“Okay…?”
“Three million.”
Sam almost dropped her pint glass. “Are you serious?”
“Completely.”
“But why?”
“He wants your property and he wants it without all the rigmarole of dealing with a real estate company.”
“Jesus.”
That was…something. No, that was everything. Three million dollars was enough money that she could create a whole new life for herself. Travel to New York, Barcelona or Tokyo and try to break into the tattoo scenes there. For a moment, she reveled in the fantasy, then the sheer unlikeliness of the offer hit her like a hammer blow. “Your dad hates us—he always has. Why the hell does he want our house so much?”
“I have a few theories, nothing concrete, but does it matter? I can promise you it’s a good deal. You don’t have to take it, there’ll be no pressure from his end, I can assure you, but at least now you know selling is an option.”
“True.”
Sam let her mind rest on that incredible number. Three million dollars…
She rolled the idea of all that money around her brain as Scott gulped the last of his pint. He was drinking even faster than she was, which was saying something. Maybe he’d become an alcoholic in London, though his tapping fingers and shifting body said nerves were more likely. He reminded her of a client who’d come in for an impulse tattoo they would almost certainly regret. Whenever that happened, Sam pretended they were short of ink and the client mimed disappointment while their eyes said ‘oh thank fuck.’ She wasn’t sure she wanted to slow Scott Sanderson’s roll, though. Not now her second pint was almost finished and her gaze kept falling to Scott Sanderson’s hands, his broad shoulders, his mouth…
“Sam,” he said quietly.
Their eyes met and Sam’s heart leapt into her mouth. “What?”
Scott brushed his lower lip with his thumb. “Look, let’s stop with the business. I saw they’re doing half-price margaritas. Are you still obsessed with lemons?”
A memory flashed bright in front of her. Sitting on the nature strip outside her house, the afternoon sweet with a sunshine and cherry blossom perfume. Tabby and Nicole had given her lemon wedge after lemon wedge, shrieking with laughter as she sucked them dry.
“I am still obsessed with lemons. Whenever I want to freak Noah out, I eat them like oranges.”
Scott laughed. “Then shall I…?”
He made a little motion toward the bar and Sam saw the afternoon unfold before them. She and Scott would drink margaritas and talk about the past ten years, avoiding the painful confusing spots—the letter, the crushes, the underwear pictures. They would flirt and the sun would set, and then they would be drunk enough to kiss.
For a moment Sam held the idea in her hand, cupped it like an open bottle of ink. Then she let it spill onto the ground. She was lonely and Scott was just visiting. Aside from some mindless pleasure, what good would come of them sleeping together? Old Samantha said mindless pleasure was enough, but if the past eight weeks had taught her anything it was that she needed to question her sources.
“I should get back to work,” she said, draining the last of her pint. “Thanks for the offer, though. And the other offer.”
“Sure.”
Though Scott still had some beer left, they both stood and pulled on their jackets, and the fact that they wouldn’t see each other without deliberate effort dangled in the air between them. He smiled at her. “You still don’t have a phone, do you?”
“No.” But for the first time in ages, she wished that wasn’t the case.
He was looking at her, his eyes dark with a feeling that made her warm inside. She imagined herself on his lap, his thigh bones pressing into her stomach as he pulled her skirt up her hips.
‘Now, Samantha,’ he’d say in his lovely cut glass accent. ‘What am I going to do with you?’
“Should I give you my number? If you want to call me back about the offer.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t need it,” she said, but some impulse made her add, “You know where to find me if you need me.”
Scott dipped his head. “I do.”
And she wandered home from the pub, her belly full of beer and her brain alternating between thoughts of her ex-neighbours body and three million dollars.
Chapter 5
The laws of time said Sam was two minutes older than Nicole, but in reality her twin had emerged from the womb aged forty-five and proceeded to clock three years every fortnight until she was only marginally younger than Gandalf.
