It Happened One Rainy Night...

The rain is falling in sheets on the front of her Buick. The cars in front of her are blurry blobs in the pouring rain. 

Damn it. How long would it take to get these windshields fixed? No, more like 'how much'. Her shift at the diner today had been worse than any other, and her car was already busted up enough to have to add windshields to the never ending list of 'Things That Need Repairing But I Don’t Have Money For It'.

Gabby leans her head on the front of her steering wheel. Cars honk aggressively around her. The traffic is even worse than it usually is. Not to mention, her landlord is probably already banging on her door for rent. 

Her phone rings, she fumbles for it in the glove compartment, not bothering to lift her head from the steering wheel to look at the contact. 

“Hello?” Her voice is scratchy and tired over the phone. If she cared enough she might have been embarrassed for whoever was on the phone. 

“Gabby! Oh my God, finally you picked up!”

She’d recognize that bubbly high pitched tone anywhere. Her eyes roll almost involuntarily. 

“Melissa.” She practically groans into the phone. Her ears pick up on a bit of sniffling. And she notices now that her sister’s voice sounds a lot more watery than it usually did. Then again, they talked every two months so did she really know her older sister’s voice?

“What the hell do you want?” 

Another sniff echoes through her tiny car, “Could you please come pick me up? I-I’m kind of lost.” 

Gabby would be lying if she said she hadn’t felt a pang of worry go off in her heart. That kind of thing was hard to ignore. And even if her sister was just as much of a deadbeat as her parents she still cared for her, in her own way. 

Gabby sighs, taking her head off the steering wheel, traffic has passed, the road is clear. She pulls her car forward, clicking the phone on speaker. “Where are you?” 

“That’s the thing, I don’t know!” 

Gabby rolls her eyes, Melissa had always been the drama queen, it's probably why she was so quick to grab a hold of fame. “Tell me what you see around you, Melissa.” 

“U-Um,” the phone goes silent for a while and Gabby wonders if she’s okay. Another pang of worry rings through her, it’s worse. She hates it. “There’s a sign that says Route 49, there’s...a billboard for chewing gum.” 

Gabby groans inwardly, traffic builds up again in front of her and she’s stopped. “Is there...a donkey with a top hat on the billboard?” 

“Yes! Yes, that’s exactly it...how did you know?” 

“I’m on that highway in traffic.” She answers, “Do you see me?” 

Gabby should know that her sister doesn’t know what her car looks like, but she forgets for the time being. This situation is starting to feel like they’d gone to the mall together and Melissa had gotten lost. That they were going to find each other and it was going to be one big joke and they would go home together. 

But this is different, and Gabby can’t see her sister, “My car is bright red, and small. Do you see it?” 

“No! I don’t. Damn it, Gabby. Where are you?” 

Gabby moves slowly and pretends to ignore her sister’s words, as if she was the one who had gotten her into this predicament, and it was her fault that she couldn’t find her. 

And then, as she slides slowly through traffic, Gabby sees her.

At the railing of the left side of the highway. She would never forget her curly blonde hair that she dyed so she could fit in with everyone else in high school. She tried so hard to persuade Gabby to do it too, and when she didn’t, she pretended not to know her in the halls. 

She’s wearing a sparkly purple dress, a sash that reads: Miss Wisconsin is slung over her shoulder. Her sparkly crown is still on her head, entangled in her wet hair, and her always perfect makeup is a mess, mascara running down her cheeks almost dramatically. 

For a second, Gabby thinks of leaving her there to rot, blending with all the other cars beside her honking and trying to get home. She thinks this as she looks at her not-so-perfect sister. 

But then she sees the desperate look in her eyes and she curses before stepping out of the car and yelling to her. “Melissa! Over here!” 

Her sister’s head whips towards her, a wide relieved smile spread across her face. “Gabby!” 

This scene would have been a lot more heart-warming if they weren’t in the middle of traffic on the highway and cars weren’t honking irritably into the night. 

Melissa was bolting towards her, a pair of heels swinging in her hands as she buries her younger sister in a hug. Gabby stiffens immediately before pushing her off. “Umm, we should probably get in the car.” 

Melissa nods and pulls open the passenger door. 

Gabby’s regretting stepping outside in the first place. She should have just yelled from the window. Now her clothes are soaking wet and her car has no AC. 

Melissa is glancing around the car, surely picking out everything she doesn’t like about it. 

Gabby presses the accelerator and swallows down an awkward attempt for conversation. She’d much rather stay silent. Her emotions would end up getting the best of her much too quickly if she spoke. 

