Misadventures with a Twin

by Elizabeth Hayley

  Corey was quiet for a moment, which was too long for him. It was starting to freak me the fuck out.

  “Dude, it wasn’t my fault,” I practically whined. “How was I supposed to—”

  “Shhh. Just stop talking.”

  Oh, shit. Is he actually pissed?

  “You didn’t have a thing for her or anything, did you?”

  “Colton, I said shut the hell up for a second.”

  Normally I would’ve told him to go fuck himself and gone right on jabbering away, but he looked way too serious, and it was making my panic ratchet up to undiscovered levels.

  He closed his eyes and then started speaking. “I’m trying to imagine what that would feel like. To be balls-deep in a beautiful woman and have her moan out my brother’s name.” His eyes popped open, and I could see the amusement in them. “How did you not immediately die of embarrassment? Seriously, the fact that you’re still standing in front of me is a testament to how conditioned you’ve become to fucked-up shit happening to you. Because if that had happened to me, I’d have immediately jumped out of her window and hoped there was a bus waiting down there to finish me off.”

  “First off, you’re a dick. And second, I didn’t sleep with her. Just got her off.” I turned back to my toast and took a bite. It tasted like cardboard, but eating was better than talking to my brother.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t stop him from talking to me. “So on a scale from one to Tom Brady choking in the Super Bowl, how embarrassed are you right now? Because I feel like you definitely just cost yourself a championship.”

  I walked around him to put the butter back in the fridge and withdrew a bottle of water. “I’m not embarrassed.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m not. It happened and I can’t change it, so there’s no point in harping on it.”

  “Oh, I am so going to harp on it.” He laughed as he got down from the counter.

  “I hate you.”

  Corey waggled his eyebrows at me, but if he was going to reply, it was cut off by our dad walking in. “Morning, boys. Have a good time last night?”

  I heard Corey take a deep breath to say God only knew what in response, which prompted me to elbow him in the stomach and step in front of him to hide his reaction. “It was fine. Good seeing everyone again,” I said.

  “That’s nice. Stayed out of trouble?”

  “Of course,” I replied quickly.

  “Some of us more successfully than others,” Corey mumbled, blocking the next elbow I aimed his way.

  My dad either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him. “You guys ready to help me start cooking?”

  “Yup,” we both replied as we moved to start clearing the counters. This was our tradition. Ever since Mom died when we were fifteen, the three of us had done our damnedest to create a Thanksgiving meal she’d be proud of. It had been her favorite holiday—a day she said was just for enjoying your family without any other agenda—and we wanted to do it justice.

  In the thirteen years she’d been gone, we’d gotten this down to a synchronized routine, but the timing always felt slightly off anyway. Like we were a relay team without an anchor to run the final stretch. But we ran anyway. How could we not? Sometimes it wasn’t about winning. Sometimes it was about finding the strength to finish the race.

  Chapter Four

  Zara

  My parents’ house was only fifteen minutes away from the hotel, and I dreaded every passing second. Normally I was more awake and had time to prepare myself to deal with my family, but with the whirlwind of the reunion, I felt woefully unprepared. There was never really a time when I looked forward to spending a prolonged chunk of time around my family, but holidays were by far the craziest.

  There would be a beautiful meal waiting, made solely by my mother, who stayed up half the night preparing it, while my father would scrutinize whatever football game happened to be on before leading grace and carving the turkey as if both of those activities were more vital than the actual cooking that had taken place.

  My sister would gush about her three daughters, who would be in matching outfits so pristine, I wondered if she locked them in glass before bringing them over. My brother-in-law, Devon, would be mostly silent, nodding along so as to appear engaged. It was like the Cleavers met the Stepford Wives. Adding me into the mix gave the evening its sole flaw—like spending hours choosing the perfect arrangement of flowers for a date only to realize there was a wilted one hiding in the middle once you’d handed them over.

  I didn’t know if it was always that way or if my memory was biased. But for as long as I could remember, I’d felt like I didn’t quite fit with my family. I was too shy, too introverted, too disinterested in all the girly things my mom and sister enjoyed. So it became easier to exclude me than to drag me along. Or maybe it was just easier for me to exclude myself.

  But today I had better things to fixate on: last night with CJ. The crush I’d had on him through high school had slammed back into me as full-blown lust when I’d seen him at the reunion. Where his brother, Colton, had been obnoxious and insufferable, Corey had been funny and charming. And he was still both those things.

  It had gotten a little awkward right before he left, but that was probably because he wasn’t sure how I’d react to him not staying the night. Something he really needn’t have worried about. I wasn’t a prude—casual sex was something I could engage in without getting clingy. But reciprocating his…generosity wouldn’t have been a hardship. Quite the opposite. I would’ve liked to have had my hands, and mouth, all over him.

  I pulled into my parents’ driveway, which killed whatever fantasies I was having of licking CJ like a melting popsicle. For now at least. Later, when I was back home, I was sure I’d revisit them.

