My Sister Can Have My Husband

When I opened my eyes again, the world was swimming in the harsh, fluorescent light of my high school hallway. My sister was laughing, her hand wrapped tightly around a boys wrist as she dragged him toward me to make the introduction.

This is the guy I picked out for you, she said, her eyes glittering with a manic, almost eerie enthusiasm.

Gia and I had always viewed love from opposite sides of a fault line. She believed romance was supposed to be a wildfire. To her, a relationship wasn't real unless it was loud and destructive. In our previous life, for the sake of that blazing, chaotic love, she had endured abortions, threatened to throw herself off balconies, and watched her lovers take literal punches and hospital stints for her. Yet, when the smoke finally cleared, she was always left standing entirely alone.

I, on the other hand, had always craved the quiet, steady hum of a slow-burning companionship. I had chosen a man who looked like solid ground. We built a life together, had children, and lived what the rest of the world saw as a picture-perfect, suburban dream.

That is, until my deathbed.

It was there, in the quiet sterile hum of the hospice room, that my husband shattered the illusion of my entire existence with a voice as cold as winter rain.

He told me our life together had been suffocating. He told me he only married me to fulfill a promise hed made to Gia. Every milestone, every quiet evening, every vowit had all been orchestrated by my sister.

He begged me to let him go in the next life. He begged for the chance to finally live for himself, to chase the intoxicating, reckless love he had actually wanted all along.

The decades of mutual support, the quiet devotion I thought we sharedit was nothing but a calculated compromise. It was a lie, spun from Gia's fingertips.

1.

Gia and I were only a year apart in age. Because it was easier for my parents, they started me in kindergarten a year early so we could be in the same grade.

Though we shared the same blood, Gia got all the light. She was a striking mosaic of our parents' best features. I was just plain. My only redeeming quality was the quiet, sharp machinery of my brain.

Gia pulled boys into her orbit like gravity. In elementary school, boys shoved each other into the dirt just to sit next to her at lunch. In middle school, I was practically a courier service for the love notes and pastries left at her locker. By high school, boys were literally doing her homework just for the chance to breathe the same air.

I was just the unremarkable bookworm standing in her shadow, flanked by a small circle of equally invisible friends.

Perhaps that was why our views on love fractured so violently. She needed the drama. She thrived on it.

In the life before this one, Gias pursuit of that epic romance destroyed her. She ran through toxic boyfriends, terminated pregnancies, and let the stress and heartbreak physically hollow her out. By the time she was diagnosed with cancer in her early forties, she was a ghost of her former self.

I remember visiting her in the oncology ward. The room smelled of bleach and wilting flowers. I asked her if she regretted it.

Her face was gaunt, but she managed a weak, beautiful smile. "No regrets. Id do it all exactly the same. My only heartbreak is that I didn't leave him a child to remember me by. He sacrificed so much for me."

At the time, I had just shaken my head, unable to comprehend that level of romantic delusion.

In that same past life, I had chosen the safe harbor. I chose Simon, a friend Gia had introduced me to when we were young. Simon was respectful. He was family-oriented. We raised two children and lived a life wrapped in beige, comfortable predictability.

Until the very end.

As I lay dying, my husband held my frail hand, and I leaned in to catch his final words to me.

"Jo, my life has been so incredibly dull," he whispered, his grip entirely devoid of warmth. "I did it all to keep my promise to your sister. I followed every script she wrote for me. Including you."

"In the next life, I want to chase real love. Even if it ruins me, at least Ill know Im alive. Jo... please, just let me go."

My dying body went rigid. I stared at the man sitting by my bed, the man I had shared a home, a bed, and a lifetime with, realizing I had never known him at all.

What I thought was a quiet, happy life had been his prison sentence.

It suddenly made agonizing sense. The lack of physical touch. The way conception felt like a clinical appointment rather than making love. The way he eventually moved into the guest room, citing my "light sleeping habits" as an excuse. We had no inside jokes, no sweeping romantic anniversaries, no late-night whispered confessions. We just had the grocery list and the mortgage.

I had convinced myself that true marital happiness was found in that calm. I didn't realize it was just the silence of a man who had never loved me.

With a few whispered words, Simon erased my entire existence.

And now, I was blinking against the harsh school lights, staring at Gias glowing face as she pulled a teenage Simon toward me.

"Jo, this is Simon," she said, practically vibrating with excitement. "He's one of my best guys. Totally loyal." She leaned in, her breath hot against my ear, and whispered, "He literally wrote all my AP English essays last semester. If it weren't for him, that psycho teacher would have flunked me."

2.

The air trapped itself in my throat. I slowly lifted my gaze to meet Simon's.

Gia had literally told me from day one. She had handed me the truth on a silver platter: Simon was the obsessed boy who did her homework.

In my past life, I had been naive enough to believe they were just "best guys." Gia had always kept a strict, invisible boundary between her platonic male friends and her romantic targets, so I never questioned it.

But watching him now, the truth was blinding. The way Simon looked at Giait was a burning, suffocating heat. It had always been there.

I had been so terribly blind. I had wasted his life, and I had condemned myself to decades of a loveless marriage.

When I didn't say anything, Gia nudged me and looked at Simon. "Simon, this is Jo. My little sister. She's a bit of an introvert, but she's a total genius, just like you. Keep an eye out for her, yeah?"

Simon gave me a polite, incredibly stiff nod. "Nice to meet you."

He was wearing thick, dark-rimmed glasses, his dark hair falling slightly over his eyebrows. He rarely smiled. Gia used to joke that he was just the male version of me.

Now, I understood the brutal reality of the world. Like repels like; opposites attract. A man as quiet and brooding as Simon would only ever be drawn to a girl as blinding and chaotic as my sister.

