CHAPTER TEN
Lucy was like a ghost in the house. She came in late, woke up late and I didn’t see her for the first three days she was there. The only reason I knew she was still around was because she left a trail of mess behind everywhere she went. My poor cleaning lady cursed in Spanish and complained about it and all I could offer her in return was a shrug.
I caught my sister coming in one Friday night. I was still up and Eric was sleeping. She crept in so quietly I would have missed her again if it weren’t for the fact that I was sitting up in the den.
“Oh, hey stranger,” I smirked. I let a full glass of wine hang on my fingertips while my eyes tracked her.
“Hey, Nora. She tossed her bag in a chair then flopped down beside me, plucking the glass from my hand. “How the fuck do you drink this?”
“You’re asking me that as you drink my wine though?”
“I’m out of Jack,” she reasoned, handing back an empty glass.
“You need a twelve-step program.”
“You needed to mind your business twelve minutes ago.”
“Whatever, Lucy.” I fluttered my lashes and went back to looking through my phone.
“Where’s your not-husband?” She asked.
“Eric is upstairs. You should learn how to address people by their names. I heard how you treated Lauren,” I told her. Lauren was livid when she called and told me about Lucy’s blow up. I didn’t know how to tell her that if she wanted to be anywhere near Abel that she needed to get used to Lucy’s blowups. It was par for the course.
“Fuck Lauren. She’s a bitch,” Lucy sneered. She poured me another glass of wine and I thought it was considerate of her until she drank the rest of the bottle in one gulp.
“Why have you not sought help for the amount of alcohol you can drink in one sitting?”
“I don’t need help. Besides, wine isn’t real alcohol anyway. It’s liquor lite. Wine is like the Great Value version of actual liquor. You can’t get fucked up on it.” I watched her pink tongue circle the rim of the bottle and I shut my eyes. She was giving me a headache.
“Not everyone wants to get fucked up though. Sometimes people want a nice little buzz and that’s it,” I explained.
“And that’s stupid.”
“You’re stupid,” I countered. It felt like we were kids again. Lucy walked over to me and I peered up at her. She was the extroverted version of me. Her hair was wild and wavy. Mine was pulled back in a low ponytail. Her eyes were blazing. Mine were subdued. She was ready to pounce but I was still surveying.
Lucy pounced.
She straddled me. Her lips were so close to mine I could almost taste the wine on them. I reached up and nipped her lip, making her laugh. “You still haven’t told Eric, have you, Nora?”
“No, he doesn’t need to know.” Nobody needed to know. Lucy and I left that lifestyle behind us.
“Don’t you miss how we used to fool around in school though, Nora?” She tugged on my ponytail and my head snapped back, exposing my throat. Lucy licked my neck and I sighed.
Maybe a part of me did miss it.
“It was fun. I’m grown now with a fiancé and a house and I want to start a family. We can’t do things like we used to.” I was a hypocrite. I was squeezing Lucy’s ass.
“You’re a stick in the goddamn mud just like Abel’s hawk-nosed girlfriend.” A cackle escaped my mouth before I could control myself.
“Luce…”
“What? We used to have fun, Nora. I can understand outgrowing it, I guess…but you’re a totally different person. You’re not my twin.” Her words were a blow to my chest.
“Is that how you really feel? Like we’re not twins anymore?” She stared down at me and gave a sad nod. I knew she thought I was prissy and acted like I was better than her but to hear her say I wasn’t her twin…that cut deep.
“Lucy, I love you more than anything. You drive me insane but there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You’re here in my house, aren’t you?” She tried to climb off of me but I wouldn’t let her. Having her on top of me reminded me of high school and college.
“You took pity on me. Thanks, Nora.”
“It’s not that. I could feel you were in need. How else would I be able to do that without being your twin?” Emotions danced in my eyes. Lucy needled under my skin but it was only because I wanted better for her. I wanted her to be as great as I knew she could be.
“You hate me because I’m not like you.” Warm, salty tears dripped from her lashes on to my cheeks.
“No, I don’t. You don’t have to be like me,” I sniffled.
“Nora, you want me to be exactly like you. We didn’t speak for a week after I picked an art major and you picked business.” She was right. I was so mad at her. It meant we would have different classes. It hurt me more than it should have.
