I can’t stop myself from pressing my little wound again. I don’t feel like Tom’s scolded me for it. I deserve a lecture.
“Jamie said even Loretta would have said I was crazy to pass up that developer’s offer. Maybe I would have reacted differently if I knew I’d basically lose my brother over it.”
Wow. I sounded completely normal saying that out loud.
Tom says in such a kind voice that I want to cry, “You haven’t lost him, DB. You’ve just pissed him off.”
“I’ve witnessed him ice out so many people over the years. I never thought it would be me. Remember that guy he worked with, Glenn? He made him repay a loan when his wife was in the maternity ward.”
“Yeah. Because Glenn got the promotion he wanted. He’s so good to the people in his circle—”
I huff. “And it’s a tiny circle.”
“But if he’s crossed, or slighted, or he thinks he’s been ‘betrayed,’ he just turns into . . .”
“Ice. He’s ice. Just like I’m ice.”
“You’re fire,” Tom says back without thought. “You’re opposites.”
There’s another tidbit. Another surprise view on me. Any man who saw me at work tonight would have said I was cold to the bone. “I want to be ice.”
“Take it from me, ice is the worst. Please stay fiery.” He pauses and sighs. He’s sad about something. “Anyway, I don’t think you did the wrong thing. You’d be okay with an apartment complex here? And going against her final wishes?”
“Of course not. Well, it’s never happening anyway now. I pissed that guy off so bad he just picked another street. Let’s just say I can’t go next door for a cup of sugar anymore.” I drink from my wineglass. “As a twin, the bigger issue was that I made a decision on my own. No consultation: the cardinal sin.”
“You yanked his chain, big-time.” Tom knows my brother’s buttons just as well as me. There are three big ones, labeled MONEY, LOYALTY, DECISIONS.
The wispy remnants of my heart medication, from whenever I last remembered to take it, are mixing with the wine in an interesting way. I’ve worked hard to build up a tolerance.
I toe off my boots. “I’m still kind of drunk on the power of actually being fifty-fifty owners with Jamie in something. I don’t think it’s ever happened.”
He moves to the wall and begins to press at the bubbles in the wallpaper. “Sure it has.”
“Come on, relax.” I point at the armchair. He moves the bra pile and sits. He can be so lusciously obedient. “Jamie has never let me actually have half of anything. Even if Mom gave us a piece of cake as kids and told us to share . . .”
Tom finishes my sentence. “Jamie would cut it sixty-forty.”
“He said it was because he was bigger. He deserved more.” I eye Tom now, sitting there in that chair, looking like a piece of cake, or another beautiful photograph I’ll never get to take. The lamplight loves that face of his. I’m getting drunk but I can’t stop myself. “I never got to share you.”
I watch him mull this over. He can’t deny it. Our entire childhood was spent at opposite ends of the dining table, my bossy blond brother always talking, laughing, dominating. Functioning as the line between us. Leave Tom alone was a common refrain. Ignore her. Sitting here with him alone is a novelty.
We’re all shareholders in Tom Valeska: Jamie, Megan, and me. His mom and my parents. Loretta and Patty. Everyone who’s ever met him wants a piece of him, because he’s the best person there is. I quickly count up all of those people. I include his dentist and doctor. Maybe he’s only 1 percent mine. That has to be enough. I have to share.
The wine is washing through my veins in a warm cuddly wave. “Why’d he have to be born first? I swear, if I was his big sister, everything might be different.”
“Your dad always joked that Jamie was the prototype.” Tom’s sparkling with humor. “That means you’re the final product.”
“Pretty crappy final product, complete with defects.” I clap my chest and my breast jiggles shamefully.
“I was meaning to ask,” Tom says carefully, avoiding eye contact like he’s edging close to a silverback, “how’s your spool?”
That’s what he calls my heart, since we were kids. It’s been too long for me to remember why. To him, inside my chest is a spool of cotton thread. This guy has so many methods to manage the Barrett twins, it’s truly impressive. His cute euphemism always untwists my knickers.
