Twins (15 page)

“Double espresso!” the Starbucks barker announced.

Heather snatched up her hot beverage, ripping the top off to get to that caffeine buzz ASAP.

But maybe she'd been a little too eager. Because when she ripped the top off, she proceeded to spill the entire boiling-hot cup directly onto another customer. Another extremely cute customer. To be more specific, on the
crotch
of the extremely cute customer.

“Oh my God, I am so
sorry.”

The poor guy folded himself inward, trying to pull himself away from his own clothes. “It's okay,” he said, laughing.

“I am
so, so sorry,”
she repeated at least four more times.

“It's fine,” he assured her. “Please, I'm fine.”

Heather grabbed a mile-high stack of napkins and ran at him. She thrust them toward the stain before remembering that she couldn't exactly wipe off that particular area. He laughed loudly as he made a few useless attempts to do something with the huge brown stain on his jeans. “Good aim,” he joked.

“I guess so,” she said nervously. “Oh God, I am—”

“Sooo sorry, I know,” he said. “Have I by chance mentioned that it's
okay?”

“Yes.” Heather giggled, dropping her head in her hands, shamefaced. “Yes, I believe you have.”

“Well, good,” he said with a smile. No, not “a smile.” More like
the
most heart-stopping smile Heather had ever seen. She wasn't even sure if she was giggling from embarrassment or just from pure schoolgirl awe at how drop-dead gorgeous he was. Everything about him. A face chiseled from stone. Jet black hair and crystal blue eyes. Taut biceps peeking out from his loose T-shirt.

“Look,” she said, trying to avoid getting her eyes stuck on him in a trancelike state. “Obviously you have to at least let me pay for the cleaning bill.”

“Cleaning bill? They're jeans. Please don't tell me you dry-clean your jeans.”

“O-Okay…,” she stammered. “I don't know, then let me wash them for you.”

“Now you're going to do my laundry?”

“Well… What can I do? Look, here's my number. Just call me with the bill, okay?”

Heather jotted down her name and number on a napkin and handed it to him.

“Ahhh,” he exclaimed as he took the napkin. “You've caught on to my ingenious ploy to collect phone numbers from beautiful, clumsy girls.” He flashed her his smile again, and she felt her toes melting. Whole body soon to follow.

“Okay, whatever.” Why had she regressed into the persona of a giggling twelve-year-old? Could it have
something to do with the fact that he'd just called her beautiful? “I have to go, okay?”

“Where?” he asked.

Don't say to school Do not say that you have to go to school.

“I just have to go,” she said, trying to locate the door. He pointed it out to her. “Right,
that way,”
she mumbled.
“Okay.
Okay, 'bye now. So call me about that bill, right.” Heather spun around twice more before she finally made her way toward the door. She stopped once more. “And did I mention how
totally sorry
I was for—”

“It's
fine,”
he interrupted, glimpsing the napkin with her number.
“Heather.
Don't worry about it, Heather. We are going to be
just fine.”

“Okay,” she agreed with a smile, taking one last look at his unreal face as she backed out the door.

She walked three full blocks in a daze before she realized she hadn't even asked him his name.

“I'M REALLY SORRY ABOUT BEFORE,”
Gaia said, keeping her eyes low as she poured her third bowl of Froot Loops. Thank God Ed was always fully stocked
on Froot Loops, because they were just about her only solace right now, after that ludicrous freak-out with Ed's door. Obviously she'd been way too optimistic about the sudden disappearance of her symptoms. After all, it wouldn't be her life if it was that easy. She tried to do her own little therapy session in her head while Ed toasted himself an everything bagel.

The best she could come up with was this: It was kind of like someone who'd been blind their whole life regaining their sight. Or a deaf person getting one of those cochlear implants. The shapes must look so totally insane to the blind person at first. The sounds must be so loud to the deaf person. If you'd grown up only knowing nothing, wouldn't even the smallest thing seem like too much? At least at first? That had to be what was happening with her fear response. Gaia was so unaccustomed to being startled that now everything was startling. Her introduction to being startled just felt like a terrifying nightmare.

