When they got to Phoebe’s place Bridget popped the trunk of her car. She tested the glass doors of the barrister bookcase, which the seller had secured with tape and rope. It was heavy, but they eased it out of the trunk and onto a big piece of flattened cardboard, which they dragged across the sidewalk and into the lobby of the apartment building.

The real challenge would be getting it up the stairs. Of course none of Phoebe’s friends had shown up to help. At least it was only one flight. Bridget took the bottom and bore the weight of the bookcase, instructing Phoebe to guide it—to make sure it cleared each stair and stayed on track. It was slow work, step by laborious step. Bridget panted and sweated but kept pushing, eager to get the whole ordeal over with. After driving all the way to Long Beach and walking around in the heat and helping lug the bookcase, she wasn’t even sure she wanted the pizza Phoebe had promised her. Maybe she’d just go home and shower and spend a quiet night in.

Her aching muscles felt ready to give out, but there were just a few more stairs until the landing. Then they could slide it again, through the door to whatever spot Phoebe wanted to put it in. They propped one end on the landing. All Bridget had to do was give it one last heave to get it the rest of the way up. But something was wrong. She felt it slipping. The weight of the thing bore down on her. Phoebe cried out. Bridget pushed with all her might, arresting its backslide. Then she felt the pain. She felt it in her head before she realized it was her hand, pinned between a corner of the bookcase and the wall. She put her shoulder against the case and pushed, but it wouldn’t budge. Phoebe was yelping and flapping around and Bridget realized she was climbing atop the other side of the case, bearing down with all her meager weight. She managed to tip it enough to free Bridget’s hand. Bridget gave a mighty shove and the case slid onto the landing.

“Is it broken?” Phoebe cried. At first Bridget thought she meant the bookcase. But Phoebe was reaching for Bridget’s hand, then pulling back, afraid she might hurt her by touching it.

“I don’t think so,” Bridget said, wiggling her fingers. “I couldn’t do this, right?”

“We’ve got to get some ice on it.”

“Let’s get this thing inside first.”

“Bridget! We have to take care of your hand!”

Phoebe put an ice pack on each side of Bridget’s hand, which she wrapped tightly in a kitchen towel. Then they went back out to the landing, propped the door, and put their shoulders to the bookcase, pushing it into the apartment. They collapsed on the couch and Phoebe took out her phone to order pizza.

“You got any beer?” Bridget asked.

“No, but I’ll add it to the order.”

While they waited, Phoebe unwrapped Bridget’s hand to check on it.

“It’ll still bruise probably, but the ice’ll keep it from getting too bad. You sure it’s not broken?”

“I think it’s fine. I don’t know. It’s pretty numb now.”

Whenever she left the ice off, it started to hurt again. The beer helped.

“Thanks again for helping me, Bridge. Not just today, but everything, giving up all these Sundays—”

“My pleasure, Little Bird. We had to get you set up in your first L.A. apartment. And I knew your friends would bail on us.”

“Well, they didn’t bail, exactly.”

“What do you mean?” Bridget looked at Phoebe and sighed. “You didn’t even ask them, did you.”

“It’s just—I don’t trust them to help me make decisions. You know, about furniture.”

“Well, I’m honored that you asked me. Not because I’m strong and my car has a bigger trunk, but because you respect my taste.”

“Those things too, but yeah. I mean, Bridge. You were always so much cooler than me.”

“That’s true. But if the way our lives are going is any indication, I think I’d rather not be cool anymore.”

They both fell silent. They’d had this conversation before and it always left both of them feeling angry at themselves and each other. Bridget had been in L.A. for seven years and had nothing to show for it but a string of failed jobs and relationships and mounting debt. She hadn’t worked for six weeks since getting fired from her most recent bartending gig and was three months behind on rent, while Phoebe had breezed into town to take a PR job that probably paid more per year than Bridget had earned in a decade of so-called adulthood. Phoebe already had a circle of friends, real friends, while Bridget had only acquaintances—drinking buddies, casual hookups. Bridget shared a dump with three roommates who complained about her “mess,” which seemed to have implications beyond just piles of dirty clothes and dishes. Every time they floated her, they threatened to kick her out if she missed another month, but they hadn’t gone through with it.

Phoebe, meanwhile, had her own place, which she was meticulously furnishing. Bridget had expected her to just pick everything out of a catalog, but Phoebe had heard the phrase “midcentury modern” somewhere and got it into her head that such an aesthetic would need to be pieced together from the various weekend flea markets: the Rose Bowl, Torrance, Melrose. And Long Beach, where they got the bookcase, which Phoebe had assured Bridget would be their last stop.

There may have been something to Phoebe’s assertion that she trusted Bridget’s judgment. When they were teenagers Bridget was always turning her kid sister on to music, movies, books—not the stuff that was cool to like but stuff she liked because it was cool, because it captured her imagination and made her see the world from a fresh angle. Phoebe had always looked up to Bridget, even when Phoebe was earning straight A’s and their parents’ approval and Bridget was racking up detentions. It was as if Phoebe had watched Bridget forge ahead heedlessly, and took what was cool and interesting from Bridget’s fumbling quest while sidestepping all her mistakes. She admired Bridget for leaving their little town and moving to L.A. And as soon as Phoebe was ready, she followed suit. How this translated to furniture, Bridget wasn’t sure. Phoebe couldn’t have been inspired by Bridget’s apartment, with its trashpicked mélange of stained, shabby couches and tables.

