Misadventures with a Twin

by Elizabeth Hayley

  I let the door slam shut behind me and didn’t even consider locking it. Hopefully someone would murder him while I was gone.

  ZARA

  I waited in the lobby of the restaurant for CJ. He’d offered to pick me up, but I was already downtown, so it made more sense to meet here. Even though I kind of cursed the fact that we’d have two cars. I was fairly certain he’d come back to my place after dinner, but I would’ve liked to have removed all other options.

  A moment later, a gust of cold air swirled around me as the door opened. Looking up, I saw CJ enter, hunkered down into his coat against the freezing temperatures. When he looked up and saw me, he made his way over and bent down to give me a quick kiss. As he straightened, an odd look came over his face, as if he’d been thrown by his own action—which was strange because he’d greeted me that way every time he’d seen me since we’d returned from my grandparents’ house.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  He shook his head as if clearing it. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good, yeah.”

  I almost called him out for sounding like Devon, but he didn’t look like he was up for being teased. There was a tension in his posture and a strain evident on his face that put me on alert.

  “Hungry?” I asked, trying to steer us away from the awkwardness that seemed to shroud us.

  “Starving.” He said it with a smile that looked genuine and made me feel a little more at ease.

  We made our way to the hostess stand, checked in for our reservation, and were shown to our seats immediately. CJ pulled out my chair before sitting across from me, and we each took a minute to look over the menus. A server quickly came to fill our water glasses, inform us of the specials, and take our drink order before hurrying away.

  “The shrimp special sounded good,” I said as I picked up my water to take a sip.

  “My brother thinks we’re dating.”

  His words startled me, causing me to gulp the water and choke. Grabbing my napkin, I covered my mouth and coughed into it a few times before looking up at CJ.

  His eyes were wide, as if he couldn’t believe he’d said the words out loud. “I maybe could’ve said that with more tact.”

  “Maybe just a bit. Now what are you talking about?”

  “He came in while I was getting ready and said it was nice to see me dating.”

  “But we’re not dating.”

  “That’s what I told him. But he went on and on about how if we were hanging out all the time and weren’t sleeping with anyone else, then that was basically dating. And I told him that I didn’t even know if we were sleeping with only each other. I mean, I’m only having sex with you, but I couldn’t speak for you. Not that I’m accusing you of banging a ton of guys, but we haven’t talked about it, so you could be. And that would be fine. Totally fine.”

  He didn’t look like that would be fine, and damn if that didn’t warm my insides. “CJ,” I interrupted, even though I kind of hated to because a flustered and rambling CJ was a sight to behold. “I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”

  “Okay. Good. That’s good. Me neither.”

  I’d gotten that message already but didn’t point it out. “That doesn’t mean we’re dating, though.” I hesitated for a second. “Does it?”

  We stared at each other for a pregnant moment before the server came back and broke our staring contest. After both grappling awkwardly for our menus, the server asked if we wanted him to come back in a few more minutes. But before he left, he said, “I forgot we also have a beef special for two. It’s popular with couples.”

  He went on to describe how it was prepared, but I’d tuned him out. Because while I wasn’t stupid and therefore wasn’t under any delusions that CJ and I were just buddies, it truly hadn’t hit me that other people looked at us as though we were in a relationship. Which, okay, maybe that did make me stupid. A man and woman out at dinner together screamed romantically involved. But what maybe threw me more than people thinking that about us was that it seemed…accurate. Or maybe I just wanted it to be.

  I knew I had feelings for him. I’d mentally owned up to them over a week ago. But saying them out loud was daunting, especially since I’d told him time and again that this was just sex. Somewhere along the way, mixed signals had become my language, and I wasn’t sure how to set the record straight.

  Looking up at him after the server left us, I let myself get lost in his eyes and imagined life without him. It made my chest ache. “I think we’re dating,” I blurted out.

  He took a deep breath that made me concerned about the words that would leave his mouth when he exhaled. But then he smiled, and just like that, I knew it would be all right.

  “I think so too. My brother is never going to let me live this down.”

  We laughed, and then as if by some unspoken agreement, we picked up our menus. I felt like we should have more to say on the matter, but we just…didn’t. We’d fallen into this change in our relationship status much like we’d fallen into every other aspect of it—completely by accident.

  Even though I’d never felt like I’d had more purpose in my life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Colton

  “How much snow are we supposed to get tonight?” I pulled Zara’s blinds up a bit to look outside. “It’s coming down pretty heavy.” I’d spent the majority of the day here, and though I knew it was supposed to snow, I hadn’t checked the weather since yesterday morning.

  “It said we could get up to eight inches before it’s done.”

  I nodded as I thought about how dating someone who lived forty-five minutes from where I worked and lived could be more problematic than I’d anticipated. The snow would be enough to weigh down power lines, enough to cover Zara’s whole car and the ground around it. I wanted to be here with her—keep her warm if the electricity went out, shovel out her car in the morning after we slept in and had breakfast. And if I left tonight, it might take me hours to get home, and I had work in the morning.

