"I have something to tell you."

Seated next to me in the pantry, my sister stops her hand, midway to her mouth, which is open, awaiting the incoming Twix. "If it's some new show you're watching, I really don't care," she tells me, putting the Twix in her mouth.

I roll my eyes. "Like I would tell you anything about pop culture unless you ask me about it."

Aubrey, ten years older than me, is twin in some ways and my complete opposite in the others.

For instance, regarding movies and TV shows, she strictly avoids all of them, deeming them mostly a waste of time, unless it's a cute animated movie, while I have probably watched every single one of them under the sun. Twice.

It may also be because she has somewhat of a social life, while I do not.

"Then, what is it?" Aubrey prompts.

I hesitate.

This is the first time that I've ever mentioned a boy to her, other than my random childhood crushes and all the weirdos I endured in university, and I have no idea what to expect.

"Oh, my God," Aubrey puts down her fourth bar of Twix – she is gifted with the talent of eating without gaining weight, yet another point in which we are opposites. Where Aubrey is small, I am not – "Did you find a boyfriend?"

I blink. "What? Why do you think that?"

"That's the only news I can think of that you would precede with 'I have something to tell you'."

I roll my eyes again. "I hate you."

Her eyes widen, excitedly. "You do have a boyfriend!"

"Shhh!"

Audrey looks around like Wile E. Coyote if he finally caught the Road Runner.

"Oh, my God, Chubs. Who?"

I bury my head in my hands and wonder how I'm going to explain to her, as if I hadn't gone over this exact conversation in my head every single night as I lay awake obsessing over it for the past fifteen days.

That's how long it took for my heart to stop thundering at the thought of telling my sister and for my brain to finally decide that I would tell her today – that and the fact that this morning, I wandered out into the garden, plucked a flower and broke off each of its petals and I landed on 'I tell her', instead of 'I tell her not'.

Aubrey nudges me and I let out a prolonged groan in response.

My insides twist with building anxiousness, and I'm sure I'm sweating behind the knees.

"Tell!" she urges, "Is it someone from work?"

"Oh, God, no!" I protest, raising and shaking my head.

"Then who?" Aubrey insists.

I blow out three calming breaths to try and settle my heart.

"RaysbrudderEllio."

Brow furrowing, Aubrey blinks at me. "In English, please."

Dramatically, I sigh because there is no better way to sigh. Wiping my forehead, I try and wipe away some – or all – of the trepidation and nervousness that's bubbling inside me.

"Ray's brother, Elliot."

It takes a moment for the connection to click, but I know the second it does because Aubrey's eyes go wide and she clutches my arm.

"The doctor?"

"The neurosurgeon," I nod.

Aubrey nods back at me, her eyes still a bit wide, finishing her fourth Twix, eyeing the two left in the pack. "That's good," she tells me, turning to look at me, "We might finally figure out what's wrong with you."

I give her a flat look.

She cackles.

I bite the insides of my cheeks, attempting to calm myself down.

Aubrey nudges me. "This is huge, Ro. Your first boyfriend."

I grumble under my breath, partly because I'm embarrassed about telling her and partly because I feel bad that there's a part of my life she will never know about.

She's always been a strict older sister – I used to be deathly afraid of her as a child. She was the perfect daughter; she still is. She's obedient, successful, driven, determined, intelligent. She's also slim and pretty, exactly the way a girl should be in Andrusia, to make all the aunties happy.

I don't think she considers herself too much of a perfect daughter anymore; not after her divorce, anyway.

Me, however, I still think she is. She was a fantastic wife to her husband, the man who used to be my brother-in-law, the guy who was so wonderful, who everyone in the family loved, but he wasn't the best husband to her. Not when he got himself tangled up with another woman, anyway. Aubrey is now, two years later, the perfect girlfriend to her new beau – albeit an annoying one.

"Stop," I tell her, remembering our conversation.

Aubrey thinks. "Is that who you've been talking to at all odd hours of the day?" she asks, "I hear murmurs when I pass your room and I just assumed it was Miles or another one of your friends."

My face heats up.

Our Mom chooses that moment to enter the room. "What are the two of you whispering about?" she asks, sitting down at her open laptop, which is on the counter. She never shuts her laptop, or even locks it when she gets up for longer than five minutes and it drives me nuts because it feels like unfinished business.

"Nothing," I sing-song quietly, giving Aubrey a pointed look.

"Mama, do you want a Twix?" she asks, sliding the packet over to our mother, who regards the two remaining bars carefully, probably wondering if she has time to squeeze in her evening walk to make up for it.

Finally, she takes one and it makes me smile.

My mother is very health conscious and doesn't indulge too much, regardless of her love for chocolate, because she says she's getting old. It makes me happy when she does treat herself.

My father walks in, carrying a saw and holding up a scuffed finger. "Where is the first aid kit?"

Aubrey and I share a look.

My father's greatest strength is his ability to fix absolutely anything that is in the house; his hamartia, how many cuts and bruises he sustains doing it.

I get up and retrieve the first-aid kit out of the pantry cupboard and start to patch his finger up.

"By the way," my mother begins and I know we're in for trouble, "All the storage containers were in the wrong places. It took me ten minutes this morning to find something that would have usually been at the top and I had to waste time putting them away properly." She gives me a pointed look over her glasses.

"Why are you looking at me?" I ask, gesturing to myself with the piece of cotton wool that I'm cleaning my Dad's finger with, getting frustrated already, "I didn't put them away."

