Page 1 of Almost Enough

prologue

. . .

Whitley

Some people might say I take up too much space.

I laugh too loud. I talk to strangers. I remember the names of all my baristas and the way the old lady next door takes her tea, even though she’s never once asked how I take mine. And that’s okay with me. Doesn’t bother me one bit.

I know what they think. That my bubbly, carefree attitude comes easy to me, and it does now, I guess. It’s who I am, and who I was meant to be regardless of what made me this way. If I can bring a smile to even one person’s face, it’s worth it.

All these people who think they know me don’t know about the house on Tucker Street.

I was eight and my sister Harper was twelve when our parents started living separate lives under the same roof. There was no explosion. Just a gradual dimming, like a bulb that flickers for so long you no longer notice it—until one day the room is just…dark.

I never doubted that my parents loved us, though. That was what made it so confusing.

Dad was the person who showed up with a milkshake after every bad day, who let me sit on the counter while he cooked and told me stories about when he was young. He taught me how to ride a bike, how to change a tire, and how to laugh at myself when I messed something up. He called me his sunshine long before I understood how much I would need to be one.

Mom loved us differently. Softer. Quieter.

She was the one who tucked blankets around us when we fell asleep on the couch, who remembered exactly how I liked my sandwiches cut, who kissed our foreheads every night even on the days when she seemed miles away. She made sure we knew that her struggles were never because of us.

But loving someone and being able to show up for them in all the ways they need are two different things.

My parents stayed together. Maybe because they still loved each other. Maybe because they thought that was what you were supposed to do when you had kids. But somewhere along the way, they became two people living parallel lives under the same roof.

Harper noticed first. She looked at the situation the way she looked at everything—assessed it, filed it, adapted. She started packing our lunches on mornings when Mom was having a harder day, and Dad had already left for work. She stopped being a pre-teen and became something sturdier. She built walls so she could hold the ceiling up.

I was a kid. I didn’t know how to build walls.

I did the only other thing I could think of. I got louder. I told jokes at dinner. I filled the silence with stories and ridiculous impressions and anything else I could think of. I made our home feel full because I remembered when it had been. I laughed so the quiet couldn’t settle in and convince us that this was all we were going to have.

I learned very young that joy isn’t something that simply happens to you. Sometimes it’s something you create. Something you protect.

Harper became competent.

I became bright.

We were both just trying to survive. I still am, I think. Even now, almost two decades later, I can’t sit in quiet rooms without feeling that familiar hollow ache in my chest.

Harper calls it my extroversion addiction. But she doesn’t understand that it’s not an addiction. I just learned early that if I stopped performing, I might forget what joy looks like entirely. And who wants that?

one

. . .

Whitley

“Icall it the hurricane.”

I’m not sure what to expect when he whispers that into my ear. Maybe a man who actually knows what to do with his hands or, at the very least, has mastered basic rhythm. But I was drinking gin and tonic when I met him at the bar earlier. He had dimples, and I hadn’t had sex in four months and seventeen days, not that I was counting.

My vibrator’s also been making suspicious clicking sounds lately, so…desperate times and all that.

“The hurricane,” he says again, stripping off his shirt with a flourish that screams amateur. I’ll give him this—he’s got nice shoulders.

I sit on the edge of his bed, already wondering if I should’ve just gone home and ordered pizza. Hindsight, as always, is a petty little bitch.