by Heidi Lowe
"I just wanted to see you," she said, squeezing me tighter, and claiming my lips once more. "But you seem pretty busy." She looked past me to Jimmy, whose brow had furrowed, perhaps with agitation, as he stared at us. I got the sense he didn't like Tiffany, which was odd, because I hadn't met one other person who didn't like her. What wasn't to like?
"No, we were just messing around." I didn't care how indecent it was, but I wrapped my arms around her waist, gave her the slowest, most sensual kiss I'd ever given her, as much for reassurance as because I loved the feel of her lips. Reassurance that, although playing the piano meant the world to me, she meant more. "I'm glad you're here. You can tell me what you think of this new song I've been working on."
My goodbye to Jimmy was hurried and indifferent. I took my girlfriend by the hand and led her up the stairs, notepad in hand.
Leading her away under the guise of seeking her critique always worked when others were around, whether at the guesthouse, or at the hospital. I would insist I needed her help, then we'd sneak off for five minutes of canoodling somewhere private. Suffice it to say, she didn't do much critiquing. It was kind of difficult with her tongue down my throat!
"I didn't know you and the new guy were such good pals," she said, after fifteen minutes of nothing but kissing.
"Why would you think that?" I giggled and looked at her to see if she was serious, as if her tone wasn't evidence of that.
"You looked like old friends, that's all."
That prompted me to burst out laughing. "Oh my God, are you jealous?"
"No," she said, tight-lipped.
"Yes you are!" I pointed at her, cackling at her poor attempts at indifference.
"Oh, you think that's funny, do you?" she said, and with that dived at me, launching into a tickling attack that had me screaming and laughing for mercy.
"Do you still find my jealousy funny?" she said, once I'd conceded.
Pinned down by both arms, with a beautiful woman on top of me, I had no choice but to give in.
I shook my head, smiling with her, my eyes hovering on her lips, which were so close I could almost taste them.
"Good." She pressed them to mine, and it was the sweetest kiss ever.
"You really have nothing to worry about," I insisted when she released my mouth. "I only have eyes for you."
"Glad to hear it."
Every time she tried to pull away, ending our kiss, I seized her by the collar of her blue shirt, and dragged her into another. Standing on the doorstep, saying goodnight to her was always a dreaded moment.
"You could stay," I said for the hundredth time that evening. "I can make it worth your while."
She only laughed, then pecked me on the nose. "I have things to do, you know that."
"I know, I know."
"See you tomorrow." After one final kiss, she turned to leave. I patted her cheekily on the butt. She chuckled. "Hey! Hands off the merchandise, lady."
Laughing, I blew her a kiss, then closed the door. I was still smiling, resting against the door, consumed by my bliss, when I saw Jimmy standing in the hallway. His presence startled me so much that I screamed.
"Sorry I scared you," he said, though he looked anything but.
"Jesus!" I pressed my hand to my heart, still a little shaken. "You can't sneak up on people like that."
I'd come to accept that this was just his way, stepping silently into a room, going unnoticed and unheard, and being slightly creepy. Funny, to look at him you wouldn't have thought he was the lurking in corridors type.
"I made a bunch of cookies. I just came out to see if you wanted any."
I frowned, giving him a quizzical look. "You made cookies? Why?" I couldn't help laughing at how random he was.
He shrugged. "It's the only thing I know how to bake, or cook. My wife does all the cooking. But she can't get enough of my cookies. They're peanut butter."
Well that piqued my interest. "All right, you've twisted my arm."
In the kitchen, I watched him use a spatula to remove the freshly baked treats off the oven tray and onto a plate, which he set on the table. I waited for him to take a bite of his before I tasted mine.
"What do you think?" he asked, watching me chew.
I nodded. "Not bad."
He smiled. "You're a hard woman to impress. I put my blood, sweat and tears into this batch."
I chuckled. "I hope not!"
He sat down across the table from me, reached for another cookie.
