Chapter 2
MICAH
F or some unfathomable reason, my sister possessed a keen ability to call while tweaking and when my micromanaging prick of a supervisor was nearby.
“Ada,” I said, pushing her name through my clenched teeth. “I’m at work, and I have to hit the road. I can’t go to the bank for you.”
In response, Ada belted out a piercing sob that punched my eardrum with such force I couldn’t help but pull my phone away. I darted a glance over my shoulder, knowing if this call attracted attention, I’d be unemployed because micro dick would assume I was jerking off on the clock.
My sister also possessed a keen ability to call while tweaking when there was a crowd.
“Our landlord is going to evict us,” Ada said through a garbled mess of tears. I half listened to the rest of her story as I skirted around several trucks to duck out of view from wandering eyes.
Ada didn’t sense my silence as anything alarming and continued speaking a mile a minute. “But I need your help. Just this one time, I swear. We found a place we can go, but we’re short a couple hundred bucks, and?—”
“I thought you wanted to keep your current place.”
“I do, I do, I do. But we’re just a little short. Micah, I promise, I’m really trying, okay? I really am.”
It’d only been two weeks since I’d pulled her out of some slum trailer and brought her back to our apartment to clean her up and feed her. She’d barely stayed for three hours before she was back on the streets, scoring another load. I scrubbed a hand over my face.
“I’m already putting my ass on the line by taking this call,” I said, grabbing a random box from my truck and stumbling to the smoker’s table to give the illusion I wasn’t fucking off from work. It was far enough away that no one could eavesdrop but still had a good view of the loading area. Work was too chaotic for anyone to chance a smoke break. “Last thing I need to be dealing with is Mom bugging me to go work for her friend’s friend, filling out envelopes, and filing patient folders all fucking day.”
Ada carried on with the rambling, and I was left inhaling the thick scent of the truck’s diesel exhaust. It was suffocating. Even the rattle of metal doors and calls from the drivers to each other as they situated their cargo into their spots couldn’t drown out Ada’s lies.
She was only ten minutes older than me and had been the leader of our chaotic duo. We were partners in crime, leaning on each other those awkward preteen years, someone to cheer each other on when friends weren’t reliable. After Ada’s acceptance into her master’s program, she’d called me first to tell me.
Now she only reached out when she needed another fix.
With a deep breath, I gathered the little patience I had and said, “If you’re getting kicked out, you can come stay with me. All your stuff is still in your room.”
“I got a buddy of mine who’s got a place for me. I just need the cash to pay my part. C’mon, Micah, I just need you to help me out this one time.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face again, then pressed my index finger and thumb into the aching joints in my jaw. It was possible that Ada’s pleas held some truth—that there was a bed for her with some friend—but that wasn’t why she wanted money from me.
Ada carried on, and I could tell whatever she’d taken had really settled in when she babbled about something that had nothing to do with the conversation. She wouldn’t stop. My patience vanished, and the spark of anger flickered to life.
I looked over my shoulder to my buddy Dakota loading up my truck. His eyebrows flicked up in question, and I raised a finger to him to give me another minute.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I breathed a tired sigh. “Who’s this friend of yours?”
“Wha—What?”
“Your friend,” I said, pressing my heel onto the curb. “You’ve been talking about a friend of yours for the last five minutes, and I wanna know more about them.”
“Oh, you know how it is. You go somewhere, your friends introduce you to someone...”
“Do they have a name?”
“Hey, I mean it when I say she’s totally legit. I could send you a copy of the lease she has so you can see that we got the place once we get that deposit down. I’m figuring some things out, you know? They say it’s never too late to find a career,” Ada said, her inflection changing.
When she was high, everything about her morphed into someone else. It was agony to see how she faded, but the one thing that crushed the little pieces of my broken heart was when the familiar laughter that had always laced her voice vanished.
Ada had always been the one going places, her flame brighter than mine. It never felt like a competition because I wasn’t the type who cared about having a degree, much less the degrees our parents wanted out of us.
I was perfectly content cheering Ada on in all her dreams of being a lawyer and tackling the world’s injustices while I took a spontaneous trip across the country with a couple of friends in a van.
