Who would you be today?

This is not my story. My foot merely swirled in this story's black waters. I brought my face close enough to this pond's edge to feel its moisture cling to my face; its heavy breath and shroud of sadness hovered near like a weeping fog.

But it didn't start like that. It began like any fantastic evening, one in which in a connection is made across a room; one in which a chorus of laughter rings true and light throughout Brentwood; one in which friends gather in a small apartment on Los Angeles' West side to share stories and tease each other and just all around live.

Roomie Deux and I hosted a fete at the Brentwood Chateau. I came home and we poured chilled white wine and cooked a feast of crab cakes and guacomole and cheese plates in the tiny galley kitchen. We had slipped past that awkward stage of small talk by then to the comfort of silence and the slicing of knives; the beautiful colliding of dishes in the sink and dirty spoons hitting a pan's edge. Outside, neighbors were arriving home from work and that salty sweet California air floated in. One of those perfect evenings licked from the bottom of summer's bowl.

Fast forward three, four hours or so. Our friends left after an evening of wine and chatting and I'm in the kitchen washing wine glasses when Roomie Deux pops in to tell me about a stranger that she met at a work event that day.

"She asked me if I am an only child," Roomie Deux started. I froze. Stopped washing dishes and turned to face her, absently putting my soapy hands on my hips.

"And?"

"And I paused. But I waited too long. She sensed that something was wrong. So I told her."

"I'm listening."

"And I think I want to hang out with her again. But I'm not sure if it's because I told her or if it's because I trust her. Or both. I don't usually tell."

And this is the part where I don't know what to say, so I say nothing. And just listen. Because when you're Roomie Deux and your 18-year old brother died when you were 20 years old, what does one say to that?

We sat in the living room. It was already nearly midnight and my eyes were tired but Roomie Deux had drifted to another place within that nostalgic, sad mind. She told me everything. How she fainted and fell down a flight of stairs when she got the phone call telling her that her brother died. How no one knows the exact day he died. How confused she is on the timing of major life events in the year after his death.

"I moved a month after he died," she said.

"In August?"

"Yeah."

"But didn't he die in February?"

"Oh. Yeah. I guess it was more than a month then."

She told me the grief her father wears on his face and holds heavy on his shoulders, each and every day. How he hasn't moved on. How all she can recall in the days following the death is her Dad playing his guitar. She didn't eat for a week. She just listened to the music. James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and the Beatles. She told me that she forgets that he's dead sometimes, that she'll be out a late night from time to time and might try to call him.

"He's dead, Roomie Deux," her friends will say.

"What!? You're joking!" and she'll laugh. "You're ridiculous."

"Roomie Deux," they'll repeat. "He's dead now."

"No. You're joking." But this time, her voice is just a bit weaker. Doubtful of her own words, reality sinking its claws into her heart.

Roomie Deux and I stayed up into the middle hours of the night, the early morning. I had work the next day, but I couldn't leave her just yet. The next morning I took off for a business trip and she to a bachelorette party. I, not knowing how to let go and not knowing the right words, wrote her an email and told her thanks for sharing with me. For letting me into that forbidden door of sadness and things rather forgotten.

She never wrote me back.

And that's okay. I still come home from work and we still cook together and we still don't have to talk. And when her iPod turns to "Sweet Baby James" by James Taylor or "Yesterday" by the Beatles--when she starts singing softly to these songs--I just listen.

And when I walk into her room to throw her mail on her bed and look at the wall to see a painting of two blond tow-headed kids, a sweet-faced young girl and a boy about two years younger, I remember.

And the next time she wants to talk until three in the morning, that's all right with me.