"Marks out of ten?"
I pondered this as I reached for my second one. They were quite delicious, but I didn't tell him that. "Seven point five."
"Room for improvement? I guess I have to work harder to impress you with my baking skills."
"Where did you get the recipe?"
"From a book I picked up at a thrift shop. I improved it over time, to get it almost to perfection...two point five points away from perfection."
"If it's not too much of a guarded secret, would you mind giving me the recipe? I want to make them for Tiffany. She has a real sweet tooth."
It was his long silence that made me turn and look at him, and catch that agitated look he always got when I brought her up. If he didn't break the silence with a smile, fake though it was, I would have bit the bullet and asked him what his problem was with my girlfriend.
"Of course you can have the recipe. I'm sure your girlfriend will like them as much as my wife does."
Now seemed like a suitable time to question him about his wife, someone he hardly ever mentioned. If it wasn't for the wedding ring, I would have doubted her existence.
I opened my mouth to inquire about her, when I noticed the mess he was making with the cookies. Crumbs were falling everywhere. It was as though he'd taken one cookie and crumbled it up, like eating it hadn't factored into the equation.
"So how long have you and Tiffany been together? It seems like a new relationship."
"It's relatively new," I said, a distance to my voice. My eyes were now glued to the table, to the sea of crumbs covering it.
None of the words he spoke after that registered. I couldn't focus on them, or him, just the million pieces of cookie littering Mrs Howlett's dining table. Where was the nearest cloth? Didn't this guy know where his mouth was?
"You know the cookies are supposed to go into your mouth," I said, my laugh nervous, panicked.
"Sorry, what was that?"
"The–the crumbs...they're all over the table."
He laughed, then with one hand, swept them onto the floor. "There, all taken care of."
Suddenly I was fighting back the urge to scream at the top of my lungs. The gray and white tiles were light enough to see the mess as clear as day, which opened a can of worms. Now just about every piece of debris that had ever fallen on that floor over the years became visible. Strands of hair, string, a piece of corn, a couple of seeds, just about everything you could imagine. How had I not noticed how filthy this kitchen was?
I looked away rapidly, and noticed that my breathing had grown erratic. Was I hyperventilating?
"Are you all right?" Jimmy asked. "You don't look so good."
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said, getting up, then dashing from the room, from all the mess.
I locked my bedroom door and crawled under the bedsheets, frightened and trembling, wondering what was wrong with me.
TWENTY
"Will I be able to tell you apart?" I said a week later, from the passenger seat of Tiffany's car. We'd been on the road to Salt Lake City for just over an hour, all of which I'd spent grilling her about her sister and her brother-in-law. Talking a mile a minute out of nerves.
It was meet the family Sunday – the big day, as far as I was concerned. I knew how much Tiffany's twin meant to her, how much her whole family did, and impressing them had become my priority. She'd confessed to me that her sister, Gillian, had thus far hated every one of the women she'd brought to meet her; she'd known even before Tiffany did that the relationships wouldn't
last.
"But you have nothing to worry about," she'd quickly tried to assure me, after dropping that bombshell. "I broke the habit of dating horrible women when I met you. She'll love you."
Now that we were less than an hour away, I found very little reassurance in her words. What if I was a terrible person and Gillian saw right through me, saw something in me that Tiffany hadn't? The trip was probably the ultimate determiner of our future together, I mused.
"If you can't, that would suggest you're colorblind, seeing as her hair is brown," she said. "She's been dyeing it that color since we were teenagers, so people could differentiate between us."
"Why was she forced to undergo the change? Isn't she the oldest?"
"By four minutes. And we both agreed that blonde suited me better. Besides, she took every opportunity to piss our parents off back then. Still does."
I watched her for a moment without her realizing, and smiled to myself at how beautiful and serene she was as she drove. She had such an elegant way of handling the steering wheel, like it was the most delicate piece of equipment in the world. Something about that turned me on immensely.
