Delia

Now

I spent the better part of the next morning painting in a corner of the room. Or trying to—it was more long stretches of me staring at the canvas, really. Leigh fussed around for a couple of hours, but then she let me know she had one of her mysterious dates with an important person—her words, not mine—and then let me be.

I was part doing my homework, and part searching for that high that came from working with paint, the push to get me over that sea of feelings that was drowning me. I was mixing colors that were as dark as my mood. Oscar and I hadn’t even started and we were already on shaky grounds. After the third spill of too much black into my mix, I gave up hope, tossed my brush into the cup of paint thinner, and strode out the door.

I couldn’t fully understand his way of thinking. He wanted to be unique, and he was. Just because his brother had identical DNA, it didn’t mean that they were the same person. How could he not understand that what he and his brother had was something incredibly special? For him to be so ashamed of his brother that he would hide him and push him away like that was unacceptable. Family trumped everything. Speaking of, if Oscar wouldn’t open up more, I had another source to go to.

Turn after turn, block after block, I walked and stewed over the situation until I found myself glaring up at the decrepit building that was Echo Hostel as if it was the one having kept things from me. I didn’t know what had come over me, but I couldn’t stay in Brittany, I didn’t want to talk to Oscar, and I couldn’t paint for shit. So there I was. Time to get some answers. I ignored the buzzing of my phone in my bag and went to the clerk to ask him if he could call Oswald down. He looked at me like I was a crazy person and showed me a register. I guess I had to track his whereabouts on my own. I was trying to make sense of the scribbles on the third page I was reading when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Why are you here?” Oswald asked as I turned my head to look at him.

“You told me to find you after I talked to you brother,” I returned, unfazed, lifting my chin and holding his glare.

He arched a brow.

“Want to get a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” I answered instantly, scrunching my nose. “It smells in here.”

He barked a short laughter.

“You should smell the inside of the rooms,” he said loud enough for the clerk to hear, but the dude was so captivated by the reality show he was watching he didn’t care.

“Smells like unwashed old balls,” Oswald said matter-of-factly as he gestured to the door. “After you.”

We found a small cafe that looked mostly deserted and took a window seat.

“I need answers.” I cut right to it since there was no point in waiting.

He didn’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as I was and made a point to take off his leather jacket slowly, revealing an almost complete sleeve inked.

I stared at it.

“This is supposed to tell us apart,” he said, but his tone was so serious it was almost steely. “I started getting inked at seventeen because Oscar couldn’t stand our likeness anymore. Actually, I don’t think he ever liked our resemblance,” he explained and squeezed his lips into a straight line as if he thought he said too much. “What do you want to know?”

“So, let’s start from the beginning. I’ll talk and you’ll correct me, okay?”

He put his elbows on the wooden table, watching closely as he nodded.

“Oscar was the one I saw first in camp, but you were the one I gave my address to when the bus was leaving.”

He nodded again.

“You never told Oscar you’d met me or that we started writing, and you let him think I just didn’t say goodbye.”

Another nod.

Damn it, Oswald!

“Why would you that? Why?” I fired at him, and he sighed and smiled at the waitress who had brought our order. “He said you always stole stuff from him, was that it? Was I some sort of sick-type of shiny object? Like a toy he had and you wanted?” I resented my own bitterness. This wasn’t me, this venomous-spoken person.

“That was what he said? That I was the trickster in the family?” he asked, his eyes a storm of emotions.

“Well, didn’t you sleep with his girlfriend?” my voice came out squeaky.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I may have slept with his girlfriend, but I wasn’t the one who initiated it. She knew exactly which brother she was throwing herself at and made it clear that she didn’t care.”

“So that makes it okay?”

“No, of course it doesn’t, but one day he’s going to thank me for saving him from that girl.”

I snorted. “Not likely.”

“I did some stuff to get his attention, okay? He denied I existed, and all I wanted was a bit of his attention. That was why I did most things. I took your address and wanted to taunt him with it when we got home, but then he was mean to me on the way home, so I kept it for myself just for a little while longer. I wrote because I wanted to know the girl who took away his attention, and you were so sweet to me that I wanted to keep you for myself. I wanted my own friend, just for a while.”

I was quiet for a long time, forcing him to fill the silence.

