Curtain Call by Liz Botts

my last question, Harlow appeared at the doorway. She hovered there for a moment, and then joined me on the sofa. I noticed how…content she looked as she sank back onto the faded floral print that had clearly seen better days.
    â€œWe’re glad you finally decided to come out of hiding,” Harlow said. “But if all you’re going to do is snap at the people who care about you, then just go back to your cave or under your rock or whatever.”
    I gritted my teeth. Typical Harlow. “Thanks for the advice, sis. I think maybe I’ll take it.”
    She grabbed my arm as I moved to stand, and pulled me down beside her. “Look,” she said. “Everyone’s been really worried about you. Grandma doesn’t mean any harm and neither do I. I’m just saying you should lighten up a little where Grandma is concerned. She’s always been like this.”
    Grudgingly, I nodded. Grandma hadn’t changed, I had. There was a time not so long ago that her blatant references to sex or her strip club act simply made me blush and stammer. That was before: before sex became routine with Josh, before I let myself get caught up in the minutiae of our relationship, and before I had lost myself to the everyday life of being someone’s girlfriend.
    â€œHow is it that even my grandmother thinks that sex is no big deal?” I muttered, mainly to myself, as I stared at my hands knotted together in my lap.
    From the corner of my eye I saw Harlow lean forward. The sofa springs grumbled as she moved. “Did you and Josh finally do it?” she asked. I pursed my lips, unsure if I wanted to have a sisterly bonding moment. Harlow continued, “That’s it, isn’t it? Why you’re so mad at Grandma right now? Is that why you and Josh broke up? Did he…?”
    Something about the way she trailed off, the insinuation of something dark or nasty about Josh made my skin bristle. I was allowed to be mad at him and say stupid things to him, but no one else was.
    â€œYou know Josh is a perfect gentleman,” I said. “We made the decision together. But…it changed everything in a lot of ways. I don’t understand why I’m such a freak.”
    Harlow was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “If you didn’t enjoy sleeping with Josh that’s one thing, but sex complicates a lot of lives, and a lot of us can’t just move on.”
    Britney. Britney was Harlow’s complication. Of course, I’d always known that but she seemed…happy, so I guess I’d always dismissed the difficulty it had caused her.
    â€œI love Britty more than anything, but do you really think I wanted to be a single mother at twenty-one?” Harlow asked. “I had big dreams. And I was so full of myself. Plus, I was on birth control. So what could go wrong? The day I found out I was pregnant, Christian left. Who can blame him for being freaked out, right? We’d only been dating a month. I just thought he needed some time, but he never came back. I called him when Britney was born. You know, to let him know he had a daughter. You know what he told me? Not to expect child support.”
    â€œHe’s a jerk,” I said, reaching out to touch Harlow’s arm.
    Unshed tears made her eyes shiny and too bright. “You know what else he accused me of? Getting pregnant on purpose, so he’d stay and marry me.”
    We sat in silence for a long time. Thinking about Harlow’s situation made me dizzy. When I told Josh about the pregnancy scare, his immediate reaction was that he’d marry me. But then, I always pictured us married anyway. How could I have taken that for granted?
    â€œI just…lost myself,” I said finally, helplessness settling over me and leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. “Why couldn’t I have just kept enjoying things the way they were?”
    â€œYou’re a lot more serious than me or Hayley. Things aren’t