  I got out of my car, shut my door, and popped the trunk to grab the pies I’d picked up. Not that I’d ordered any of them. My mother would never entrust me to pick out anything for our meal. I carried the three pies and a platter of cookies—my own contribution—along with my purse and tried to not drop everything as I trudged up the three steps that led to our front door. I kicked it with the toe of my knee-high boot and waited for someone to open it, hoping that happened before I dropped everything.

  The door flew open, and my mom stood there with one hand on her hip. “Did you have to bang on the door like that? We have a doorbell.”

  Hello to you too. “My hands are full. And last time I was here, it didn’t work. Did Dad fix it yet?”

  Sighing heavily, she backed up so I could pass. “No. He can barely put his shoes on the right feet. You know that. I fixed the doorbell myself.”

  “Really? How’d you know how to do that?”

  “You know, you really should have more faith in me, honey.”

  “You YouTubed it, didn’t you?”

  She nodded and scooted around me to hustle back to the kitchen. “You say ‘YouTubed’ like it’s a dirty word,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” I said, putting the desserts on the counter. “I’m proud of you. Not a chance I would ever mess with anything electrical.”

  “Well, I turned off the power to the house first. Dad barely survived the half hour without Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.”

  I rolled my eyes good-naturedly and noticed my mom do the same. When we caught each other, we both began laughing.

  “What’s that?” my mother asked when she noticed the extra bakery box.

  “Cookies.”

  “I didn’t ask you to get cookies.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her, and I mentally praised myself because she definitely would have called me out on that one. “Sorry. I didn’t know I needed permission to do something nice.”

  She put down the spoon she’d been holding and crossed her arms. “Why do you always make things a bigger deal than they need to be?”

  I laughed, though I didn’t find the accusation at all amusing. “Me? You’re the one giving me a hard time about bringing c
ookies to Thanksgiving.”

  “I wasn’t giving you a hard time. I just said I didn’t ask you to get them.”

  “I know you didn’t. Sometimes I make my own decisions,” I said, my tone much too serious for a conversation about cookies. Maybe my mom was right.

  She snorted, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she found my comment funny or if she was scoffing at the thought of me making my own decisions. Sure, my mom and dad hadn’t been supportive of my decision to get bachelor’s and graduate degrees in hospitality while taking culinary classes, but the choice to go down that road had led me to financial independence. So yeah, my decisions had been pretty solid, even if she never gave me credit for them. Okay, so maybe I did make a big deal out of little things, but this was about more than just cookies.

  Mom called for my sister, Brielle, who came rushing in like the kiss-ass she was.

  “Oh. Hey, Zara. What do you need, Mom?”

  “Can you check on the turkey for me?”

  I wanted to ask why she didn’t want the trained chef already in the room to check it, but I knew the answer—she was done with our conversation and effectively done with me. So I left them to it and went into the family room. Brielle’s daughters were having a tea party with dolls as my dad and brother-in-law griped at the football game. Well, my dad griped. Devon more grumbled nonsense when my father did.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said as I leaned down to kiss his cheek.

  “There’s my girl,” he replied, taking his eyes off the game to pull me in for a bear hug.

  I turned toward the couch. “How have you been, Devon?”

  “Fine, fine, just fine,” he said. Repeating everything three times was a weird idiosyncrasy of his. I once asked my sister if he had OCD or something, and she nearly detached my head from my neck. I took her reaction as a yes.

  I walked over to the girls and squatted down. “Can I play?”

  “Did you bring a doll?” Harper, the older one, asked. There was no sarcasm or harshness to her words. Just genuine curiosity.

  “Unfortunately I did not.”

  Her little sister Rumi looked sad at this news. “We don’t have an extra one for you to play with.”

  “Sorry, Aunt Zara,” Harper added before they both continued playing.

  I stood around awkwardly before making my way back into the kitchen and asking my mom if she needed help. But a dark ball of fur darted in front of me on the way. “Oh my God!” I yelped, jumping back. “What the hell was that?”

  “What?” Dad called.

  “There was like a gigantic rat or something.” I was already standing on the chair in the corner of the room.

  “You better get down from there before Mom sees you with your feet on the furniture,” he scolded. “It wasn’t a rat. That’s Cecil, my kitten.”

  “You didn’t tell me you got a cat,” I said, stepping down from the chair.

  “I got a cat.”

  “I always thought Mom was allergic.”

  “I am!” my mom yelled in from the kitchen.

  “She’s not,” my dad said. “And it’s about time I got some testosterone in this house. Years with three women is enough to put someone in the nuthouse.”

  “He’s so dramatic,” my mom called.

  “You can call me dramatic when you stop fake sneezing at the sight of Cecil.”

  “I don’t want a black cat in here. It’s a bad omen.”

  My dad groaned like he’d heard this argument before. He probably had. “It’s only bad if it crosses your path.”

  I was tempted to say it just crossed my path, but I chose not to think about my potential bad luck. Maybe if I didn’t acknowledge it verbally, the universe would forget it happened. Instead I chose to change the subject. “You need any help, Mom?”

