by SM Olivier
Emery had been a mama’s girl. They had been so similar. They liked everything “girly.” It wasn’t until the beginning of the school year that I decided to reinvent myself. I found out I actually did like looking like a girl. I started wearing makeup more, even owned several skirts and dresses.
Our brother BJ, however, kind of just went with the flow. His relationship with Dad was great now, but there had been many years he wouldn’t even talk to him. The loss of my mother and Dad’s constant absence had been detrimental to their relationship.
Me: Thanks, Dad :-* Are you still coming to my graduation in three weeks?
I looked off for a moment. Dad was coming home next week. I was graduating first, then BJ, then Emery. He had to do a lot of traveling when he was home this time, but I knew Stephanie, our new stepmom, wouldn’t mind.
Dad had been mostly stateside for the last four years and had met Stephanie, a young widow, two years ago. She had two young boys herself. I wasn’t ecstatic about their relationship at first, but I had grown to love the boys. The jury was still out for Stephanie.
It wasn’t like she was a horrible woman. In fact, she was terrific for my father. She doted on him and breathed new life into him. It was just a bitter, hard pill to swallow, accepting a new woman when you believed your parents were soul mates. It was hard to acknowledge that my dad could love another.
At the end of the day, though, I had to accept it and accept it soon. Stephanie was pregnant with my little sister. It was kind of surreal, in so many ways, to know that I would be a big sister to a baby.
If I—I started to think but quickly shut those thoughts down. It hurt too much to think of that, even now. What had followed had been debilitating.
I focused once more on my conversation with Dad. A month ago, he was called overseas for a secret mission. I had no clue where he was or what he was doing, but I couldn’t wait to see him.
Papa Bear: I wouldn’t miss it for the world! Have you talked to Emery lately?
I sighed. He had been trying to mend our relationship for a while now. He knew we had grown apart long ago and even understood why I hadn’t talked to her in nearly a year now, but he still held out hope that I would forgive her. I couldn’t.
In retrospect, I knew the loss of Mom had changed Emery irrevocably. I knew the strain of not having our own separate identity for most of our lives and knew it had been hard on her. High school had been the beginning of the end of our close relationship. Her decision to go to another college had dug our grave. Her betrayal had nailed the nails in her coffin. She was dead to me.
I knew it was a bit dramatic, a bit Godfather-ish even, but I didn’t care. Some things couldn’t be forgiven. There were choices people made that sealed their fates in your life.
It hurt me more than anyone would ever understand.
Emery and I may have been night and day, but that whole twin telepathy thing had been real for us for many years. When I had my tonsils removed as a child, she had felt the pain I had gone through. And once, in our senior year of high school, she had gone skiing with a bunch of friends. I had woken up in a cold sweat, my leg in spasms. I told Dad I thought something was wrong. Less than an hour later, her friends called. She was in an accident and had broken her leg.
But where I embraced our connection, she had shunned it.
It wasn’t the first or last time that had happened between us. I always felt this weird bond with her. Even though I was never willing to become who she wanted me to be growing up, I had at least embraced our differences. She hadn’t. She always acted like I had been rejecting it one moment, then angry when someone confused her for me. She had always wanted to have her cake and eat it, too.
I finally responded to my father.
Me: No
I kept my answer short. He wouldn’t push. He was awesome like that. I knew he would never give up, but he knew when to quit.
I continued to go through my messages, “feeling the love” as family and friends reached out to congratulate me on my win. My friends and family might not physically be there for my tournaments, but they were their emotionally.
I opened my next message, and my heart clenched once more. Reluctantly, I read it.
Aunt Pam: Congratulations, baby. I knew you could do it. Can you come to dinner next Sunday? Trevor won’t be home…
Aunt Pam had taken on the role of my mother after Mom passed. She and Mom had been so much alike, and it comforted me to have her around. Uncle Scott and Aunt Pam had purposely purchased a house in the same neighborhood as us for that reason.