“I was a stupid twelve-year-old. I missed my brother. He had made it so we didn’t even share the same building during our stay at camp. He certainly hadn’t mentioned talking to a girl all summer. When I heard you call his name, I turned and saw your extended arms and hopeful smile, and something snapped. I saw red. I took your address, and didn’t really think about it. I didn’t really think about it until I got your first letter, truth be told. And then, the game changed from keeping something from Oscar to hurt him back. All of a sudden, I had something that was all mine. For the first time ever, I wanted to keep it as such. That was why I lied. It was pretty obvious you never assumed there were two of us, so I wanted to check if you’d like the person that I was. The one who can’t sing, but can brawl. The one who hadn’t shared any experience with you in the past, but was super willing to experience things in the future.”

I remembered our pact and felt my cheeks starting to burn.

He pressed a finger on my arm, reassuringly.

“Hey, don’t think about that. It’s so far in the past, it’s invisible.”

“You know, that’s what he said earlier too,” I said, changing the subject. “That in camp I was the first friend he had just for himself. So, I wasn’t interesting on my own. I was just a property neither of you wanted the other to have,” I said, pouting and feeling childish as I did it.

“You’re plenty special, Delia,” he said, his eyes fixed on his triple espresso.

“How did you know it was me? That morning when you were jogging?”

“You sent me that sketch of yours.”

“I sent Oscar one . . .”

“And your curls are pretty uncommon.” He smirked, unfazed by my correction, and I rolled my eyes. These twins and their fascination with my curls.

“Why did you ask me to call you Os?” I continued my tirade.

“It was the only way I could have you address me in our letters. Everyone in school used to call us Os when we were children, like we were some sort of weird entity. Unrecognizable, and I guess it was one of the first thing Oscar resented.”

“Why did you stop writing to me?”

“Which time do you want to know about? The time you were so sweet about my brother’s supposed beauty that it pissed me off? The time when you were compassionate about my brother’s supposed beatings? Or the time you conceded to being his, and you went on and on about soul mates?”

As he spoke, his eyes slowly lifted to meet mine and held there.

We were silent for a few beats.

“How much of what we talked about was true?”

“I didn’t lie. I just forgot to keep track of when I was talking about him or myself. I only lied when I said he’d quit piano, and for that, I am sorry.”

“For that, you are sorry?”

“I’m sorry about it all, okay, Delia? I really am. All of it. Me, you, my brother. Our teen years were extremely confusing,” he rumbled.

“So the beatings that you mentioned in the letters actually happened?” I poked him further.

“Did he complain I would take his place in different circumstances?”

I nodded.

“Bet you that was one circumstance he wouldn’t have craved to keep his spot in.” Oswald lifted his hands, fluttering his fingers in the air. “He had to maintain these,” he said, letting me notice his knuckles were bruised. “Me? Not so much.”

“Why? If he treated you as badly as you say he did, why would you protect him?”

“Oscar was a bit of a geek and stepped on toes without realizing it, especially during junior high. He kept challenging the bullies verbally during hours and then, when he was at his piano rehearsals, I went to meet said bullies and pretend I was him. I knew I could take their beatings and that my brother couldn’t. I told you I could wrestle.”

“Wait, didn’t he know?”

“I am sure he did, as he saw me black and blue at the dinner table. I’m not sure he cared, though. Or maybe it was what satisfied his need to be different from me. If one of us was always bruised up, people would be able to tell us apart.”

“And you never thought to tell him?”

“No. Why would I? He’s spent most of his life wanting to be nothing like me, and despite that, I wanted to protect him. He would have died had something happened to him that made it so he couldn’t play anymore. I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“But then he kept going at it because that’s what he is made for,” I said, thinking of Oscar’s talent in shredding a keyboard.

“Yeah, he is,” Oswald conceded, giving me a full smile this time. I looked into his eyes, and they looked a bit tired to me. His nose had a hint of crookedness on one side. I guessed it had been broken once. It was probably something inconspicuous to most, but I had years of looking at the human face and seeing it split into quadrants, to size it up. How one couldn’t tell these two apart was beyond me. So far, I had an inventory of different skill sets, different mannerisms, subtle, but definitely different eye colors, and a different shape of their smirk. And I felt like I was barely scratching the surface. Oh. And I definitely did not want to jump Oswald’s bones.

Speaking of. . .