  “No, I think I’m okay.”

  Having checked the turkey and finding things progressing satisfactorily, my sister moved toward me and slid onto a stool at the island, where I joined her.

  “How was the reunion?”

  Mind-blowingly orgasmic. “Fine.”

  “See anyone interesting?”

  She was really trying to sniff out some gossip, but since the best rumor to come out of last night involved me, I wasn’t going to give her an inch. “Nope.”

  “I saw Maddie Gilbertson the other day. She’s pregnant. Again. I wonder who the father of this one is.”

  The derision in her words made my shoulders tense. Maddie had had a tough life, growing up with an alcoholic father in a trailer and rumors swirling about what had gone on inside. But I’d never heard her utter an unkind word about anyone. Which was a hell of a lot more than I could say about my sister. “Wasn’t she working at the bank?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So she has a solid-paying job that she’s managed to hold on to since we graduated high school. That says a lot about her character.”

  Brielle snorted. “So does having three kids by three different men. And she’s probably off with someone else as we speak.”

  “You want to know what she’s probably not doing?”

  “What?” my sister asked, leaning in excitedly.

  I shifted closer to her, like I had a salacious secret to share. “Talking shit about you over Thanksgiving dinner.”

  Brielle reared back, glaring at me before sliding off her stool and leaving the room.

  “Can’t you try to get along with Brielle so we can have a nice meal together?” my mom asked, clearly exasperated.

  “Not when doing so requires me to be an asshole.”

  “Such language.” All that was missing was the tsk.

  We were silent after that. Even when she called everyone to dinner and we began eating, quiet prevailed. That was the problem when not one of us had a single thing in common with any other member of our family. We had fuck-all to talk about unless we were bickering about nonsense. Maybe that’s why we resorted to it so often. It brought us closer together while we pushed each other apart.

  I briefly thought about telling them about my new business venture, but I really didn’t need to hear any negative comments about it. Not that they would’ve really cared anyway. It would’ve been a painful two-minute blip in an already strange evening.

  Once dessert was over—during which my mom didn’t even bother to put out the cookies I’d brought—I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I grabbed my cookie tray, said quick goodbyes, and practically sprinted to my car.

  I let myself unwind for a second before turning the ignition and making the half-hour drive home. With as mentally exhausted as I was, part of me wished I’d booked another night at the hotel, but I knew I’d feel better in my own bed. When I pulled up to my town house, I dragged my things inside and took them to my bedroom. A bath sounded wonderful. I’d basically thrown everything into my bag that morning, so I had to sift through its contents to find my toiletries and put everything into piles: laundry, toiletries, jewelry…

  I pulled the thong I’d worn last night out of my bag, and a shiny object came with it before falling to the floor. I picked it up and studied it. The gold chain in my hand held a beautiful pendant. It definitely wasn’t mine, which left only one person it could belong to.

  My heart rate spiked at the thought, and an arousing throb pulsed in my clit. This gave me an excuse to see CJ again. There was no way I was going to suggest mailing it to him. I might not have time for a boyfriend, but getting fucked into the mattress by my high school crush? That I had time for.

  Chapter Five

  Colton

  My phone dinged, but I was too frantic to check it. I couldn’t find my mom’s necklace anywhere. It wasn’t until halfway through the day that I’d realized it was missing because I took for granted it was where it always was: wrapped safely around my neck. I never took it off. Ever. So when I reached up to clasp it as we said grace before dinner, I nearly had a panic attack when my hand touched nothing but my own chest.

  Where the fuck could it be?

 
; Okay, I had to calm down. Way down. I had already ripped my childhood bedroom apart and turned up nothing. I needed to be more methodical in my approach. Where had I last had it?

  “Dude, what the fuck?” Corey’s voice from the doorway sounded alarmed.

  Sinking onto the bed, I dropped my head into my hands. “I lost it, Cor. I fucking lost it.”

  Barely a second passed before I felt the bed dip beside me and a hand roughly squeeze the back of my neck. “We’ll find it.” He knew exactly what I was referring to. Of course he did. There was only one thing that would cause this kind of reaction in me, and no one knew me better than him. “I’ll check the bathroom.” He was out of the room before I could tell him I’d already looked there, but it was probably best to have him double-check anyway.

  When he returned with tense shoulders, I knew he hadn’t found it. He began digging around the mess I’d made of the room, and I did the same.

  “Where did you have it last?”

  Despite having just asked myself the same question, I was irritated by him asking it. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be ransacking my room, would I?” I snapped.

  He stood up and pointed at me like he was somehow threatening or intimidating or some other shit that wasn’t true. We were the same size, and he hadn’t been able to take me down since before puberty. “Don’t start acting like a dick. I’m trying to help you.”

  I wanted to tell him to shove his “help” straight up his ass, but I also knew I needed it. My phone began ringing the sound of a screeching alarm—the only thing I was guaranteed to hear in the shop.

  “Answer that thing, will ya?” Corey griped as he tossed a pile of clothes onto my bed. “I don’t know how you stand that ringtone.”