Chapter 2
2
EMMA
It was almost ten at night, and I was still at work. Ugh.
“Emma–chop chop. We don’t have all night.” My supervisor, Stan, clapped his hands together as he passed my cubicle.
Asshole.
Tilting my head back, I rolled my sore neck around.
God, this job was a nightmare. I’d thought I’d landed my dream role when I got hired to do digital effects in Hollywood. My design degree had paid off, and I’d thought living in a big city on the ocean was going to be a dream.
I’d thought I was the lucky twin for a change.
I hadn’t minded the late nights. I hadn’t minded working eighty hours a week. I expected it. I’ve always been the diligent one between me and my sister. This time, I’d thought I was part of something big when I took the job. But two and a half years later, I was still making the same salary and working the same hours. My self-confidence had been ground to a little nub. I didn’t even remember the last time I saw the Pacific or anything outside the walls of my office.
It would be one thing if I felt like my work was respected or I was given any credit for anything I did.
But that wouldn’t ever happen here. Day after day of the same old non-stop grind, it was more apparent.
I gritted my teeth and finished creating the explosion scene that they asked me to redo five times. Not because I did anything wrong–just because someone new kept interjecting with a different vision.
That was how the movie business was. I knew better than to get my nose bent out of shape.
Or I should, but it was beyond old.
My cell rang, and I glanced down. It was Lyssa. It was close to eleven at night in Montana, but she was always the party girl.
“Hey, what’s up?” I answered.
“What’s up with you?” Since we were identical twins, our voices were the same, like everything else about us, but hers was filled with excitement and enthusiasm. “Tell me you’re not still at work.”
I sighed. “I can’t because I’d be lying. ”
“Seriously? It’s Sunday. You haven’t had a day off in what? Six weeks? It’s not like you get overtime.”
“Preaching to the choir,” I muttered as I kept my hands moving on the mouse and keyboard to program the visual effect with the new look they’d asked for. My monitor was huge and took up my entire desk. The lights were off. I had no exterior windows. My space was a digital cave.
“You need to quit.”
She’d been telling me this for about a year, and she wasn’t wrong. At first, I’d resisted her advice because I had a job. A job in the field that I wanted. A job that paid the bills, even if I didn’t have any time to spend any of my earnings. Heck, I was barely in the apartment I paid rent on.
Where did being the “good girl” get me?
Absolutely nowhere. That was where.
Having her call in the middle of my little pity party only made it worse. Reminded me what I could have if I hadn’t been the responsible twin. I’d spent my entire life being just that. The boring twin. The quiet twin. The dowdy twin. The mousy twin. The nerdy twin. Insert whatever staid adjective before twin, and that was me.
Meanwhile, Lyssa, living her erratic, wild, and crazy life, had always pulled in luxury, ease, and fun. She bounced from job to job but had never made less than six figures. She didn’t pull eighty-hour work weeks either.
“Emma, are you on the phone?” Stan called across the office. “You don’t have time to be on the phone.”
“Oh my God, is he yelling at you right now? It’s like… ten o’clock!” Lyssa was pissed on my behalf. “Quit! Emma, seriously. Quit. Just get up and walk out. Nothing bad will happen to you, I promise.”
Lyssa knew I was a worrier. That I overthought everything. That if I wasn’t cautious and careful something bad was going to happen. My twin was the opposite. She didn’t worry about anything. I had a planner and every second of my day was allocated while she literally winged life. I questioned everything, knowing something terrible could happen if I made the wrong choice. Maybe that was why she said nothing bad will happen. She knew that was exactly what I was imagining if I did what she said and quit.
I bit my lip, never before so tempted. I should quit. I really should. I was absolutely miserable. My only joys in life besides talking to Lyssa were hitting my bed at night and taking a hot shower in the morning, and that was depressing as hell.
This work was killing me.
“I’m still working, Stan. I can work and talk,” I called out. I wasn’t usually sassy. It must have been Lyssa’s influence .
Or the fact that I was one inch from a nervous breakdown. I grabbed my favorite coffee mug, and saw that it was empty. Shit. I needed more coffee.
“I’m serious about quitting,” Lyssa said in her take-no-prisoners tone. “You could come to Montana and just decompress from all that bullshit.”
“Hmm.”
It was tempting. Very tempting.
“My boss isn’t ever here,” she continued. “I mean, I’ve met him. He did the interview. But he comes and goes. The last time I saw him was two weeks ago, and he said he wouldn’t be back this month.” Her latest gig was working as a ranch caretaker to some billionaire who owned a huge piece of property in Montana. Since it was his second or seventh home, the guy, like she said, was rarely there.
