while i was away last month my sister began something with our housemate, the one who is the good friend of my brother. (this is sticky. this is almost family, of a kind.) and the something she began involved, as is her way, talks about fate and the future and the inevitability of them. (and where they'll build their house and what to call the little ones.) and then her (recent, fresh, very fresh) exboyfriend began to grovel for her back again. (hmm? coincidence?) this is the exboyfriend who rolled his eyes whenever she began to tell a story. who called her diabetes a flaw and a liability, who said (privately) he'd miss her dog more than he'd miss her if they broke up, whose curmudgeonly oldmanness was a wicked weight on her sometimes-crazed buoyancy. and he is pleading for her back again. and she talks to him. she acquiesces. she meets him for coffee, for dinner, for talking, and it's not a secret, it's not like it's a secret or anything, because her new devoted housemate boyfriend knows, so it's fine, you see? and so on. she goes to couples therapy with the ex to talk about where it went wrong. (everywhere. where it started. the whole thing. he is bad. ask me, i'll just tell you, no calling to make an appointment.) and she would consider getting back together with him. she wouldn't rule it out. because he's changing, you know? he's really changing. and we do still really love each other. and she is falling falling falling for it because no one, no one asks to have her back again. no one pursues her harder than she does them. and he is difficult in a way that devoted houseboyfriend will never and could never be, and some special shiny trap of illogic in her heart makes that appealling. the whole fool mess of it makes me so baffled at what in the heehihell she could be thinking. you want to stop people from hurting themselves over and over, you know? and you just really can't. and i can't stop letting it bother me.