"You 'ate éclairs'? Is that code for something?" Tisper's cell phone slipped from her shoulder and she caught it with her free hand—the other far too occupied painting he toenails the fleshy color of a ripe peach.

"Yeah," Jaylin said on the other end. "It's code for we ate éclairs. Alex told me to come by after work, so I did and...he was just kinda there."

"Alex Sigvard?" Tisper replied. "I thought he was the dictionary definition of a richling. Like, Richie Rich rich, minus the dog."

"He was. Or he looked like it in those photos, but he's weird now. That kid, the one at the back of the bus the hides in his hood the whole ride. Maybe it was Anna."

"What about Anna?"

Jaylin was chewing on something. Probably cereal—he was always earing cereal. "The dead part?" he said with a mouthful.

"Wait, Anna's dead? Since when?"

"I know about as much as you do." He sighed and the sound was harsh against the speakers. "It's not like I could just ask Alex."

"Jay, you work in a library for shit's sake, do some research."

"I would," he groaned, "if Matt wasn't always distracting me. He's trying to win you back, you know."

Tisper clicked her tongue, lathering the last toe in paint. "Remind me to fetch him a participation trophy."

Just as she was screwing the cap back onto her nail polish, a gentle sound tapped at her door. She hopped to her feet, carefully curling her toes up as she crept along the cream-beige carpet—one already spoiled with stains from the night Jaylin drank himself into a sloppy, clumsy stupor and spilled his vodka cherry-cola and then soon after, the contents of his stomach.

"He's a good guy, Tis. He just made a mistake."

"No, I made the mistake," she said, unlatching all four locks. "By thinking he was anything but—"

As the door swung open, the phone nearly slid from Tisper's hand. It was like staring in a mirror. Same height, same heart-shaped face, same dark freckles in his eyes. Her own past was alive before her, tapping out a cigarette on the stoop of her apartment. He took one long look at her, dark locks windswept along his forehead, and there was a glisten of conviction in his eyes—one Tisper latched onto long after the man had traded it for a smile.

"Hey," he said.

Tisper crossed her arms, rubbing her skin like it was cold. It wasn't, but the chill bumps told another story. She stepped aside, her mouth still ajar, searching for words or sounds or something to fill the silence.

He gave her a hesitant look, seeking permission to enter. Tisper could only slouch back a step and let him stroll in, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"Nice place."

Tisper, still rubbing at her arms, looked to him briefly. Then away again. "Phillip, why are you here?" Then she remembered that Jaylin was still on the line. She brought the phone up and said, stuttering, "Jay, I'll call you back." Tisper didn't wait for a response. She hung up, and dumped her cell into the front pocket of her shorts.

Phillip took a slow spin around, smirking at the decorative posters and pink décor. But the way he smiled fondly seemed nothing short of forced. "Work. We're looking to open a place up here. Seattle's the millennial hotspot. We need all the young, brilliant minds we can get."

"So you're...staying?" Tisper managed.

"No. Not until we open our first office in Washington. We're doing well enough in San Francisco—don't see why it'd be a problem. Our financial team's prepared. Handful of developers are ready to make the transfer. Just need some new recruits is all, then yeah—I plan to move the family back up here." He talked like he owned the company. And maybe it was some kind of feat to be throned Development Lead fresh out of college, but Phillip's new social networking game was nothing more than a glorified dating app with VR capabilities. And it wasn't hard to get places with the silver spoon of nepotism that had been thrust in his lap at birth. His own silver spoon and the one that had been stolen away from her.

"Relax," Phillip started again, before Tisper could think of a properly contrived congratulations. Her displeasure must have shown on her face. "We'll be living in the city. Or maybe move the west with Ma and Pa in Olympia, until we can find our own place. Do you know if they still have property by the waterfront? I guess you wouldn't. Still not on speaking-terms, huh?"

"Why are you here, Phillip?" Tisper asked again, but this time the dander spilled through her teeth.

"I just told you—"

"Why are you here? In my apartment?"

"I wanted to stop by." His brows slouched—confused or hurt, Tisper couldn't tell. But she knew just why Phillip had come by. It wasn't to bid her hello. Her mouth tasted like dust.

"If you're looking for someone to showboat your beautiful life to, try Mom and Dad. You have nothing to prove to me, so leave me out of it."

Phillip looked at her incredulously. "What the hell is your problem? I just came by to see how you were doing."

"Oh bullshit." Tisper's feet were moving before she knew it. She caught him by the shoulder of his vest and steered him to the door. "You haven't given a shit about how I was doing for a good seven years. You didn't come here on behalf of me, you came to brag about your business and your fancy house, and your pregnant model fiance. And I don't give a shit, Phillip! I just don't give a shit. To answer your question, I'm doing great." Tisper threw the door open, the handle smacking against the cracked indent in the drywall. "Now get out."