“It wasn’t because I wanted you to be like me, Lucy,” I laughed through the tears. “It was because we wouldn’t have the same classes. It was because I realized we wouldn’t have the same careers or anything else anymore. I realized in college that we were going in different directions.
You wanted to be free and I wanted a safety net. You wanted to do things that scared me. I had to protect myself from the reality that you wouldn’t always be by my side.”
Truth spewed out of me uncontrollably. A part of me wanted to suck it all back in but what good would that do? I’d been at odds with my sister for a long time and we hadn’t spoken in a year. It was time to crush the misconceptions we had about each other.
“Are you serious, Nora? I just wanted an A. I didn’t give a fuck about art and you should have known that. I didn’t want to take business and be bored out of my skull. You were thinking about the future. I was thinking about Mom and Dad yelling at me every time I brought home an F.”
Leave it up to Lucy to simplify something that plagued me for years. I laughed a little and shook my head. “You can’t say you didn’t realize we were growing apart then. It was in the air, Luce. It was all around us. We grasped at straws trying to keep it together but it fell apart once we graduated.” I pushed my fingers through her soft hair and kissed her cheek. “I’ve missed you ever since. I hate that you’re such a fuck up because it means you’ll never have time for me. For us.” My words trembled with tears.
“How? How is my being a fuck up contingent on how much time I have for you, Nora?”
“Because if you’re busy putting your life back together, where do I fit in? The only way for me to fit in is if I help you.”
“That’s why you want to fix me so bad? You think it’s the only way for us to be close?” We hit an epiphany. It stunned us both silent. Finally, Luce broke the hush that fell over us and shook her head at my logic.
“No, Nora. That’s not the case. I know I’m a wreck of a woman, okay? You ever think that maybe I like it like that? It’s my organized chaos. I like to live life not knowing what’s coming next all the time. If I stuff everything into nice, pretty boxes I’ll have nothing left to play with.
I like my mess in front of me where I can see it. Not stuffed into closets and locked away in my recesses. You can have that kind of shit. I just want to be me. I’ll get the hang of everything eventually.”
I had to let Lucy be Lucy but I didn’t want her to get so caught up in cleaning up her messes that she forgot I existed. I needed my twin. She was the other half of me and without her, I was lost.
“Lucy, don’t forget I’m here for you though. You can get lost in that head of yours.”
“I know. I promise not to forget.” She held my face in her hands and we shared a soft kiss. “Nora?” She called.
“Yeah, Luce?”
“Your not-husband is an asshole and you shouldn’t marry him.” The words rushed out of her mouth so quickly, it took me a minute to understand them. She didn’t like Eric. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was going to be my husband or if she picked up on something about him that I didn’t. Lucy was like that. She could read people.
She possessed a chunk of the universe in her heart and she read everyone’s soul like a book. It was creepy but she was never wrong. It gave me pause to hear her tell me Eric was an asshole.
“This isn’t just one of your I-don’t-like-him-because-he’s-yours moments, is it?”
“No. He’s an asshole. Remember the pact we made when we were teenagers?” She asked while her fingers loosened the hair tie around my ponytail.
I remembered sitting in our room after I broke up with a boy Lucy tried to tell me he was no good. She made me promise her that in the future if she told me one of my boyfriends was trash that I had to believe her. I refused because I couldn’t give up power like that. What if Lucy just didn’t like a guy?
I told her that if she could prove it…I’d believe her. She could use whatever tactics she wanted and I’d believe her if she could show me my man was no good.
“How are you going to prove he’s an asshole, Lucy?”
“He slipped me a hundred dollar bill at the bar.” I opened my mouth to brush it off but she continued. “He slipped it right between my tits. He could have put it in my hand or left it on the bar but he put it in my bra.” My face grew warm all of a sudden. I pictured Eric’s smile when he slid the money in Lucy’s bra and shuddered. Maybe she was right. I didn’t want her to be right though. It was the guy from high school all over again. I wanted Eric to work.
“I believe you about the money but…Luce, I love him. I want this to be it for me. You have to prove it.”
“Don’t get mad at me when I prove it, Nora.”
“I won’t.” I held my hands up and she grinned. It was crooked and drunk but I saw the glint in her eyes. She already had something in mind.
“Go along with it, okay? I want to eliminate some things off my list before I go in for the kill.”
