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Chapter One
Jules
“I’m washing the sheets. Toss me your blanket,” my younger sister, Justine, asks after kicking open my door.
I tighten the blanket she’s asking for around my back and say, “No, thanks. It’s still good.”
How can I wash it when it still smells like him?
“You’ve had it wrapped around you the entire time you’ve been home. You’re acting like a child with a lovey, and it’s so gross. Trust me, it needs a wash,” she says, plopping herself next to me on my bed. “Yuck. There’s even a leaf on it.”
“It’s only been a week. I don’t need to wash it.” I turn away from her and reflexively sniff the corner.
Wrinkling her nose, she asks, “Did you just smell it?”
Deny. Deny. Deny.
“Of course not. Now let me enjoy my book before the family party in an hour. These friends are going to turn into lovers any chapter now.” Looking away, I flip the page.
I’m waiting for the familiar sound of my door closing after she leaves, but it doesn’t come. I can feel her weight shift on the other side of my childhood bed as she sits down.
Suddenly, she gasps and hits my butt through the woven blanket.
“I get it now. It all makes sense. I understand why you didn’t come home for Christmas last week, why you check your phone every hour, and why you keep sniffing that gross blanket. How did I miss it?”
I guess I wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought.
“Tell me about the guy,” she says triumphantly, as she props her hands behind her head and leans back.
In that position she looks exactly like me, but with long hair. We’re both 5’5” and have matching brown skin with red undertones. We blush on the tips of our ears and our hair is so dark it looks black, except for during the summer when it lightens up from swimming most days as kids. On this winter day, it looks as dark as charcoal.
My twin has always been able to sniff out my lies. During dinner every night, my whole family shared stories from the day. Anytime I’d share a story about a crush that I was trying to pass off as a friend, she’d always kick me under the table. While I blissfully kept my secrets from our parents, Justine always knew when to ask me the same questions alone in her room to get a completely different answer.
There’s no use denying my crush with her, even if I’m not totally sure it goes both ways. “Okay, I met a guy.”
She squeals, and we face each other while lying on our sides.
Curling her body into a cove of listening, she waits for me to open up. She’s always been good about inviting me to say more without saying a word.
“His name’s Adriel and he’s from the small town I moved to. He visits the library I work at every week like clockwork with his daughter Ana.”
“Single dad?” She asks with a raised eyebrow.
I flick away her young judgement with a shake of my head. “She’s ten going on thirty and so much like you.” I light up thinking of her at that age. They’re both precocious and most likely to spend saved money on books than anything else.
When Justine was ten, I just about graduated from my two-year community college and went to UCLA. I stayed home so I could keep helping at the family business between classes, and easily watch Justine on weekends when my parents were at the restaurant. I’d do anything to ease their load. They had businesses to run, but still made it back home every night for dinner. We all had to endure my parent’s hustle.
That struggle feels so far away.
Now, Justine is almost eighteen and graduating from high school in a few months to pursue her goals, while I’m thirty and barely getting to mine.
“How did it change from seeing him at the library to outside of it?” She asks with a self-satisfied smirk.
I'm going to spare her the details of how I mentally undressed him for months before I had the nerve to really talk to him.
“It was nothing at all, then suddenly it was everything. He signed up to volunteer with me at the library, and then it was Christmas and I saw him at a party.”
Rolling her eyes, I can see her writing off Adriel.