"What?" she said, finally noticing me watching her.
"Nothing, I'm just admiring the view." She'd worn her hair loose for the occasion, a retreat from her usual braid. I couldn't decide which hairstyle I liked more. "And I definitely agree with your sister, blonde suits you to a T."
"You should have seen me when I dyed it jet black. I was listening to a lot of death metal back then...weird phase."
I chuckled imagining her that way. "I'm sure you looked great."
I watched her blush. That, too – seeing her cheeks and neck light up – was a huge turn on.
It took me only a few minutes to realize that just about anything she did would have had that effect on me, because I was like a cat in heat!
"Can we take the next exit?"
She peered over at me, bewildered. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I just need to stop for a minute."
Concerned, she took the next exit and pulled up onto the first street off the highway.
She cut the engine and looked at me, worry creasing her brow. "What's wrong."
I undid my seat belt, then caught her completely unawares when I smashed my lips to hers.
"I want you," I breathed between kisses.
"Right here? Now?" she said incredulously.
My kisses were answer enough.
We climbed into the back of the car, then fumbled to unzip our jeans blindly, unwilling and unable to separate our tongues from their dance. When we did, eyes locked, we wet our fingers with our mouths. She went first, slipping her moist fingers into my panties and seeking out my bean. Her touch was delicate and light, just like her. I had no intention of treating her sex that way. When it was my turn to enter her, I was more aggressive, more determined. I felt her moistness and it only increased mine.
I caught her moans in my mouth, as she caught mine. It didn't matter how awkward our positioning was; what mattered was getting each other off.
It took five minutes, and we came within seconds of each other.
"Well that was a first for me," she said, out of breath, her hand still tucked into my pants, mine still in hers. If I never had to remove it, that would have been okay with me.
She rolled her head, which was resting lazily against the headrest, and looked at me, a lopsided smile on her face. "I'm almost certain we just broke the law...but breaking the law never felt so good."
I laughed, inched forward to plant a slow, sensual kiss on her soft lips. "I feel like I'm corrupting you."
"You are! But a little corruption never hurt anyone." Finally, she removed her hand from my crotch, and as though we were completely in tune with each other, as soon as I removed mine from hers, we licked off the residue. It was the sexiest thing ever, and made me want her all over again. "Let's get back on the road."
When Gillian first opened the door to us, the moment was surreal. It was like looking at a slightly curvier Tiffany, if Tiffany grew her hair out and dyed it brown. They had the same everything: nose, mouth, same almond-shaped eyes the color of the daytime sky. Even their smile, a little lopsided, was the same. She did seem older, but that, I surmised, was down to motherhood. Because when the seven-year-old twins, Baxter and Kirsten, came charging down the stairs and rushed into Tiffany's arms, it became obvious that they were a boisterous handful that had been running their mother ragged for years. Before we were even able to step over the threshold, they began dragging Tiffany away to show off their science project and new tea set.
I stood awkwardly in the large foyer of the mansion, smiling nervously as Gillian sized me up, not all too subtly. I could see she had a million and one questions for me, which I'd been anticipating ever since Tiffany mentioned her penchant for judging all of her girlfriends. Was I going to fail the test?
"Would you like a drink, Abigail?" she said. Her eyes were warm, just like Tiff's, which relaxed me.
"Please. Oh, and it's just Abby."
She smiled. "Okay, Abby." She led me into the huge open-plan kitchen. Everything here was oversized, from the refrigerator to the counters. You would have thought that a hundred people or more lived here, not four.
"You have a lovely home." I peered at all the opulence.
"Thank you. What can I say, I married rich."
I laughed with her. She asked me what I wanted to drink, and I settled on coffee.
"Where is your husband? Tiffany said I'd meet everyone today."
"He had to fly out to Vancouver last minute. Some business emergency." She didn't seem all that bothered by his absence. It must have been a regular occurrence.