  This was the kind of bullshit decision-making I wanted nothing to do with. I hated how I’d have to consider the impact of my choices on someone else. Not because I didn’t care about Zara or about her life. I did. I wanted to know about her family and her interests and what she had for breakfast. I wanted to know all of it. But having my life so closely linked to another person’s was a lot of responsibility—especially with someone I felt so much for.

  “You still wanna go out to eat? We can order something if it’s easier.” I felt her arms slip around me as I looked at snow covering her lawn. “Or I could cook.”

  We had plans to go to a nice sushi restaurant in the city and then to see one of Zara’s friends sing at some sort of open mic thing we’d promised we’d go to. “What about Miranda’s thing?”

  “She’ll survive,” she said simply. “She goes to them all the time. I went to one two weeks ago.”

  “Oh.” I could hear the surprise in my voice. “Why didn’t you invite me then?”

  I felt her shrug. I turned to face her and slid my arms around her too.

  “We weren’t serious then,” she said. “I guess hearing Miranda’s drunken version of Adele’s ‘When We Were Young’ isn’t my idea of foreplay.”

  I burst out with a laugh. “Well, now I want to go more than ever.”

  “Believe me, there’s nothing hot about any of it. One time she threw up right as she sang the last line.”

  “That’s…gross.”

  Zara nodded slowly, like she was still traumatized from the memory. “The open mic was closed after that.”

  Both of us tried to hold in laughs that eventually escaped. “Okay, so we’ll give Miranda a rain check. Or a snow check, I guess I should say. But we can still go get dinner. We have reservations, and I’m sure we’ll be finished eating before it gets too bad out.”

  Zara thought for a moment. “You know what? Neither of us have even gotten in the shower yet. Let’s just stay here. I’ll make something for us, and we can find something
to do here.”

  Raising an eyebrow, I said, “I have an idea.”

  “We already did that twice today,” she teased. “Three for me, actually.”

  “Not that,” I said. “Well, we can still do that. But I was actually thinking we could go sledding.”

  “Where? On what? Childless adult women aren’t normally known for their selection of winter toys.”

  “Anything can be used as a sled,” I said, shocked that she’d never gone down a hill on a trash can lid. “Didn’t you ever make an impromptu sled in high school if it started snowing while you were out?”

  “I feel like I should just lie and say yes.”

  “Oh, no. No lying.” The words stung on my tongue as I said them, and if I’d been able to filter them before they’d come out, I would’ve. But my excitement at the prospect of doing something I hadn’t done in years got the best of me, and as usual, my mouth moved quicker than my brain. “If I’m going to take your household item sledding virginity, I need some advance notice.” I lowered my voice to a deep rasp that I hoped would sound sexy. “It’s gonna feel so good.”

  She bit back a smile. “What are we going to do it on?”

  “What do you have? Air mattress? Laundry basket? Cookie sheet greased with PAM?”

  “Who’s Pam?” she asked, her face so serious, it made the comment even funnier. “I thought I wasn’t sharing you.”

  I gave her a swat on her ass and then slid my hand into the back pocket of her jeans. I brought my other hand up to rub the back of her head, playing with her hair between my fingers. “You don’t. I’m all yours.”

  And better yet, she was all mine. For now, at least.

  ZARA

  I pulled my hat down over my ears before brushing off whatever snow I could from my pants. Before going outside, we’d gotten as bundled up as we could—luckily I’d gone skiing a few years ago, so I at least had some waterproof pants. But CJ, poor guy, was wearing only his jeans, which, from the looks of them, were so frozen I was worried they might actually crack and fall off him. At least he’d had boots in his car.

  “We can go back whenever you want,” I offered, though the kid in me was secretly hoping he’d hang for the long haul.

  “I’m good. I forgot how much fun it is to sled on a golf course.”

  “Until we get arrested.”

  He grabbed the twin air mattress, and we headed up to the top of the hill. Even though we’d decided to go out before dinner so it wouldn’t be as cold and dark, we’d already been sledding at least an hour, and the only light to be seen was the reflection of the moon on the snow—which was still falling, though not as heavily. “We won’t get arrested. No cops are worried about two old people playing in the snow.”

  “We aren’t old.” I looked at him for confirmation. “Are we?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t feel old. But most of my friends are married, and some have kids.”

  “Mine too.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’re old, though. We just took a different path, that’s all.”

  “A path that involves wine, trespassing, and numb fingers,” he said, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them.

  “Definitely the better option,” I said. “I still think you should’ve worn a pair of my leggings under your jeans.”

  “If I freeze to death tonight, I can’t have my family wondering if I was about to go all Caitlyn Jenner on them.”

  As he positioned the air mattress so we weren’t going to head toward the small pond on the eighth hole, I thought about what we’d just talked about. It was a point I didn’t often labor over, though it was true nonetheless. I didn’t exactly want kids—I never really had—but I didn’t not want them either. I’d just never been at a place in my life where I could picture caring about someone else as much, if not more, than I did myself.