This time, I didn't extend my hand. I just gave him a cool, detached look. "Hey."

He flinched slightly and immediately averted his eyes.

In that microsecond, I knew. He remembered too. He had been reborn.

Over the next few days, Gia constantly tried to push us together. At lunch, she dragged me into the cafeteria with her arm slung over my shoulder. Simon was already sitting at a table, three bowls of soup waiting. As I sat down, he and I simultaneously looked away from each other.

Right there, over the plastic cafeteria table, I drew the line.

"Gia," I said, my voice steady. "I need to focus entirely on college apps. I don't have time for dating or any of this setup nonsense."

Gia rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue. "Oh, come on. Youre really turning down Simon? If you keep your standards this high, youre gonna end up a crazy cat lady."

"If romance is off the table, you guys can still be friends," she pushed.

I didn't answer. I reached for my spoon, intent on just eating and getting out of there. But as I glanced down, I froze.

Simon was meticulously using his chopsticks to pick every single piece of cilantro out of Gia's bowl.

He remembered that Gia hated the taste of cilantro. But he had completely forgotten that I was deathly allergic to it. My own bowl was full of it.

Suddenly, the whole situation just felt deeply, profoundly pathetic.

I set my spoon down. "Sorry. I have a quiz to study for. I'm going to the library."

As I stood up to leave, I caught sight of Gia throwing her arm around Simon's neck, pulling him laughing against her shoulder. "Don't mind Jo! She's always like that. More food for us!"

A week later, the school handed out the schedule request forms for our junior year. We had to declare our primary trackswhether we were pushing toward STEM or Humanities.

In my past life, Simon and Gia both chose the AP Humanities track. Gia chose it because she was terrible at math; Simon chose it just to stay close to Gia.

Back then, I had desperately wanted to stay with them. I abandoned my top-tier rankings in physics and calculus and forced myself into AP Literature and History.

At first, Simon would tutor both of us. But then Gia got caught up in a massive, school-wide scandal over a reckless romance, got suspended, and dropped out of the study group entirely. Immediately after, Simon told me he was "too busy" to tutor me anymore.

Looking back, he was just mourning the loss of the girl he actually wanted. He had no reason to spend time with me without her there.

I had spent my high school years destroying my sleep schedule, studying until 2 AM every night, just trying to keep up with him in classes I hated. Gia's grades had tanked, and our parents eventually panicked and enrolled her in a private performing arts conservatory just to make sure she got into some kind of college.

When the college acceptance letters arrived in that past life, Simon had finally asked me out. I was thrilled. When he found out Gia and I were moving to the same city for college, he immediately committed to my university, taking a different major just to be near us.

This time, history was trying to repeat itself. Gia dragged Simon to my locker during passing period.

"Jo! What track are you picking?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the white-out on Simons form. He had originally checked the STEM boxes, but he had erased them to check Humanities.

This time, I didn't even blink.

"STEM," I said. "All AP Sciences."

3.

A memory surfaced from my past life. I was sitting in my mother-in-laws kitchen. She was laughing, telling me how shocked they were when Simon chose the Humanities track in high school. He had always been brilliant at math, and they wanted him to go into engineering or finance.

He wasn't naturally gifted at writing or history. He had to bleed over his textbooks to get the grades needed for a good university. His parents only gave in when he promised he would go to law school and pass the bar.

His mother had smiled at me over her teacup, her tone teasing. "You know, looking back, I bet the only reason that stubborn boy forced himself through those writing classes was because of you, Jo."

Gia had been sitting at the table with us, immediately chiming in. "Right? Simon was playing the long game! Hes been in love with our Jo since we were kids. What a romantic."

Simon had turned crimson and snapped at his mother to drop it. I had blushed furiously, staring down at my lap, assuming he was just shy.

Now, the memory made me sick to my stomach. He wasn't blushing out of shyness. He was terrified Gia would realize the truth. He snapped at his mother to protect his secret obsession.

The signs had been there, painted on the walls of my entire life, and I had simply chosen to paint over them.

"Aw, that sucks!" Gia whined, pulling me out of the memory. "Simon and I are doing the Humanities track. We won't have any classes together."

I glanced at Simon, keeping my tone entirely conversational. "It's fine. We weren't in the same classes before anyway. I'm not going to sabotage my college prospects just to hang out with you guys."

Gia opened her mouth to argue, but a voice called out from down the hall. It was a senior boy.

Damon. The man who, in my past life, would become Gias deeply toxic, on-again-off-again obsession for the next twenty years.

As Gia ran off toward Damon, I watched Simon's eyes darken. The mask slipped for a second, revealing a raw, ugly jealousy before he turned and walked away.

That afternoon, I went to fill my water bottle at the fountains near the gym. Simon was waiting for me. He stepped into my path, effectively cornering me.

"Jo, we need to talk. Come here."

I raised an eyebrow. "Whatever you have to say, you can say it here."

He grabbed my arm, pulling me into an empty classroom, and shut the door. He didn't waste time.

"I know you remember too," he said, his voice low. "But you don't need to push me away like this."

I stared at him, genuinely baffled by his audacity. "What do you expect me to do? If you're in love with my sister, then grow a spine and pursue her. Stay away from me."

I turned for the door, but he lunged, slamming his hand against the wood by my head, trapping me.

"Yes, the woman I love is Gia," he said, his breathing shallow. "But that doesn't mean I don't care about you. We lived together for decades. We had children together, Jo. We're family."

"Just take the Humanities track. We can all be in the same classes. I can look out for both of you. If you go into the upper-level math and physics classes, you're going to be surrounded by guys, and I won't be able to keep an eye on you."