Four Days and Counting!

My sister has spent all summer abroad. I won't say where or what she was doing because I don't know what I'm aloud to (let's pretend she an international agent, but she's really, really not), but she comes home Wednesday. Due to the the nature of what she was doing, we've had very little interaction with her over the past eight weeks. I'm going to take a couple of days off of work and catch up until she's sick of me.

I've come to realize over the past couple of years that she's my best friend and her absence this summer has only strengthened this belief. As much as I am looking forward to spending time with her again, I'm dreading it at the same time. She's my best friend. I'm only her default friend. The one she spends time with because everyone else is busy. As many best friends that she rotates through, she always comes back to me.

When she started high school as a freshman, I was a senior. The first day of school, we walked through the hallways together, with me waving left and right to my friends I hadn't seen all summer. I made sure she found her locker and her friends and let her on her way, making sure she knew to call me if she needed me. At the end of the day, she met me at my locker and I drove her home. In the car, she told me she didn't realize I had so many friends. I've kept that close to me because she was the social butterfly, always flitting off to hang out with someone else, and I was the one who's better off when left alone. She always has several large groups of friends and a best friend and they hang out like girls on Sex and the City do. I've always had a small, close knit group of people who I don't really call up unless there's a bad movie playing or it's pizza and game night. She's never shown up to one of my pizza and game nights.

She'll never admit that I'm her best friend but I'll always know it to be true. It's just going to hurt when I'm all excited to pick her up at the airport and she snaps at me about something. It will be due to jetlag but that doesn't mean she'll apologize once it's passed.

But who knows? Maybe after her first summer away from home she'll appreciate more of what she has here. Maybe once we move into our new house and it's only a two minute drive from her, we'll hang out more.

It's just hard getting my hopes up knowing I'll probably get hurt again. Maybe being an optimist will pay off this time and things will be different. Either way, I bet she'll have some coll souvenirs.