Huffing, I open the bottle of ointment. Since Aubrey works late a lot, I'm the one who cooks dinner whenever my mother can't or just needs a break. This ultimately means that I am the one who is blamed for any misplaced crockery or cutlery despite being one of the only two people in the house who know where things actually go.

I grind my teeth, annoyed that I get blamed and because I just couldn't keep my mouth shut without throwing Aubrey under the bus.

"I'm telling both of you," Mom says, before turning back to her laptop. "Just make sure you put the containers away properly."

Finger patched, my father escapes back to the garage.

Sighing more heavily than necessary, I put the first-aid kit away and retreat to my room, leaving Mom and Aubrey seated at the pantry counter, working opposite each other.

My downturn in mood is immediately sunny again when I come across Elliot's text.

Elliot:
Let me know how everything goes with Aubrey.
Tell her that I've slain dragons for you, so sisters are
a cinch.

Please don't slay my sister.

Elliot:
Duly noted.

I told her and she said that since you're a neurosurgeon,
you can find out what is wrong with me.

Elliot:
The distance.
That's what's wrong with you.

You're the crazy one.
Still in hospital?

Elliot:
Only five more hours to go.
I'm just on my break.

I don't know how you do it.
You've been in for over 24 hours. Your schedule
is maniacal.

Elliot:
Such is the life of a doctor.
Get used to it, Aura. Your future will be overrun
by this maniacal schedule.

You can't threaten me with a good time,
Dr. Elevator.

Elliot:
You're always so far away.
I miss you and your pretty brown eyes.

Ditto.

A few seconds go by and I get a voice note from Elliot.

"I have to go do ward rounds. I cannot wait to see your face on our video call. I'll talk to you. Soon."

I don't know how many times I listen to it, just to hear his voice, but I don't get enough.

Hearing Elliot's voice. Immediately calms my furiously thumping heart – a side effect of coming clean to my sister. Blowing out a slow breath, I calm myself further.

I switch over to Ray's chat and scroll to find the image she sent me three days ago. The caption reads 'Caught red-handed' and depicts Elliot, clad in a pair of dark grey trackpants and a light grey college sweater, standing at the end of the hallway on the first floor of the Kingsley residence, his hand on the doorknob of the room I occupied while I was there, staring into the room.

I haven't mentioned to Elliot that she sent it to me; I don't even know if he knows she took it. I'm waiting to tell him on the video call, just to see his reaction. I'm perfectly sure he'll scrunch up his nose, and chuckle softly at the ground, his dimple showing, his index finger scratching the back of his neck.

Knowing that I'll be speaking to him soon, face to face – as face to face as we can be across oceans – makes the thrumming inside me calm further and I feel more at peace.

Three hours later, my plans are completely foiled by Elliot's new voice note.

"Aura," he starts and I hear shuffling of things in the background - papers, pens, stethoscopes, I'm assuming – and faraway, hurried voice, "We have an emergency patient who just came in and I have to go into surgery. I don't know when we will be done, so I will have to take a raincheck on the video call."

My heart sinks, probably more than it should.

"I am so, so sorry about this, Aura. I'll make it up to you. I'll let you know when I'm going to be home. Oh, I have to run, so could you please tell Jenna? She knows what to do. I'll see you. Soon."

The voice message ends.

Soon.

Something Elliot says a lot. At the end of a conversation, usually one that has to be cut short before he leaves for work, because he just got home from work, or because it's so late for me that we have to stop talking so that I don't fall asleep at work.

Elliot will always say 'soon'. His own way of telling me that our conversation will continue. A sort of semi-colon, so that he doesn't have to give me a full stop.

The word has never made my heart drop to my stomach the way it did today.

I have to sit down to catch my breath because it feels like someone is tap dancing on my heart and lungs, making it hard for me to breathe. The overwhelming feeling of missing him comes in a tidal wave and I audibly gasp, gripping the edge of my table with one hand and my phone with the other.

Squeezing my eyes shut allows a few tears to escape and I feel completely and utterly ridiculous. It's another one of those moments where I'm more distraught about something that I should be and I have absolutely no idea why. I get that I miss Elliot, but this is completely unexpected. All it makes me want is for Elliot to wrap his arms around me and just hold me, because despite only having known him for such a short period of time, he gives me the feeling of coming home after being away just a little bit too long.

The thundering in my heart which had died down earlier today as I listened to his voice drums back, making me take deep breaths to calm myself and wonder what is eliciting this gut-wrenching reaction from me.

Missing Elliot had always – at least for the past month and a half while I've been home – felt like something was squeezing my heart from the inside; painful, surreal and debilitating because of my inability to do anything about it.

It had never, however, driven me to angrily wipe away tears while rubbing a shaky hand over my chest to try and calm my heart.

I close my eyes and meditate on my deliberate, slow breathing for a minute before I type out a message to Ray telling her about Elliot and his emergency surgery.

When the reply is not immediate, I scroll up in the chat, look at the samepicture from three days ago – the same picture that has made my screen timeskyrocket over the last three days – and miss Elliot all over again.

Hi there!

I know it's been a little time since my last update and I was trying to update at least once a week, but I had some major issues where my eyes really needed rest from looking at a screen - because my day job is also looking at a screen - so I had to stop writing and just listen to audiobooks for a few days, during my free time.

I am here with some of Aura and El for you all.

I love them and I am so excited for you all to know their story.

I know it's slow and soft, but I'm glad that the ones who are around for it are enjoying it. It makes my heart so happy.

I have been having some tough mental days and coming on here and reading your comments is the best, so I will keep trying to update more just to read your comments about El and Aura.

Thank you, you guys. You keep me going.

So, so much love.