“My spool is just fine and dandy. I’m going to live forever. I’m going to pour Kwench on your grave. Ugh. No way I’m going to explain that to elderly Megan. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll die first.”
“I worry about you.”
“I worry about big hot dorks who ask too many questions, who are stuck in a house late at night with me.” I stretch my legs and my tank slips off my bare shoulder. I wonder if my nipple piercing is doing what it does best, through my clothes: punctuating the obvious. Judging from the way he’s looking at me, the bras, and the darkness outside, he’s just realized that our eighteen-year friendship has finally hit a belated milestone.
We’re alone.
I look into his eyes and I feel that crackle in him again. Everyone else sees a mild-mannered sweetheart. What I feel, between us? It’s never quite human. “You know why this feels so weird, don’t you?”
A door creaks open and we both jump. If anyone had a secret passageway behind a bookcase into this house, it would be Jamie.
Loretta’s cat Diana walks in, huffy and annoyed, her green eyes trained on Patty. She’s another one of our inheritances. I dislike her on a personal level, but again I have to appreciate how animals can break tension like magic.
I snap my fingers at her and she gives me a look like, You’re fucking kidding, right? “I hate to be cynical, but do you think Loretta had this cat to add to her mystical tarot-reader persona?”
Tom shakes his head. “She wasn’t a scammer. She really believed in it.”
He’s pretty much tried everything on Loretta’s menu. She was fascinated by his palm. Predictably, he has one hell of a heart line. Like a blade has cut right through you, she told him with a slicing motion. One big one. His little-kid face pinched in surprise as he looked at his hand like he was searching for blood.
Loretta’s specialty was tarot, but she offered everything: tea leaves, I Ching, numerology, astrology, feng shui. Palms, dreams, and pendulums. Past lives. Power animals. Auras. Once when I came over as a teenager, I was halted by a Séance in Progress Post-it note on the door.
I gesture around us. “I know. And I think she was the real deal. But holy shit, she backed herself up with a lot of ambiance.”
The wallpaper is blood-red hyperreal hydrangeas. The curtains are fringed with jet-black beads that glitter in the light. The low coffee table transforms easily enough when a thick, sparkling cloth is put over it, even more so with the crystal ball.
It’s like sitting inside a genie’s bottle. When the fire crackles in the hearth and the ruby lamps are on, you could believe anything in this beautiful room. The air is still heavy with Loretta’s signature incense: sage, cedarwood, sandalwood, and the faintest incriminating whiff of pot. In this room, I miss her the least.
“That fireplace is in my top five favorite things in this world.” I tip my face toward it. “I can’t wait until it gets cold and I can light it again.” I mentally count forward the pages on the calendar. “Oh. Well, shit.”
Tom links his fingers together and leans forward. “We can light it again before . . .”
I nod and try to swallow the sad. “Just one more time would be great. I guess I haven’t completely thought about what I’m going to have to say goodbye to.”
With a dismissive nose-wrinkle, Diana jumps up on the arm of Tom’s chair and Patty vibrates with outrage. These dear, sweet buffers.
“I begged Jamie to take her.” I open a new bag of marshmallows, because the void is getting bigger. “Every evil overlord needs a fluffy cat to stroke.”
Tom offers his hand to her and she roughly rubs her white cheek along his knuckles, before looking at me with smug acid-green eyes. Fair enough. I’d love to do the same to him. He yawns and slumps a little, unaware that my screws are getting looser by the second. I remember something.
“So, Jamie’s room is an issue.”
He seizes the chance to leave the room, so I guess my stare is getting to him. I call after him, “It’s not my fault. I didn’t know you were coming.”
“It’s up to the ceiling,” he says from the hall. “Darcy, seriously.”
“I don’t have any storage space, and Jamie just won’t come and get his stuff. So I just . . . stacked it to the ceiling.” I am sloshing wine into my glass again when he appears. He confiscates the bottle, towering over me, holding it up to the light to look at the level.
