by Piper Lennox
She laughs behind her hand. “Sorry. I actually knew what you meant right away. But this was way more fun.”
“That’s not fun, Colby.” I fan my shirt out as the nerves dissolve, my laugh coursing through me like ice water. “I’m melting in my own sweat, over here. Thanks.”
After a minute, we quiet again. She nudges my foot with hers. “I’d love to have dinner with you. But now I have to get back to the Firelight Fortress, before Londonia gets captured again.”
“Ah. Duty calls.”
“Exactly—you understand.” She smiles again as she slips out. I shut the door slowly and lean my forehead against it, listening to the strains of warriors in my living room.
Colby
“Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”
A current runs up my spine. I look at Georgia, who’s trimming Clara’s pixie in the middle of the kitchen, just like last week and the week before. For all their kawaii and glitter and bouncy soundtracks, the twins are dead serious about two things: running their business like a business, no matter how much fun is infused into it—and their hair.
“That really what you’re wearing?”
I think of Eden, swabbing her lips with gloss as she threw that jab, one of so many, years ago. But this time, instead of jeans and a T-shirt, I’m wearing a navy blue dress, cut higher on the front hem, down to my ankles in the back. Until two seconds ago, I thought it was perfect.
“Is it.... Is something wrong with it?”
“Oh, no, it’s gorgeous.” Georgia motions to the desk they use for makeup tutorials, where a slew of eye shadow palettes, blush compacts, mascara wands, and beauty blenders is scattered. “I was just making sure you weren’t going to change, so I can pick out the right colors.”
“Colors?”
“For your makeup.” She brushes the last of Clara’s hair into a dustpan, discards it, and crosses the room to pat the stool. “Sit.”
“If you want us to do your makeup,” Clara adds. Georgia rolls her eyes.
“I have some makeup on already, but...thank you for offering.”
“Please?” Georgia waves a huge, fluffy brush like a magic wand. “I’m so tired of putting makeup on my own face, it’s not even funny.”
“You’ve got your—” I look at her sister and shut up with an, “Oh. Right.” The whole identical twin thing.
“You look gorgeous already,” Clara stresses, sweet as always. I find it ironic that she, the one whose makeup is always brightest and heaviest, is the sister not pressuring me to add more. Then again, I also find it ironic that the quietest twin is the one who wears the most attention-grabbing stuff in the first place. And it’s not just makeup: right now, for example, she’s sporting cut-off jeans and a homemade Rocky Horror tank top.
“But,” she adds, eyes sliding from mine to Georgia’s, “it would be fun to do someone else’s makeup. We won’t film it, we promise.”
“Promise.” Georgia pats the stool in front of her again. “And Clara’s right, you look great the way you are—but this is how you look every day. Orion’s seen it. Let’s give him something that’ll make him think, like, ‘Oh, shit.’ You know?”
I laugh, shaking my head as I drop my purse, kick off my sandals, and follow her beckoning finger.
Fifteen
Orion
When I knock on Colby’s door that evening—Walt and London watching from our apartment—I’m greeted by one of the twins. I think it’s Clara, but can’t remember.
“Hi,” she says, half-shouting over the music blasting from the headphones around her neck. They’re huge and, apart from being decked out in rhinestones, look like they belong on a Los Angeles deejay. Not a spritely girl with a temp tattoo of Totoro on her bicep.
“Hi.” Please, God, don’t let her know I can’t remember her name. “Is Colby ready?”
“Almost. Go to the bottom of the stairs.”
“What?”
“Bottom of the stairs!” comes another voice, followed by Colby’s simpering, strained, “Sorry!”
“We’re doing the whole staircase thing,” Possibly-Clara explains softly. She waves me away, the way I do to London when she’s stepping on clean clothes from the laundry, and shuts the door.
The whole staircase thing? What the hell does that mean?
I head back down to the sidewalk and wait. My tie digs into my neck until I loosen it; Walt’s an expert at Windsor knots, but does them a little tight for my liking. Two tugs and a breath strip later, I hear the door above click open.