Unluckily, Melissa breaks the silence, “How are you, Gabby?” She asks, an awkward smile spreading across her lips. 

Gabby takes a second to one-over her sister again before speaking, “What happened to you?” 

Melissa scoffs, “Oh nothing, I just won Miss Wisconsin, no biggie.” 

Gabby drags her eyes back to the road, “Then why the hell were you mooning in the rain? I’m sure your posh driver could have taken you wherever you wanted to go.” 

Melissa balls her fists together against her lap, fidgets a little, “That’s the thing...” She bites her lip, “I don’t have a driver anymore. Or any money for that matter.” 

Gabby bursts into laughter immediately after she says it, and Melissa’s staring at her incredulously, “So you lost all your millions and you came to me for some money?” She laughs once again, “Sorry, sis, I’m just as broke as you are right now.” 

Melissa’s eyebrows draw together angrily, “So you find this funny, Gabby? I’m practically homeless and you find it funny?” 

“Yes, I find it funny, Melissa. I find the fact that you expect me to help you when I was suffering for three years without a single cent from you hilarious actually.” 

Gabby’s anger dies down, her anger morphing into muted guilt, “I-I’m so—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Melissa.” She bit back, “You’ve used them all up over the years.” 

The car breaks from the highway and back into downtown, Gabby’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. She swerves to a stop after a few seconds, parking messily on a clear sidewalk.

“Get out.” She whispers. 

“W-What?” Melissa asks, “You heard me, get out. I have nothing for you. Go find someone else to mooch off of.” 

“Gabby, I’m your sister, please—” 

“Stop! Okay, just stop it, Melissa. Stop lying to me. You can’t guilt trip me into helping you. Just admit it, you’re a horrible person and you just want to leech off of me the same as you’ve done all our lives!”   

“I never leeched off you, Gabby!” 

“You’re still lying?!” A disbelieving laugh hissed past her lips, “You may not remember, but I do. How you lied to me after high school, saying you would come back for me, that you wouldn’t leave me with them. I sent you money every week from that job I was working for, from the money I was saving for us. And you never came back!” 

“I-I tried, Gabby!” She reasoned, “It’s just I-I couldn’t—” 

“Spare me your excuses and get out, Melissa.” 

“Gabby—”

“Get out.” 

She murmurs a small ‘I’m sorry’ that Gabby can barely hear before leaving the car. 

Gabby rests her head back on the wheel and sighs. 

It has been a few weeks and Melissa fades from her mind, just as she always did in all of their other meetings. 

Gabby’s late to her late shift. Funny. She throws her uniform on hastily and sloppily before stepping from her car and attempting to smooth out the wrinkles in her dress and push her hair down. 

The transparent door opens with a chime of the bell and the diner is buzzing with more noise than usual. The neon sign outside is still blinking irritably and the tables are still not quite clean enough. Yep, this was her workplace, the crummiest diner in town.

Gabby shuffles through the diner, apologizing swiftly to other waiters before hearing a chime sort of giggle similar to the bell at the top of the door. She turns around, trying to pinpoint the sound. 

The crowd disperses slightly and Gabby rolls her eyes at the sight of her sister. 

She’s wearing the same outfit as her, but Melissa’s always found a way to pull off outfits better than her. Suddenly it makes sense why the diner was so packed today. Everyone was flocking towards Melissa like sheep. 

Before, Gabby would have been jealous, maybe back in high school when she watched her become the most popular girl in school and leave her behind. 

But now frankly, she didn’t really care. 

Unluckily, right before she was going to turn around and disappear into her duties, her sister’s eyes were on her, widened in surprise. 

Gabby grumbles and turns around before she can get the chance to be stopped by her sister. 

But Melissa’s quick, and nimble. Her hand is already wrapped around Gabby’s arm before she can think. Gabby yanks herself back and stumbles backwards a couple places. 

“Gabby,” She says calmly, “I know you’re probably angry right now but please hear me out.” 

“I don’t want to hear you out, Melissa.” She sneers, “And if you’d look around you’d see that I have a job, No, we since you work here now apparently.” 

“Yeah.” An unreasonable smile pulls on Melissa’s lips. “I’m working now, Gabby. I want to earn your trust.” 

“Earn my trust?” Gabby repeated, “When did I ask for that?” 

The smile fell quickly, “Gabby, please. I want to do better for the both of us. I didn’t deserve to treat you like that and I want to make up for it.” 

Gabby chuckles darkly, “Okay, what now, Melissa? How are you gonna ruin my life this time?” 

“I’m not.” Melissa proceeds to pull out two hundred dollar bills from her pouch. She hands it to her, “Here, that guy gave me a really big tip.” 