It was a cliché, identical twins who weren’t anything alike. The Olsen twins made a career out of parading their same-face-different-personality shtick around. The Wakefield twins of Sweet Valley High only had about a gazillion volumes dedicated to the same bullshit. But she and Nicole weren’t quaint ‘good girl’ and ‘only slightly less good, maybe she wears a leather jacket girl’ twins. They were polar opposites.
When they were eight, Sam’s passion was WWE and Nicole’s was reading The Financial Times. In their senior year, her twin was voted ‘most likely to become Prime Minister’ while Sam had to contend with ‘most likely to go to jail.’ Nicole got a Masters of Accounting at the best university in Australia and Sam completed her tattoo apprenticeship and got busted trying to bring a joint into an Ice House gig. She didn’t go to jail for it, though—take that, graduating class of 2007.
All things considered, Sam had way more in common with her younger sister Tabby than she did the other half of her embryo. That baffled her. Genetically, she and Nicole were the exact same person, how the fuck could they have different tastes in food, clothes, art, music, boys, politics and every other thing on the planet? Whenever she talked to her dad about it he rambled about the karmic wheel, but Sam preferred to think of her and Nicole as proof of the unique human soul. How else did you explain a person with her exact face whose favourite singer was John fucking Mayer?
They’d always been close. That was a cliché Sam never minded—the built-in best friend, the steadfast ally. When they were kids, she and Nicole wanted to marry brothers and live in the same house forever; shape their whole future around the two of them. Then they were adults drifting apart as their friends and careers diverged. At twenty-two, Nicole accepted a job in Adelaide. Sam clung to the belief that the move was temporary, but then her twin got engaged to Aaron and they bought a house. When Sam heard the news, she wrote Nicole an email she never sent. Please don’t make a life so far away from me. I need you. We belong together.
She knew it was stupid, to describe your twin in a language that was only appropriate for lovers. She and Nicole weren’t a single person. She was entitled to march to the beat of her own (extremely rigid) drum, far away from Brunswick and their dad and the mess of their shared adolescence. But in spite of the distance Nicole had put between them, Sam knew she’d freak if she sold the business without her knowledge.
That was why, three days after her meeting with Scott Sanderson, Sam closed the shop up early, ran a scalding bath, poured a large glass of Shiraz, and when she was pleasantly light-headed from the heat and alcohol, called her twin on her landline. She didn’t have a mobile phone, but she did have her own extension—just like Claudia from The Babysitters Club. It had a long twirley cord so she could talk in the bath and the receiver was shaped like an ice cream cone—a whimsical touch that always made her smile. At least, it usually did. Just then, the silliness of it only enhanced her feeling of being an incompetent adult.
Her twin picked up on the second ring. “Has dad called? Is he hurt? Is he sick?”
“No.”
“Oh, hello then.”
Sam grinned. “Hey, is Aaron home?”
“No, he’s got a meeting and then he’s going to the gym.”
“Good.” Sam hadn’t wanted to tell Nicole the news about the business with her fiancé around. He was an insufferable snob moonlighting as a barrister and he’d demand Nix put the call on loudspeaker
so he could weigh in with his cunt opinions.
“So…what’s up? Dad’s fine, isn’t he?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t heard from him, but I do have news. Get a massive drink of some kind and sit down.”
“Oh god, what’s wrong? Do you have cancer?”
Oh Christ, she’d forgotten about Nicole’s lifelong fear that everyone and everything was going to get cancer. “No. No one is in any kind of immediate danger. Go get a drink and I’ll fill you in.”
She listened to the click-splash of her twin pouring a glass of wine—a white because wine was another thing they couldn’t see eye-to-eye on. So her fiancé was at the gym, was he? A likely fucking story.
A year ago, Nicole found a wrapper and a hotel bill in one of Aaron’s suit jackets. The cheating itself wasn’t that surprising—Aaron had the octopus ooze of a born skirt chaser—but what had surprised Sam was Nicole’s refusal to leave. Her twin swallowed all Aaron’s piss-weak lies about stress and how it would never happen again, while ignoring the fact that he refused to apologise and tried to shift the blame onto her by saying they weren’t having enough sex. Sam didn’t have power over who Nicole married, no more than she had power over anywhere her twin lived, but it was hard to talk to her after that. Hard to look at her without wanting to shake her very hard.