She had been so happy when Trevor and I started dating. She told me she always knew we were meant for each other and had confided in me that she and my mom had been planning our weddings since Tommy Messina had pulled my hair in the fourth grade, after which Trevor had punched him in the face, defending me.
She had helped Trevor pick out my promise ring during my freshman year of college. She shopped with him for my actual engagement ring. She always told me that Emery and I were the daughters she always wanted, but I was the daughter-in-law she hoped to have.
She had a great relationship with Emery, but I gravitated towards their family more. Especially on Sundays. I had attended church with them every week and had dinner with them afterward. Sundays were family days in the Cavalier household, whether Uncle Scott was there or not.
No plans were ever to be made on Sundays by the Cavalier boys. Even after Corbin joined the military, when he was home, he was always there.
I craved some normal family bonding. The invitation was always open for us to attend. When BJ was home on the weekends, he would tag along with me and Trevor. Emery had turned her back on that tradition by the tenth grade. She was too busy with her friends to care about family dinners.
I hadn’t been to a family dinner since Trevor and I had broken up. I wasn’t able to talk to Aunt Pam for months after the demise of our relationship. I had deactivated all my social media accounts until competition season began this past winter. I couldn’t answer phone calls or text for weeks after we broke up—I just couldn’t be reminded of all that I had lost.
With time, I eventually talked to her, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.
Me: Maybe I can stop by for a little while. Mikey and I have a birthday party to go to.
Mikey was my youngest stepbrother. He was eight years old, and ever since he found out I was into martial arts, he became…attached to me. Dad got Mikey and Miller into martial arts, but Miller preferred the indoors and gaming. He went to classes, but he didn’t love it like Mikey did.
Mikey quickly became my little buddy. Whenever I was at Dad’s, I always made it a point to spend some time with my step-brother. He had suffered from my break up, too. I tried to make the three-hour drive home as often as possible. Mainly since my Dad was away, and Steph was so close to given birth. It was a great excuse to briefly escape from college life and help Steph out so she could have some much-needed time to herself.
I often took the boys out on Saturdays. We would hit up the arcades, movies, or pretty much anything else that gave Steph a few hours to herself. This weekend, the plans were to go to a place that specialized in climbing trees and ziplining. I was excited to see my brother BJ, too. He was just as stoked to accompany us.
I told Mikey I would take him to his friend’s birthday party on Sunday before I headed back to college. I came to the realization that the busier I was, the easier it was for me to forget. Spending time with my siblings was the greatest way for me to keep occupied.
Aunt Pam: Please do. I miss you.
Me: I miss you too.
I bit my lip, trying to hold the tears at bay once more. One would think ten months was enough time to mend a broken heart, but it wasn’t. Life had a way of laughing at me when I thought I was going to be okay again.
People never realized how much someone was imprinted onto their lives until they were gone. The simplest things—smells, sounds, shows, and song
s—could dredge up old memories. I had given Trevor almost six years of my life as his girlfriend, and we had been best friends since our daycare days. That was a lot to forget, a lot to try to get over.
“No way, no way, no way!” Sylvia now squealed. “Please tell me this means what I think it means!”
I was brought out of my memories as Sylvia shoved her phone in my face and continued to bounce up and down like a child strung out on too much sugar.
I took her phone, confused at what I saw at first, until I realized she was on Facebook.
Why, oh, why? Life, can you stop kicking me?
I didn’t need what was in that card this morning. I didn’t want to talk to Aunt Pam. And I definitely didn’t need to see Corbin Cavalier’s post. There was a reason I deleted him from my social media accounts.
Suddenly Sylvia frowned. “I’m sorry, Avery. I know you don’t like to know what the Cavalier family is doing, but we’re… still friends.”