A tip of two hundred dollars was ginormous. And Gabby could use it. A small part of her felt like taking the money from her sister would mean surrendering and getting betrayed again. But then again, what would it benefit for Melissa, who had nothing right now, if she grabbed the money?

She thinks to herself, that maybe it’s her turn to mooch off, and grabs the money before turning away without the least bit of a thank you. 

It has become a normal occurrence for her sister to gift her with the mysteriously large tips she was getting from thirsty men at the bar. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel bad taking the money knowing her sister was now more broke than she was.

But Melissa always had this gleeful smile on her face when she handed her the bills. And it made Gabby angry. She wishes she can make her sister angry at her, make her feel as bad as she did all these years. 

It’s been about two months since her incident in the rain with her sister. Some model agent-scout-whatever guy had sauntered into the diner a few weeks earlier and decided he wanted Melissa to be his newest masterpiece.

She was whisked away from the diner, and Gabby hoped that she would never see her again. Even if her heart panged at the thought of her sister leaving her again. 

But that day, as she was closing out from work she approached her more or less repaired Buick and found an envelope sitting in the fixed windshield of her car. 

It said nothing on it but her name scrawled in blue pen and when she opened it, she almost fainted. 

She counted the number of hundreds. One, two, three, four….ten. Ten hundred dollar bills. A thousand dollars. 

She turned the envelope around again, and recognized the blue squiggly font. The only thing she remembers her sister being bad at was penmanship. She’d never forget her chicken-scratch handwriting. 

Gabby sat in her car in shock at what she had stumbled upon. Her heart was pounding in her chest. One thousand dollars? For her alone? She hadn’t had this much money in her hands in...ever. 

It took her a few moments to realize she was crying. 

The envelopes kept getting bigger as time passed. The next month it was two-thousand five hundred. The month after that three thousand. Then packages were starting to get delivered to her doorstep mysteriously. Designer bags, shoes, clothes. It was a wonder that her sister had known her size. Everything fit like a glove. 

It was towards the end of the year when Gabby wanted it all to end. Her apartment was getting too small for all of these gifts and she couldn’t be angry at her sister, couldn’t hate her if she was doing this.

And so, she decided she would confront her openly. 

She drove first to downtown, pictures of her sister littered on shop windows, billboards plastered with designer brands. Her sister was everywhere now. But she still couldn’t seem to find her anywhere. 

It’s been three hours of aimlessly driving before Gabby makes a turn back to the diner, using this as an opportunity to take a food break. The bell jangles as she steps in, and she does a double take when she sees her sister sitting at one of the booths. 

Melissa spots her quickly, waving her over. And dejectedly, Gabby walks over and sits down opposite to her. 

She looks great, and out of bankruptcy. Her clothes are undeniably expensive, hair aglow with highlights and skin shiny and smooth. She’d come so far from the girl who had stumbled into her car trying to mooch off of her younger sister. 

“What are you doing here?” Gabby can’t quite make her voice angry, not when she can’t find a reason to be angry. 

Melissa smiles, “I came looking for you.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I wanted to say goodbye.” 

Gabby’s heart drops, “W-What?” She hates that she's stuttering right now, that her heart is somersaulting her in her chest in distress.

“Melissa chuckles sadly, “Oh, so you do have a heart.” Her smile fades, “I’m heading over to Europe for a few months to model over there. But don’t worry, the checks won’t stop coming.” 

Gabby almost wants to say that she doesn’t care about the checks anymore, all she wants is her big sister. But she catches herself, rearranges her words, “Why are you sending them? I didn’t ask for them.” 

Melissa covers Gabby's hand with her own, “Because I want to make up for everything I’ve done wrong to you.” 

Gabby’s bottom lip is quivering, she tucks it underneath her teeth, “What if I said I didn’t want the money? Hell, I don’t even have space in my apartment for it.” 

Melissa shrugs, “Then I’ll buy you a house.” Gabby’s eyes are starting to water, “I’m never going to stop trying to make up for what I did Gabby. One day, I hope you understand how sorry I am.” 

Gabby almost says ‘I do’. But she stops herself, wipes the tears that escaped. Melissa stands up, smiles again, “I’ll be on my way, then.” 

She’s strutting out of the diner, and Gabby tries to tell her heart to be silent, let it happen. Let her sister leave once and for all. Isn’t the money enough for you? 

“Wait!” She finds herself shouting instead, Melissa turns around, eyes expectant, “Just...make sure you come back.” 

Melissa doesn’t walk back towards her, simply smiles, “Of course, little sis.”