“That’s enough for tonight.” He tousles my hair with his fingers to soften the scolding. “I can’t get used to it. It really is so short.”
He still hasn’t said that it looks good. I won’t ask, because he can’t lie. Megan has a beautiful glossy dark mane. Even I want to touch her hair.
“I look like I’m in a Korean boy band, but I don’t care. I can feel the air on the back of my neck.” I stretch as his fingertips depart, and hopefully he doesn’t notice. I need physical touch more than sunlight, and it’s embarrassing. A hologram of Vince appears and I blink it away.
“I personally didn’t know you had a neck. What happened to your plait after it was cut? Not the bin.” The thought horrifies him.
“I donated it. Someone out there is walking around with a big white wig. So, do I look like Jamie now?”
He laughs and the room gets brighter. I’m not saying that to be cute; it’s true. The lamps all blaze up. Shot electrical wiring—or Loretta spying on us? I know which I’d put my money on. “What did your brother say when your mom sent him the photo?”
“That I look like a wannabe Goth Joan of Arc and that I chopped off my only redeeming feature. I don’t care. I love it.”
He puts the bottle and glass out of reach, then takes the bag of marshmallows that I’ve been cradling and puts them on the mantel. “You look nothing alike.”
“I look like Ms. Pac-Man with a bow on my head. I’m like the scale version of him.”
“You’re really not.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult? My brother is beautiful, as you know.”
He shakes his head in amusement but still says nothing. I’ve been fishing on this same pier for many years. He steps closer, and feather-soft, he reaches down and nudges the mark on my arm.
“This is not okay. And I’ll . . .” He bites down on the rest of that sentence and the tendons of his jaw flex. The hands by his sides curl and squeeze. I know what he’ll do. He doesn’t have to say it. I feel it.
I’ve just decided to reach up to uncurl his fingers when he decides to retreat entirely to the only place I cannot follow.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he says, going outside before reappearing with a huge suitcase.
“What’s that? Are you flying internationally somewhere?”
“Ha, ha,” he replies dryly. He’s not an easy flier. The image of him crammed into a tiny plane seat, nervously clutching the armrests, is weird. And cute. And makes me sad. Wine kind of does that to a person. The Cure also assists.
I lie back and cross my legs at the knees. “Now, that shower has gotten a bit temperamental. Should I come in and show you?” I keep my tone straightforward, but I can see a rose-gold blush on his cheekbones as he unzips his bag.
“No, thanks.” He pulls out some pajamas and a black zipped bag.
“Oh wait.” I get to my feet and run down the hallway, Patty at my heels. “I’d better check . . .”
“Darce, relax,” he says behind me as I scoop up puddles of underwear from the floor. “We practically shared a bathroom when we were growing up.” And it goes unsaid but he lives with a woman. He’s seen everything.
The room shrinks by half. I don’t leave.
“You’ll have to go out now.” His hand cups the hem of the T-shirt. Then he grips it. Everything twists tighter. There’s an inch of stomach, and it’s tanned like caramel fudge. I plead with myself. Eyes up, DB.
His knuckles start going white. “Go on. Out.”
I don’t know if he’s talking to me or Patty. I pray for St. Megan to give me strength. He herds me out. “Towels in the usual spot?”
“Yeah,” I say, hating the fact that he’s audibly turned the lock. How embarrassing. How prudent. “I’m sorry I’m weird to you.”
“That’s okay.” On the other side of the door, Tom is getting naked. Come on, Maison de Destin. Collapse your walls. “You forget, I’ve known you a long time.”
“And I’ve been weird to you the entire time.”
“Yeah.” There’s a banging noise, then a blast, and he yelps. “These pipes.” I can hear the shower curtain flutter. I slide down the wall and Patty looks like she has a twin sister. I’ll keep one when he leaves.