I really couldn’t get mad at her. Sylvia had grown up in a broken home. Her life was worse than mine. My dad might have been gone all the time, and my mother had died, but Sylvia’s father was in jail, and her mother was on drugs, an addict in the worse way. Sylvia had practically lived with me since we were fifteen, right after my dad had found out about her home life.
She got to meet Pop-pop, Nana, the Edens, and the Cavaliers the summer after I met her. Surprisingly enough, Wyatt and Corbin were able to take leave that summer too. They had joined the service together as their fathers had, and, ironically, they were still together to this day.
It didn’t surprise me that Sylvia had fallen under the Mischief (Corbin) and Misfit (Wyatt) spell almost immediately. Sylvia was still just as boy crazy as Emery, if not more. She had lusted after Corbin and Wyatt immediately.
It was that summer that I realized the M & M−Mischief and Misfit− had changed. Where did the annoying boys and carefree teens go? In their place were men. Corbin had filled out. He had a large frame at six-foot-three and two hundred and twenty-five pounds of hard muscle. His long ash-blond hair had been shorn close to his head, due to the military. I’d also realized for the first time how unique his eyes were. They weren’t soulful brown like his brother’s. Instead, his eyes were a pale jade green one day, and a light steel-gray the next.
Misfit, Wyatt, had always been tall and lean. He was about six-foot-two, and before that summer, he had weighed around one-thirty, max. His first year in the military had helped him gain about forty pounds of muscle. He was still lean, but he had muscles where bones were once prevalent. The military also made him cut his glorious russet-brown, wavy hair. Unlike Corbin, though, he kept some length on the top of his head. I’d always noticed Wyatt’s bright emerald green eyes since we were kids and still had never seen eyes as green as his.
“I didn’t expect you to unfriend them,” I admitted truthfully. “Just because I did, didn’t mean that you had to,” I murmured. I looked more closely at her phone. “What’s this?”
It was just a picture of six rucksacks, six pairs of boots, and six M-4s leaning against the wall.
“Well,” she had hesitantly. “It’s Corbin’s way of letting his friends and family know he’s coming home.”
Sylvia had grown out of her crush of M&M and had become friends with them. By her second summer at the campground, things had changed more so. M&M no longer treated us like pests. They hung out more with the men, but they still had time to hang out with us “kids.”
Sylvia had exchanged numbers with them and soon were occasionally talking. Every time they deployed, we had sent M&M care packages. They had been part of some top-secret team for years now. For their last mission, they had left shortly after our Fourth of July get together—the one I had attended. This last one, though, I hadn’t participated.
“That’s great,” I faked enthusiasm.
It was great, but I had been avoiding Corbin since my breakup. He had reached out several times, but in my irrational belief, I blamed him for Trevor’s behavior. Trevor always looked up to him, and Corbin had always been a manwhore. Granted, Corbin never dated− that I knew of− and was still up front with the girls he hooked up with, but I had this belief that Trevor envied the variety of girls Corbin had been with.
It wasn’t until after I had broken up with Trevor that I found out that the couple of times we had taken a “break,” he’d been with other women. Whenever we took breaks, I assumed it was to get our feelings and heads sorted out. I loved Trevor. Never had I entertained the thought of being with another guy.
I had found out from Emery, since they went to the same school, that he had taken our breaks literally and found other girls to warm his bed. Her not telling me showed me how very different we were. I would have told her in a heartbeat. She honestly thought it had been no big deal.
We had taken a break, not broken up, twice. Both times she was aware of his behavior, and both times she never thought to tell me. If I had known last year that he’d done that to me, I would have called it quits then. So many things had happened between our break and the final break up. I would have still been hurt, but I didn’t think I would be as devastated as I was now.
“He’s been asking about you,” Sylvia confessed quietly. “Wyatt too. They miss you.”
I looked down at my hands. “It’s hard,” I confessed. “There are too many memories. I can’t see Corbin without seeing Trevor. I can’t talk to Wyatt without him talking to me about Cor.”