“Things like what?” My interest was piqued.
“I want to know if maybe he has a twin fantasy or if he wants to prove to you that I’m scandalous, which I am but I’d never hurt you on purpose, Nora.”
“I know,” I laughed. I didn’t ever think Lucy would fuck Eric because it was fun. I knew that’s what she would do to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was trash though. I had to brace myself.
“Once I check those off the list, I’m going in for the kill. Please give me the go-ahead, Nora.” I threw a mini tantrum on the couch and when I did it, Lucy’s tits bounced around, making us both giggle.
“Okay. You better be able to prove it though.” I aimed my finger at her and she placed her hand over her heart. We were back and we were twinning. It felt so good.
**
The next morning, Lucy got up before Eric and me and made breakfast. I could smell it all the way in the bedroom. Bacon propelled me out of bed and down the steps. I hugged her from behind and she turned around to lock her arms around my neck.
“Where’s not-husband?” She asked, looking around me.
“He’s coming.” I rubbed the tip of my nose against hers and she pecked my lips.
“Play along with me?” Her eyes were glittering like they did when she was up to no good.
“What game are we playing, Luce?”
“Give me your clothes.”
“We’re doing the switch? It’s not going to work on him. Plus we have different tattoos.” I had a tattoo on my forearm that read ‘one of two’ and Lucy’s said ‘two of two’. On our shoulders, we had three small triangles. Abel had the same tat. His first triangle was shaded in since he was the oldest, my second triangle was shaded in since I was born two minutes before Lucy, and her third triangle was shaded in.
Eric would pick it out in no time.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” She waggled her perfect brows at me and we switched clothes right there in the kitchen. I’d just wiggled into Lucy’s leggings and pulled my hair out of its ponytail when Eric came in. I stood at the counter, arranging the food while Lucy smiled up at him.
“Morning,” she said happily. I could barely contain my laughter. Eric would call this shit out any second.
“Morning, babe.” He kissed her forehead and walked over to me. “Morning, Lucy.” She shot me a look and I shot her the same one back. How the fuck could my fiancé not tell my twin and me apart?
“Morning, Eric,” I said hoping he’d realize his mistake.
“I see you made breakfast. Look at you,” he chuckled. Was the switch seriously going over his head? He had to be playing along. I knew he wouldn’t push it too far though. Surely he wouldn’t kiss Lucy. I nudged her and she looked at me with wide eyes.
I knew she could read my thoughts.
“How’d you sleep?” Lucy asked him. He put his arms around her waist and shrugged.
“I slept okay. How about you?”
“Great. I slept great. How’d you sleep, Luce?” She looked at me and I glared at my fiancé.
“I slept fine. Eric, do you want some breakfast?” My tone was turning sour and Lucy noticed it immediately.
“Yeah, of course. I need to see what kind of skills Lucy has in the kitchen. I saw her bartending skills the other night. Can you cook too, Lucy?” He stood way too close to me but maybe that was a part of his plan. Maybe he knew it was me and he was fucking with me.
“Sure can,” Lucy piped up then realized her mistake. “Lucy is a great cook…” she tried to clean it up but it didn’t matter because Eric was none the wiser. “Hey babe, can you go upstairs and grab my robe? I’m cold.” Lucy rubbed her arms and flashed, Eric a smile.
“Which robe?” He asked.
“The pink one.” He nodded and went on the faux mission. Once he was gone, we switched clothes again. “He totally didn’t notice a fucking thing,” Lucy whispered.
“He had to have been playing along.”
“No. He didn’t notice. I’m telling you.” She made him a plate and put it on the table. I didn’t want to believe that though. He had to know. He wasn’t that stupid. Yes, Lucy and I looked just alike but there were differences in the way we spoke and the way we did things. A man should be able to pick out his woman even if she has a twin.
Breakfast was very awkward after that. Mostly because I was expecting Eric to mention that he knew we were playing a trick on him but he never did. Maybe Lucy was right and he had no idea.
“I’m gonna go see Abel, I’ll be back.” Lucy hopped up and left the dishes on the table. I chased behind her, grabbing her arm.
“You need to clean up this mess.”
“Why? I cooked.” She kissed my cheek and I growled, pushing her back. She pushed me in return and we started play fighting in the hall. She pinned me to the wall and wrapped her fingers around my neck.