Matters of taste aside, Phoebe needed Bridget for muscle. Phoebe had endurance, and a high tolerance for discomfort, but she couldn’t lift anything heavier than twenty pounds. She was short and small boned, as slight as a little bird, her childhood nickname. Bridget was the big one, the tough one. She’d been an athlete in high school—field hockey, basketball, softball. She didn’t play sports anymore, or get much exercise apart from the occasional self-punishing run, which briefly purged whatever guilt she happened to be feeling and did nothing for her health except make her sore for a week. She was consuming too many empty calories through booze and fast food and now, at thirty-one, she couldn’t get away with it anymore. She was in the worst shape of her life. But she could still lift stuff.

“You wanna crash here tonight?” Phoebe asked.

“I should get home. Take a shower.”

“You can shower here.”

“But I don’t have my stuff … no, I’ll go home.”

“Well, you’re not driving. You had five beers.”

“What, were you counting?”

“I can subtract.”

“All right, you know what? I’ll stay. ’Cause when I get home all the neighbors’ dogs start barking and if it’s after ten everyone gets pissed. Like they yell at me about the noise even though it’s their stupid dogs that’re the problem. I mean, I’m a human, I fucking live there.”

Bridget planned to sleep on the couch, but Phoebe insisted there was plenty of room in the bed. Phoebe fell asleep quickly, just as she always had, curled up in a little ball. Bridget lay awake for a long time, dozed off, and woke up disoriented. She didn’t think she would get back to sleep, but just before dawn she passed out hard.

When Bridget woke again, in the morning light, Phoebe had already left for work. She showered and thought about going home, but decided to straighten up around the apartment. Phoebe wanted to have a housewarming party the following weekend. Bridget found it was easier to straighten up when it wasn’t her place or her stuff and there hadn’t been time for it to get messy yet. Not that Phoebe would ever let her place get messy. Bridget cleaned the counters and floors and unpacked some boxes Phoebe hadn’t gotten around to unpacking yet. She noticed that her hand had started hurting again. She was also hungry. She went to the kitchen to get some ice and leftover pizza. But she changed her mind, grabbed Phoebe’s spare key, and went out to her car.

She drove to her neighborhood bar. Not the one she’d been fired from, but the one where she’d become a regular after getting fired. She knew people there and they gave her free drinks sometimes and she hoped maybe they’d hire her. She ordered a burger and a beer. Then another beer, and back to Phoebe’s before her sister got home from work.

The rest of the week went pretty much the same. Bridget slept in while Phoebe went to work, did some tidying around the apartment, had lunch and a few drinks at the bar, and ate dinner with Phoebe while they planned for the housewarming party. Bridget’s hand healed, slowly. Phoebe kept checking on it and suggesting Bridget see a doctor, but Bridget insisted the unsightly bruises were just on the surface and it didn’t hurt anymore. It still did, sometimes, but the pain went away after a few drinks.

Every day Bridget thought about stopping in at her own apartment, but there was no reason. She didn’t want to see any of her roommates or neighbors or set the dogs off barking. Each day she stayed longer at the bar, and she felt like she was making some headway with the owner, who poured drinks during the daytime. She dropped hints about her bartending experience and thought he might make her an offer any day now.

The housewarming was on Saturday. Bridget stayed sober as she spent the day with her sister, getting the place ready for the guests. Phoebe’s friends were like her: put together, and just enough younger than Bridget to make a difference. Still fresh, not yet run down. Bridget had met some of them before but couldn’t remember their names, and forgot them again as soon as they were reintroduced. She stood off to the side, resisting the urge to get blitzed just to deal with this scene, wondering how many of these people had blown Phoebe off when she needed help but now showed up for the party.

“You’re Phoebe’s big sister, right?”

Bridget turned. It was a guy from Phoebe’s office she’d met once or twice before, good-looking and fit, with the heedless confidence Bridget hoped would get beaten out of him in a few years but probably wouldn’t. Guys like that just coasted through life. She gave a grudging nod as a reply. She didn’t like how he’d felt the need to insert “big,” with its implications of age and size.

“Phoebe sure knows how to throw a party,” he added. “And I love what she’s done with the place.”

“What would you know about it?”

He flinched. “Excuse me?” He was taken aback, scandalized even, to be spoken to this way. He seemed to be wondering if he’d misheard her.

“You’re an able-bodied guy. Did you help even once with any of this furniture?”

“Hey, I was just—”

“Did you help unpack, clean up, get ready for this kick-ass party?”

He gave her a disgusted look and walked away muttering. No one else had noticed. Bridget fumed. Her hand throbbed. She wanted to stand on the coffee table and tell off this whole gaggle of freeloaders, but she didn’t want to embarrass Phoebe. She spotted her sister across the room with a group of friends, talking and laughing. She took the opportunity to slip out the door.