A sharp whistle cut through Ada’s ramble, and I looked up to find Dakota pointing at his wrist, letting me know it was time to go. I braced myself for the shit show.
“Look, Ada, if you really need somewhere to stay, your room is ready at the apartment. Otherwise, I’m out of options for you.”
“Are you serious?” Ada said, the hiss in her voice barbed with acid. “It’s not like you need money for anything. You just work for whoever will hire you, and you won’t help your sister have her own place? God, I should’ve known you’d be selfish and worthless, just like you always are.”
Ada’s words hit my stomach like a punch. The bitter taste of bile crawled up my chest and throat with an acidic burn that made it hard to speak. The Ada I knew would never say something cruel like that, and it was hard to remind myself that this person, this Ada, wasn’t my sister.
After the hurt always came the anger, and the burn in my stomach fueled my resentment that Ada constantly refused to make the choice to get better.
“I work hard at my job, and it pays me well. Fuck, the reason I have to work overtime today is from all the times I gave you my money,” I said, unable to stave off the rising anger in my voice.
“I hate you so much,” Ada said, her voice the shiver-inducing sound of a growl. “I wish I never knew you.”
The deafening silence on my phone told me she hung up. An ironclad grip strangled my throat, the sting of tears pricking the corner of my eyes. My chest twisted like a tight coil, and I pressed my palm against my hammering heart to relieve the pressure.
This always happened. Whenever I didn’t give Ada what she needed for her next fix, I knew the monster the drugs had made her would sear my insides. But no matter how many times Ada did it, her venom left me winded, like I’d suddenly had to sprint around the block.
With shaky hands, I tucked my phone away, grabbed the ignored box, and headed back to the loading bay. The aftershock of the phone call still quaked inside of me. With blurred vision, I wobbled toward my truck, and I almost dropped the box when I tripped on a rock. Dakota waited near my truck and opened his arms to take the box. With his back to me, I wiped harshly at my wet eyes, destroying the evidence of Ada’s vitriol.
Dakota stared at me as he closed the distance between us, naked concern in his vivid green eyes. “Ada?”
“The one and only.” I stared off into the distance, squinting against the waking sun. The ache in my chest remained, Ada’s voice ringing in my ears. “This one was pretty bad.”
“Did she say where she was?” Dakota leaned on my truck, and I shook my head. He exhaled through his teeth. “Damn, that’s rough.”
He didn’t say he was sorry, and I was grateful for it. Someone else may have thought he was insensitive, but I appreciated how Dakota didn’t hand out pointless solutions. He just let things be what they were, holding off till the end to say he was right. I respected that about him. Probably why he’d been my best friend since we were fourteen.
“We’d better get going,” I said after checking my phone. Dakota and I split toward our trucks. Other trucks had already pulled out, and I watched them slowly form a line before they turned different directions to their routes.
As I drove toward the exit of the parking lot, I cleared my mind and expanded my diaphragm with a deep breath. I shouldn’t let Ada get under my skin like this. It was because we were so close that she knew how to press all my buttons, but it wasn’t my twin sister Ada doing the pressing. That Ada would never have said those things. It was Addict Ada, who was cruel and cutting.
When we were younger, Ada would ask me if I could sense her whenever we were apart because we were twins. It was a folklore we’d often play off as a joke, but deep down we really believed it. I channeled every cell in my being, hoping that our bond would be a signal that cut through the smog that had taken over Ada’s mind. That the bond to Twin Sister Ada ran deeper than Addict Ada’s defenses.
I wondered if she’d feel it. I wondered if she was nearby, if I’d see her on the street corner with her usual group. I wondered if I’d be able to recognize her.
The rest of my workday was wonderfully boring. Funny how the thing I hated so much became a respite after a call with Ada. I settled into the routine of my deliveries with my playlist blasting through the speakers of my truck. By the time my shift ended, the disquiet of my argument with Ada had faded into the background.
All I wanted to do was go back to my apartment, take a long shower, and bury myself in bed. But my day wasn’t over yet. After I dropped my truck off, I took my car to the Wright Place, a local diner close to the warehouse that a lot of the delivery crew used as a stop for coffee and a bite to eat.
