Fever Dream Green (Discontinued)

11

We haul the sofas over to our apartment, and get them into the living room.

Aggie calls Lily into another room to help with the curtains she's bought, leaving me and Doug. I still feel bad about what happened earlier, so I say "Sorry."
"For what?"b
"I was a bitch."
"When?"
"When I opened the door? Remember?"
"Oh. Yeah. You were. But, to be fair, I was a dick too. It equals out. Sunny treats me badly enough anyway. I get used to it." Doug smiles sadly, making me feel even more guilty for being a judgemental idiot. I have no clue what to do.
"I bet you're probably wondering what the deal between me and Sunny is, right?"
"Correct. Except, I don't wanna be nosy."
"It's okay. Be nosy."
"Can't be arsed. I honestly don't care." I shrug.
"You do."

I sigh and decide to humour him.
"Fine. What is the deal between you and Sunny?"
"Not much to be honest. Sunny's parents died when she was about one. I think it was that age. Yeah. Yeah. She was one. She was my Trevor's cousin. I think. Was she? Maybe. You'd have to ask Trevor about that one."
"Who's Trevor?"
"Oh shit. You don't know who Trevor is. I mean, you'll meet him soon enough. He lives in the apartments. He's my best friend. Has been all my life. We were both about fifteen when Sunny's parents died. She was left to Trevor's mother but she worked pretty much all the time at the catering company.

So Trevor had to look after her himself. I came around almost every day to his house, since he couldn't leave Sunny on her own. So from then on, it was pretty much me and Trev who looked after her. Then when she was four, we both moved out to go to college for three years. Trev's mom could hardly cope without us there, so by the time we had finished and moved out she asked Trev if he could take care of Sunny. It wasn't a problem because we both got jobs where we never had to come into office - Trev's a video game developer and I'm an artist. We developed a system where I have Sunny for a week and then Trev has Sunny for a week. It works out pretty well."

"Oh. That's...cool." I don't know what to say. "So does Sunny think of you both as like her dads, then...?"
"Nope. She knows her parents died in a car crash, but she also knows that we have looked after her for nearly all her life. I guess she thinks of us as her big brothers."
I nod my head. "How old is she?"
"Fifteen. So..."
"My age. Yes."
"Cool. You'll probably meet her then. Along with the others."

Doug stands up and dusts himself off. "I better get going. There's fuck all to do here and I'd better leave you all to it."

I walk Doug to the door, and he walks into the apartment block floor. Just as I'm about to close the door, he says to me: "Oh, and Sunny hasn't always been Sunny. She's trans. I just thought you should know. She's out and everything. This isn't old news, everyone knows. I'm not outing her or anything like that. I just think you should know."