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She needs a friend or a good fuck or both. I can’t help but wonder, what if pleasuring Hazel could be my job?
I better not go there. Not even in my fantasies. It would only lend itself to sheer torture. Hazel is way too close, and way too fucking far away.
A slight gust of wind rolls across the fields and whips up a lock of her blonde hair and I reach out on instinct to sweep it off her cheek. God almighty, Hazel’s skin is so soft.
I temper my groan. “He likes you,” I decide to say.
“Who does?”
“Hank Hardin.”
“What? No he doesn’t. You’re kidding me.”
“He’s a proud, stubborn man. But he’s a family man above all else. And you are family, Hazel. Hank might not show that he cares about you in the same way you’re used to, but give it time. You just got here. Give it the week and get to know him, and I promise you, he will open up.”
She looks up at me questioningly.
“What?” I ask.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I know how it feels to belong, and not quite belong, at the same time,” I admit.
“You?” She makes a broad motion with her hand, as if sweeping me from the brim of my hat to the steel toe of my cowboy boots. “You don’t exactly look like a fish out of water.”
“I reckon I don’t,” I say with a chortle, then let in the slip of silence for a bit. One thing we don’t need to do is get on the topic of me. I toss her a grin.
“What?” she says, catching me.
“Aw, nothin’. Think you could ever learn to like it here?”
“Yeah, I do, actually. It’s hard to explain. I love my family so much. The Davenports, I mean. It seems crazy to me that they aren’t my own blood. At the same time I’ve always felt this, I don’t know, connection, with something else? Someone else? I can’t explain it. So much makes total sense now, and so much makes no freaking sense at all. And it hurts in a very, very discomfiting way.”
“I won’t pretend to understand that. The only person who probably truly can is Rosie.”
“She’s a writer, right? I bet she explains it much better.”
“Not better, not worse. A little the same and a little bit different. You are two very different people.”
“Would we have been more like each other, if we hadn’t been switched?”
“You’ll likely never know.”
“Yeah,” Hazel says wistfully.
“You can belong here, and belong in Seattle,” I proffer. “You can have two families. Two moms. Two dads. All the brothers…and your sisters.”
“You know about my other family?”
“I keep in touch with Rosie. She’s a good friend, you know. We grew up together.”
“What is she saying about Seattle?” Hazel asks, her voice tempered and dulcet. An angel’s voice.
“She feels like how you feel. A bit awkward, a bit curious. She’s grieving two losses, just like you are. The life she could have had, and the one she feels like she stole from you.”
Hazel smiles, and it feels like a gift she’s happy to give me in this moment. “You’re really good at that.”
I furrow a face. “Good at what?”
