Forbidden Currents

The first time I saw Sofia in something other than jeans and a hoodie, I was carrying a box of her mother's dishes up the stairs.

She was standing in the hallway outside her bedroom, wrestling with the zipper on a dress the color of a bruised plum. The dress was winning.

"Don't just stand there," she said, not looking up. "Either help or keep walking."

I set the box down. My arms were aching from three hours of unloading the U-Haul, and the last thing I wanted was to get roped into whatever this was. But I walked over anyway. That's the thing about me. I always walk over.

She turned her back to me without being asked, sweeping a curtain of dark hair over one shoulder. The zipper was stuck halfway up her spine, caught in the fabric, and I could see a sliver of skin through the gap. Warm brown skin. The kind you don't stare at, especially when it belongs to the girl who's about to become your stepsister.

I fixed the zipper in about four seconds. "There."

She turned around. And I forgot how to breathe.

Sofia had always been pretty in a way that was easy to ignore. The kind of pretty that hides behind messy ponytails and no makeup and a permanent scowl. But in that dress, with her hair down and her lips painted something dark, she wasn't easy to ignore. She was the opposite of easy to ignore.

"Well?" she said.

"Your mom's going to love it."

"That's not what I asked."

She was right. That's not what she asked. But I wasn't about to tell her what I was actually thinking. Not when our parents were downstairs unpacking silverware together, laughing at something on the radio, two months away from saying I do.

"You look nice," I said, which was the understatement of the century and also the safest thing I could manage.

Sofia rolled her eyes. "Nice. Great. Thanks, Matteo."

She disappeared into her room and slammed the door. Not hard. Just enough to make a point. I stood there in the hallway for a minute, staring at the closed door, wondering what I'd done wrong. That was our whole relationship, summed up in one exchange. Her pushing, me pulling back, both of us pretending we weren't doing anything at all.

---

The wedding was small. Courthouse on a Tuesday, then dinner at a Cuban place downtown that her mom picked because my dad liked their ropa vieja. Twenty people, maybe. White flowers on the tables. A cake that tasted like vanilla and nothing else.

I gave a toast. I don't remember what I said. Something about how my dad deserved to be happy, and how I was glad he found someone who made him laugh again after my mom died. Everyone cried. Sofia didn't. She sat at the end of the table, nursing a glass of champagne she was too young to be drinking, watching me like she was trying to figure out a puzzle.

After the toast, she found me by the bar.

"That was good," she said. "What you said about your mom."

"Thanks."

"I never met her."

"I know."

She was quiet for a second. Then she said, "Do you think they're actually happy? Or do you think they're just scared of being alone?"

I looked at her. She was wearing a different dress that night. Dark green. Still not the kind of thing she normally wore. Her arms were crossed, and her jaw was set, and I could see something underneath the attitude that looked a lot like fear.

"I think they're happy," I said.

"How do you know?"

"Because my dad smiles now. He didn't for a long time."

She nodded slowly. Then she reached over and stole a shrimp off my plate, popped it in her mouth, and walked away without saying anything else.

That was the first time I thought about kissing her. It wouldn't be the last.

---

We moved into the house in August. A three-bedroom on a quiet street with a lemon tree in the backyard and a garage my dad filled with tools he never used. Sofia got the room at the end of the hall. I got the one next to it. We shared a bathroom, which meant we shared everything. Toothpaste. Counter space. Morning breath and the sound of the shower running through the wall.

The first month was fine. We stayed out of each other's way. She was starting her senior year, and I was commuting to the community college, and we were both busy pretending this was normal. Two strangers living in the same house, connected by a piece of paper and a promise neither of us had made.

But you can't stay out of someone's way forever.

It started small. She'd leave her mug in the sink, and I'd wash it. I'd forget my keys on the counter, and she'd text me a photo of them with no caption. We'd pass each other in the hallway, and she'd smell like coconut shampoo, and I'd think about it for the rest of the day.

Then it got bigger.

I came home late one night in October and found her on the couch, knees pulled up to her chest, watching something on her laptop with the sound off. She didn't look up when I walked in.

"You okay?" I said.

"Fine."

"You're watching a cooking show with no sound."

"I like the visuals."

I sat down on the other end of the couch. Not close. Careful. She kept her eyes on the screen, but I could see her jaw working, the way it did when she was trying not to cry.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Sofia."

She closed the laptop. The room went dark except for the kitchen light bleeding through the doorway. She looked at me then, really looked, and I saw it. The thing she'd been hiding. The thing I'd been hiding too.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't be nice to me. I can't handle it right now."

I didn't move. Didn't say anything. Just sat there, letting the silence stretch out between us, thick and heavy and full of everything we weren't saying.

She got up first. She always did. But at the doorway, she stopped.

"I don't hate you," she said. "I know it seems like I do. But I don't."

"I know."

She nodded, once, and disappeared down the hall. I stayed on the couch for an hour, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself I didn't want what I wanted.

It didn't work.

---

The breaking point came on a Thursday. I remember because I had a test the next morning, and I was up late studying, and I heard her crying through the wall. Not loud. Quiet, muffled, the kind of crying you do into a pillow when you don't want anyone to know.

I knocked on her door before I could talk myself out of it.

She didn't answer. I knocked again.

"Go away, Matteo."

"Not happening."

A long pause. Then the door opened, just a crack, and I saw her face. Tear-streaked. Raw. Beautiful in a way that made my chest ache.

"What?" she said.

"Let me in."

She hesitated. Then she stepped back, and I walked into her room for the first time in three months.

It was small and messy and smelled like her. Clothes on the floor. Books stacked on the nightstand. A poster of some band I'd never heard of taped to the wall. She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You're crying."

"I'm allowed to cry."

"You are. But you don't have to do it alone."

She looked at me. Something shifted in her face. Something that looked like surrender.

"I don't know how to do this," she said. "This whole thing. The house. Your dad. My mom. You."

"Me?"

"You're too nice. You're always there. You always fix things. And I can't stop thinking about you, and it's driving me insane, because you're my brother now, or whatever, and I'm not supposed to feel like this."

The words hung in the air between us. I could feel my heart beating in my throat.

"Say something," she whispered.

So I did.

I crossed the room and sat down next to her, close enough that our shoulders touched. She didn't pull away. She looked at me with those dark eyes, wide and wet and terrified, and I knew that whatever happened next, there was no going back.

"I think about you too," I said.

And then I kissed her.