Mom sat at a table at the front window with her usual order of iced tea in front of her, squinting at whatever she was reading on her phone.
For as long as I could remember, Ada and I were told we looked like a carbon copy of our mother. We both inherited her ice-blue eyes and raven hair, but Ada shared Mom’s heart-shaped face and infectious smile.
Ever since the accident, Ada was a threadbare resemblance of herself. That night had changed all of us, and the halo of light that had always surrounded Mom dimmed forever.
She stood with a smile and opened her arms for a hug that enveloped me in the comfort of her lilac shampoo. She ran her hand around in a circle on the middle of my back, and some of the tension of the morning unraveled.
We sat down, and Mom returned to her phone, sighing as she typed something out, then flipped her phone faced down on the table.
“Thank you for rescheduling last minute. This week has been absolutely hectic, and we still have a lot to finalize with the coordinator.”
My parents’ vow renewal was drawing closer. She kept trying to fool everyone that she was going to keep it small, but none of us believed her. Every week when I met up with her, there was someone new on the guest list. At this point, there would be at least fifty people there.
Mom circled her straw in her cup. “Did you get the time off?”
I yanked a menu toward me under the illusion of interest in food. The last thing I could tell Mom was how I’d run out of all my paid time off because Ada would call out of nowhere and need my help. What she needed was faith that Ada could get better.
“I’m working on it. I just got the new route I’ve been asking for, and I don’t want to give that new asshole supervisor a reason to think I’m taking advantage of it.”
Mom leaned back in her seat and sighed. “Love, please take up that offer I told you about. It’s a good salary with wonderful benefits. You’d even be eligible for a yearly bonus.”
What Mom didn’t understand was that I didn’t care about yearly bonuses and holidays off. I wasn’t interested in company parties and networking. That was all Ada, and she’d made her determination for success so loud to keep our parents off my back. The few times my mother had been concerned about my future, Ada would meet up with her and guide those worries away.
Now it was my job to prove to my parents that having Ada back in their lives could actually save her. In the meantime, I had to deal with deflecting my mom from trying to push me into a cubicle.
“I swear I’ll get the time off. If I have to switch shifts with someone, I can. Don’t worry about it.”
Mom’s lips pursed as she studied me, an eyebrow flicking upward. “You’ve been leaving work for Ada again, haven’t you?”
“It’s not what you think,” I said, my hand balling into a fist on the table. I scrambled to prove my point, pulling at the last conversation I’d had with my sister. “I just talked to her today, and she told me how she was looking for a new place with a friend. That’s a world of difference from a few months ago.”
I left a lot of the drama out of the conversation, mostly out of preservation for Ada. It felt deceitful to give Mom half-truths, but if it could get her to see Ada and talk to her, it could be the one push Ada would need to get back into rehab.
Mom’s lips screwed tight, and she shook her head harshly. “It’s a lie, Micah. How many times has she done this? She’s going to say whatever it is you want to hear just to get what she wants.”
“But that’s not really her. She’s still in pain, and I think if she can see that you and Dad are together again, it can push her to get better,” I said, refusing to back down.
After Ada’s accident, she had taken on the entire responsibility of our parents’ split, forgetting that they’d been on shaky ground to begin with. I deeply believed the reason Mom and Dad reconciled was because of Ada, and I wanted more than anything for everyone else to see it.
I cupped Mom’s hand with my own and gave it a squeeze. “Can you at least consider it?”
Mom folded her lips into a thin line, her eyes shiny. “You know we’ll never agree about this,” she said, speaking over me when I tried to interject. “And I don’t want to fight about it, so why don’t we talk about something else?”
I slumped back in my seat, twisting my arms around my middle, my heart broken all over again. It was agonizing how Ada’s addiction made everyone in her life so fucking lonely. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I know, love. This is just how our life is now,” Mom said in the soothing tone she’d used my entire life. She picked up her phone again and pulled something up on the screen. “Do you mind giving your input on the centerpieces I’ve chosen for the reception tables? I’m worried they’re too over-the-top.”