That was one theory. The other was that she'd lost her freaking mind.

Crunch, crunch. Don't look at Ed.

“Gaia, you don't need to be sorry,” Ed said, bringing cream cheese and tomatoes over to the counter. “I'm just worried about you, that's all.”

“Yeah, I'd be worried about you, too, if you thought a knock on the door from Heather was actually triplet murderer ghosts coming to kill me.”

“What?” Ed asked.

Jeez. Did I say that out loud?

Gaia was already getting used to this new expression on Ed's face. The one where he would squint and his head would shake ever so slightly as he searched Gaia's eyes, trying to gain a modicum of understanding. It was the face that said, “I'm sorry,
when
exactly did you become a raving lunatic?”
“Yesterday morning,”
she wanted to say.
“It started yesterday morning, Ed.”
But she said nothing. She wasn't about to attempt to explain everything her uncle had told her or done to her. It was almost too complicated for Gaia to understand, and Ed certainly didn't need to hear it.

Gaia just needed to find some way to control what was happening to her. Because if it was going to hurt Ed in any way, then she'd rather put herself in a nice rubber room now, get a walloping daily dose of Thorazine, and spend her days drooling with the rest of the psychopaths. Ed couldn't be damaged in any way, shape, or form. That was the only remaining rule in her life.

She looked up and locked eyes with Ed across the kitchen counter. “Ed… don't listen to me for a while, okay?” she murmured. “I'm not making a lot of sense right now, you know, from my fever and everything.”

There was the look again. Ed's you've-gone-psycho glance. Even the request to ignore her insanity had come out sounding insane. But his eyes relaxed into a confident stare.

“Sure,” he said. “I ignore most of the crap you say, anyway.” Ed smiled at her as he bit into his bagel.

Had he always been this cute?

Yes… she supposed he had. But his morning cute… hair-even-more-of-a-mess-than-usual, collar-of-his-black-T-shirt-stretched-out-way-too-far-on-his-muscular neck morning cute… that was a whole new level of cuteness.

“What?” Ed asked, speaking with his mouth full as he froze midchew.

“What?” she asked defensively.

“What are you looking at?” he replied. “Are you seeing me with the head of a lizard or something?”

Gaia paused to give Ed the evil eye. Then she dug her hand into her bowl and created a Froot Loop ball that she successfully hurled in his face.

Ed let the Froot Loops cascade slowly down his cheeks. “I can't believe you just did that.” He wiped his face clean.

“Yeah, well.” Gaia smiled as she looked down at her bowl and began crunching on her breakfast again. “You may be cute, but you're still an asshole.”

“Aha!”
Ed bellowed, lunging across the table and pointing his finger in Gaia's face.

“What?” Gaia demanded.

“One of us just said I was cute,” he said, as if he'd just proved the unified theory of physics. He leaned his face dangerously close to hers again. “And it wasn't me.”

Gaia felt an electric current shoot down her spine
as he came toward her. She made no attempts to create additional distance between his lips and her own.

She wondered if perhaps she could just stay in this moment. The moment before a kiss. This moment cleared all the horrors from her mind and warmed her entire body, killing all the aches and pains. It was probably just her hallucinatory state, but Gaia still wasn't convinced that Ed didn't possess healing capabilities. His closeness seemed to reinfuse her with power. It was this purely electrical phenomenon. But it was just a little safer. As long as they were
before
the kiss, it was electricity that could be safely handled. Still no unwieldy shocks or dangerously high voltage that might be beyond her control.

That was the problem. If she moved to the next moment—the actual kiss moment—she wasn't sure she'd be able to control it anymore. If they reached that moment, she was rather sure that someone was going to end up getting shocked, big time. Electric-chair style.

But at this distance from his lips, it was pretty much beyond her control already. Sparks were already running up and down her back. And she wanted to move to that next moment. She really could no longer stop herself from moving to that next moment….