“What a fucking lucky drain.” The wine has knocked my legs out and maybe I should be worried. I didn’t have much. Am I dying? My heart feels steady, ticking away valiantly. I look at the two little faces next to me. “Patties, that shower doesn’t know how good life is right now.”
Let’s review how this night has turned out.
Tom Valeska is putting his flawless face under the spray of my shower, suds sliding down, rinsing his gold skin. Muscles dripping. I have seen him climb out of pools roughly ten billion times by now, so I think I know what he looks like. Almost.
I pull up the bottom of my top and blot the sheen from my face and neck.
He’s got legs for days and a beefy butt. Straddle-worthy hips. Those shoulders? Streaming with water now. The shower’s off, and now one of Loretta’s towels is probably around his waist. Those towels barely wrap around me.
I am having mental images that need to be taped shut inside that box of dildos, like it’s a cursed sarcophagus.
I don’t think this can be happening. I’ve fallen asleep on the couch and am having a delirious, dehydrated sex dream. But if this were a dream, the door would be ajar, steam curling out to me. If he asked me to come in right now, I would pull the pins out of the hinges with my teeth, spitting them on the floor.
I can say this with absolute certainty: No man has ever made me want to lick a foggy bathroom tile before. “Megan, Megan,” I whisper to myself, icy-white diamonds behind my eyelids as I drag myself to my feet.
In my room, I scrub my eyes with makeup wipes and change into leggings and an old band T-shirt. I’ll let my teeth decay tonight. When Tom appears in the doorway, wearing another tight T-shirt and sweatpants, I’m starting to doubt reality again.
“You’re forgetting something.” He points a thumb next door. “That room.” His jaw tenses and he swallows a yawn. My hospitality leaves a lot to be desired. “Where do you want me?”
“In my bed. Not with me! I’m on the couch tonight.” I eye my bedside drawer. “Wait, let me burn the room down real quick.”
He laughs like he’s got my number. “I’ll take the couch.”
“You can’t fit on it. Here.” I pull the blankets back, take him by the wrists, and toss him down. It’s weirdly easy. Shouldn’t he be difficult to manhandle and throw down? Maybe I’m super strong. Maybe he’s light as a feather.
Or, most realistically, he’s exhausted. But still, he gives me a look that makes my inner thighs quiver. And when he pulls up the comforter, it’s low on his hips. He looks like a beautiful big Viking, even under candy stripes.
“I shouldn’t.” He leans back against the headboard and contemplates my nightstand with sideways eyes. I don’t feel too worried. This here is a cast-iron moral compass. Mine, on the other hand? Not so much. I need to get out of this room. Out of this country.
“Jamie would kill me if I let you sleep on the couch or the floor. Consider me the hostess with the mostess.”
I sound incredibly drunk. How strange; I’m starting to feel very sober indeed. I dig around in the big wooden chest at the foot of the bed, searching for a quilt. I hear an uneasy mattress squeak. The sound seems to come from his soul.
I tsk at him. “What? Sleeping in my bed isn’t cheating on Megan. And they’re fresh sheets, before your mind goes there.” In my peripheral vision, he regards the empty space where Vincent would go with slack-jawed horror.
I avoid looking in his direction as I snatch up a pillow. I don’t have to look to know that Tom fits my king-sized bed like a dream. One of those dreams you defile yourself after.
“Okay, good night.” I retreat backward down the hall, knocking my elbows on everything, and fall onto the couch.
I cocoon myself, knowing it’ll be icy in this room by morning, and then I decide to set myself an impossible little target.
It’s nothing too aspirational. It doesn’t involve my finding the courage to loosen my fingernails from the edge of this couch and walk back down the hall. Skin-on-skin-on-sweat physical contact isn’t in the realm of possibility.
Not now, not ever, not Tom.
I thought that having just 1 percent of Tom Valeska’s heart feels like hitting the jackpot, but I think I was wrong. It’s now not enough.
I’m going to make him 2 percent mine.
