I pinched her arm. “I’m not into strawberry-flavored lube, I prefer chocolate.” Where the hell had that come from? “Let’s keep them so that whenever we get too sad we can come in here and laugh. I’m tired of being sad, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “I really am.”
“Good. It’s done, then.”
“Sooooo, chocolate?” she asked.
“Not another word.”
“But you said—”
“—Colby.”
She pulled away. “Thank you, by the way, for being so strong. I cry over a T-shirt and you’re ready to box things away…”
“Honestly,” I said, looking away, teeth clenched. “If I start, I won’t stop, Colby. That’s not strength, that’s more like weakness and avoidance.”
“We all deal with grief differently,” she whispered after a few seconds.
“Yeah.” I stared at the pile of sex toys, then very carefully started putting them into a new box. A few Polaroids fell out of the last remnants of the pile and it was like a bomb going off in that closet.
They all fell facedown.
I stared at them.
Colby stared at them.
“I’m both curious and horrified,” she whispered.
“There’s no coming back from this,” I agreed, reaching for them. “You look, I don’t want to see my sister naked.”
“Well, I don’t want to see my two best friends naked! I walked in on them once in college and I’m still traumatized!”
“He was so loud, how did you not know what they were doing?”
“How do you know that?”
“Roommates.” I winced. “Trust me, I wish I didn’t know what he sounded like when he orgasmed.”
She nudged me. “OK, help me put this on the top shelf so the kids don’t find it.”
“That’s just what we need. Ben grabbing a vibrator and then bringing his new toy to show-and-tell.”
Colby shuddered. “I’d just tell the school that you’re into some really strange kink.”
I laughed. “Oh, is that so?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to go to the principal’s office. I’ve never been.”
I gawked. “You’ve never been to the principal’s office?”
“I hate, and I do mean hate, getting into trouble.”
I wondered if that made it harder coexisting with me in a space where I was always correcting her.
“Makes sense,” I finally said as Colby got up on the small stepladder she’d been using and tried to put the box on the top shelf.
Her foot slipped, and she wobbled back and forth trying to catch herself, but suddenly she was falling backward.