She handed me my coffee and we sat at the table.
"Your kids seemed really happy to see Tiffany. You all seem really close." Touching though it was, I couldn't help envying all of them for their bond. I knew then that I wanted to be a part of it, of their family. Possibly because I didn't have one of my own, or because everyone seemed so loving and warm here.
"They adore Tiff, and she loves them right back. I would have a revolt on my hands if she ever decided to up sticks and leave, move out of the state."
Was that a warning to me to keep my grubby little hands off her sister, and not try and steal her away? If so, Gillian was way off. Oakwood was my home; I loved it there and I had no plans to move anywhere, with or without Tiffany.
"So Tiff tells me you're a pianist," she went on, her tone playful and friendly again. "And that you're working on your own musical."
"That's right. Though I haven't done nearly enough writing lately. I've been preoccupied..." I smiled to myself, got that far away look that I always got when Tiffany came into my thoughts. It was so easy for her to make me smile, and she needn't have been in the room.
"With my sister?" Gillian chuckled. "Ah, the good old honeymoon phase. I remember that well."
"I dunno. I have this feeling that every day with her will be like this as long as we're together." Being so honest, so open with someone I'd just met, Tiff's twin no less, hadn't been my intention; and immediately I felt embarrassed for my words. Did I sound too attached?
Gillian gave me the most curious look, like she didn't understand me but found me amusing nevertheless. She doesn't like me, does she? She'll tell her sister that I'm not genuine, or that I'm too clingy, and I'll go the way Sarah did, dumped when she drops me home.
"Well my sister is special. She does have that effect on people." She took a sip from her coffee, eyes trained on me the whole time. "She's going to kill me for asking, but I'm dying of curiosity. I hope I don't offend you."
"Ask away." I knew what was coming before she opened her mouth to speak.
"Your memory loss. How does it work? I apologize for my ignorance, but how is it possible that you remember how to speak, how to play the piano, how to walk even, but you can't remember events?"
"Different memories are stored in different parts of the brain," I
explained. A rehearsed answer to the questions I'd heard a dozen times, the questions I'd once had myself. After really reading up on retrograde amnesia, spending an afternoon in the Oakwood Library, a lot had become clear about my condition. I knew others were curious, and that naturally they had every right to ask questions, but I didn't want the condition defining me. Whenever I spoke about it, I tried to keep the conversation short.
She must have sensed my reluctance to discuss it, because she moved right on to another topic. "You met the last girl she brought here, didn't you?" Upon my nod, she made a face which had me chuckling. "What an absolute nightmare! I was this close to telling her to sleep in the yard."
"Tiff told me all about that trip." I recalled the story of how Sarah had propositioned Gillian and her husband. Just by virtue of me not doing that, I was already winning.
"Weren't you supposed to come here that Sunday?"
"Yeah, but Tiff changed her mind and invited Sarah instead."
"But she made that up to you when she got home, or so I heard..." Her grin was lecherous, naughty, like a devilish Tiffany who'd gone over to the dark side.
My cheeks burned as I laughed. "Do you guys talk about everything?"
"Pretty much. What she doesn't tell me, I can read through telepathy. The twin connection, you see," she joked.
Once I'd stopped laughing, my curiosity got the better of me. "What else did she tell you about me? About us?"
"All good things, don't worry. She's smitten. It's Abby this, and Abby that. Like you can do no wrong."
"So no pressure, then?"
"My sister is usually a great judge of character...apart from when it comes to matters of the heart. You're the only woman she was friends with prior to dating. That's a good sign."
Maybe I stood a chance after all.
"Aunt Tiff, you can sit next to Mr Squirrel, and Abby can sit next to the shark."
Tiffany, Baxter, Kirsten and I had journeyed to the kids' playroom to be entertained as guests at the dinner party of the year. Such guests in attendance included giraffes, teddies, a big purple dinosaur with a green stomach, and others.