“You said Eliza came on to you. But why did you sleep with his girlfriend? How could you?” I whispered.

He shrugged.

“Because I could, and, like I said, she wanted to.” His boyish grin glued to his face while admitting it was making me angry.

“You had to know that was something that would push you apart, not bring you together.”

“He still holding a grudge?” Oswald grumbled.

“Of course he is!” I think anyone put in that position would hold a grudge.

“Of course? Of course he holds a grudge against his own blood, as opposed to the girl who was supposedly in love with him but would turn around and sleep with his brother.”

He had a point. A small, barely-there point, but I saw it.

“It’s getting late, and I have somewhere I have to be,” Oswald said. “Let me take you to the bus station. It isn’t the best neighborhood, you know?” he said, winking.

“Yeah, speaking of, what did those guys want?”

“Ah . . . Long story.”

“Hey, you’re walking me to the bus, so we have time.”

“Fine.” He sighed. “On my first night in town I slept with a hustler.”

“A what?”

“A female, hustler, who cleaned me of my wallet. Doesn’t matter how, but I found out one of those guys was her pimp. I told him I needed just my wallet back. Nothing from its actual contents, just the leathery old thing.”

“Why?”

“Just a family heirloom.”

“So what happened to military academy?” I changed lanes, satisfied for the moment with that line of thought. If women with pimps were the kind Oswald hung around with, that explained what Leigh had seen, and suddenly I didn’t want to know more.

“What exactly did my brother tell you about the weekend I slept with Eliza?” he asked, a shadow or worry in his eyes.

“Nothing. Just that you guys fought and haven’t talked since. Why?”

He shook his head. “Nah, you’ll need to ask him. I’m done answering questions.”

I fell silent and tried to keep up with his long strides. Even their walk was different.

“What—” I started to ask, he buckled his knees, looked at the skies, and mock-prayed.

“I promise, it’s the last one.” I laughed before adding, “For today.”

“Okay, Ms. Question Mark, shoot,” he said with a snicker.

“Do we . . . do I . . . do you . . .” I didn’t exactly know how to voice my question.

“Do I . . .” Oswald repeated, letting it hang in the air between us, “like you like a girl?”

His choice of words made me laugh.

“If you want to put it that way, yes. Do you?”

“Does it matter?”

I bit my lip and used the time he offered me. No, no, it really didn’t, because there was only one brother I was attracted to. Only one who ruled my heart. If only I could find a way to show him that as well.

“No, Delia, it started as a game, as you pointed it out. It went on as a dare; I might have caught some feelings for you along the way, but right now, if I’m being honest, what matters the most is me getting my brother to see me,” he said and gave me a faint smile, touching his fingers to my chin to lift my face. “I even kissed you to test the waters.”

I looked up, evading the tormented look in his eyes.

“Delia, look at me.”

I complied to the torture in his tone.

“You might be the eye opener Oscar and I need to bring us back together,” he gave me.

“How?”

“Because . . . you always felt like something was wrong each time I was near you, haven’t you? Not in a bad way . . . just off. Like you knew I wasn’t him even if you didn’t know it yet.”

I nodded.

“There you go. You didn’t know what to look for, but you saw right through each of us anyway. It answers Oscar’s obsession with being different.”

“And you?” I asked him.

He barked a laugh.

“I don’t know . . . It might answer my obsession with making him open his heart for me,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for him to see, really. It is pretty plain from where I’m standing. Your devotion to him shines bright through your eyes,” Oswald continued.

His rational strengthened my resolve, and all of a sudden, I felt a million times lighter. I climbed onto the bus with a smile on my face and in my heart.

***

“You’ve got to stop making me chase you,” I told a confused Oscar once he opened his dorm room door to let me in for the second time that day. “I mean, a girl has her pride,” I teased. “Are we alone?”

He nodded and stood straight, his body tight as he waited for whatever verdict I was about to throw down.

“I just want to tell you one thing, and I will be fast. Oscar, you still don’t believe it that it was you I was talking to, all those years?” I asked on a crescendo, each word louder. I hadn’t planned on it; it just came out that way.

“Okay.”

He raised his palms in a defensive manner, looking as if he were about to shatter. It broke my heart as I stepped closer to him.

