Paper Dolls (8 page)

I didn’t care who saw us. I just didn’t care.

Suddenly he wasn’t there anymore. The cold air rushed in between us as he stood, arms straightened, holding himself away from me, his fingers on my shoulders still holding me to the door. We were both panting. My head spun and if it weren’t for him holding me up, I may have slithered to the ground into a puddle.

“Why did you stop?” I whispered.

“Need a second,” he muttered. “And a cold shower.” He looked at me, lust still clouding his eyes like a troubled sky.

All I could think of was that just beyond this wooden door was my living room and a few more steps and there was my bedroom and my bed. Clay Jagger, in my bed. The thought made a sharp ache lash through my body.

“Do…do you,” I paused to lick my lips, which had suddenly gone dry, “do you want to come in?” My voice warbled at the end of my sentence.

His eyes widened for a second, letting me know that I had surprised him with my question.

“I want to,” he breathed out. “But I can’t…not tonight.”

My heart squeezed so hard it hurt. “Oh. Right. Why…why not?” I asked, hoping that I didn’t sound so disappointed.

“I have things to do…a comic deadline. And I know if I go inside, that…” he turned on his gorgeous half grin, a mix of lust and cheekiness and a hint of danger in his eyes, “we won’t leave for days.”

We won’t leave for days
. I shuddered at the promise.

“One day. One day soon, angel. I want to do this properly with you. You make me want to make up for…the times I haven’t done it properly. I want to make it right, with you.”

His words trickled into my chest and pooled into my heart. It didn’t ease the ache for him, if anything, it just enflamed it. I shut my eyes, just listening to his breath and my breath, both heavy, both, I realised, pleasantly in time with each other. I felt the outline of his wide palms and his strong fingers on my shoulders and tried not to imagine that same feeling down further across my skin. I tried not to imagine what it would feel like to have those large hands across the rest of my body.

He cleared his throat. “I should go now, angel. I have a deadline.”

I opened my eyes and he was peering at me with slight concern. I nodded, trying to ignore the ache in my core, trying to feign coolness. “Of course. You know, I want to see your work one day. If you’re happy to show me?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You want to see all the nerdy comics I draw?”

I smiled. “I’d love to see you geek out.”

“It wouldn’t bore you? It’d bore most girls.”

“It would be the most interesting thing in the world to me to see what you’re passionate about.”

He grinned. “Don’t suppose you’d come to the next comic-con with me?”

“Sure.”

“Dressed up.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

He laughed and tugged my hair again. “See you around, angel.” He turned and sauntered away down the sidewalk, leaving me staring after him.

I closed my door behind me, turning the key all the way before I leaned against it with my forehead on the glossy surface. This desire for him had faded to a barely tolerable ache. What was he doing to me? A few kisses and I was turning into a sex maniac. Apparently innocent little Aria didn’t want to stay innocent little Aria anymore. This wasn’t me. Was it?

Or perhaps it was. A piece of myself I had ignored. Hidden. Underneath my carefully constructed façade. Clay was just the catalyst. He was doing things to me, revealing parts of me I never knew I had, igniting desires in me I never thought I’d want.

Oh Clay, you’ll be the death of me one day.

* * *

I woke up the next morning like always, newborn and fresh, staring at blankness, before an image of two dark and intense eyes, and a certain pair of soft, inviting lips cast across the backs of my eyelids. I stretched and shifted under my sheets and my mouth carried the lightness of a soft smile.

My mind turned to our kiss yesterday. The way the temperature had heated, the way the kiss turned aggressive, almost violent, as he crushed me against the door and held my mouth to his with his fingers twisted in my hair. My body heated, the fissures appearing like molten cracks under my skin, making my lungs open, seeking more air.

I shivered at the promise of more…intimate things with Clay. Of his fingers seeking places never before explored, of his lips painting kisses on my skin new as blank canvas, of letting him into my body.

A realisation lashed through me, causing me to bolt upright, clutching the sheets to my chest.

Salem.

I didn’t think of Salem first. I thought of Clay.

