5. Chase
Chase and his twin sister Lydia may have had the same birthday, the same dirty blond hair and freckle-splattered noses, and the same sense of humor and taste in movies, but somewhere in those five minutes between his birth and hers, she’d developed a skill that was hers alone.
She called it persuasion. He called it manipulation.
“But you have to come with me.” Her forehead crinkled as she pouted, her attention only half directed at him as she rifled through the hangers in her closet in search of the perfect dress.
Which metrics she used to determine that? He wasn’t sure, but he knew she was probably running colors, fabrics, and styles through a mental cross-section chart as they spoke.
He had initially dropped by her room to see if he could pawn his grocery list off onto her, but somehow ended up perched stiffly on the edge of her way-too-soft mattress. She didn’t want him to wrinkle her neatly tucked comforter, but she was now holding him hostage, and there was nowhere else to sit. Organized as Lydia was, her space gradually descended into chaos whenever she needed to attend an event. Part of it was her indecisiveness, sure, but Chase had another theory that she made a mess every once in a while just to indulge in the sheer joy that cleaning it up would bring her afterward.
“Otherwise, I’ll be all by myself. I haven’t seen these people in five years. What if I end up surrounded by a bunch of psychos?”
He drank his soda, carefully placing the can back on the rhinestone-rimmed coaster she’d indiscreetly slid underneath it after his last sip, lest he ruin the pink enamel paint on her nightstand. “What are the chances of every single personfrom our graduating class turning out to be a serial killer? You watch too much Dateline.”
“Fine.” She held up something blue and shiny to get his opinion.
He hoped his shrug gave off the resounding, I don’t care, that he was going for.
She didn’t want to hear his fashion opinions—or lack thereof—anyway. It was all part of some calculated ploy to make this seem like a casual conversation instead of a trip through one of her carefully concocted flow charts. If Chase does not respond positively to Reason A, then Reason B shall be provided. If Chase provides an excuse after hearing Reason A, his response shall be considered positive and answered with Counterpoint A.
“Realistically, what if I get stuck listening to someone brag about how they met their smoking hot fiancé or started their booming Silicon Valley startup, or gave birth to their precious little angel and lost all the baby weight in two weeks and you aren’t there to bail me out?”
Or what if she tried to have a good time with her friends and everyone kept bothering her all night with questions about him?
She wouldn’t say that. Chase didn’t even know if she was thinking it, but it was all he could imagine when he pictured her attending their high school reunion alone. He wasn’t in the mood to answer anyone’s questions, either. That was why he had RSVP’d “no” and stuck the return envelope in the mailbox within the first five seconds after opening his invitation.
Suddenly, he felt selfish for not considering how things would shake out for Lydia in his absence. Being a public figure, even if only among hockey fans, meant he was used to having no privacy. Followers of the sport or not, surely everyone he used to go to school with knew about his career-ending accident.
Before he had regained consciousness, videos had been plastered all over every sports news station in the U.S. A headlining story for one week, and still consistently brought up by commentators throughout the ‘96-‘97 season.
It would be years before he, or the league, could move on from what had happened to him.
Lydia had never cared about prestige or glamor. The moment she realized she couldn’t become a princess, she decided to become an accountant. That idea had given every adult a laugh coming from a seven-year-old, but three months ago she got promoted to finance manager at the largest accounting firm in California, one of the largest in the county.
Still, she never made a purchase without first checking at least five thrift stores, swore up and down that boxed wine tasted better than the bottled stuff, and wouldn’t replace her running sneakers until they wore down to court shoes. But while she hated being involved in other people’s drama, she loved listening to it.
She wouldn’t go to a bar without bringing a book, but she would still sit at the counter to eavesdrop while pretending to read. Every piece of fan and hate mail he’d ever received had been delivered to his desk with broken seals. A cheesy reunion was probably her idea of the perfect night out, and the simple fact that people knew she was his sister was about to ruin that for her.
“Why don’t you just tell them one of your own boring work stories for every boring life story they tell you? You’re sure to win that way. It’s too late for me to go with you, Lyd. I told them no.”
The regret in his voice to Lydia was like blood in the open ocean to a shark. She could detect a drop of it from miles away.
“Oh, please.” She waved one hand while clasping a butterfly earring with the other. “You know the party planning committee would never turn you down. You’re the biggest success Laurel Park has churned out in over thirty years.”
Chase’s career with the Tacoma Kodiaks had spanned only three seasons, yet his sister still viewed him as a superstar athlete. He couldn’t imagine why when he was now an out-of-work forward. Burning through his earnings to live in a big, expensive city he hated because he couldn’t even nab a job as a youth league skating coach.
“I don’t think that”s how anyone else sees it,” he said. “They just want the publicity.” And all the gory details.
“Who cares what they want?” She rested a hand on her hip as she finally focused on him. “I want to party and get blackout drunk on margaritas from the open bar, and then—maybe, probably, hopefully—bring David Ramirez back here because I ran into him a few months ago at the mall, and he is rocking the new beard. And I want to do all those things with my best friend. My brother.” She cringed. “Well, except for that last one.”
“Thanks for the clarification. David’s a nice guy, but not really my type.”
Lydia shot Chase an impatient smile. “The longer you let fear and insecurity keep you from enjoying the little things, the more you get used to not having them. Then the little things become big things, and the big things become even bigger things, and eventually, you can’t recognize yourself because there’s no you left at all. You might not feel like it tonight, Chase, but it’s time. Because if you’re waiting until you’re ready to start living again, you’ll never start.”
Sometimes, it felt like twin telepathy was real. “I never said anything about—”
“You’re not the only one who saw a therapist after the accident.” She placed a hand on his knee. “I didn’t know how to be there for you when things got bad and you weren’t talking to anyone about it. But now I do, which means you have yet another reason to do what I say. Scientifically backed, this time.”
Chase fought past the urge to protest that last part and pulled her into a hug. That was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. So nice that it almost felt like an orchestrated plan to get him to go out with her tonight.
How could he tell her no again after that? Even if she did mumble “dork” under her breath as she pushed him away and went to plug in her hair iron.
“And this therapist told you to force me to go to a party with a bunch of people I did dumb shit with as a teenager?”
“We had a confidentiality agreement,” she called out from the en suite bathroom. “But I can assure you, we discussed integrating tequila and karaoke into your rehabilitation plan.”
There was no doubt about it. Chase was stuck going to this event now, and all he could do was try not to let his mind wander too far.
He’d lost touch with all his high school acquaintances when he moved to Washington until the first time his name popped up on national television, and they blew up his phone. When he won the Rookie-of-the-Year Award that following summer, suddenly every person he had ever crossed paths with crawled out of the woodwork to congratulate him and suggest they get together sometime.
Never in his life had he been surrounded by so many people, and he was just as alone then as he was now.
“I’m not singing karaoke, by the way,” he said adamantly.
“Does that mean you’re going?” Lydia made no effort to dampen her excitement.
She must have already known before the start of their conversation that she would convince him to go, so he chose not to dignify her question with a response. “Do you happen to know who else is going?”
She popped back in the room, hair straightened to her collarbones, arms and face coated in some sort of shimmery body oil that made her look like a glazed donut. Her answering grin was unhinged. “Why? Looking for anyone in particular?”
He threw a pillow at her with an emphatic, “No.”
The only reason he was going was to preserve Lydia”s right to a carefree evening.
He wasn’t looking for anyone.