All The Things You Should Have Known About Me

“My name is Markus Najbreit. Tiffany Najbreit is my half-sister. I went to talk with her because… because she’s family, and I’ve never seen her before,” I say.

Ella Sue whips into an upright position, almost smashing my jaw in the process. She sits facing me on the couch, blinking quickly, mouth half-open, her anger set aside by the confusion that racks through her mind as she tries to recalibrate everything that she knows about me.

“I don’t know whether I believe you,” she says after a moment, but her voice is unconfident.

She’s smart. I know that she’s putting the pieces together in her head—the little things that didn’t add up about me before, suddenly making sense with this one bombshell that I’ve dropped.

“It’s alright, you can take your time. I know it can’t be easy to take in. I should have told you earlier, but… I guess trust is something that I still have issues with,” I say, offering a half-smile by way of apology.

She does take a minute, or maybe five, sitting there in silence, shooting me a distrustful look every once in a while.

“So when I met you on the train… and then a day later, that news about Erin Najbreit dropped…” Ella Sue looks at me. “That wasn’t a coincidence, was it?”

I shake my head.

“That’s the other reason I didn’t want to tell you,” I say. “Erin tried to help me, and I—well, I thought we had made the best of a shitty situation, but now I think I might have just fucked her over for no good reason. And I think on some level I knew that if I involved you, too, then… well, you might have been fucked over too. And I don’t want to see that happen. I like you too much for that.”

She tucks in her knees and brings her arms around them, looking awfully lost. She gives me a bleak smile.

“And here I thought that asking you out would be the scariest thing I could ever do. And I guess I was right, because now it’s turning out that my entire life is going to be torn apart because of it,” she says. She looks up at me again. “So, just how much trouble are we in?”

“At the moment? I’m not sure,” I say, and then I begin to recount to her the recent happenings in my life.

I tell her everything. How Lizzie beat me. Dodging Vidocq. Going to see Scarlet, and then Jessica. Going to court. My escape to Boston, and Mr. Samuel, and Jericho. Meeting Genevieve and Erin. Fucking Genevieve and Erin. Leaving Genevieve and Erin. And then, I tell her about the Affection Multiplier.

She takes it all in without saying a word, her expression only shifting slightly as I break revelation after revelation to her.

“You’re not the quirky, charming artist that I thought I knew,” she says when I’m done. She sounds vaguely disappointed, but not angry anymore. “You’re not the same person as the one that I fell for.”

“I know,” I say.

“And I don’t agree with everything that you did, but at least I think I understand it now. Who you are. What you want. You’ve got big dreams, and maybe there’s not space for me in there,” she says.

I nod, agreeing with her, despite myself.

“But tell me you don’t want to give this another try?” she says, voice lilting up at the end.

There it is again. That small note of hope, eking its way out, despite everything.

It would be cruel to shut it down.

It might also be what I want.

“I like you. I really, really, do,” I say. “Now that you know everything, I guess it makes sense to try. The only thing is… I don’t know if we should be exclusive.”

Ella Sue laughs at my last few words, something high and ironic, and then she shakes her head.

“I didn’t mean another shot in that way,” she says. “I meant staying housemates, staying friends. Maybe even friends with benefits… but that’s a conversation for another time. It certainly wouldn’t be smart for me to jump into a relationship with a man that I’ve only just gotten to know.”

I can’t help but smile as she says that. I nod, saying: “Yes, friends is good,” and just like that the tension is broken, we pull each other into a tight hug, the complex brew of emotions that had been swirling between us gradually settling away.

She holds on tightly to me, swaying ever so slightly on the couch, and I hold her back, feeling her warmth, her kindness, her maturity… she’s a special one, I know, and I’m lucky that she hasn’t kicked me out at this point.

“You owe me one,” she whispers into my ear, and I nod back, yes, more than she could know.

We hug it out until my arms feel sore, not that it takes much these days. After a minute of quiet, Ella Sue finally breaks the silence.

“So, you’ve got a magical app that makes people like you more?” she asks. Something of her usual mirth dances in her eyes as she looks at me in disbelief.

“Have you ever fallen so far for a guy in the space of a month?” I reply. She shakes her head. “Here, let me see if I can show you.”

I pull out my phone and open up the app. The changed scores jump out at me:

Tiffany Najbreit, Score: 15 (as Markus) (+50), 0 (as Claude)

Ella Sue Sergeant, Score: 50 (as Markus and Claude) (+50/-35)

Ella Sue peers over my shoulder curiously.

“Can you see it?” I ask her.

She shakes her head.

“What do you see, then?”

“It looks like you’re just scrolling through some photos,” she says.

“There’s no Settings menu to disable that invisibility perk,” I say to myself, “and it doesn’t look like there’s anything new in the shop… I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it that it exists?”

She pouts at me.

“No fun,” she mutters. “Can’t you at least try?”

“I am, I am,” I say, but after several minutes spent fiddling around, I still haven’t figured out a way to show Ella Sue the AMA.

She rolls her eyes at me and says: “Can’t you at least show me the secret account on your phone then? That sounded kinda cool.”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” I quickly say, not wanting to disappoint her any further.

It takes a couple seconds to switch my phone from Claude-mode to Markus-mode, and that’s when I see the stream of messages from Erin waiting for me.