What did this mean?

You’re forgetting her.
A tiny thread of guilt wormed its way through me.

Never. I would never forget her. I would never stop missing her.

You’re replacing her.

I couldn’t. I could never replace her…

A knock sounded on my front door, snapping me out of my thoughts. I glanced over at the clock on my bedside table. It wasn’t even 8:30 a.m. Who would be knocking?

Clay.

It could only be Clay. Perhaps he forgot that I was starting later today. I threw on a terrycloth dressing gown over my shorts and thin camisole and tied it up as I padded barefoot to my front door, my heart skipping with joy at the thought of seeing him so early. I only wish I was wearing something more…sexy. Perhaps I should take advantage of the staff discount at Flick’s boutique.

I unlocked the door and swung it open, a smile on my face as I squinted against the sun. My eyes adjusted and the world outside came into focus as did the person standing at my door.

My breath lodged into my throat and I made a wheezing noise. My heart, thudding inside my ears, drowned out the sounds of calling birds and a distant lawn mower. I stumbled back, blinking, trying to clear my vision. I must be seeing things. Hallucinating.

It wasn’t Clay standing there, on my threshold.

It was Salem.

4

My mirror image, my twin, the very woman I had been searching for the last three long and lonely years, stood right there in front of me. Feelings so convoluted and overwhelming slammed into my body like a wave and I was left barely standing and choking like I was underwater.

“Heya, sis. What’s crackin’?” Her voice, sounding so much like mine but rougher and with a hard edge, forged by the one experience we didn’t share when we were together.

“S-Salem,” I managed.

Why? Where? How…? Everything I had wished to say to her over the last three years crammed up into my throat, turning itself into a barricade. All I could do was gasp.

She raised an eyebrow. “So, you gonna invite me in or what?”

Right. Invite her in. That would be a good first step. I nodded and stepped aside, barely feeling the cool tiles underneath my feet. She moved past me, a black scuffed duffel bag over her shoulder. Some sort of sweet perfume hit my nose like a thick incense, dragonsblood and musk, but underneath I recognised the sour sharpness of whiskey. I don’t remember her ever smelling like that.

I shut the door and turned the key in the lock, the cheap keychain, half a silver heart on the end swaying as I stared at it. And stared at it. They had come in pairs. I had bought them hoping that one day I’d be able to give Salem the other half of my heart, the other half that she already owned.

Would this be that day?

When I turned around, would she really be there? Did I dream that Salem showed up? Did I imagine this? Wishful thinking? Temporary insanity after three desperate years of searching?

You stopped searching, remember?

Did Salem know that I gave up on her? I turned slowly as if I were facing a firing squad.

But Salem wasn’t there.

Holy shit. I was going mad.

I heard movement in my bedroom. Moments later she appeared, walking back into the living room.

I wasn’t going mad.

Salem was here.

She was here.

In my apartment.

She dumped her bag on the floor of my small living room. “Nice place.” She plopped down on my couch and lifted her booted feet up on my coffee table.

That was Salem.

“You gonna offer me a drink or what?”

“Drink. Right. Water?”

“Coffee.”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“You have any whiskey?”

“In your coffee?”

“It’s called an Irish coffee.”

“But…” I blinked, staring at the lime-coloured digits on my microwave. Yes, it was still morning. It was 8:36 a.m. No, the numbers weren’t flicking around like crazy so this wasn’t a dream. I had read somewhere that was how you knew whether something was a dream; if the clock numbers spun or if you couldn’t read words. Or was that a movie I saw? I don’t know. My memory had never been any good. “But it’s still morning.”

When I looked back at her, Salem gave me a searing look. After all this time I recognised that look. It was the ‘chill out, man, stop being so uncool’ look. It was the look she used to give our neighbours behind their back when the old bat told me off for stealing the cherries out of her tree. I would never be game enough to climb any trees, it was always Salem that did it. But somehow I was always the one who got in trouble. I would never rat Salem out though. I would never tell on her. I just took the scolding.