Colby appears like the slow rise of a tide, swelling from the horizon—or, in this case, the top of the staircase above me. Her hair, usually finger-combed up into a ponytail whenever I see her, is lose and wavy, catching the last bit of evening light as it moves.
I have no idea what she’s done differently with her makeup, but I can see her features clearly, even from here, including the nervous half-smile she gives when I sweep my eyes down her dress. It’s dark blue, revealing every inch of her legs in front, and grazing the stairs at the back as she makes her way towards me.
“Okay,” she scolds, “say something. The staring is creepy.”
“You look....” Stop staring at her cleavage. Stop staring at her cleavage. When I drag my stare to her eyes, though, the creep factor undoubtedly stays the same. I can’t look away. And I can’t conjure any word to finish my sentence.
Luckily, or unluckily, the twins can.
“Incredible?” one of them prompts, leaning on the railing at the top step.
The other takes a seat beside her sister’s legs and props her chin in her hands. “Stunning?”
“Radiant?”
“A vision in cotton?”
“All of the above,” I tell Colby, who blushes while the twins exchange a low-five.
“Sorry about them,” she whispers, on the way to my car.
“No need to apologize. I’ve got my own audience.” As I open her door, I nod over to my unit. Walt pantomimes a photographer taking pictures; London is riveted by Colby’s dress. We wave to all four onlookers before getting in and gunning it out of there.
“Beautiful,” I add, as the apartments shrink in the rearview. She looks at me. “That’s the word I was going for, back there. Not that you don’t also look incredible...stunning....”
“Radiant, a vision in cotton...” she finishes, laughing. “Thank you. You clean up pretty well, yourself.”
Right away, I find myself at a loss for witty banter, or even generic conversation. The sight of her bare legs crossing, one over the other, compresses my breath into a single thread.
I can’t help but wonder how radiant she’d look with all that cotton stripped off—how it’d feel to get those thighs trembling around my ears.
“Can I turn on the radio?” she asks, and does it anyway. She settles on a classic rock station and keeps it low.
Without the pressure to fill the silence, I actually find topics coming to mind. “Can I tell you a secret? I had no idea which twin was which when they opened the door. Thank God I didn’t have to call them by name.”
“Clara has the pink in her hair and the dermal anchor near her eye. Georgia is the...more exuberant of the two. They’re actually really different, in a lot of ways. It’s just hard to see it unless you’re around them a lot.”
I nod and weave through the maze of minivans ahead. “So you like living there, huh? Better than your last place?”
“Without question.” She inches her hand closer to mine on the console. Maybe it’s me that does the moving, and I don’t even notice. It doesn’t matter which, in the end: when our skin brushes, neither of us pulls back.
“But,” she adds, “I like Myrtle Grove for a lot more reasons than the chill roommates.”
My stomach lifts into my chest like it’s full of helium—that feeling when you’re at the very top of the roller coaster, hovering above your seat. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It’s been months since my last date, bu
t years since I’ve felt like this about any of them: adrenaline fueling every cell from the inside out. I can’t read Colby well enough to know if she feels it, too. She does seem happy to be here, though.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“It’s a new place near Isla Vista, so it’s a bit of a drive, but it’s supposed to be really good. Their dining deck is right on the beach.” I pause and try to channel the wit I have in my imagined conversations with her—maybe some debonair reference to our kiss—but no luck.
“Romantic,” she says breezily. “Sounds like a good place for certain unfinished, kitchen-floor business.”
Damn. She’s good.
Colby
The restaurant is tucked back on the beach like a cluster of lanterns. We have to cross a plank walk to get there. I feel the wild grass growing through the spaces between the boards, brushing the bare fronts of my legs, as Orion takes my hand.
The beach views aren’t the only romantic factor: when I look away from the rich orange and red of the sunset, caught inside the waves, I notice the thick satin cloths on every table, tealights blinking inside hurricane jars. A real violinist plays dreamy covers of pop songs at the far end of the deck.
