“Keep going.”
“But I don’t care. I want to... to explore whatever this is, even if it crashes and burns.” Feeling as though I might throw up, now that I’d gotten the words out, I bit my lip and looked down at my sneakers.
God, I was wearing sneakers to a party. I wouldn’t have done that anywhere except in Fish Lake. It just went to show that we all just kept on changing, adapting to the twists and turns that life threw at us every single day.
There was silence, a silence that was still somehow deafening in the midst of the crowd. I tried to drag my stare from the oil stains in the concrete floor, but couldn’t.
This was too important.
“Kaylee.” Strong hands grabbed my upper arms, pulled me up to my toes. I tipped my head up and, after catching the quickest glimpse of the burning green of his eyes, found myself locked into a kiss that stole my breath away.
I froze—didn’t he know that pretty much everyone we knew was here and could see us?
Then he murmured a word against my lips, and I found that I no longer cared.
“Mine.”
Moaning, I wrapped my arms around his waist, returning the fierceness of the kiss.
This—this.
This was what I’d been waiting for my entire life.
“Kaylee?” The all too familiar voice came from behind me, and a big hand grasped my forearm and tugged.
“Let me go!” Not happy about being bodily pulled away from a kiss that was telling me so much without words, I whirled to face the intruder and give him a piece of my mind.
“Joel?” Shit. I felt my heart leap into my throat as I looked up into the accusing blue eyes of my ex.
“What the fuck is going on, Kaylee?” Joel was angry, that was obvious, but there was a hell of a lot of hurt in his voice as well. I cringed, knowing what it looked like.
I looked from Joel to Dylan, and felt my heart skip a beat when I saw how much his expression had cooled.
“No, Dylan. This isn’t what it looks like.” It would have been better to just spit out that Joel was my ex-boyfriend, that we weren’t together, but that would have hurt Joel.
Too late for that, I realized as I looked back to my ex.
“I thought you said there wasn’t anyone else.” Joel almost shouted, accusation dripping from every word. I flinched when I remembered my reasoning for saying that.
Dylan wasn’t the reason that I’d decided Joel and I were over for good. I’d thought it was better to just not even bring him up, to spare Joel’s feelings.
Now I saw that when I’d thought I was being kind, I’d actually made everything worse.
“What is this, Kaylee?” Joel asked, throwing his arms up in the air. Seeing the two guys next to one another hurt my head. Joel was a study in action, movement—he was upset and wasn’t afraid to show it.
And Dylan—when I turned to Dylan, I lost the ability to breathe. He was reserved, calm on the outside, like he could have cared less.
But I could see that he wasn’t really calm. No, he’d just erected his barriers, closing in his emotions.
It scared the hell out of me.
“Yes, Kaylee. What is this?” Dylan sounded bored, maybe even slightly amused.
I thought of that afternoon, of the way he’d pulled me into his arms like he needed me more than he needed to breathe, and I knew that I’d fucked things right the hell up.
“Dylan...” I tugged on the tail of my ponytail with frustration, aware that curious eyes were turning our way. “Joel is... he’s my ex-boyfriend. He got here yesterday.”
“I see.” Dylan nodded, and I knew what he was thinking. Why would Joel have come if I hadn’t invited him? I would have thought the same thing in his place.
“I’m sorry.” I looked up at Joel, then at Dylan, my eyes wide and probably terrified. I was sinking, and neither of them was reaching out a hand to stop me.
Joel snorted with disgust. With a shake of his head, he walked away. I still cared about him enough to want to chase after him, to make it better.
But if I did, it would be over with Dylan for good.
I returned my gaze to the man who, only hours before, had held me in his arms and told me he needed me. His eyes had turned to green ice.
“Dylan, I...” My voice trailed off as panic snaked through me. I had so much to say, and no way to get it out.
He shook his head, his lips curling into a sneer. Tossing his empty can into a nearby bin, he nodded, his expression that of someone looking at a stranger.
