“Au contraire. Wistful portraits of sex toys are very much me these days.” I shrug at his expression. “Hey, I just shoot what they send me. I’ve personally taken every single product shot on the entire Internet.”
My voice blurs drunkenly at the edges and I know he hears it. “No one thinks about who takes the photos. They just click and add that dildo to their cart.”
I arch my back, unclip my bra, and sag back down with a groan. Out the armhole and I toss the bra onto the pile. Tom averts his eyes through the whole thing.
Except somehow, I feel like he watched me do it.
Chapter 5
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.”