Orion slides my chair out for me. I get that flutter in my stomach all over again as I thank him.
“I was wondering if you’d ever ask me out,” I confess, after we’ve exhausted all avenues of safe topics: the menu, the wine list, commentary on the guests surrounding us. “Sometimes I’d get the feeling you liked me, then...not.”
If he adjusts his tie anymore, it’ll wear through the collar. It makes me less nervous to know he’s nervous. We’re both feeling our way along, here.
“Yeah...I could have been more clear about that.” He sips his wine, something from the dry list; I opted for rosé. I like how he swirls his glass first, watching the legs stick and slide like a weeping willow in reverse. “I actually liked you as soon as—”
“Oh, no.” I cover my mouth until I finish the sip I just took, its sugar cramping the back of my jaw. “Don’t say, ‘As soon as we met,’ because that’s impossible. I can tell, I pissed you off bad telling you not to replace the cat.”
He pauses patiently, smiling. “I was going to say, as soon as you came back to my hotel room. Which doesn’t sound much better, since you were having a panic attack and all...but, yeah. That’s when I first felt it.”
I make a face. He laughs.
“I know, I know. But I guess it just showed me this part of you that...that I could really relate to. And when you said I’d made that day easier for you, I realized you’d made it easier for me, too. A lot easier.” He rearranges his silverware on the appetizer plate and wets his lips. “There was also this thing, when I told you London didn’t have friends? It seemed like you weren’t judging her for it. Or judging me, for ‘letting’ it happen.”
“I wasn’t,” I assure him. I put my hands in my lap so he can’t see me fidgeting. “That’s how I was, as a kid. Not a lot of friends, kept to myself.”
Orion sits back in his chair, eyebrows raised. “Really? I never would have guessed.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No, I really wouldn’t think that. You’ve got this confidence about you that I equate with having lots of friends. Like Walt.”
The tablecloth swishes back and forth over my shins as my foot bounces, the heel sliding in and out of my shoe. This isn’t a topic I prefer, but I’m feeling something strange, right now: that familiar urge to tell Orion everything. The full truth, all its warts.
But there’s also a weird peace in the thought, like I no longer have to keep that conscious filter in place around him. I didn’t realize just how much energy it required, all these weeks.
“Getting friends wasn’t really the problem for me, growing up,” I explain. “Especially growing up in Kona. Everyone knew each other already, so it was easy to feel like they were my friends. Like, they were friendly with me, I mean. But I wasn’t really friends with any of them. Not the way they were with each other.”
My voice dips and trails. Orion studies me carefully, his expression seeming to shift in the candlelight.
“But you had some friends, right? I just...I can’t imagine not having any.”
I can tell he’s asking because of London, trying to find some hope that his daughter won’t stay lonely forever. For a second, sugarcoating comes easily.
“Yeah, some.”
He nods, swallowing, relieved but embarrassed to have gotten worked up in the first place. These are the kinds of subtleties I’ve learned about him since I moved.
It’s that relief, though, as visible on the now-smooth surface of his brow as a splash of water, like the reflective pools dotting the shore below...that makes it impossible not to tell him the rest.
“The way I talk,” I blurt, expelling the full truth from my throat like a sickness, “it’s...it’s better now, than when I was younger. I know that’s hard to imagine,” I laugh, “but trust me, it really was that bad, back then.”
Half-smiling, half-worried again, he swirls his wine and waits.
“So, yeah, I had some friends. But I lost a lot of them, too. Or they’d stay, like, school friends, or neighbor kids...but not real friends. Nobody I’d call every afternoon to talk about stuff.” I rub my arms. “Nobody I’d invite over, or who’d invite me over. Eventually, I’d always say something to make them mad. Even if it was true.”
“Like what?”
I think back and laugh without meaning to. “I told one girl she looked like Mulan, but only if Mulan were fat.”
