Someone Has to Make the Tea

My sister and I hadn't spoken for three days.

It started over something so stupid that, by the second day, I could barely remember what the original argument had been about. I only remembered being annoyed. Then being annoyed that she was still annoyed. Then deciding that if she wasn't going to say anything, neither was I.

She apparently made the same decision.

So we became very good at not speaking.

For three days, we moved around the same house like two people who had accidentally booked the same Airbnb. We passed each other in the hallway. Opened the fridge while the other one was in the kitchen. Sat in the living room at different times. If one of us needed something that happened to be near the other, we suddenly became extremely resourceful.

By the third day, the whole thing had become ridiculous.

Not ridiculous enough for either of us to apologize, obviously.

But ridiculous enough that the silence had started to feel heavier than the argument itself.

That afternoon, I walked past her room and stopped.

Her door was half closed. I stood there for a second, trying to come up with something to say. Every sentence sounded too serious in my head. “Can we talk?” felt dramatic. “Are you still mad?” would probably start another argument. And “I'm sorry” felt strangely enormous for something neither of us could properly remember anymore.

So I opened the door.

She was sitting on her bed. She looked up at me but didn't say anything.

I walked in and sat down beside her.

Still nothing.

For a few seconds, we just sat there, both pretending this was a completely normal situation.

Then I asked,

“Do you want tea?”

There was a small pause.

“Yeah.”

That was it.

No apology.

No explanation.

No investigation into who had started it or who had been more unreasonable.

I went to the kitchen and made two glasses of tea.

While the water boiled, I could hear her moving around in her room. I wondered whether we would actually talk about the fight when I went back. Part of me thought we probably should. Another part of me was already tired of it.

I poured the tea and carried both glasses carefully down the hallway.

When I handed hers to her, our fingers almost touched around the hot glass.

She took the first sip.

Something in her face softened.

I think something in mine did too.

We still didn't talk about the argument.

We didn't need to.

We sat there drinking tea, and the silence between us was suddenly a different kind of silence. Not the sharp, deliberate silence of the past three days. Just the ordinary silence of two sisters sitting in the same room with hot tea in their hands.

A few minutes later, she started telling me about something completely unrelated.

A brooch she'd just bought.

She showed it to me, turning it between her fingers while explaining where she'd found it and what she wanted to wear it with.

I asked to see it more closely.

And just like that, we were talking again.

No official end to the fight. No declaration that we had forgiven each other. At some point, without either of us announcing it, the argument had simply stopped existing.

Later, I tried to remember exactly when we had made up.

Was it when I opened her door?

When I sat on the bed?

When I asked the question?

Or when she said yes?

I still don't know.

I think some reconciliations don't need words.

Sometimes someone just has to get up and make the tea.

And the other person has to say yes.