18. Brody
Brody
I’m still not one hundred percent sure why I said I thought Kiki should help us.
Yes, she’s an incredible artist and she has this uncanny ability to capture a scene in photo-realistic detail.
But she’s also my ex-girlfriend’s sister.
And my break up with Yetty wasn’t exactly the best break up in the history of the world.
Full disclosure. Yetty dumped me. And I still don’t know why.
Not in detail anyway. She gave me some spiel about compatibility and us wanting conflicting things and having different ideas about life, but none of it made much sense at the time.
We weren’t together long, and to be honest I thought everything was going well.
We had fun. The sex was amazing. Sure she took the piss out of my job, called me a dork and a nerd – and not always in a good way, sometimes it felt a little derogatory, like she wished I was cooler.
Matt and I dissected every moment of the relationship after she broke things off.
We went through every conversation, every date, every text message, searching for the thing I’d done wrong.
The thing I’d done to ruin the relationship.
There was nothing. Or at least there was nothing I could put my finger on anyway.
Matt concluded it was a “her problem”, that I was only nominally to blame as I’d made “yet another bad choice” – his exact words – on the dating front.
But to me, Yetty remains my one who got away.
Anyway, Kiki agreed to help me, but I have a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach as I stand on her doorstep, hand raised as I pluck up the courage to knock on her door. The sisters aren’t twins, but they’re so alike a lot of people mistake them for each other.
“Hey Brody,” Kiki says as she opens the door. “Long time, no see.”
“Yeah, well, I…” I run my hand through my hair.
“You don’t need to be weird with me, you know,” she says with a laugh and reaches out a hand to grab my arm and pull me into the house.
“I know my sister broke your heart, blah blah blah, but that’s nothing to do with me.
” She stops talking for just long enough to give me a hug, squeezing me hard.
“You’re looking good,” she says, “but you need bulking up a little. That whole pale and interesting nerd-chic thing is so last year.”
She sounds just like her sister. Yetty always commented that I should start lifting heavier weights to gain more muscle.
And she thought my style choices were deliberately ironic rather than my personal preference.
Or that I was just too clueless and needed her to help me to – in her words – “be a better version of myself”.
I’m not sure she realised that I dress like a nerd because I am actually a nerd.
“Where’s the other?” Kiki asks, looking behind me as if I might be concealing Ari somehow.
Ari has popped to see Ivan who is having a total melt down about something.
I was only half listening but it sounded like he’d forgotten to pay his council tax bill and now they were threatening to take him to court about it.
Ari’s gone to help calm him down and then find him a lawyer who can make it all go away.
But I don’t say this to Kiki so I pull out the oldest excuse in the book.
“Running a few minutes late, she’ll be here any moment. ”
“Well, let’s get set up.”
I follow Kiki through her flat and out into the small garden behind. This place is amazing, more like a small jungle, a slice of paradise in the middle of Exeter. At the back, almost hidden by a screen of ferns, is a bright blue structure.
“This is the studio,” Kiki says sweeping her arm in front of her. There’s a hint of pride in her tone and I can understand why. This is probably the dream set up for any artist.
“Wow,” I say.
“I know, right?” She smiles at me.
My message alert goes off and I pull my phone out. “Oh, that’s Ari. She’s here.”
“Great, why don’t you let her in and I’ll set up?” she says as she starts to open drawers to reveal a plethora of supplies.
“Umm… I can’t let her in. It has to be you.”
She pauses, her hand resting on the handle of a drawer. “Is this one of your weird things again, Brody?”
I frown at her. “What do you mean?”
“Yetty always said you had all these weird little rules and rituals that made no sense. Like you were bound by a series of laws but couldn’t articulate them.”
“Oh.” It stings a little if I’m honest. There’s nothing wrong with order but she’s made it sound like a serious character flaw. “But no. It’s not like that. It’s just that—”
“Fine. Whatever. I’ll go let her in. You just stay here. And don’t touch anything, OK?”
I nod somewhat numbly and watch her leave. But then she pops her head back round the door.
“It gave Yetty the ick, you know,” she says.
Once introductions are finished, we sit in the collection of small armchairs in the corner of the studio to discuss plans.
