Page 72 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
“What did he do?” she asks quietly.
I let my eyes slip closed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She drops the prim, polite act. “If he hurt you, I’ll go over there and kick his ass.”
The determination on her face would make me laugh any other day. She scrunches up her nose just like Mami used to whenever she was on a mission. “It’s fine. It…was something I should’ve seen coming.”
Her eyes lose their spark. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, lying down beside me. It reminds me of our last trip four years ago, when we tried to come to the pier without Mami. We didn’t know she was sick yet, but the signs had started to show. She was too tired to bring us here, so we set out on our own. Within minutes, we both knew something felt off. Uneasy. Maya whispered something about feeling creeped out and we both ran back to the cabin as if we’d seen a ghost in the water.
“Don’t be,” I reply. “Like I said, you were right.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted to be.”
“You love being right.” In fifth grade, Maya’s anger management class forced her to make a list of things that brought her joy. Being right was number two. I was number eighteen.
She smiles and rests her hand on top of mine. “Not this time.”
My fingers close around hers, and for a few seconds, I indulge in gratitude. While I wish we’d found our way back to each other without having my heart broken in the process, at least I have her at all. At some point, I’ll tell her everything. Not today, maybe not even before I head back to California. But she’s the only person I trust to tell.
“I’m sorry,” I croak, the words scratching my throat ontheir way out. “About everything, but especially what I said to you. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry.” She laughs around a sniffle, wiping at the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve been…I don’t know. Jealous, I guess?”
My brow furrows. “Ofme?”
Maya’s always been the cool one. The one with friends and flings and people who want to know what she’s up to and what she thinks. I’m just her awkward two-minute-older brother who makes her look significantly cooler by comparison.
Her chuckle is as hoarse as my throat feels. “Yeah, you, dumbass,” she teases, leaning over to flick me on the forehead. “Because you’re brave. You moved to California without doubting yourself for a second while I just…panicked.”
We’d never asked questions about Maya’s reasoning behind choosing to stay home instead of heading to New York like she’d always planned. When she’d shrugged us off and said something about finances, we’d drawn our own conclusions. California isn’t cheap, but CalArts at least offered me some type of financial aid, even if it was minuscule. Going to cosmetology school in the city meant finding an apartment—and you don’t get scholarships for those. No matter how talented you are.
“New York was what I wanted. I knew that. But then I started thinking—what if I got there and I didn’t like it? Or it didn’t likeme? What if all those fancy-ass New York kids with their seven-dollar lattes and four-thousand-dollars-a-month apartments thought I was annoying, or tacky, or…not goodenough? What if I never fit in? And I wasted the last of Dad’s savings on something that would’ve made me miserable.”
Oof…Whoever said twins have a psychic bond may have been on to something. Neither of us spoke that fear out loud, and yet we’ve been hung up on the same one for months.
“I told myself I was staying home because I needed to. Because it was expensive, and it’d be weird for Dad to not have either of us around after losing Mami. I could still have my friends, my family, all the best parts of my life here, and that was fine. And I believed it too. Until you left.”
Finally, she rolls onto her side and looks me dead in the eyes. Hers are clouded with tears.
“You were doing all the things I was afraid to do, and I was bitter, and frustrated, and scared. You got the fancy tablet and the top-tier school and the cool city, while I was home waiting for you to FaceTime me like you said you would. And then, when my phone didn’t ring, I thought, maybe…I didn’t fit into your life anymore either.”
I go to protest, but she holds up a hand and continues.
“Then you came home and started talking about the mentorship, and you started spending all your time at the Seo-Cookes working on it, and it felt like you’d chosen them instead of us, instead ofme.”
“I didn’t choose anything or anyone over you,” I insist, squeezing her hand hard. Though I can see how she thought I did. “Honestly, California isn’t anything like what I expected. It’s lonely, and it’s hard. And it feels like everyone is already so much better than me…. And I’m sorry for notjust telling you that, but…I was scared. That if you saw me on FaceTime you’d know, and you’d tell Dad, and it would blow up, and someone would say I should come home. But I never should’ve let you think I didn’t care about you.”
“I’m sorry too.” With a sniffle, she shakes her head and slips her hand out of mine. “I was bitter. About you leaving, about me staying. It was weird, not having you around anymore. I thought I’d get used to it eventually, work through being so angry all the time, like I did before…but this break felt so much like the old ones and…it freaked me out again. Not having this place anymore…not having you around.”
“I’m always going to be around,” I reassure her, wiping away one of the tears she didn’t catch. I can’t promise her the cabin, but I can promise her that. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
She nods as she rubs away the last of her tears with the back of her hand. “Think I can come with you to that pizza place when we visit for spring break? The one with all the toppings?”
“Oh God no.” I wince at the thought. “I read the reviews and that place is definitely a no-go. Like, seven people have gotten sick after eating there.” I bite back a grin. “But I think we can find something better.”
The sound of her laugh relieves the pressure between my eyes, makes my heart swell with something other than sadness. Hugging with a half-asleep arm is awkward, but I lean into the embrace. My face winds up buried in her curls, and she smells so much like Mami, coconut conditioner and pineapple hair gel, that I hold her tighter.
From petty fights with the Seo-Cookes when we were kidsto losing the person we loved most, she has always been my silver lining.
