Chapter 9
Silas squeezes my hand in his and, in a reversal of roles, guides me through my house.
I’m sure I would think it was sweet if I wasn’t so busy freaking the fuck out.
Every creak sounds like a bomb preparing to detonate, and now the charming soundtrack of my old house sounds more like the score from a horror movie.
By the time I collapse on my couch, my watch vibrates on my wrist to alert me of my heightened heart rate.
“Hey.” Silas holds his phone to his ear, but his concerned gaze stays trained on me.
“No,” he says, “you can’t call back. I need you to head over to the Monroes’ old place.
” The lines tighten on his face, and he clenches his jaw.
I can’t make out what the person on the other end is saying, but I don’t need to hear to know they’re pissing Silas off.
“Jesus. Stop. This isn’t some trick to get you to talk to Dad.
The tub just fell through the damn ceiling and—”
The voice on the phone gets even louder, and I don’t need to hear what’s being said to know he’s pissed off now too. Wonderful. Having a hole in my floor isn’t ideal, but neither is causing a fight between twin brothers.
“There’s another bathroom.” I try to stop him. “He’s busy. He doesn’t—”
Silas shakes his head and talks over me.
“That’s the person who lives here. Wanna stop being a dick for a minute and come help her?” There’s another long pause, but this time, whatever’s said causes his shoulders to relax. “Thank you…yeah. See you soon.”
He hits end on his phone and drops it onto the coffee table.
“Everything okay?” I ask after I’ve given him a minute to decompress. “Sorry that me and my house started a fight with you and your brother.”
“Everything is fine and, trust me, that wasn’t a fight.” His full lips curve into a full smile, but for the first time since I’ve met him, it doesn’t reach his eyes. “He’s on his way. He just likes to give me a hard time.”
I eye him skeptically. I’ve been dying to meet his brother, but I’m pretty sure the whole “good first impression” dream is shot, since it sounds like he’s less than thrilled about having to come over. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” he says. “It’s typical brother shit.”
As an only child, I’m not familiar with sibling dynamics.
Besides my friends growing up, the closest thing I had to draw on was my mom and uncle.
And my uncle sucks. Although, to be fair, this has less to do with sibling dynamics and more to do with him being a raging, racist asshole.
He pretty much cut my mom out of his life when she announced she was pregnant with me.
But the joke was on him, because after that, my grandma practically cut him out of her life as well.
There were a lot of things my grandma played about, but I was not one of them.
He’s been trying to get in touch with me since I sold my grandma’s house, but ever since he called me a selfish bitch before hanging up on me when I called to give him the funeral details for my mom (aka his sister), I haven’t been too eager to take his calls.
Suffice it to say, it wasn’t the most heartwarming example of sibling relationships.
“If you say so,” I say. “Thank you for calling him.”
“Your bathtub is in your laundry room.” He reminds me of the unforgettable. “It was the least I could do.”
If I have to find at least one bright spot in this, the tub somehow managed to miss not only my washer and dryer, but the cabinet doors we brought in were still leaning, unbothered and undisturbed, against the tarp.
“That might be true for you,” I say. “But it means a lot to me.”
He tips his head sideways and his eyes soften. “Luna—”
His phone vibrates on the table, and one word appears on the screen: Pops.
“Fuck,” he mutters beneath his breath. “I have to take this, but I’ll be right back.”
He swipes the phone off the table and puts it to his ear as he disappears into my kitchen. I only hear his terse greeting before my back door slams shut behind him.
Without his gentle, concerned presence around, the unbothered facade I’ve been wearing melts like a Popsicle on the Fourth of July.
If I’m honest with myself, my mom was never the kind of mom you could count on.
I don’t think there was a single soccer season when she didn’t forget at least one game.
When I was a kid, I loved how childlike she seemed.
She’d flitter in and out of rooms without purpose, the sound of her giggles the only thing as constant as the wineglass in her hand.