  Until I’d reconnected with CJ, that is. I found myself falling for him in a way that I tried to deny. We’d had an instant attraction that, on my part at least, had been present in high school. But what I’d felt then, what I felt currently was more than just satisfying a childhood crush. And once we’d both allowed ourselves to acknowledge our real feelings, we’d gotten closer than I’d anticipated more quickly than I’d expected.

  He held a hand out to help me sit down in front of him.

  I let him pull me between his legs and wrap his arms around me. “They’d never think that. I doubt the morgue would tell them what you were wearing.”

  He squeezed my sides in an attempt to tickle me, but thankfully my coat was a thick enough defense. “Okay, two more times, and then we’ll head back. I’ve worked up an appetite. Ready?”

  Before I could respond, we were flying down the hill. Like every other time, the mattress was all over the place because it had two grown adults on it and no handles or other means of steering.

  Our breaths came out in loud puffs as we laughed after CJ somehow fell off the back. I went about fifteen feet more before I came to a complete stop. I lay on the mattress for a few moments, looking up at the falling snow.

  “Make room for me!” CJ yelled. Before I could react, he flopped down next to me, his weight popping the mattress at the seam. “Oops,” he said as we slowly deflated all the way down to the snow. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t used this thing since I moved out of my one-bedroom a few years ago.”

  “What are we gonna sled on next time it snows?” He asked the question like it made all the sense in the world.

  I rolled my head to the side so I could see him. Then I gave him a soft kiss. His lips were somehow still warm enough to make me want them on other parts of me. “I guess we’ll just have to invest in a two-person sled.”

  “Buying a sled together, huh? That’s a serious step. It’s like…three steps away from a puppy.”

  “I think it’s at least four or five ’til we’re in puppy territory,” I assured him.

  This time he turned to look at me. “Okay,” he said. “What color do you want?”

  “White with one of those brown spots around its eye.” I let the silence hover above us. “Kidding. I like red.”

  He smiled and rolled onto his side to bring a snowy, gloved hand to my face. “Me too.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Colton

  I pulled up in front of Zara’s town house and idled for a second, wondering if doing this in person was the best way to go about this. Though I figured there really was no best way to go about it.

  The better things got with Zara, the worse I felt, because there was no way around it: I was going to lose her. No scenario I conjured in my mind resulted in a happy ending for us.

  But wasn’t that how things always worked out? Happy endings were for fairy tales and romcoms. Even my parents, who’d loved more deeply than any two people I’d ever seen, hadn’t gotten the ending they deserved. Instead, my dad watched his wife waste away in bed as she writhed in pain from the disease that was eating her from the inside out.

  He’d been her rock through it all, but I wasn’t that guy. I wasn’t one to settle down and go all-in. Even if Zara had made me believe for a little while that I could be. Because my feelings for her were real, and if there was any way I could’ve told her the truth and kept her, I would have. If I could go back to the night of the reunion and been honest from the jump, I would.

  Though that likely would have meant never getting to know her in the first place, since she’d made it clear she wasn’t fond of who I really was. But maybe that would’ve been for the best, because the path we were on now was headed to crash and burn. I’d been a dick keeping the truth from her, and she was likely going to begin plotting my death as soon as I told her, which I deserved. I deserved a lot of things: her ire, her harsh words, her hatred.

  I just wished I deserved her. But I didn’t, and it was time to come clean about that. I’d already waited almost two months to be honest. The least I could do was face her wrath head-on
.

  I climbed out of my car and made my way to her door. I’d texted earlier to say I was heading over, and she’d told me she’d leave the door open. Which wasn’t the safest thing for her to do, but I didn’t feel like I was in the position to lecture her about it. I walked into her home and looked around. I could’ve seen myself spending a lot more time here if I hadn’t been a lying prick who was about to get tossed on his ass.

  “Zar? I’m here.”

  “I’ll be right down,” she yelled. “Or you could come up.” The flirty invitation was clear, but there was no way I would take her up on it.

  “I’m going to grab a drink of water.”

  “Okay,” she yelled back, dragging out the initial vowel.

  I wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and toyed with it while I waited. Maybe the kitchen wasn’t the best place to have this discussion. Too many knives. But a change of venue was out of the question as she bounced into the room, immediately coming over to me to give me a kiss—which I allowed myself to soak up since I was sure it would be the last one I ever received from her—and then went to grab herself a drink.

  “So what do you want to do tonight? I could go for takeout from that pub around the corner.”

  When I didn’t answer her, she looked up. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” My voice was raspy, as if it had been scrubbed with a Brillo pad. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yeah, I’m fine. But…I need to talk to you about something.”

  She moved closer to me and crossed her arms over her chest. “What is it?”

  “It’s… I need to… Fuck, this is hard…” I scrubbed a hand over my face.

  “Is this about the restaurant? Because I think your dad and I have come to an agreement that’ll make everyone happy.”

  I put up a hand to cut her off. “No, it’s not that. But I’m glad you’ve figured it out.” And I hoped what I said next didn’t fuck it all up.