I love my little brother

My parents divorced when I was 3. My mother got remarried when I was 6, and gave me a baby brother when I was 8. Being the older sister, I was often the one taking care of my brother; dressing him, feeding him, bandaging his bruises, and comforting him when he was sad. We were very close, my brother and I, and that didn’t change even when we became teenagers. When I was 19, I moved into a dorm at college, but I still kept in touch with my brother. More than with our parents, actually. I invited him over to campus, where we went for ice cream and talked about college and junior high and parents and the future and boys and girls. The other girls at my college loved my little brother Max, and thought he was cute. And Max was of course on cloud 9 every time at college girl fondled his hair and pinched his cheeks. When I was through with college, I moved into a small apartment of my own and got a job in a jewellery store. Max visited me every now and then.

One Friday night, when I had been working late, I came home to find Max on my doorstep.

“What’s wrong, Max?” I asked.

“Trina dumped me” he said.

Max had been seeing Trina for 3 months, and even though I thought that she was a conniving slut, Max had been madly in love with her.

“Come inside and tell me all about it” I said.

Max went into my house and sat down heavily on the sofa.

“She dumped me” he said. “I love her. And she dumped me!”

“Let me get you some water?” I asked, took out water bottle out of the fridge, and sat down in the armchair next to him.

Max told me the story.