“So you’re just going to send me the photos and I’ll sketch the people who sign up?
” Kiki asks as she sits on the sofa, tucking her feet underneath her in the same strangely graceful way Yetty did.
I used to think it was adorable but now it just makes me remember we were from such different worlds.
The sisters are both dancers and artists and I was…
well, I debug code for a living which is hardly the pinnacle of creative endeavour.
Yetty liked to tell me that, a little too often if we’re being honest, and always with this little hint that she was disappointed in me, like I wasn’t fulfilling my whole potential.
Like I could be better. It kind of grounds you down after a while.
“No photos,” Ari tells her.
Kiki arches an eyebrow. “No photos? So how do you expect me to work?”
“Live models.”
“Ha.” Kiki’s laugh comes out more like a bark.
Ari turns to look at me. What the actual fuck is her problem? her face asks.
“It has to be live models,” I say, trying to keep my voice level.
There’s a creak behind me as the door to the studio opens and a wave of apprehension breaks over me. I know it’s her, I can feel it deep within myself.
“Oh. It’s you,” Yetty says as I turn to look at her.
“Hi,” I say, raising my hand in a strange little wave. As soon as I realise what I’m doing I drop it, like a Pavlovian response; she always said it made me look “even more dorky than usual”.
“Brody has a potential commission for me,” Kiki tells her sister.
There’s a fourth chair and Yetty sits down, legs tucked beneath her. “Let me guess, you need someone to draw all the dragons from Game of Thrones?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ari clench her hands into a fist for a moment.
“This is my business partner, Ari,” I tell Yetty. “We’re building a new dating app and we want portraits of the members as they sign up.”
Yetty yawns and doesn’t even try to stifle it. “You’re building a dating app?” She chuckles softly to herself. “Well don’t let me interrupt,” she adds when she realises the rest of us aren’t talking.
“Where were we?” Kiki says. “Oh yes, you were saying you didn’t want me to sketch from photos?”
“I’ve already explained,” Ari says and that irritation she’s been trying to damp down bubbles to the surface. “The subjects will need to model live.”
“Live models?” Yetty says, but it sounds more like a rhetorical question.
“That’s a stupid idea.” Her face twists into a smirk and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s being contrary – something she has always taken pleasure in – or if it’s because she knows that from this angle I can see straight down her top.
She isn’t wearing a bra, never wears a bra, and takes a perverse pride in forcing you to look and then chastising you for it afterwards.
“It’s the only way this works,” Ari says, no longer trying to hide her irritation.
“Oh sweetheart. I don’t think it’s a good idea to come and ask for my sister’s help and then try to tell her how to work.”
“They’re vampires.” Ari doesn’t sugar coat it, and she doesn’t apologise either. It is merely a statement of fact.
“Ha,” Yetty replies. The only vampire she’s ever met is Matt and I think she thought it was all a bit of a hoax.
Ari stands up. “Well, I guess I’m sorry we wasted your time.” She doesn’t sound sorry. I’m watching Yetty and the blood literally drains from her face, taking her to paler than death in less than a second.
“Are you coming?” Ari asks me, sweeping past the others and heading out of the door of the studio.
I follow her, throwing a look back at Yetty. I’ve never seen my ex-girlfriend stunned into silence before.
When we get outside I turn to Ari. “What the hell happened in there?”
“What?”
“Don’t play innocent with me. You did something in there and Yetty changed in an instant.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
But I can tell from the grin licking the corner of her mouth that she’s lying. Lying and thinking she’s funny at the same time. “What did you do?”
Ari bites her bottom lip as if she’s debating what to tell me. “All I did was give her a little glimpse.”
“Of?”
Ari runs her tongue over her top lip and then very slowly, she snarls, baring her teeth.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her teeth up close and personal.
I know it’s a big deal for a vampire to expose the truth of them, not the retracted version they show the world, but the full extension.
Matt says its more intimate than showing someone your privates.
And seeing Ari’s I don’t know if I should be appalled at how she scared Yetty or terrified myself.
What I most definitely am not is turned on.
No.
Absolutely not.
No siree.