99 Percent Mine(17)

The wine is washing through my veins in a warm cuddly wave. “Why’d he have to be born first? I swear, if I was his big sister, everything might be different.”

“Your dad always joked that Jamie was the prototype.” Tom’s sparkling with humor. “That means you’re the final product.”

“Pretty crappy final product, complete with defects.” I clap my chest and my breast jiggles shamefully.

“I was meaning to ask,” Tom says carefully, avoiding eye contact like he’s edging close to a silverback, “how’s your spool?”

That’s what he calls my heart, since we were kids. It’s been too long for me to remember why. To him, inside my chest is a spool of cotton thread. This guy has so many methods to manage the Barrett twins, it’s truly impressive. His cute euphemism always untwists my knickers.

“My spool is just fine and dandy. I’m going to live forever. I’m going to pour Kwench on your grave. Ugh. No way I’m going to explain that to elderly Megan. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll die first.”

“I worry about you.”

“I worry about big hot dorks who ask too many questions, who are stuck in a house late at night with me.” I stretch my legs and my tank slips off my bare shoulder. I wonder if my nipple piercing is doing what it does best, through my clothes: punctuating the obvious. Judging from the way he’s looking at me, the bras, and the darkness outside, he’s just realized that our eighteen-year friendship has finally hit a belated milestone.

We’re alone.

I look into his eyes and I feel that crackle in him again. Everyone else sees a mild-mannered sweetheart. What I feel, between us? It’s never quite human. “You know why this feels so weird, don’t you?”

A door creaks open and we both jump. If anyone had a secret passageway behind a bookcase into this house, it would be Jamie.

Loretta’s cat Diana walks in, huffy and annoyed, her green eyes trained on Patty. She’s another one of our inheritances. I dislike her on a personal level, but again I have to appreciate how animals can break tension like magic.

I snap my fingers at her and she gives me a look like, You’re fucking kidding, right? “I hate to be cynical, but do you think Loretta had this cat to add to her mystical tarot-reader persona?”

Tom shakes his head. “She wasn’t a scammer. She really believed in it.”

He’s pretty much tried everything on Loretta’s menu. She was fascinated by his palm. Predictably, he has one hell of a heart line. Like a blade has cut right through you, she told him with a slicing motion. One big one. His little-kid face pinched in surprise as he looked at his hand like he was searching for blood.

Loretta’s specialty was tarot, but she offered everything: tea leaves, I Ching, numerology, astrology, feng shui. Palms, dreams, and pendulums. Past lives. Power animals. Auras. Once when I came over as a teenager, I was halted by a Séance in Progress Post-it note on the door.

I gesture around us. “I know. And I think she was the real deal. But holy shit, she backed herself up with a lot of ambiance.”

The wallpaper is blood-red hyperreal hydrangeas. The curtains are fringed with jet-black beads that glitter in the light. The low coffee table transforms easily enough when a thick, sparkling cloth is put over it, even more so with the crystal ball.

It’s like sitting inside a genie’s bottle. When the fire crackles in the hearth and the ruby lamps are on, you could believe anything in this beautiful room. The air is still heavy with Loretta’s signature incense: sage, cedarwood, sandalwood, and the faintest incriminating whiff of pot. In this room, I miss her the least.

“That fireplace is in my top five favorite things in this world.” I tip my face toward it. “I can’t wait until it gets cold and I can light it again.” I mentally count forward the pages on the calendar. “Oh. Well, shit.”

Tom links his fingers together and leans forward. “We can light it again before …”

I nod and try to swallow the sad. “Just one more time would be great. I guess I haven’t completely thought about what I’m going to have to say goodbye to.”

With a dismissive nose-wrinkle, Diana jumps up on the arm of Tom’s chair and Patty vibrates with outrage. These dear, sweet buffers.

“I begged Jamie to take her.” I open a new bag of marshmallows, because the void is getting bigger. “Every evil overlord needs a fluffy cat to stroke.”

Tom offers his hand to her and she roughly rubs her white cheek along his knuckles, before looking at me with smug acid-green eyes. Fair enough. I’d love to do the same to him. He yawns and slumps a little, unaware that my screws are getting looser by the second. I remember something.

“So, Jamie’s room is an issue.”

He seizes the chance to leave the room, so I guess my stare is getting to him. I call after him, “It’s not my fault. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“It’s up to the ceiling,” he says from the hall. “Darcy, seriously.”

“I don’t have any storage space, and Jamie just won’t come and get his stuff. So I just … stacked it to the ceiling.” I am sloshing wine into my glass again when he appears. He confiscates the bottle, towering over me, holding it up to the light to look at the level.

“That’s enough for tonight.” He tousles my hair with his fingers to soften the scolding. “I can’t get used to it. It really is so short.”