“There is only one version of reality from where I stand, and trust me, trust me, Oscar, there aren’t three people in it. It was your weirdness, it was your depth, your air of a lost boy wanting to be braver than the rest of the world that made me grasp on to an ideal despite all the disrupted communication. It was you who fell for, it was you who I craved.” I felt tears rolling down my cheeks as I said that last part, and it killed me to be so vulnerable in front of him. I tried to will the tears to stop, but the harder I tried, the bigger the blobs of salt-water seemed to be forming. I swiped away at my face and refused to look at him. “You're who I wanted and who I wrote the words Truly Yours for all those times. In my heart and in my mind, it was you who was receiving them. When I signed those letters Truly Yours, I was letting you take claim of me. Oswald never wanted me—he was hurt and took the address to be spiteful. All he wanted was his brother, and all I wanted was you. All I still want is you.”

His responding moan was so loud it made the air in the room vibrate around us.  His mouth was on mine, his hands were on me, and his body melted against my own like we were one. Through the haze of our kiss, through the haste of our movements, through the closeness of our hug, my heart and his drummed together a song so violent I thought they would rip apart our ribcages to finally be together.

It was late into the night when our kisses went from plain to feverish, our hugs morphing into heavy petting. His molten eyes fell hungry on my forms.

“Yo, mister,” I said in a joking tone, “my eyes are up here.”

His brazen gaze came to me at the same time as his hand roamed toward my chest, brushing it in a playful stroke as he chuckled.

“What these? I want to write a song about these,” he teased and I didn’t think it was possible for a person to blush harder than I was at that time. I giggled.

“Don’t you dare!” I admonished, which only made him chuckle more loudly.

I pulled him into me and kissed him just to shut him up. We started alternating long kisses with undressing each other in quick motions. It was when his fingers brushed on my damp panties and paused that I whispered, “I really want to do this tonight.”

He searched my eyes for a really long time before dipping his lips to mine again in a deliciously slow, torturous way, as if he were testing all of my buttons. It wasn’t long before my body took to his touch, like he was lighting me up from the inside out. It was as if old embers were lying deep within me, just waiting for that right spark. And the spark was Oscar. I was trembling with desire in a way I’d never known before. He played with my breasts, which overfilled his hands, reverent in his affection. When he took a nipple into his mouth and used his other hand to cup my mound, I moaned.

“Harder . . .”

He palmed me more firmly, pulling the tight bud between his teeth. Oh, sweet anguish.

“I know it’s going to hurt, but I promise I’ll make this as good as I can,” he told me.

I ignored the butterflies in my stomach because this was Oscar. Being with him was something I’d fantasized about all my teen years, and I knew he would take care of me.

He squeezed my nipples between his fingers in a precise, cruel motion that made me even more drenched. I grabbed him everywhere, frantic and raw as his fingers dug into my skin as he settled between my thighs and nudged at my entrance, pushing into me gently. He buried his face in my hair and pressed his lips against my neck, muffling his sounds of pleasure that made my whole body tremble in need. I needed to feel more of that. There was a deep itch of pleasure buried within all the burning pain. I felt stretched and filled and the pressure on my clit from the base of his cock made me buck against him instinctively. Primitively. Wildly. Uncontrollably. I shuddered under him and heard a noise inside his chest that sounded like a roar. He brought his mouth back to mine, catching my lips in a kiss that melted away everything else. His short thrusts became something else, his hips rolling more, his body tightened like an arc.

“Yes,” I spurred him on, his control breaking. He seemed to swell inside me before his whole body tightened, over, around, and inside me as his pleasure released. He sighed as he came. There was a whole array of feelings hidden beneath that sigh, and I touched my fingertips to his mouth in a soothing gesture. He pressed his forehead against mine, and I could see his eyes shining with a hint of satisfaction and sadness.

“I’m so glad we did this,” I whispered, and he barked out a laugh, pulling out with in a soft motion that still made me sting. I hissed.

“Stay here,” he whispered and ran to the bathroom, coming back with a towel that had been soaked in warm water and gently swiping it against my sensitive skin. He soon replaced the towel with his lips, tender and soft, kissing my thighs, my belly, my waist, making his way up toward my breasts, and I got lost in his addictive touches all over again.

His lips vibrated against my skin, as he started humming a song I didn’t know.

“What is that?” I whispered, almost afraid to cut him off.

