thing. He was the one who gave you the remaining money.” My emotions I wore on my sleeve deceived me. Sumiko punched the air in victory. “Haven has a sugar daddy,” she taunted. “Does he match your blow jobs for money?”

She was nine months older, but I always felt like the older one. Irritability crawled underneath my skin.

“Don’t act like all high and mighty, Sumiko. He saved us,” I bit out. “And stuck his neck out to do so.”

Taken aback by the venom in my voice, her mouth gaped open. “You never once defended any of your boyfriends before. You usually join in until he is ripped to shreds.”

“Things change.”

“No he is special, I can tell. I was honestly worried you would never fall in love. I’m glad you’re opening your heart.” She fluffed her pillows and leaned back. “Does he treat you right?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “He does but were you really worried?” Sumiko never seemed to care about my personal life, so this was news. “It’s not as if I didn’t have boyfriends.”

She pinned me with a look. “Those weren’t boyfriends. They were distractions from your own problems. Besides, they would treat you like garbage because that’s how you thought you should be treated.”

I stared at Sumiko as if she had three heads. It seemed as if there was an old wise woman trapped her inside her all along.

“Why didn’t you express this earlier? It might have saved me some time,” I said.

“You really think you would have listened to me?” She huffed. “Please, your head was so far up your own ass you couldn’t see the light.”

“Hey!”

“It’s true.”

After the string of her insult lessened, I saw the value behind her words. The men I’d dated were a warm body to cuddle up against at night. They were didn’t push my boundaries or attempt to eradicate the walls around my heart. They allowed me to float through life comfortably numb. Andrew had entered the scene a week ago with a hammer and didn’t stop swinging until I was naked and exposed. Literally.

Sumiko gave me a self-satisfied smirk. “I can’t wait to meet the man who was won the keys to my little sister’s heart.”

“Be quiet,” I mumbled. Done with the discussing my love life, I moved on to the elephant in the room. “I know you don’t want to talk about this but what caused your downfall? You said it was your nightmares. What nightmares?” Lowering my voice, I brought up her least favorite person. “Where they about your childhood? About your dad?”

Sumiko’s face immediately turned cold. She pushed a red button on her side table, ignoring my questions. “Stupid nurses don’t give you the good stuff unless you ask.”

I pressed on. “You can trust me.”

Her chin jerked as her green eyes reveled a chasm of broken promises. “If anything, our parents have distilled the opposite of that. You can’t trust anybody, not even your family.”

A nurse bustled into the room, carrying a tray of hospital food. “We have a delicious cheese sandwich and green Jell-O today.”

Sumiko scowled. “I want pills.”

“Lunch first.”

The tray was set in front of her and the Jell-O jiggled unnaturally. I could sense Sumiko was done with having visitors.

Grabbing my purse, I stood. “I’ll be by later tomorrow. Enjoy your lunch.”

She didn’t acknowledge me. Defeated, my body dragged itself out into the artificially lit hallway. With Sumiko, her darkness overran the small amount of light that still burned inside her. I was afraid one day the darkness would take over completely.

After Andrew and I left the hospital, we found ourselves in an old-timey diner across the street. I drowned my sorrows in a stack of pancakes while Andrew sipped a cup of green tea. His fingers wrapped around the mug and steam fogged up his glasses. They had become such an integral part of his identity, at times I forgot he wore them.

Andrew grimaced as I dragged a piece of bacon through a pool of maple syrup. “That’s really gross.”

My fork hovered over my plate. “Are you kidding me? It’s amazing. Haven’t you had maple smoked bacon? It’s basically the same thing.”

“I wasn’t allowed to eat bacon growing up.”

I almost dropped dead in shock. A child shouldn’t be deprived of delicious bacon.

“So let me get this straight.” I said. “You don’t text, you don’t eat bacon, you used a creepy abounded house as your fort, any other weird facts I should know about you?”

Andrew tapped the side of mug while he thought. “I can hold my breath for two minutes under water.”

“Seriously? What are you—part fish?”

“My mom forced to me to take a sport. She gave me three options: Football, field and track, or swim. I chose to join the swim team. It was the sport that had the lowest chance of me tripping over my feet.”

“A little gawky in high school, were you?”

“I was known as the school klutz.”

An image of a teenage Andrew, glasses perched on his nose, books clutched to his chest as he attempted to wrangle in his long limbs had me giggling. I wished we had met back then. The outcast and the klutz was a romantic comedy waiting to happen.

“How about you? Did you take any sports?” Andrew asked.

I snorted. “Me? Sports? That’s like asking if cheetahs can survive in the streets of Los Angeles.”

“So I’ll take that as a no?”

“A big fat no. I was that girl who always chose the seat in the back and spent more time in her own head than in reality.”

“I bet you had purple hair and those spiky bracelets around your wrist.”

Making a swirl in my pancake syrup, I rolled my eyes at the clique. “Not every loner in school is a Goth, although, yes I did have purple hair. Monica and I first dyed it blue but with my tiny stature, I was afraid people would mistake me as a Smurf.”

Andrew choked on his green tea as he laughed. He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. “Did you and Monica tend the same high school?”

“We did when I lived in Detroit. My mom as you know wasn’t a pillar of stability. We moved around a lot. There was one year when she dragged me to Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland, looking for the richest men. It was a wild goose chase.”

Andrew had already expressed his disdain for my mother. However, whenever her name came up, his face became sympathetic—just a hair away from pity. Since it was Andrew, I let it slide. Giving up my last piece of bacon to him, I pushed my plate away.