When did I become uncool?

You were never cool. You were only cool because you were with Salem.

“Fine,” Salem drew that word out and combined it with a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll just have it black. Like my heart.”

I somehow made it into the kitchen and fumbled around with cups and spoons and a half-empty container of instant Nescafe Gold, as the water roared away in my shitty plastic kettle.

Fuck. I didn’t drink but damn if I needed one now. Whiskey at 8 a.m. didn’t sound half bad. I kept sneaking glances over to Salem, now flicking through one of the magazines from under the coffee table that I think Flick must have left one time.

As I poured the water into the mugs I watched the granules dissolve under the heat, turning the water to mud. I added milk to mine, disguising the darkness, and left hers black. The spoon dinged sharply into the thick silence broken only by the rustle of pages.

Salem is back.

I tried that again, saying it slower in my head.

Salem. Is. Back.

She came back to me. I let her down. But she still came back to me. I gave up on her. But she came back to me.

I carried the two coffee cups over to the living area, walking slowly, trying not to spill the contents or my sanity onto the carpet. Salem dropped her feet from the table and threw the magazine aside. It skidded on the side table before coming to rest, partly flopped over one edge.

I sat her cup down on the low table, placing my own aside hers, twin red mugs, one with the lip chipped from that time it was knocked down, hers rolling with steam.

I sat down on the other side of the couch, grabbing one of the cushions to place in my lap and began to play with one of the corner fringes, the space between us, like the last three years, yawning open like a canyon.

She nudged her chin towards her mug. “Thanks, Rosey.”

Rosey. I hadn’t heard that nickname in years. When we were children she started calling me Rosey because my cheeks would turn into red roses whenever I got embarrassed. They still did. Salem never had that problem. Nothing ever embarrassed her.

Something crawled up my spine and seized my chest. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe, my lungs held in an iron grip. Everything over the last three years bubbled up into a thick hot mess and I couldn’t hold it back. I began to cry, my vision blurring with tears so that I could barely see the outline of my twin sitting before me, my Salem, sitting on my couch.

I heard her tsk as if my tears were a nuisance but she shuffled up to my side and slipped a gentle arm around my shoulders, shushing me like she used to do when we were kids. “It’s alright.” Her soft lips pressed a kiss to my forehead. “No need to cry.”

I leaned into her, resting my head in the warm crook of her neck, ignoring her harsh cloying perfume and letting the comfort of her presence wash over me, easing the tightness in my chest and brushing down the source of my tears like a sandcastle returning to nothing under the persistent wash of waves.

She began to hum under her breath. It was a song that Mama used to hum to me when I was sick or upset. It calmed me. I remember the tune, “A Sailor’s Lullaby”, lilting and soft like an old ballad. When Mama died, Salem took over humming to me. I was safe. She would protect me. Always. And from anything. I wasn’t alone anymore.

For some reason, Clay’s face broke through into my mind.
You weren’t alone anymore.

My sobs subsided and her humming faded. We just sat there, my sister and I, leaning into each other.

“I…I missed you,” I squeezed those words out of my constricted lungs. “I missed you so much.”

“Missed you, too, sis.”

I pulled back, wiping under my eyes, and my twin’s image became clearer. Her arm stayed around my shoulders and I treasured the weight of it. I studied her face and her sharp grey eyes stared back at me. The last time I had a chance, a real chance to study her face, we had been fifteen.

God, it was like looking in a mirror, but…not. She wore more eyeliner than I ever would, and her mouth wore a permanent scowl. She had no extra scars, no new piercings that I could see, and she still wore her hair long and loose like I did.

She wore waist-high skinny jeans, which her slim legs looked great in, a midriff top that came just to her beltline, giving me flashes of her slim pale waist. I knew she was studying me too, seeing how I’d grown, seeing how we now differed after three years apart.

“Where have you been?” I tried not to sound so needy. I’m not sure I succeeded.

She shrugged a shoulder. “Around.”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“I know.”

“You knew?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Although you stopped looking, didn’t you?”