my sentiments, exactly

Oh, Kiki. I don't think you can ever understand how much I love you.

My sister’s blog about our adventures together in Spain:

My last night in Salamanca was spent in a quaint cafe around the corner from my sister’s apartment. The food was good, as usual. I finished her coffee, as usual. Just the night before, we (or rather I—as the older and thus more mature and responsible sister) patrolled the streets well past midnight shouting obscenities (in Espanol!) at passers-by in the Plaza Mayor. The liquor made a fine woman out of me. I had increasingly become more comfortable with my broken Spanish and thereby found every vulgar/bodily word highly entertaining as the night (and shots) progressed. And while we were reminiscing over the previous night’s events over tapas and cafe con leche, there was this moment when we both were silent—aware that we were noticeably older, more mature, conscious of the bodies and the women that we had slipped into being. She had asked me to check her teeth, a gesture she’s always done since we were kids. My brother and I spent the better half of our teenaged years grudgingly peering into that row of teeth after every meal and chocolate bar. Ironically, Chelsea will probably end up with a man who absolutely loves that quirk about her. He’ll find it disarmingly charming, an idiosyncrasy that makes her peculiarly and undeniably her. This is what I thought of as I gazed at my sister across the table, suddenly filled with that sisterly, almost maternal kind of love. It was so odd to be eating dinner with her in Spain—the same girl that used to share the same bedroom with me as kids, the same girl I teased for forever having ashy knees, the same girl that took the same painstaking effort as I to not break down at our mother’s funeral. Yet there we sat, glowing like fireflies, convinced that our debts had been paid, our rewards now given.

Later, when Chelsea dropped me off at the bus station, the bus began to pile out, engine groaning like a heavy drone. I saw her face through my window—that wordless smile, those glistening eyes. She was so beautiful. It almost killed me.