It wasn’t until I was older that I understood what was happening…
that I realized her laughter was filled with sadness, not joy.
I spent the majority of her last years taking care of her.
Making sure she paid her bills, stocking the fridge with food that might possibly absorb the wine she was beginning to switch for vodka, rescheduling the doctors’ appointments she canceled. Hiding the keys.
I’m used to shouldering my problems on my own.
But even knowing she wasn’t the kind of mom most people would think of, she was the only one I knew.
And right now, I want more than anything to call her and hear her voice tell me everything is going to be okay.
I need her to tell me I didn’t make a mistake by selling the one place that ever really felt like home so I could move into a house that is quite literally crumbling beneath my feet.
I need my mom.
But she’s gone.
My skin prickles as the cold reminder that I’m all alone in this world washes over me. I clench my eyes shut, hoping the tears that have been lodged in my throat for the last three months will finally fall, but they don’t come.
They never come.
Instead, the anxiety always lurking in the back of my mind rears its ugly head and slithers its way down to my lungs, squeezing them so tight that I feel like I might suffocate.
My vision grays as sharp pain ignites like fireworks shooting across my chest and wrapping around my back and down my arms.
“Pink couch, wood floors, white ceiling.” I fight through labored breaths to name three things I can see like my last therapist told me to do.
I wiggle my toes and twist my wrists and neck back and forth.
I close my eyes while the fuzzy feeling in my brain starts to fade.
The white noise filling my ears quiets until I can name three sounds.
“Birds chirping. Air-conditioning buzzing. Gravel bouncing.”
It’s the last sound that tethers me back to the present.
My eyes shoot open just in time to hear the sound of an engine shutting off cut through the silence. A car door opens, and the driver doesn’t have any qualms about slamming it shut. He’s not happy to be here and he’s making sure I know it.
Message received, Twin Jacobs.
Heavy footsteps draw closer, and I look around for Silas but he’s nowhere to be found. A heavy knock rattles my front door, and just when I think another panic attack is imminent, icy numbness runs down my spine and a familiar mask slides back into place.
Thank god.
I think after my bathtub falling through the ceiling and experiencing the worst anxiety attack I’ve had in months, not melting down in front of Silas’s brother is the least the universe could do for me.
I know they say bad things come in threes, but if you look closer at the grand scheme of my life, I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere around number 3,791.
It seems only fair that nothing else should happen to me for the rest of the night.
If not eternity.
My hand pauses above the doorknob, and I tuck an errant curl behind my ear. I take a deep breath, plastering on a smile I know looks real despite how it feels, and swing open the front door.
“Hi!” I say with false bravado. “It’s so nice—”
A bulldog barrels past my legs, and my words lodge themselves in the back of my throat. My mind spins as I try to process what’s happening and why, instead of staring into another set of honey eyes, I’m met with a pair of onyx ones.
“Tate? What are you doing here?”
Pieces from a million different puzzles fall into my head. A slow ache builds at the nape of my neck while I sort through them all.
He takes a step back and looks over my head, into my living room.
“Um, hi. Sorry,” he says, and the confusion in his voice mirrors my own. “I thought you knew I was coming?”
I shake my head and open my mouth to tell him no, but before I can, everything falls into place.
I didn’t see it at first.
I was so distracted by their differences, Tate’s ebony skin to Silas’s bronze, Silas’s short fade to Tate’s locs, Tate’s stony demeanor to Silas’s cheerful one, that I didn’t see the similarities.
The same slight slant to their eyes, the straight bridge of their noses, the strong line of their jaws.
The self-assured way they stand. The quiet confidence that follows them into every room they enter.
It’s unmistakable. I can’t believe I missed it before.
“You’re Silas’s brother.”
It’s not a question, but he answers anyway.
“Yeah.” He nods his head. “He told me you needed some help?”
Oh, I need help alright. I’m just not sure it’s the kind either of the Jacobs twins can offer.