Page 26 of On the Double

Oh, this was good. “Doing what?”

“Well, you already have a leg up in the bathroom industry. You could start a cleaning service.”

“You’re so funny.” I stuck out my tongue at him, feeling seriously depressed. How did this become my life?

“It’s not like you love the job anyway. Something else will come along and you can quit.”

“We live in the smallest town known to man. I really doubt that’s true.”

“Well, maybe you’ll find a rich husband and you won’t have to work anymore.”

I didn’t like the idea of that either. I wanted to do something important with my life, but getting there was becoming more difficult by the day. I was what my brother called flighty. I thought I knew what I wanted, and then I changed my mind, sure I would think of something better. It drove him nuts, but he’d learned to live with it. My parents, on the other hand, had never understood me. They thought for sure I would go out into the world and find my dream job. And when thathadn’t happened, they never gave up hope, telling me it would still happen for me.

I was left wondering when.

“At least Gram hasn’t heard of this yet.”

I cringed at the thought. My grandparents were already supremely judgmental of my life. If they suspected for even a moment that I was the cashier causing all the trouble in town, I would get a lecture from both of them.

“Luckily, they live far enough away that they might never hear about this.”

“Have you heard from Gram lately?” Oliver asked.

“No,” I sighed. “But whenever I screw up, Gram seems to just know and show up. It’s like she has a sixth sense about these things.”

“Remember that summer we spent with them and we were supposed to be planting flowers,” he chuckled.

“And I knocked over the cart of flowers and then you ran them over with the lawn mower?” I said, still shuddering at the anger in Gram’s voice. “Yes, I recall it vividly.

“You took the blame for me.”

“Well, you had already gotten in trouble for breaking Gram’s favorite vase,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but I still don’t understand how they believed that you knocked over the flowers and ran them over all by yourself.”

I shook my head, still humiliated by how that played out. “I’m a terrible liar. But I just kept thinking the whole time that I wasn’t going to tell them the truth no matter what.” I rested my head back against the chair with a deep sigh. “What am I going to do with my life?”

I wasn’t really asking him. He didn’t know any more than I did. But like the good brother he was, he answered anyway.

“You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

I rolled my head to the side to look at him. “When in my life have I ever had it figured out?”

He shrugged. “I was just being kind. You’ll probably screw it up like everything else, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“You’re the only one.”

“And the only one you need,” he pointed out.

“Don’t you want more than this?” I asked, looking around the house. I was tired of living in our parents’ house. It was like constantly trying to live up to a ghost. Everywhere I looked, they were there. And while that should be comforting, instead, it felt like they could see every failure I had. And they were judging me for it. I could feel it when I closed my eyes at night.

“I have a good job. I like it here.”

“But…don’t you want something of your own? We haven’t even changed anything around here.”

It was the wrong thing to say. While I wanted nothing more than to escape this house that was a shrine to our parents, my brother was comforted by their constant presence.

“Why would we change anything?”

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