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So why did all this feel like déjà vu? I blinked, took a breath, and my hand fell away from the doorknob.
I knew why.
This wasn’t the first time my brother had snatched away everything I wanted right when it was all at my fingertips.
Anger started to build, only to be swept away by another wave of guilt.
Leander’s leg was broken in multiple places. He was in terrible pain because he was trying hard to avoid taking the pain meds. After our teenage years, we’d both sworn off pills and drugs in all forms. He was in pain and struggling. Not to mention that he’d given me the role of a lifetime.
We need this, he’d said. Like we were a united front after all. So why was I still treating it like we were enemies pitted against each other? Just out of habit? Because Mom had been doing that to us since we were kids?
’Cause our childhood was fucked up. Maybe it took me too long to see it. But I did now. You could try as hard as possible to follow the rules but it didn’t matter. The rules always changed. There was no way to be good enough for Mom.
But still I’d lived for her praise. When I was a kid, she’d take whichever of us had managed to get the most screentime on Who’s Counting Now that week out for ice cream. She had the ability to make you feel so special. Then after we got home from ice cream, she’d take you to rewatch tape of yourself. And she’d critique your acting and tell you what you should do better. There was never a reward without a stick. As fucking twisted Mommy Dearest as it all was…
To a kid who’d lost his parents when he was too young to remember, it felt like… ya know. Love.
Milo had insisted she was evil. Manipulative. And I’d tried to deny it all these years.
Leander called her a narcissist. He detailed the symptoms of the personality condition and then reminded me of times Mom had shown examples of every single one.
And I’d known they weren’t totally wrong. But no one was perfect, I’d told myself. Yeah, I’d figured, Mom had been trying to re-live some of her glory days through us. She’d never made it as an actress, so she wanted to live vicariously through her kids. What was so wrong with that? Lots of people did. It was called leaving a legacy. Wasn’t that why people had kids?
That was all the bullshit I’d been spinning to myself all these years, at least.
Until suddenly it was possible I might have a kid.
Then that woman shows up and treats us like that?
I’d move fuckin’ heaven and earth for that little seedling in Hope’s belly, and yet the woman who called herself our mother could only come see us when there was something she could get out of it for herself? In other words, we were just things to use. And we always had been.
Even when we were fucking kids.
It took me all these years to see our mother for what she was. Controlling. Conniving. Mercenary. I’d refused to see it. I’d been so sure everyone else was wrong. That I was right. My way was the right way. The only way.
… So how was I different from her? It had always been her way or the highway.
I pulled away from the door and stepped back.
Call time was early in the morning. Maybe I should just go shower and hit the sack. Leander was right, anyway. We needed this and I couldn’t fuck it up by not being rested. They were all counting on me.
So I backed silently down the hallway and headed to my own room instead.
TWENTY
HOPE
It felt wrong to call the next weeks some of the best of my life. Leander was in such pain. And we barely saw Janus, he was working so much. Rehearsal schedule had been pretty nonstop and now that they’d actually started filming, it would be even worse. Apparently twelve-hour days were the usual. Milo and I were also working long hours to manage media coverage along with keeping the secret of which twin was actually on set.
Not to mention handling the continuing publicity of Leander’s last movie and all the hype of filming the current one. And handling the twins’ socials, which they’d finally caved about and let me start up again. Just Instagram. Not too invasive. Only pics of the set and around Italy. Enough to satisfy fans and keep “Leander” on their radar without getting too private.
Meanwhile, the real Leander was healing. Getting out of bed to get to the bathroom was getting easier. He usually needed Milo’s help, but in the beginning, he’d needed both of our help.
Yesterday during a long afternoon, when we’d watched as much streaming TV as we could stand, he’d clicked off the TV.