“You know Kaylee, you’ve spent weeks now trying to convince everyone that the way you’ve been behaving isn’t just you acting like Ella, but that it’s really you.” Shoving his hands into his pocket, he would have been the picture of nonchalance if I hadn’t been able to see how tight his every muscle was.
“It is me.” My voice was small. “But I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Joel is my ex. We’re done. We’ve been done since before I got here.”
“He doesn’t seem to know that.” With a casual shrug, he sneered down at me, and I felt my heart twist.
“You know, maybe you’re more like Ella than any of us ever knew.” He jerked his chin in the air, the movement my friends and I had always called ‘the guy nod’. “You sure had me fooled.”
“Dylan!” I followed him towards the exit of the garage, my steps halting where his were sure. From the corner of my eye I saw the little brunette in the tube top, the one who had been draped over Dylan not twenty minutes earlier.
“Are they really fighting over the girl who killed her sister?” The snide whisper made my steps falter, but I continued on. Dylan’s legs were far longer than mine though, and he quickly outdistanced me, leaving me alone, shivering despite the summer night.
What was I supposed to do now?
Words that I’d told myself before I’d even come back to Fish Lake echoed in my head, and this time, instead of despair they offered the tiniest, most miniscule shred of comfort.
Home is where you go when you have no place else.
Chapter Ten
My mom kept her emergency stash of vodka in the back of the freezer, in a plastic container labelled ‘jam’. I’d found it when I was taking stock of what she’d had for groceries before I’d gone shopping, which had turned out to be not much.
For the first time in memory, I was grateful that there was alcohol in the house. I walked in the front door and went straight to the kitchen, removing the container from its hiding place and peeling back the lid.
I lifted the entire container to my lips for a sip. Tomorrow I would deal with the fallout from this clusterfuck of a day, but right now I wanted a drink, maybe two, just to numb the dizzying whirl of emotion that was filling me to the point of pain.
I took one small sip of the ice cold vodka, the potent liquid burning the tender skin of my throat and making me gag and cough.
It warmed the way to my gut and made relaxation spread slowly, warmly, in my belly.
I lifted the container for a second sip, desperate to chase the feeling. I was so lost in my misery that I didn’t hear anyone enter the kitchen until the alcohol was ripped out of my hand and tossed into the sink.
“What—” I jumped as my mom picked up the container that had flopped into the sink and upended it, the viscous liquid swirling down the drain in a gelatinous river. She turned on the tap to rinse it away, and I couldn’t do anything but stare.
“Oh no you don’t, Kaylee Ann Sawyer.” The vodka effectively taken care of, my mom brushed her wet hands on her thighs, and I saw that she was dressed not in the skirt and blouse that she favoured for her evenings out drinking but a pair of worn blue jeans and short bathrobe.
“I wanted that.” Though I had been stunned into silence by her sudden appearance, I pulled my wits back around me and glared. “What the hell was that for?”
“I might not be the best mother in the world, but I’m still a mother. You think I didn’t hear you stomping in, crying, then rifling through the freezer? Th
ere’s no ice cream in there, so what else could you be looking for?” A hint of guilt flashed through her eyes, and in the mood that I was in, I pounced on it.
“Like you can talk.” Not actually that upset that the vodka was gone, I crossed my arms over my chest and bared my teeth in anger. “Who’s the one who had emergency vodka hidden in the freezer anyway?”
“That’s why I poured it out.” There was a moment where Mom looked like she might back down, but she rallied and lifted her chin. In that moment she looked so much like Ella that I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.
The next words that she spoke didn’t help.
“I won’t have you follow in my footsteps, or your sister’s.” Mom had never been one for confrontation, hiding from the problems with my dad, with Ella in the bottom of a bottle rather than confront them. But as I looked at her, at home in the evening when she was usually perched on a bar stool, pale with her limbs trembling just the faintest bit, I realized that something much bigger was going on here.
