The Things We Keep

Histories have a way of repeating themselves, and Josh and Emily both have bad ones.

His dad is a drunk. Her mom doesn't know the meaning of monogamy. Their marriage together goes about as well as you'd expect, not well at all.

Josh calls Emily weirdo, but she is a little weird. She's also the prettiest girl he's ever laid eyes on, a fact he somehow failed to notice when she first moved into the next room over a few years back. He's nineteen, and about ready to leave on his first deployment when Emily comes into his room to say goodbye. He knows he should kick her out of his bed, tell her to get lost, but he can't.

Emily calls Josh idiot, and sometimes he acts like an idiot, but he's nice to her when it counts. After some of the places her mom has dragged her through over the years, Emily doesn't trust anyone. She doesn't trust Josh for a while either, and when he never writes back, she starts to realize she was the idiot for trusting him to begin with. She's eighteen, and old enough to know better.

Josh never opened those letters for a reason. Emily was way too good for him, and she was his stepsister. He felt like a creep about the way things happened. If she wasn't his stepsister, he would've opened those letters. If she hadn't grown up in the next room over, maybe things could've been different.

After Josh never responds, Emily figures it's probably for the best. She doesn't need him, and neither does their daughter. Emily grew up without a father, and she turned out fine, didn't she?

When Josh gets home and learns he has a three year old, he's determined to make things right, but he's not the man he was when he left. Josh has scars now, some you can see, and some you can't. Emily has scars too, ones no one sees.

Emily didn't believe in love, or second chances, but seeing Josh again makes her want to believe. What she wants most of all is to give her daughter a nice, normal life like the one she never had, but she's beginning to think neither of them know what a normal life is even supposed to look like.


*** This 109,000 word novel deals with sensitive subjects, and has a happily ever after