Phoebe called as Bridget was driving home.

“Bridge, where’d you go?”

“I just—wasn’t feeling well, wanted to get home and lie down.”

“You could’ve gone in my bedroom. I mean, you didn’t even say goodbye.”

“Sorry, you were having such a good time, I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“All right, well … hope you feel better.”

“Go back to your party. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Bridget drove to the bar. She ordered a double shot of whiskey and chased it with beer and ordered another. She bent the ear of the bartender and anyone else who would listen about her sister’s obnoxious, entitled friends. She caught their embarrassed looks at each other and realized she was being obnoxious herself and had probably blown her chance of getting hired to work there. She made a clumsy pass at the bartender, who did them both the courtesy of ignoring it.

At closing time she left her car in front of the bar and stumbled home. She carefully closed the wrought-iron gate to the apartment complex and gave the leaf-strewn pool a wide berth as she crossed the courtyard. She dropped her keys three times before managing to get the apartment key into the lock. Except it wouldn’t go in all the way. She was very drunk, but she could usually manage things like this no matter how drunk she was. In the harsh porch light the lock looked too shiny. Then she realized it was new.

She banged on the window. A dog barked and the neighbors from across the way yelled at her to keep it down. She banged on the window again and her hand hurt. It hadn’t hurt the whole time she’d been at the bar.

No one came to the window. “I know you’re in there!” she shouted. “You fuckers changed this lock on me!”

The whole courtyard was in an uproar now, the neighbors really laying into her, pointing out that she’d caused middle-of-the-night scenes like this before. More dogs joined in and it was like a choir, with the big dogs rumbling at the low end and the little dogs yapping up top, but the people were shouting too and Bridget had a hard time distinguishing human voices from canine. She stumbled down the steps.

The window above opened and a head leaned out. “We changed the lock ’cause you’re a deadbeat!”

“Cowards!”

“Pay what you owe us and maybe we’ll let you back in!”

“You’re all cowards!”

Something hit her in the face. She was terrified that she’d been divebombed by a bat, but then she realized it was a hoodie. Her roommates were throwing her stuff out the window. Neighbors were still yelling, but now some clapped and cheered. She scooped up as many things as she could—clothes, books, pictures, tampons, her toothbrush—and spat on the steps. Then she puked, a steaming pink stew of hôrs d’oeuvres, whiskey and beer. There were more cheers, and howls of disgust.

“Fuck all of you and your stupid fucking dogs!” Bridget screamed.

She lurched across the courtyard and pushed through the front gate, making sure it slammed behind her. Out on the sidewalk the yelling and barking were muffled. She sat on the ground with her armload of stuff and took out her phone.

“Bridge?” Phoebe sounded groggy. “It’s three in the morning. Are you okay?”

Bridget just sat there with her phone pressed to her ear.

“Bridge, what’s happening?”

“Is the party over?”

“Yeah, like two hours ago. What’s wrong?”

“Can I crash at your place?”

“Sure, I’ll come get you. Where are you, the bar?”

“My apartment. Outside, I—they … don’t worry, I’ll take a Lyft.”

“Bridge, stay there. I’m on my way.”

Bridget must have passed out on the sidewalk, because the next thing she knew Phoebe was there, helping her stand. As soon as she was upright she doubled over and puked again, watery and bitter. Phoebe wiped her mouth with a tissue, picked up the pile of personal stuff, and helped her into the car.

“I got kicked out,” Bridget muttered as they drove.

“I can see that.”

When Phoebe was angry, the veins at her temples grew brighter, like streaks of blue ink. Bridget couldn’t tell who Phoebe was mad at—her roommates for kicking her out, or Bridget for bringing it on herself. Either way, she was surprised once again that someone so small could be so fearsome.

“Bridge, I’m sorry,” Phoebe said.

“For what? I fucked up, Pheebs. Big time.”

“I’m sorry I took you for granted.”

“I wanted to help.”

Phoebe squeezed Bridget’s hand. The good one, not the one that had been hurt, which Bridget was ready to admit might not be healing properly. Bridget started to cry. She leaned over, the sobs wrenching up from deep inside her. Phoebe eased Bridget’s head down on her lap. Bridget realized Phoebe was wearing pajama pants.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Bridget said, getting control of herself. “I got you out of bed at three in the morning. And look, I got tears and snot all over you.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“No, but I’m sorry about everything.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“I’m always safe with you, Little Bird.”

Bridget started to cry again, no longer in heaving sobs but in a low, dolorous moan.

Phoebe chittered gently. “Ch-ch-chhh … ch-ch-chhh …” One hand stroked her big sister’s hair while the other steered the car through the empty streets. Bridget clutched a soft flannel fold of Phoebe’s pajama pants. Her hand hurt but she held on tight.

Andrew Eastwick’s writing has appeared in Barely South Review, In Parentheses, Kelp Journal, Sans. PRESS, and Straylight Literary Arts Magazine. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.