But another knock at the door could stop them both.

Three hard raps to the front door turned both their heads and threw Ed back toward his stool. Gaia tried to regain her faculties after her brief journey from Earth to planet Ed.

Ed turned quickly to her, making sure she wasn't going to call 911 simply because someone was knocking at the door. She rolled her eyes and indicated with palms out that she was going to be cool this time… even though she was maybe a
little
troubled by the second round of knocking. Ed really didn't need to know that. She didn't want to give him any more evidence that she'd gone off the deep end.

“It's probably just Heather with coffee,” he said, sounding mildly agitated. He grabbed his crutches and headed for the door.

“I'll come with you,” she said, leaping off the stool to follow him. She hoped it had sounded nonchalant enough, even though the real plan was to sic herself on the Joshes she knew were standing behind that door.

Ed moved quickly, but Gaia managed to pass him and take the lead. She did her best to prepare herself for battle as she turned the knob and ripped open the door.

“Oh, thank God, you are okay!”

Natasha stepped into the room and wrapped her arms around Gaia before she could even move. Gaia wiggled her way out of the embrace. Disgust washed over her.

Natasha had somehow tracked Gaia down. And now she was standing in Ed's foyer, smiling with relief. Tatiana was only a few feet behind her, staring coldly from the hallway.

“What are you
doing
here?” Gaia hissed, once again seeing through Natasha's rigid fake smile. Gaia wondered if anyone had ever been foolish enough to think that sickly sweet look in her eyes was actually sincere. It was so clearly a sugarcoated facade, masking some other totally unknown identity. Gaia didn't want to think further on it. She just wanted her out of her sight.

“This is the question I should be asking
you,”
Natasha stated, crossing her arms. Her anxiety had brought out her Russian accent even more. “You need to be home, Gaia, you know that. Your father has trusted me to take care of you.
Please
let me do that.”

Gaia eyed Natasha's faux concern. “How did you even know I was here?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because the school office was kind enough to give me your best friend's address, that is how. And thank goodness they did, or I would still be at home, worried that you had gone out and gotten yourself
killed.
Please, Gaia, I beg you not to put me through this again. I need to know that I'm taking proper care of you. Your father needs to know this, too.”

Gaia's eyes darted quickly to Ed's face—permanently confused, then to Tatiana's face—one hundred percent heartless resentment. Then she stared back into Natasha's eyes.

Maybe Natasha
was
sincere? But if that was true, then Gaia was beginning to realize just how much she'd been appreciating a parentless existence. The last
thing she needed now was another fake authority figure who seemed to take on the substitute mommy role.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Gaia breathed, crossing her own arms as she faced down Natasha. She asserted her power with a piercing stare. “I don't
know
you—I know the guy who hands me my chili dogs at Gray's Papaya better than I know you. The only person I know
less
than you… is
her.”
Gaia pointed her finger directly toward Tatiana's too-elegant face.

Tatiana stared back in silence. Natasha's eyes drooped downward, as if Gaia's admonishment had deflated her entire body. “Well, that is why I have brought her here,” she explained quietly. “So you can get to know her.”

“Excuse me?” Gaia snorted.

“Tatiana is enrolled now at the Village School,” Natasha said. “And whatever you may think of us right now, I… and she… were hoping that perhaps you might show Tatiana around the school today. To help her get acquainted.”

Tatiana rolled her eyes and huffed. She turned to her side, looking disdainfully off into space.

Gaia couldn't believe her ears. “A buddy?” she asked, sneering at Natasha in disbelief. “You want me to be her
school buddy?”

Tatiana bolted for the elevator.

“Tatiana!” her mother snapped. Gaia listened as Natasha scolded her quickly in Russian, forcing her to
come back to the doorway and “try the way we've discussed.” Tatiana obeyed her mother, turning around and marching robotically back to her first position.

“Please, Gaia?” Natasha asked. “My daughter has done nothing to you.”

“Not yet,” Gaia said, looking Tatiana over again.