After the cheating incident, their dad had sent Aaron copies of The Ethical Slut and Sex at Dawn along with a note suggesting ethical non-monogamy might be a viable option. Aaron had mailed the books back and refused to talk to him for months.
“What did you expect?” Sam had told her dad. “He wants a traditional relationship. You know, where the guy cheats on his wife and she just has to get over it.”
Sam took a big gulp of wine, offering the universe the same silent prayer she’d had for three years—that her twin would wake up and smell the pheromones before she and her slimy fiancé scrambled their DNA into a kid. It hadn’t worked yet, but maybe a thousand times would be the charm.
“Are you there?” Nicole said, coming back on the line. “I’ve got a jug of pinot in hand. What’s the news?”
Explaining took longer than Sam expected. She tried to get it all out in one sentence—dad left me the house and the business, the former is messy, the latter is broke, but Nicole wanted details. By the time she was done explaining the financial issues, dead-end social media prospects and heritage site nightmares, she could hear her twin grinding her teeth.
“You can’t be broke. Dad had a great system in place. I helped him set it up.”
“That was years ago,” Sam reminded her. “Something must have changed. I don’t know why, but we’re barely breaking even and clients are dropping off like flies. Dad’s old customers don’t want to see me or Noah or Gil and we’re not bringing in any new blood.”
“Okay…”
Sam swore she could hear her twin’s brain whirring. “Before you announce a plan, there’s something else you should know. I had a run in with our old neighbor today.”
Nicole gasped. “Scott Sanderson?”
Sam hated that her stomach fluttered at the sound of his name. “Yeah, that guy.”
“Oh my gosh, did he want to talk about the pictures?”
“No,” Sam said firmly. “He’s home on a visit from London. His old man sent him around to offer us a deal on the house.”
Nicole gave an indignant snort. “Again? Does that man ever give up?”
“Yeah, that was about my reaction, but here’s the thing—he’s offering us three mil for it.”
There was a loud clattering noise, followed by the sound of Nicole swearing and scrabbling. When she came back on the line, she was breathless. “Three million dollars?”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s insane. We’d never get that much on the open market.” Nicole hesitated. “So, I mean…what are you thinking?”
Sam knew what her sister was thinking; three million meant more stocks, a new car and a bigger fucking balloon arch at her wedding to sleazy cuntlord Aaron. It stung, but Sam didn’t blame her. Nicole had grown up in their house but she wasn’t invested in living in its walls or working in the business that was their father’s pride and joy. Maybe once, but not anymore.
“Sam?” Nicole pressed. “Are you thinking about selling?”
“I don’t think I can,” she admitted. “I know it’s a great offer but dad left this place to me.”
“His letter said that you could sell if you wanted to.”
“I know, but I don’t think that’s what he wants. He wanted to give me some responsibility, make me grow up, which was fucking stupid because the whole business is tanking. I can’t believe what a fuck-up I am.”
The backs of her eyes prickled and she felt fat tears slide down her face.
“Sam…are you crying?”
Sam laughed through her fingers. “Yeah,” she said, pulling her hand from her mouth. “I’m a fucking fountain right now. I cried all over Galahad this afternoon.”
“Are you serious?” Nicole sounded more surprised than when she’d told her about the business failing.
“Is that so shocking?”
“Uh, no offense, but yes.”
“I cry!”
“You didn’t at nana’s funeral, or when Andy stole your weed and ditched you in Berlin or when mum—”
“Yeah okay, I’m not known for crying,” Sam interrupted, rubbing her wet palms over her face. “It’s just a phase with dad and the business and everything. It’s all so overwhelming and, fuck it, let’s just sell.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” Sam said, ignoring the gurgling in her stomach. “Let’s sell and split the profits then you’ll have your wedding and Tabby’ll have endless weed money and I’ll move to Costa Rica and bang locals and learn how to do stick ink tattoos.”
