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I stay away.
I do it to prove to myself that I can, but also to be strategic in the process of acquiring her. Scaring her off by moving in too fast will fuck the whole thing, so I don’t. It’s as painful as surfing in the frigid ocean. I’m out there every day in the salt and waves, my bones like ice. My hands take hours to warm up afterward. No one can say I haven’t been out in the world. Fuck the snow and the breath-stealing cold. Wave after wave after wave.
Her apartment was like her. It was small and sweet and she chose every piece of it. The knitted blanket on the back of the sofa. A bright blue teacup in the sink. Something you’d buy at a craft show. Pottery, not china, but the shape of it was perfect. I can see it cradled in her hands. I can see her laughing as she tries to take a sip from it. Her cheeks going pink with joy.
Daphne’s bed.
She makes it in a haphazard way, the blankets pulled up but not smoothed. Daphne paints in her bedroom. It’s all very quaint, for a Morelli. Her family has enough money to buy her a private studio, and she paints where she sleeps, her easel by the windows. Her paints wait in a case on the cushion of a window seat. An arched doorway leads back to the living room. No door to lock. Strange that she can sleep out in the open like that. A light burned outside her apartment while I was inside, cutting her front door from the frame.
I want so much to see it in daylight. But then—it’s not really the apartment I want to see. It’s her.
I push that feeling away. Deny it food. It won’t shut up. I can ignore it for days at a time, but it’s always there, howling. It’s not enough that I have a plan in place. Not enough that I’m working toward getting her. One night I surf out past the point it’s safe and roll off the board into open ocean. I can’t drown the feelings, can’t freeze them, can’t keep them locked away.
I need to have her.
On the way back to shore, I do the more difficult task of letting the feelings become more than static images. More than framed prints. Not so much that I can’t control them. Enough to stop my heart from pounding. It’s awful. Being at the mercy of emotion is enough to make a person sick. To make them vulnerable. I can’t have that.
The rest of the night is strange. Half of it I lie awake, watching the moonlight on the ocean, trying to wrestle those feelings back into frames. I try to hang them at even intervals on a blank gallery wall. When I do fall asleep, it’s straight into dreams. Her face. Her mouth on mine.
“Hummingbird,” I tell her in the dream.
“Yes,” she says, and it’s like she understands, but that would be impossible. A person like her could never. Fragments of light from behind a door.
“Don’t look.”
She doesn’t answer. She is looking at me.
In the morning I call my brother from the car. All the naked tree branches have frosted. A thin layer of glass, wrapped around every twist in the wood. It seems impossible that buds will ever form again. I dial his number even though it’s early.
It’s not as early as the winter makes it look, but it’s very firmly morning. It’s the kind of light that could trick a person into sleeping in. Doesn’t matter.
Sin never sleeps.
It’s boring. That’s what he says about sleep, as if he needs a 24/7 adrenaline rush to stay interested in life. And maybe he does. I think he avoids sleep for a different reason, though. Control. Scaling a mountain. Kayaking white water rapids. Crossing the desert with nothing but a backpack. They’re a bigfuck youto nature. Proof that he’s not a victim to his surroundings. He’ll dominate nature or die trying.
“Emerson,” he says. He sounds surprised to hear from me. His voice inspires me to do nothing so much as hang up and never talk to him again, but I don’t. The voice of a news anchor cuts off in the background. “How are you?”
“The same as always. I heard you were thinking of coming to town.”
“Not thinking about it. I’ll be there soon.”
“Not here. You can’t stay with me.”
In the front, Logan sips coffee from a travel mug. I gave it to him for Christmas last year. It’s supposed to keep drinks hot for nine days or something ridiculous like that. It must be all right, because he uses it all the time. Or else he’s angling for a bonus. Just a joke. He doesn’t have to angle. He’s good at his job, or else he wouldn’t work for me.
“Why?” He was watching TV. I haven’t caught him about to jump out of a plane or off the side of a cliff. For once, it sounds as if my brother is inside like a normal person.
“Because I’m seeing someone.”
“Like, what, dating?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
Sin takes a beat. I wish I could forget what he looks like, what both my brothers look like, but I can see his expression now, clear as day. He has a way of furrowing his brow but not looking particularly bothered. “Is it serious?”
“Yes.” It comes out quieter than I meant it to. More truthful. It’s the truth, after all. The feelings I have are serious. If I can’t ignore them, if I can’t cut them out or force them away, they must be serious. They take up more room in my chest every minute. A need that verges on desperate, and a twin hate that she’s not here.
“Did she move in?”