Orion purses his lips, fighting his laughter.
“I know, it was horrible. I mean, it was accurate, but horrible.” I pick up my fork and twirl it between my fingers. “I think getting out of Kona helped a lot, though. Because there, no matter how hard I worked on talking to people the right way, so many of them figured it was fake. They stayed angry about stuff I’d said to them before, and wouldn’t really give me another chance, even years afterwards.
“But in college, it was all new people. I made a lot of friends in the biology department, and my roommate.”
“Do you still keep in touch with any of them?”
“A few. Breton, the girl I lived with, we video chat sometimes. She’s engaged now, though, so...you know how it is.” I shrug. “People lose touch. Get caught up in their own lives. It’s kind of a catch-22, really: now that I’m older and know how to make friends, it’s also the age where making friends...starts feeling impossible.”
“Makes me even more grateful I’ve got Walt,” he says, leaning back as the waitress brings our appetizer. I’m not hungry anymore, but I start squeezing edamame onto my plate like I’m in a contest, just to avoid the pity on his face. Tactless, friendless Colby.
“And so do you,” he says suddenly. I look up.
“Walt and you are friends, now, I’d say. Right? And the Hurley twins.” Orion reaches for the bowl the same time I do, our hands touching. Just like before, in the car, neither of us moves.
“And me,” he adds softly. He lifts my fingers in his and rests our hands on the tablecloth, the silk cool against my pulse points.
“Yeah,” I whisper, and feel my smile flicker back. “I guess I do.”
Sixteen
Orion
“Stop! There’s no way that’s true.”
Colby shoves me towards the ocean, her laugh like a chime pinging back to us from the end of the beach, wherever it may be. “Cross my heart. I’ve got every Power Rangers toy you can imagine.”
“Even the Megazord?”
“Especially the Megazord. The one that walks.”
In the silver moon, she squints at me, still unbelieving. “Why haven’t I seen this little collection of yours?”
I pause to roll my pant legs up again; the tide is rising, every slap on the shore unpredictable. My cuffs are damp and coated with sand, while she had the foresight to tie her dress up past her knees
. “It’s packed up in my closet. London definitely wouldn’t understand the concept of having toys that can’t be played with.”
“So let her play with them. They’re not, like, mint in their boxes, right? They were yours as a kid?” When I hesitantly nod, she adds, “That’s the only reason I’d want to keep my old toys around—so my kids could use them. And I’d have fun playing with them again, too.”
“Yeah, but see, you’re better at that than I am.”
“Playing?” She dances to the water as it lurches in and skims it with her foot, spraying me.
“Pretending.” Only partially aware of it, I grab her waist and steer her into the tide before it ebbs back. She laughs at the chill. This time, it echoes back to us like a bell.
“You are a pretty serious person,” she says, while we catch our breath. “Hey, don’t look embarrassed. It’s not a bad thing. Just...who you are.”
She runs ahead a few feet and scoops up a shell, perfectly intact and pure white, before the tide can rope it back. I step up behind her and watch how carefully she removes the sand from the grooves along the front.
“I didn’t used to be this serious, you know,” I say softly.
Colby turns her head. She looks at my mouth, then my eyes. “I had a feeling.”
The scar on her lip looks wet in the moonlight, that filament of pale pink I wanted to touch so badly, beyond all reason, that afternoon in her kitchen. I get that feeling again and know, if I lean just the slightest bit inward, she won’t hesitate to meet me the rest of the way.
Suddenly, the tide roars toward us; we jump when the cold soaks the bottom of our clothes. Colby’s yelp melts into another laugh as she pulls me to the dry sand, still warm from the sun.
“I assumed it was the teenage parent thing,” she adds, the moment passed, conversation soldiering on. “Most do the opposite, act even more like kids and dodge the responsibility. But the ones who don’t...they have to get serious. More serious than anybody else, just to prove themselves, because no one expects them to be able to do it.”