“Our song,” he answered, not stopping his humming. “You inspire me, Dellie, in ways you don’t even imagine. You are a song I discover every day.”

We cuddled close to each other, and I relished in the touch of our skin. For a while, we stayed like that with his hand pressed against my heartbeat.

“I wish I could capture this in a song.”

“What?”

“This moment, this beat, this feeling of pure happiness. Nothing can beat it.”

He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and showed me an app he used on the go. He hummed the song he had come up with to capture it and typed away some quick notes. He looked into my eyes with an intense nuance in his yellow eyes and went to the keyboard, naked.

I grabbed his tee to cover myself in it and as admired the sinewy lines of his back and the ink on his shoulder blade I hadn’t seen before. A very familiar, comical form. I pushed myself upward and took a closer look, not stopping my fingertips from tracing it.

“Oh my gosh, Oscar! You tattooed that?”

He glanced backward toward his shoulder as if he’d forgotten what his skin was marred with.  

The monocle, top-hat wearing monocle I had drawn for him at twelve. He’d kept the piece of paper, obviously. Just never mentioned putting it to any use.

“I had it done right after my eighteenth birthday,” he said quietly and turned to me. “I’ve always treasured that image you gifted me, Dellie, of the different kinds of tadpoles that were all the same but unique at the same time.” I could only beam at his explanation.

He sat at his keyboard, naked and splendid. I leaned into the pillow and watched him, committing the scene to memory, fully intent on painting this scene later.

His fingers tapped the keys in a few tentative notes, until he found his rhythm. It was torturous, slow, and delicious.

We met when we were shapeless.

You got under my skin;

I got under yours.

Now looking at your bareness,

I see so much more.

He sang a verse with his amazing falsetto and then stilled his hands on the keys.

“I think I’m going to call this “Shape of Our Love”. I’ll sleep on it. He winked, making me grin. It was like his wink pressed a button deep within my heart, I was pretty sure the redness of my cheeks seeped down to my breasts.

Let me show you the beauty—

In your eyes,

In your smile,

In your lips,

In your everything.

He closed his eyes and hummed some more and went on with his song in a voice that sounded raw, his fingers no longer catching up with the verse.

Beauty of the skin is nothing

Without beauty underneath.

You got it all,

You got it all.

“I’ll work on it,” he said abruptly and hurried back to bed with me.

“I missed you,” he whispered into my ear and hugged me close to his chest, my back aligned to his front, our feet tangled between each other.

I pressed into him and fell asleep to a low humming he made while touching his fingertips to my thighs. Oscar was perpetually writing a song and that song being about us

***

“Why didn’t Oswald go to into the military, Oscar?”

We were in the elevator the next morning, ready for classes.

Maybe I was just too exhausted, but I thought the shadows from earlier returned to his eyes. We stopped in the lobby, still among the moving bodies of students.

“I was so angry,” he said so softly I could barely hear him. “I was already angry at him for Eliza. I didn’t just go through his room, I trashed it.”

I held my breath and listened for the rest of the story, mostly reading his lips, he was that quiet.

“I took a hammer and a screwdriver, and took apart or broke apart everything he owned. That was how I found the letters. They were in a locked drawer I didn’t have the key to. I saw the one on the top. I saw that he had kept you for himself all those years. I saw that he had made sure I’d lost you too. I lost it, Dellie . . .” He heaved a sigh. “He came in, and all I saw was red. I don’t even really know what happened other than when I came out of it, I had him pinned against the door and the screwdriver was in his shoulder. . .”

His voice trailed off when I gasped loudly.

“I didn’t mean to; I swear I didn’t mean to hurt him. There was a lot of blood and he just stood there looking at me without saying a thing. At the hospital, he said it was an accident.” He scoffed. “An accident! They told him he was lucky because I’d missed the subclavian artery, just barely. Just barely! But there was nerve damage to his shoulder, and he was unable to go through the physical exam that was mandatory to get into the academy. I made him lose a year. No, worse. I made him lose purpose,” he said.

The remorse in his voice was so real, so raw, that it felt palpable in the air between us. Still, I felt bile coming up. Over what I’d just learned, over my role in making the wound between these two ooze even more. I couldn’t stand it. I also couldn’t help the next words that came out of my mouth.

“Are you sure he is the evil twin, Oscar?”