“Stop being a bitch, Lucy.”
“You like when I’m a bitch.” She kissed my lips and I sighed softly. I could feel eyes watching us and I looked up to see Eric. His gaze was intense but it was on Lucy.
“Anything I need to know about you two and your twin bond?” He folded his arms tightly across his chest making his muscles bulge.
“We like to kiss,” Lucy purred. She tilted her head to the side and we shared another kiss. That one was deeper and she slipped me her tongue.
“Kiss?” Eric took another step closer. Maybe he did have a twin fantasy like most men in the world.
“Kiss,” I said, grabbing Lucy’s hair and pulling her into me, kissing her again.
“You two do anything else together?” He cocked a curious brow up at us and we laughed against each other’s mouth. Those giggles got us into so much trouble in college.
“We fool around a little. Is that gonna be a problem, not-husband?”
“Not sure yet…” Eric rubbed his hands together and leaned against the wall beside me.
“You think I’m going to take your girl?” Lucy laughed. She kissed a trail up and down my neck while Eric stared, watching her lips move.
“You can’t take her. I’ll watch you try though.” Eric smiled. “I’ll watch all day long.”
“Well, I don’t sell tickets. Sorry.” Lucy pulled away from me and I bit my bottom lip. “Hey, Eric, why don’t you clean up the dishes in there? Make yourself useful. Come on, Nora. Go with me to see Abel. How long has it been since we all hung out?”
“It has been a while,” I agreed.
“See? Let not-husband clean up.”
“Can you stop calling me that?” Eric grumbled and I stifled a laugh. Lucy was doing what she did best; work her way under people’s skin.
“No. I’ll call you what I want. Thanks.”
“Come on, Luce,” I said, locking my fingers with hers. I sensed a tornado coming.
“You realize you’re staying in my house, right?” Eric scoffed. Arrogance peppered his words and Lucy’s hackles rose. I could feel it vibrate through my hand where we touched.
“Lucy…” I whispered, tugging her arm.
“You realize you’re sticking your dick in my sister and that’s the only reason I know you, right? Get the fuck out of here with your bullshit, Eric.”
“What? Yo, Nora…get your sister before I put her in her place.”
“Put me in my fucking place.” Lucy snatched away from me and folded her arms, defiance danced in her eyes. I pushed the hair out of my face and stood between them, my jaw clenched tight.
“Stop it.”
“Fuck that, Nora. You didn’t let your little boyfriend know that no matter how long it’s been since we’ve spoken that you’re always my sister before you belong to any man?”
“Boyfriend?” Eric laughed.
“You heard me. You’re not her husband, right? Stop acting like it. You’re still replaceable.” She reached around me and shoved his forehead.
“Nora, you go anywhere with her ass today and we’re not speaking,” Eric warned. “You need to stay away from her. She’s toxic.”
“I’m toxic and you’re a bitch.”
“Nah, you have that the other way around, sweetheart.”
“Oh, do I? I have a reason for having a vagina, what’s yours, Eric?” I’d never seen him look so enraged before.
“Eric,” I called to him as he turned and walked out of the room.
“I’m going to get dressed, Nora. You coming?” Lucy’s eyes begged me to go with her. I was torn though.
“I need to go talk to Eric,” I sighed and turned to go after him. I caught him on the steps and pulled his hand.
“She needs to leave,” Eric growled.
“No, I’m not putting Lucy out. That’s out of the question,” I barked.
“Then she needs to remember her place because if she says something like that to me again I’m putting her out myself.”
“You’re not putting Lucy out either. You need to leave her alone. Stay out of her way and none of this shit will happen. Lucy is…she’s like a storm.”
“Is that my problem? She’s your sister. You deal with her. If I have to deal with her from here on out, there are going to be problems.” I narrowed my gaze at him and folded my arms. It felt like I just got my twin back and I didn’t want Eric or anyone else coming between us.
Maybe Lucy was right about him.
She only spewed venom when she was right.
“Then leave her to me and you don’t speak to her again,” I told him before going into the bathroom and slamming the door. I refused to let him or anyone else talk shit about my sister or tell me I couldn’t talk to her. I spent too long not talking to her. I didn’t want to go another minute.
**