Phillip cut into her stare, his own sudden glower drowning out the fire in her. There was the Phillip she knew. There was the short fuse, the sharp face, the superior tilt to his chin. He clapped a hand around the wood and slammed it shut again.

"Despite what you've been telling yourself and your dirt-bag friends, it's not my fault you're miserable here." Spit flew from his teeth. Tisper could feel a wet flake of it hit her cheek. "It's not my fault you ruined your life. I mean look at you, what is this? What have you done to yourself?" Phillip asked, but this time, there was humor behind it. A pitiful kind of laugh that brought a sting to Tisper's eyes. "What the fuck did you do, Steven?"

Tisper shoved him suddenly—shoved him harder than she had ever shoved anyone before. Phillip stumbled back and nearly fell, tripping over the welcome mat.

"Don't ever call me that." Tisper's rage thundered off the walls, but there were cracks in her confidence where the hurt shown through. She was quick to seal them up again. "Get out of my apartment, Phillip. Get out now." She shoved him again—shoved him hard past the threshold, so hard he had to catch himself on the staircase railing. He could have toppled over if she'd put any more force into it. She didn't care.

He turned, mouth open, like there was something else he wanted to say. Tisper didn't want to know the kind of ignorant shit that would fall out next, so she spoke first: "Wherever you decide to settle down, keep yourself, your wife, and your rotten crotch-fruit the hell away from me." She'd nearly shut the door then, but paused mid-close to swing it open again. "And it's Tisperella, you piece of shit."

Then she sent the door slamming.

-

It was half-past midnight when Jaylin watched the words scroll along the notification bar of his cell phone screen.

I need your help, she wrote. Please.

It wasn't unusual for Olivia to summon him in the peak hours of the night. Another spat with Tyler, probably. But even if Olivia really did need him tonight, Tisper needed him more.

He tucked his phone away and nestled into the passenger seat of Tisper's convertible, twisting a fry between his teeth. They'd gone out for a midnight snack and settled in a clearing to watch the moon. It was almost like a tradition between them, watching the moon, eating the very food that would kill them young, and complaining about the lives they were leaving an inch further behind every day. It never got old for Jaylin. There was far too much to complain about.

Tisper had only taken a bite of her burger, and Jaylin noticed the way she picked off each sesame seed one by one. "I can't hate him. God, I want to though."

"I know," said Jaylin.

"I knew better than to trust him. I knew when Grandma came over to tell me he was in town, it was a warning. But I still let him in, I shouldn't have done that."

"He's your brother."

"Yeah, he is." She sighed, something soft and unsure. "He was my best friend until I was thirteen years old."

Jaylin knew too well what Phillip was to her before. The sweet, big brother by five-minute's time that would gladly let her have the first-player controller because she could never get used to watching the bottom of the screen. He was sweet milk at night when she couldn't sleep and a warm hug when sleeping was all she wanted to do. He knew how much she'd loved him before he stopped loving her.

"I hate knowing he's only so far away." Tisper chewed on the tip of her straw. "Why couldn't he have stayed gone?"

Jaylin sighed and flicked the salt from his fingertips. Phillip had been his friend too, at one point. A long, long time ago. He was as dead to Jaylin as Tyler was.

He passed Tisper the carton of fries. "They say the Puget Sound is ground zero for the next catastrophic event. One day, that mountain's gonna blow and Seattle will be nothing more than a cesspool of sticky hot mud. If God could do us one solid, he'd wait until Phillip moved to the city."

"Knowing my luck, you and I would be the ones drowning in mud." Tisper frowned and burrowed into the back of her seat, watching the tiny freckles in the sky overhead. "Phillip would win a million dollars at the last second and buy himself a jet. He'd escape with his money and Estella and the kid, and they'd live happily ever after in an apartment in New York, or a beach-side bungalow in Maine. And I'd be stuck under thirty feet of mud—"

"It'd be way more," Jaylin corrected her.

"Fine. We'd be stuck under a shit-ton of mud, frozen in timelike disgusting little bugs in resin."

Jaylin shifted in his seat, kicked his legs up on the dashboard. Tisper didn't shove them off like she usually would. "I don't know," he said, snatching another fry. "That doesn't sound so bad to me."

"Being frozen in time like that doesn't sound bad to you?"

"I doubt the bugs ever minded." Jaylin shrugged his shoulders and gave her a lopsided grin. "Plus, we'd never have to grow old."