Part 1My Sister Loved My Boyfriend First

After a devastating breakup years ago, my sister Delia decided that every man on earth was fundamentally broken.

The day I introduced her to Ted, she didn’t even try to hide her cynicism. Looking right past his polite smile, she said, "He’s no different from the rest of them. Eventually, Meg, he’ll break you."

I frantically tugged at the hem of her sweater under the table, my face burning with embarrassment. But Ted didn’t flinch. He didn’t get angry. He just looked Delia dead in the eye and said, sober and steady, "If I ever do anything to hurt Megan, I hope I lose everything I have."

Delia just let out a cold, sharp laugh. "We’ll see."

After that, the frost between them never thawed, leaving me trapped in the middle, trying desperately to play the peacemaker.

Fast forward to three years later. I was sent away on a six-month corporate assignment to Chicago. The night before I was scheduled to fly home, I was lying in my hotel bed, mindlessly scrolling through an anonymous online confession forum. One title caught my eye, stopping my thumb mid-swipe:

"I fell in love with my younger sister's boyfriend. What do I do?"

The comment section was already a bloodbath of judgment and rage.

Then, I scrolled down to a reply from a burner account that made my chest tighten:

"Please stop attacking her. It’s not her fault—I’m the one who pursued her."

"She acts so tough on the outside, but she’s incredibly fragile underneath. The harder she tries to hide it, the more it breaks my heart."

My breath caught in my throat. On pure instinct, I tapped on the user's profile. There was only one post: a short video of a cat.

I froze, a sudden, icy dread washing over me. My hands began to shake violently.

The cat in the video was Milo. The cat Ted had given me.

* * *

I zoomed in on the video, replay after replay, searching for any detail to prove myself wrong. But there was no mistaking it.

The unique white patch shaped like a lightning bolt on its chest. The slight nick on its left ear. It was Milo.

Ted had brought him to my apartment in the middle of a blinding blizzard on my twenty-first birthday, knocking on my door right at midnight. He’d named him Milo—short for "milagro", he said, because he wanted every day of my life to feel like a miracle.

A wave of profound absurdity washed over me, crushing the air out of my lungs.

I backed out of the profile and scrolled back to the very beginning of the original forum thread. It had been posted just an hour ago.

"The first time we met, I hated him. I had been betrayed before, and I didn't trust a single man alive. But he was so good to my little sister. She has chronic gastritis, so he kept a detailed list in his phone notes of everything she could and couldn't eat. Whenever she worked late, he’d wait outside her office to drive her home, no matter the hour. He memorized every single one of her quirks. His profile pictures, his social media headers, his wallpapers—they were all photos of her..."

I bit my lip so hard I tasted copper.

Ted had been my sanctuary. He kept track of my cycles, always keeping Advil and heating pads in his glove compartment. Once, when I was crying from cramps in the middle of the night while visiting a friend out of state, he bought a ticket on the first flight out just to bring me my specific prescription. If I offhandedly mentioned a craving or a book I wanted to read, it would appear on my desk the next morning. He was a devout skeptic, yet he had walked into a cathedral with me once, lighting a candle and kneeling in silent prayer just because he knew it would comfort me.

I had spent five years believing I was the luckiest woman in the world.

My fingers trembled as I scrolled further down the screen.

"Then my sister went out of town for her work assignment. She told me to call him if I ever needed anything, saying he was the most reliable person she knew. I told her I’d rather die first. But one night, a massive thunderstorm hit. The power lines went down, and a bulb exploded in my hallway. I’ve always been terrified of the dark, and maintenance wouldn't pick up the phone. Desperate and shivering, I dug out the number my sister had left on the fridge and called him. Thirty minutes later, he was standing at my door, soaking wet from the rain. He looked at me, smiled, and said, "So, Delia, you actually do have things you're afraid of." In that exact moment, something shifted inside me. Something I couldn't put into words."

I remembered that night.

Ted called me every single evening, and he had mentioned it so casually during our FaceTime call.

"Your sister acts like she's made of steel, but she’s terrified of a little darkness," he had said. He talked about Delia for a long time that night, laughing softly—a tender, familiar chuckle. I hadn’t thought twice about it. In fact, I’d scolded him, telling him he had to protect her because she was all the family I had left.

"After that, whenever something broke in the apartment, my first instinct was to call him. We started seeing each other more. Gradually, the resentment faded. He began waiting for me outside my office, too, taking me to get groceries, sitting beside me in dark movie theaters. He even learned how to make my favorite dishes, starting a new list in his phone notes with all my likes and dislikes. I eventually told him, "Can you stop texting me with my sister's face staring back at me?" and the very next day, he changed his profile picture. He picked a sunset photo that matched the aesthetic of mine. My feelings for him grew into a tangled, suffocating mess."

His old profile picture had been a candid photo of me laughing on our very first anniversary. I remembered teasing him back then, asking, "Aren't you embarrassed to have my face plastered all over your work accounts?"

He had pinched my cheek, radiating pride. "My girlfriend is gorgeous. Why wouldn't I want the world to see her?"

He kept that photo for five years, ignoring every comment from colleagues or clients. When he finally changed it a few weeks ago, I had asked him why. "Just keeping things professional for a new client," he had replied.

And I, like a fool, had believed him. It wasn't a client. It was a single sentence from Delia.

A hot tear slipped down my cheek, blurring the glowing screen.

"Tonight, we went to the movies again. During the credits, he turned to look at me in the dim light and whispered, "Delia, do you have feelings for me?" My heart was hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it. Then he said, "I wish I had met you first." I lost control. I leaned in and kissed him. And he didn't pull away. I feel disgusted with myself. I can't believe I did this to my own sister. But I can't stop loving him. She flies back tomorrow, and I don't know how I'm going to look her in the eye."