Page 34 of The Trouble with Wanting

Then she gives me a wide smile that reveals almost all of her teeth and makes her look like a monster.

“You’re a little shit, you know that?”

Bells laughs. “It’s why I’m your favorite.”

* * *

The four of us stay out on the deck for a while longer, the twins answering all of Ruby’s questions about what it was like growing up with someone sharing almost all of your DNA.

It’s the normal questions people ask twins when they’ve never met a pair before.

Do they finish each other’s sentences?

Do they have their own secret language?

Have they ever switched places?

Ruby burst into laughter after asking the last one, belatedly remembering they’re brother and sister, not identical.

“You know, we actually get that question more than you’d think,” Bellamy says. “Normally we don’t share the real answer, but maybe today we can make an exception?”

She asks the last as a question, her eyes looking over at Bishop like she’s seeking his permission.

He sighs and scrubs his hand through his hair as he thinks something over, looking far more serious than he normally does.

“Yeah, I think we can trust Ruby with the intel,” he finally says. Then he crosses his arms and gives Ruby an intense look. “But just know, if you decide to share this, you’ll be banished from Cedar Point for all of eternity.”

Ruby looks like she might burst out of her skin with how she’s practically vibrating in place. Her excitement is palpable, and it makes her eyes glitter in a completely new way.

“Oh my god, cross my heart and hope to die,” she says, actually using her finger to make an X over her chest.

“Bishop, do you want to tell it, or do you want me to?”

“You tell it,” he says before tilting his head back and finishing off the remainder of his beer in one long pull.

“Alright, we are going to call this story The Day Bellamy Interviewed For Her Internship.”

She launches into the story I’ve heard a dozen times, though never outside of our family, about how she was hungover on the day of her interview with the place she wanted to intern at. Thankfully, the interview was online via teleconference, and Bishop rushed to her rescue, dressing in full Bellamy extravagance and completing the entire interview for her over the camera on her laptop.

“I was lying on the bed in the same room listening to the entire thing, and I have to say, he did an excellent job.”

“Yeah, I did,” Bishop asserts. “You got the internship, didn’t you?”

Bellamy rolls her eyes and ignores him. “The best part was when I finally moved to Texas for the job over that summer, my boss said my voice sounded completely different in person.”

She lets out a cackle of a laugh and Ruby follows along, the two of them leaning their heads close as they both enjoy the end to Bellamy’s story.

“Yuck it up, ladies.”

“You should have seen him in lipstick and a wig,” Bellamy wheezes, laughing just as hard about it now as she has every other time I’ve heard this story.

“Hey,” he says, irritation coloring his words, “I have friends who do drag. It’s an art form.”

“Yeah, you’re just the Monet of the bunch,” she says.

We all laugh at that, even Bishop.

God, I love my family. They’re weird and ridiculous and we are all so different from each other, but hell if they aren’t the best people to have a drink and a laugh with.

---