Sylvia snorted. “I don’t see how. You know Trevor was always the replica, while Corbin was the real deal. Trevor was…cute, but Corbin is hot.”
I looked over at her, slightly surprised she was going down this road again. The last time we had hung out with Corbin and Wyatt was three years ago, and Sylvia had sworn they were vying for my attention. She was convinced they both liked me. At the time, I had laughed at her. I was happy with Trevor, and Corbin and Wyatt always treated me like a younger sister.
She had been Team Trevor back then. Now she had changed teams since Trevor had dragged me through hell.
“You know,” she said slyly, “when we go visit Steph and the boys, we should swing by Aunt Pam’s. I’m sure Corbin will be home by then. You know they’re moving into their new place.”
I sighed and looked around. I was happy to see my other seven teammates were animatedly talking amongst themselves or sleeping. It had been an early morning, and most of us had left ourselves on the tournament floor today.
“Aunt Pam asked me to come to Sunday dinner,” I admitted quietly. “Trevor won’t be there. I told her I might stop by.”
Sylvia leaned in and hugged me. “Is that why you’re so…down? You know it’s been almost a year. I think it’s time you stopped punishing yourself. And Aunt Pam and Uncle Scott, too.”
The Cavaliers and Edens had taken to Sylvia immediately and now accepted her as family. With the ease that she fit in, one would think she was my sister. Hell, she was more of a sister than my own sister had become.
I reached down and withdrew the card once more. I pulled out the cardstock, and I felt my heart rip open. On the glossy cardstock was a professional picture of Trevor. His ash-blond hair perfectly swept to the side; his lean but firm body was leaning into the woman he had replaced me with. He was smiling down at her. The girl was looking up at him with a broad smile in return.
They wore complimenting outfits. He was dressed in a pair of khakis and a white button-up shirt. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing his forearms. She was dressed in a short white dress with thin spaghetti straps. The white was a sharp contrast against her tanned skin, and the length of the skirt was flattering on her long, shapely legs.
The way her head was tilted back and to the side was so familiar. Her medium length, dark brown hair was cut in layers and carefully curled to her shoulders. My hair was long and fell to right below my shoulder blades. I liked the simplicity of my hair, and unless I was going out, I never did anything with it.
Her makeu
p was done heavily, professionally polished, which made sense since she had several YouTube videos out on how to achieve a flawless look. Me, I was for simplicity. I wore makeup, but I preferred the natural look. Most of the time, all I needed was some mascara and lip gloss.
Her eyes were turned away from the camera, but I knew they were shaped like a cat’s eyes, tilting at the corners and were a light amber color. Her hand was possessively touching his chest. A chest that once had been mine to touch.
“Are you shitting me?” Sylvia whispered in horror. “They actually had the gall to invite you to their… wedding?”
“It gets better,” I said bitterly, my voice heavy with unshed tears as I showed her the little note that had come with the invite.
Sylvia gaped as she read the note. Her laugh was incredulous and angry. “You’re kidding me, right? She wants you to be in the wedding?”
I nodded, wiping away the tears that had finally fallen. It was hard knowing your boyfriend of six years had cheated on you with another woman. It was perfectly reasonable to wonder why. It was easy to compare yourself to her. Typically, the other woman was so much more different than you in looks that you could understand the reasoning, even a tiny bit.
But imagine losing your man to a woman that looked exactly like you. In fact, identical. She might be more… high maintenance and have other hobbies, but in looks and mannerisms, we were indistinguishable.
The day I lost my boyfriend was the same day I’d lost my sister. They had chosen themselves over me. I could’ve eventually gotten over it, but things had only escalated from the original indiscretion. I understood they had been drinking; Trevor more so than all of them. After all, Trevor had been celebrating his successful finals.
The stories they’d told me were different, and Emery’s had changed several times. Trevor said he was drunk that night and had put himself to bed. He woke up thinking it was me going down on him. He thought I had come to visit him.