“Okay.” I said simply. When she sat at the kitchen table and pulled a chair out for me, I leaned in and took a surreptitious sniff. The alcoholic fumes that usually hung around her in a crowd were conspicuously absent, replaced by a slight twitch and a small crease in the space between her brows.
I sat, and we simply stared at one another for a long moment. Being here, with my mom, in the house where my life had turned to shit made tension and nerves ride throughout my veins, but it was a ‘better before worse’ kind of scenario.
I had no idea what to say. Thankfully, my mom spoke first.
“I like having you home, Kaylee.” Her voice was tired, like the words were an effort to get out. For some reason, those six simple words were a blade slashing into a water balloon—my flexible front gave way, and the emotions that I had frozen inside of me exploded like a geyser, spewing red hot and burning me, my mom, the world.
I buried my face in my hands and sobbed, sobbed like I hadn’t done since my twin sister had been lowered into the ground. I cried until my eyes burned and my nose was stuffy and I’d gone through an entire roll of the toilet paper Mom brought me, cleaning up the mess.
She sat, patient but for that twitch that I was pretty sure didn’t have anything to do with me.
When the worst of my storm had passed she slowly, tentatively reached out a hand and laid her fingers over mine. Apart from helping her to bed when she was drunk, it was the first time we’d touched in years.
My heart stuttered in my chest, trying to adapt to the strange new rhythm.
She held back, her eyes telling me that I needed to speak first.
Slowly, the words doing their best to stay in my throat, I looked her in the eye.
“I needed my mom.” I wasn’t referring to tonight—no, the stress of the encounter with Dylan and Joel was still present, but had been pushed back a bit under the weight of what was happening between me and my mother.
She winced, just the slightest bit, as my words hit home. I shuddered at the notion of upsetting her, but...
Well, maybe it was time that it was said.
“What’s the problem?” She finally asked, after visibly trying to absorb what I had said. I understood that she was asking about tonight, and I didn’t push.
Those few words she’d said to me had been giant, a completely unexpected offering of peace. I didn’t want to push it.
Not that this topic was any better. Shuddering, I tried to reach for the warmth that the small sip of vodka had spread through me. Liquid courage, isn’t that what people called it?
“I—” I couldn’t. I couldn’t say the words. She already knew, but we’d never discussed it.
“I can’t tell you.” I whispered. This whole story started with Ella, and my sister was a taboo subject in this household.
Mom looked me square in the eye, again looking enough like my twin to make me wince. Dragging her gaze in a way that was designed to make me follow her stare, she turned her eyes towards the gigantic garbage bin that stood by the back door, the bin that was filled with empty cans and bottles.
Empty beer cans. Empty bottles that had once contained coolers, margaritas, and her favorite, vodka.
Runs in the family, I thought idly—vodka was my favorite drink too. Then I froze, remembering the urgency with which I had wanted that drink when I had come into the house.
Maybe I was no different than my Mom or Ella—maybe that wanting was in our blood. The only difference was in how I’d handled it so far. And when I thought of how much booze I consumed in an average week at school I had to conclude that I wasn’t handling it very well at all.
“I—” This was a new perspective on my mom. Biting my lip, I forced the words out like vomit, hot and acidic and bitter to the taste.
“I killed Ella.” Slapping my hands onto the table, I spread my fingers, let the coolness of the surface ease the heat that clamminess brought to my palms. I stared at my mom, waiting for her to jump up, to point her finger and disown me.
She did none of that. Instead she furrowed her brow and clasped her trembling fingers beneath her chin, looking at me intently and with puzzlement.
“Explain, please.”
I swallowed heavily, inhaled deeply, then poured out the entire story.
I’d know when something started to be seriously wrong with Ella. We were twins—I would have known even if she had been discreet about the drug use, the drinking, the casual sex. The way she snuck out of the bedroom window to meet up with Dylan and raise hell.