What a job. Manage house cleaners for a place that never got dirty. Filled the pantries of a bunkhouse full of hot–Lyssa’s word–cowboys. She knew nothing about horses. Nothing about…running a dang ranch, except she was doing it. Without a boss breathing down her neck. Or, from what it sounded, even in the same state.
“I’m actually headed to Ibiza with the Sultan of Arunai.”
What? My brain stalled. Sultan of Arunai? SULTAN?
I couldn’t even get a date with the security desk guy downstairs, and she bagged a sultan? And where the hell was Arunai? Was she making it up? Had the guy lied to her about being a sultan? How did someone even become a sultan? Did she mean Aruba?
God, I was thinking all of the possible dangers, Lyssa was like, cool. Let’s do it. I don’t care if you’re lying, you fuck well, and I want a free trip.
“What?” I asked. “Ibiza?”
“I know!” she laughed. “Crazy, right?”
Yes, batshit crazy.
“When were you going to tell me this?” I asked.
“ Emma! ” Stan yelled. “Are you still on the phone?”
“That’s why I called,” Lyssa said.
I shook my head, losing my shit over two different people talking to me.
“To tell you the crazy story,” she continued. “You see, he was in Montana to check out a prize bull he sponsored, and we bumped into each other at the only restaurant in town.”
“Emma!” Stan’s voice was louder this time.
“We hooked up, and…well, now he’s flying me to Europe on his private jet!” My sister’s laugh did not begin to convey how actually incredible and bizarre her story was. But that was because this was a normal kind of occurrence in her life. She hooked up with a guy she met in a restaurant. Then, on a whim, went flying to Europe with him.
I was going to go to the break room and get more coffee. Maybe stir in some of that hazelnut creamer. That was my excitement.
My sister was literally the luckiest, flightiest, wildest human on Earth. She didn’t try hard at anything. It was all just handed to her on a silver platter.
Who happened to run into the Sultan of Arunai at a restaurant in MONTANA and hooked up with him?
Only Lyssa.
And all I’d done in my life was play it safe, and look where I was. In my cave with an annoying boss pestering me close to midnight.
“Emma!” Stan was back at my office door. “Hang up the phone and finish the goddamn effect. We are all waiting on you.”
I looked up and stared at my boss. I hated him. Hated my job. Hated my life. Look where playing it safe had gotten me.
Absolutely nowhere.
“You know what, Stan?” I stood up from my rolling chair, which had broken a year ago, and I couldn’t get replaced. “Go fuck yourself.”
His eyes widened because I’d never spoken to him like that before. Or anyone else, for that matter. “Oh, that’s nice. Real nice.” Stan’s stubbly face turned red.
Lyssa cheered in my ear. “That’s right, girl. You tell him. Now walk out of there.”
“I have been here for fourteen hours already, and that was after working until 1:00 a.m. last night. All I wanted to do was hear my sister’s voice while I worked on the background imagery before she left the country, and you’re over here riding my ass.”
Wow. I never even really cursed.
This felt good .
I threw open the drawer to my desk and pulled out my purse. “So you know what?” I started throwing my things scattered around my desk into my purse. After eight years, there wasn’t much, which was really sad.
“No.” There was alarm in Stan’s voice. “You can’t leave. Not before it’s done.”
Under normal circumstances, I would feel bad for him. His problem would be my problem, and I’d solve it for him, and he’d get the credit. That was how I rolled. I was the conscientious, responsible employee. The safe sister. But fuck this. I didn’t have a sultan fucking me and taking me to Europe, but I didn’t have to be fucked over by my boss and getting nowhere.
“I’m done.”
Lyssa cheered some more. “That’s right. You tell him.”
I hefted my overstuffed purse over my shoulder, grabbed my empty mug, still holding my cell phone to my ear with my other hand, and scooted past him through the door of my cave .
“Emma! At least finish this one effect!” he called as I walked away.
Finish the effect? He didn’t care that I was quitting, only that the effect wouldn’t be finished, and I was the only one to do it. Fuck him.
“I’m sorry, okay?” His voice switched to a stupid whine. “I shouldn’t have bothered you about your phone call! Come back!”
I lifted my hand with the mug and extended my middle finger above my shoulder as I walked away.
“Okay, I quit,” I said to Lyssa as I skipped the elevator and took the stairs. I sounded a little giddy. I felt it, too. “Let’s talk about Montana.”