Page 2 of Life

Tommy.

I blink furiously against what I think I see. There he is. Alive.Esplendido. His eyes are the same dazzling green I remember. As he looks at me, he seems to see right through me, to the brokenness within. My heartbeat goes wild inside my chest, pounding out a rhythm I’m incapable of keeping up with. I clutch at the skin above my breasts.

“Can’t be…” I choke out. The tears now have a mind of their own, and they race down my face, dropping hotly onto my chest. I hold out a shaky hand. A halo of light glows around his head, but his hair is dark and layered, with the sides cut shorter. What? I blink a few times, trying to understand what it is I’m seeing. Tommy didn’t have hair.

“Are you okay?” he asks, but his voice sounds deeper, not quite the same timbre I’m used to.

He grabs me under the arms and hauls me against his massive chest just as I begin to teeter and lose touch with my balance. The chest I’m plastered against is far larger than the one I’d cuddled, kissed, and hugged this past year.

“Oh my God. What’s going on?” I sob while gripping his tattooed arms.

Tattooed arms? Tommy didn’t have any tattoos. I trace every inch of what I can see with an analytical eye. My body continues to shake like a leaf in the center of a windstorm.

“Tommy?” I pet his bearded jaw. Bearded jaw?

The man jerks his head back. “Tommy? No…oh, no. Miss, you’ve got it mixed up.”

“But, but, you’re him. Your eyes are the same. Your face…” I wipe at my cheeks and back out of his grip until my back collides with the casket. Just like Tommy would, it holds me up as I shake my head. “I’m losing my mind. Finally happened. I’ve goneloco en la cabeza!” I screech, barely able to hold myself up, and look at Tommy’s doppelgänger.

He lifts his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. Tommy’s hands, only they seem a little bigger. Everything on this man seems larger than life. I am officially losing my shit.

“You’re not crazy.” He chuckles, and it’s a deep rumble that pounds against my chest and squeezes my heart. It’s like Tommy’s laugh, but not.

“I don’t understand. You’re dead. And you’re not you!” I cant my head to the side and try to find the exit signs or my friends. “Chase! Gillian!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Is this a dream? Another twisted nightmare I can’t wake from?

A door in the back of the church opens up and light seeps in, casting the stranger in silhouette.

Feet are getting closer and closer, but so is Tommy. “You’re dead.” I point a finger and shake my head over and over.

“I’m not Thomas,” he rushes to say, and drops his hands down to his sides.

The sound of shoes pounding against a wooden floor gets louder. “Maria!” I hear Chase’s voice, and I swear it’s like a healing balm over my battered wounds.

Chase reaches us, my friend’s fiery red hair bouncing in the distance behind him. “Ria!” she yells.

I fly into Chase’s arms and cry—big, heaping, lung-racking sobs into his warm chest. “Tommy!” I gag out in my breakdown.

“Who are you?” Chase’s voice is a lethal weapon demanding a response. “Jesus Christ, you look exactly like him!” He gasps as if he just got a good look at the man standing a few feet from us. I turn my head and take in the man before me.

Gillian arrives, teetering on her stilettos, and puts out both arms to balance herself. The man holds out a hand to steady her. She grabs his wrist and then gasps as she, too, notices his face. “Oh my God, it’s you…” She reaches for her mouth, one delicate white hand covering her peachy lips.

The man shakes his head. “I was trying to tell you before you freaked out”—he addresses me where I’m still cowering into Chase—“my name is Elijah Redding, but everyone calls me ‘Red.’”

“Who are you?” I manage to form the words through the fear and anxiety controlling every facet of my being.

He rubs a hand through his dark, layered hair. “I’m Tommy’s twin brother.”

“Twins!” I croak and push off Chase’s chest. He never mentioned that he was a twin.

Elijah nods. “Identical twins.”

“I’ll say,” Gillian adds. “You’re like the Hulk version. It’s uncanny.”

Chase whips his head to his woman, his eyes hard on her.

“What? Look at him, baby. He’s like Tommy, but with fifty additional pounds of straight muscle and badass tats.” Leave it to Gigi to go straight for the hot-guy description.

Chase lets me go and moves to his wife, wrapping an arm around her waist, bringing her close. “We’ll discuss later,” he grumbles, and then turns toward Tommy’s brother. “Why is it that Maria hasn’t met you before now?”

---