I’d tried to keep an eye on her. Tried to know where she was, what she was doing. Tried to stay home to sit with her when the depression caused by substance withdrawal kicked in, as it had the night everything had gone to hell.
But that afternoon... that afternoon I had run into Dylan in town. He’d called me the pretty Sawyer girl, and he’d asked me if I wanted to come out with him that night. Being the serious, studious girl that I was then, my head wouldn’t normally have been turned by something so simple.
But this was Dylan. Dylan, for whom I’d harboured an almost obsessive desire for years and years.
I’d been out with Dylan when my twin died—had been out having fun while the other half of me needed me, maybe even called for me.
I hadn’t been there.
Finished with my horrible tale, I slumped back in the wooden chairs, the spindles of the back digging uncomfortably into my spine. Steeling myself, I looked up at my mom. I fully expected to see disgust, maybe even rage on her face.
“Oh, Kaylee.” Instead of what I’d expected, she only looked sad. “Oh baby, that’s not what you’ve been believing, is it?”
I blinked, suddenly feeling like my brain had been stuffed full of cotton balls.
“Didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “I wasn’t there. Because I was out on a date with her best friend.”
Pinching her lips together, Mom shook her head.
“Kaylee, what happened to Ella was not your fault. If anyone is to blame, it’s me and your father. Neither of us set very good examples.” She rubbed her throat absently and swallowed, the sound dry like she needed a glass of water, and I understood.
She wanted a drink, but water wasn’t what would make her feel better. She wanted alcohol. Maybe that emergency vodka was all she had in the house, but somehow I didn’t think so.
She was trying to be good.
I could try to be good too.
“Since I went to school, I...” Oh, I had no idea how to say this. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, more a way for me to deal with the guilt and grief, but it sounded so strange to say it out loud.
“Since going to school, I’ve been... almost trying to be Ella.” I cringed when my mom winced, and I saw at once how misguided I had been. Trying to be like the girl who had committed suicide—not so healthy.
But feeling like a bit of my sister was alive in me was what had gotten me through.
“I dress different. I behave differently. I..
. at first it was an act, but now it’s like... like I’m both of us. For real, like, that’s just who I am now.” Miserable, I cupped my chin in my hands and looked across the table. “I thought it was what everyone wanted, for Ella to be the twin who had lived. I guess I was trying to make that real.”
My mom’s mouth fell open like I had struck her. When she grabbed my wrists and shook them I jumped.
“You listen to me, Kaylee Ann.” She sounded furious, but someone I didn’t think that all that mad was for me. Heaven knew there were plenty of targets—me, her, Dad. Ella herself.
“Ella was going to do what she was going to do. You know that better than anyone.”
I swallowed, the image of my beautiful, headstrong twin flashing through my mind before misting away.
“If it hadn’t happened that night, it would have been another night. Kaylee, you know that.” Mom looked at me with eyes that were so similar to my own, and for the first time in years I was grateful for her presence.
But there was something that even she couldn’t explain away.
“Dylan... that night, when we came inside. When we... found her.” I squinted, frowned, refused to let those dreadful images take up residence in my head. “He looked at me—and the look was so full of anger. Of blame.”
That look had burnt itself into my mind a long time ago. To the day I died, I would never be able to forget his eyes, topaz rimmed with green, looking at me not with the desire of earlier in the evening, but with accusation.
“He thought I should have stayed home with her that night, if no one else was around.” Clearly he hadn’t known she was going to be alone. I’d known but had brushed it off, and that made it my fault.
No—not my fault. At least according to my mom.
It was going to take a long time before I actually believed that.
“What does he think now?” Mom asked quietly. “Clearly he’s gotten over it, if he’s been hanging out with you.”
I sank my teeth into my lower lip.
“I don’t know what he thinks now,” I admitted. “We don’t talk about Ella much, because when we do we fight. I don’t know why we’ve been seeing each other. It’s like the universe has decided that we have to deal with each other.”
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