Giving Trumps Taking

My sister and Josh came home from the beach just a couple days ago, and we're all getting along much better than we did when I first moved home from Costa Rica. Back then, they had accused me, not directly, but via friends of the family, of "interrupting their routine." Maybe they didn't fully believe that I would be moving my stuff out of my ex's house, that I would just fall back into my old life as if I had never left. Or maybe it was that I was home all the time, eating their food and drinking my sister's pop every day with no source of income and nothing to contribute.
A few days after my mother had new windows that she can't afford installed in this old old house, my sister was painting the trim around the windows in the kitchen to match the new white of the fiberglass frames. She didn't look up when I walked past, a bag of her pretzels in my hand on my way to living room. She remained croutching with her fragile hands holding the paintbrush as steady as she could. When I walked back into the kitchen, I saw her talking to Josh, her face looking like it was ripe with tears. And they both got silent when I entered the room. How inconspicuous.
I asked Mel what was wrong, preparing myself for some sort of attack. She told me through tears, "You drank all of my rum."

I will admit, while she was on a bit of a drinking hiatus, I drank perhaps half of her bottle of rum over the course of a weekend or two. Every time I made a drink with it, of course, I thought, "She's never going to notice one more shot is gone." Until the plastic bottle of cheap rum became much lighter.
And then I stopped; I had realized I had taken advantage of my sister's finances a little too much then. But did I concede and beg her forgiveness? Hell no. Yes, we are family, but we are still women. And we absolutely have it out for each other most of the time. So I argued, my main point being that "It's not like there's a rum shortage in the world."

No, she didn't like that, but took the argument instead in the direction of principle. She makes the money to buy those things, she is not my mother and is not sharing shit with me, she wanted to start this particular weekend with a full bottle of rum.

"As soon as I start getting paid in a couple weeks I'll buy you like four handles of rum." She didn't like that, either, as I'm sure she didn't like me very much during the entire 4-month period between when I got home from Costa Rica and when I started school and tutoring again.



Tonight, as she sat on the other side of the sectional couch and sustained control of the remote despite my pleas, she pointed to the end table on my end of the sofa. "That's for you."
And there, neatly folded and with the tag still on, lied a white t-shirt that said in big, angular black letters "OBX."
I didn't mean to seem like a bitch, I really didn't, but I casually looked the shirt over and set it right back on the table. "Thank you," was all I said before we went back to fighting over what to watch on TV.