There was no use in arguing, so I held out my hand for her phone. I listened to Mom talk about flower arrangements for as long as I could endure, completely out of my element.
Mom knew I was indulging her and eventually took mercy on me. “I have to go. Your father and I have an event with his company for the junior lawyers at the university.”
I flinched. My parents had mine and Ada’s entire future planned from birth. They’d put us through the best private school, had encouraged us to go to college. That life wasn’t for me, and Ada’s success always left me comfortably in the shadows.
Not anymore.
I said goodbye to Mom and watched her get in her car and drive away before sinking down in my chair and covering my eyes with the heels of my hands. Silently, I recited the mantra I’d learned from the countless support groups I’d attended, hoping it could assuage the sharp ache that pierced my heart.
I did not cause it. I cannot control it. I cannot cure it .
“Here ya go, baby. You look like you need this.”
I dropped my hands to see an enormous mug of coffee in front of me. Destiny pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. “Been a hot minute since I’ve seen you. Here I thought you’d up and moved away on us,” she said, a tenderness in her smile like she was actually glad to see me.
Which threw me off. Of course, we were friendly with each other like I was with a lot of customers I grew familiar with on my routes, but none of them tried to talk to me outside of polite conversation.
“Uh, yeah, I got a new shift schedule, so my route changed,” I said, still feeling wrong-footed.
Destiny hummed in understanding. “And how are you holding up with that?”
“It’s okay. I have to start earlier in the morning, which is a bit of a transition, but it doesn’t chew into my evenings, which is nice.”
Evenings were safe because Ada rarely called in the evenings. She saved that time for early mornings after several days awake on who knows what or when she needed a place to crash. On rare occasions, Ada would reach out before dawn and beg me to rescue her from some asshole’s house when things got a bit too heated.
It was always the same with Ada. I didn’t know how she wasn’t bored with it by now.
I picked up the coffee and blew over the rolling steam for a few seconds before I took a cautious sip. The warmth and chocolate notes were so lovely that I closed my eyes in gratitude.
“Thanks, I really needed this,” I said, the heat of the coffee slowly unraveling the tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders all morning.
The diner was in motion. People wound around each other to get to their tables while someone placed several plates on the kitchen window and hit the bell for an order up.
Two servers walked by, chatting, with one saying, “Yeah, it’s in that trendy spot in Old City, and instead of a wall, they have this curtain to separate the cocktail lounge.”
I wrapped my hands around the hot cup of coffee, my knee bobbing along with the surrounding commotion. I waited for Destiny to get up and walk away, but she stayed seated, tapping a fingernail on the table.
“Y’know, new delivery kid isn’t as good as you,” she said, still monitoring the restaurant. “Doesn’t seem to know that heavy boxes should go on the bottom, but I’m hoping he gets there. Looks a little in over his head when he gets the twins on the shift.”
“Can’t handle the chaos?”
“Hell no. Looks like he’s just out of high school. The girls like to mess with him, but they’re not as bad as they used to be.” Destiny nodded over to the twins working behind the counter. “Didn’t tell him they were twins, and it took three weeks for him to realize there were two of them, not just one person working round the clock.”
“I’m glad to hear that it didn’t take me nearly as long to figure it out.”
“Trust me, you clocked it quicker than everyone,” Destiny said with a smirk. She tapped her finger against the table and tilted her head to the side. “You know what? You should come to Jonah’s grand opening on Friday.”
My eyebrows flew upward. “I should?”
“Absolutely. It’ll be a blast because I’m the one who planned it,” Destiny said with a mischievous tone in her voice. She handed me her phone, and I accepted it, finding the contact screen open. “Give me your number, and I’ll text you the details.”
After entering my information, I tried to pay her for the coffee, but Destiny waved me away, telling me that the short break in her day with me was helpful enough. I slipped the bills in the tip jar anyway and headed back to my car.
My screen was filled with a slew of missed calls and a string of texts from Ada that swung between rage and apologies. I deleted them all, hit by a familiar exhaustion settling in my bones.
The text from Destiny was nothing more than a warm greeting and an attached image with the invitation to the party.
Well, I was always down for fun, and fuck it, if the party bombed, I could leave early.
I’ll be there.