“Sammy,” Nicole’s voice was gentle. “Is that what you want?”
Sam looked up at the wall where her father had mounted a framed photo of the three of them. She and Tabby had matching shampoo Mohawks and Nicole wore a bubble beard. All of them were laughing their asses off, frozen in time in the exact same bathroom, twenty years earlier. No, she didn’t want to sell the business to Greg Sanderson, she wanted to run a successful tattoo shop and have her family around her and a hot boyfriend who spanked her like the boss from Secretary. She wanted to not feel so lonely and unfulfilled and distracted all the time. Essentially, she wanted everything, but that wasn’t exactly realistic.
“Yeah,” she told Nicole. “I want to sell up.”
There was a short pause followed by a long, gulping sound, as though a lot of Nicole’s wine had just been drained into her stomach. “I’ll come back to Melbourne.”
Sam jolted upright, splashing lukewarm water over the edge of the bath and onto the floor. “Huh?”
“I’ll come to Melbourne. For a bit, I mean. It’s obvious you need me. I’ll help you go through the finances and shake off the heritage listing and get your social media turned over.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, but I am, okay? So let’s not make a big thing about it.”
Sam grinned so hard it hurt her face. There she was, the girl who’d once sat on the couch in pink tracksuit pants eating chicken nuggets off a tray. “You mean it?”
“Yes. I can work remotely from anywhere and I have a tonne of leave. I’ll fly down on Sunday and stay a week. Two if working through everything takes longer. That way I can free you up to handle the clients.”
Sam closed her eyes and kicked her feet in the water, trying not to scream her happiness to the ceiling. This could work. No one could do money like Nicole, and then they could hang out without arsehole Aaron around, watch TV and drink wine and go out for dinner the way they had before she moved away.
“Just let me get my laptop and look up flights,” Nicole said. “Is my bedroom still set up?”
“Fuck yeah,” Sam lied. She’d move her dad’s easels and penguin sculptures
out of there as soon as she got out of the bath.
“Good. Now, you just soak and try not to cry anymore and I’ll work on a two-week plan.”
Sam heard the sound of a computer being turned on and knew her twin wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Whenever she dedicated her powerful brain toward solving a problem, the response was always swift and awe inspiring.
“Okay, so you’ll need a new accounting system. We can finally use the KeyMaster program I told dad to install in 2015 and we need to digitize the backlog.”
Sam lay back in the bath, grinning from ear to ear. “Sounds good.”
“…and you’ll need to enter competitions again. It’s almost September, which is perfect. All the big ones will be opening up for registration soon.”
Sam’s smile vanished. “You want me to go back on the competitive circuit?”
“Yes, it’s great advertising and you’re too good not to win.”
“But—”
“Tabby can handle the social media side of things and tattoo a bit. God knows it’s about time she had a steady job and—”
“Tabby?” Sam interrupted. “You want to bring in Tabby?”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want her youngest sister’s help in saving the business, it was that Tabby’s understanding of what was ‘helpful’ was very different from most of mainstream society. And often not very helpful. A few years ago, their dad had been rushed to hospital after a minor stroke and Tabby had come to the hospital with her ex-boyfriend, a brand new boyfriend, a loaf of bread and a jar of pot honey. She wasn’t an arsehole, but you didn’t want to rely on her for a lift to the train station, let alone assistance in times of trouble.
“Yes, I think Tabby should be involved.” A keyboard rattled on Nicole’s end of the line. “Can you pick both of us up from the airport at five on Sunday?”
“Uh…yeah?”
“Great. So you’ll be doing competitions, I’ll be straightening out the books and Tabby can work on your social media accounts and re-do the website…” Nicole’s voice trailed off as she continued typing frantically.
So Wild Page 7