Page 20 of It's a Love Story

When the hug is spent, he turns to me with an outstretched hand. “Hey, I’m Aidan.’’ He’s movie-star handsome with an easy smile that lights up his face.

“Are you twins?” I ask. They are truly identical.

“We are, but Danny and I don’t dress alike. You two are embarrassing.”

“I’m Jane,” I say. “And this was an accident.”

“All the girls in LA try to dress like me,” Dan says, putting our suitcases into the hatchback. “It’s a whole thing.”

“That’s very sad,” says Aidan.

I get in the back seat, and Aidan pulls into the traffic and onto the highway. He’s wearing a wedding ring, but his hands are otherwise just like Dan’s, tan and muscled.

I text Clem: Landed, headed to their house. Turns out there are two of them—Dan has an identical twin who is hot and nice but married

Clem: You just said Dan’s hot

Me: No

Clem: Scroll up, you did

Me: Fine but his subscription to Beanie of the Month Club cancels it out

Clem: Send me a pic of the beanie he’s wearing right now

Of course there’s no beanie. I lean back in my seat and watch them as they talk. Dan and Aidan have the same longish black hair, with the same natural part. The rhythm of their conversation comes in short bursts, that back-and- forth of fragmented thoughts you have with someone whose approval you’re not looking for. I watch the cars go by as the airport disappears in the distance, and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. I have been highly focused on getting to where Jack is, but in the process I have made myself a house- guest. A houseguest to complete strangers and the one person I really can’t stand. Dan punches Aidan in the arm. Aidan laughs, inexplicably.

*

WE’RE OFF THEhighway driving through Oak Shore. It’s a classic small town, like you’d see on TV. Andy Griffith could live here. Library, gift shop, bakery, diner. Old- fashioned streetlights and leafy elm trees. Kids are riding bikes without helmets, steering with one hand while holding ice cream cones. We have pockets of this in Los Angeles, small neighborhoods tucked into corners of the city, but they look different, like they’re too new.

I’m picturing Dan’s family home again. They’ll have a wine cellar with seating, in case you ever wanted to have a conversation about wine that lasted so long you’d have to sit, and framed photos of people in ruffled shirts. His mother will be named Catherine, with all the syllables drawn out.

I’m deciding if Catherine has a French twist or a sensible bob when Aidan turns right off of Main Street, past a berry stand, and down a country road. I scoot up between the two front seats. “Is this farmland?”

“Potatoes,” Dan says.

Twins with Irish names driving me by a potato farm. This feels made up. “Is your family in farming?” I ask.

“Air-conditioning,” says Aidan, and Dan laughs. “But our grandfather worked on this potato farm for most of his life. Our grandmother was actually the Potato Queen in 1951.”

“Okay, stop, now you’re just bragging,” Dan says.

Aidan has the easiest, most generous smile, and I remember seeing that smile twice on Dan, when we first met and right after he called my movie trash. Since then, it’s been a lot of eye-rolling.

“It’s all automated now, but we grew up here, running through the sprinklers in the fields and then rolling in the mud,” says Aidan.

“Mom hated that,” Dan says to the window.

“She did. It’s noisy during the harvest in the fall, but the rest of the year it’s just a vast expanse of peace and quiet.”

Dan turns to me. “Which is why he lives in a house in the center of town.”

“Well, yes. It’s too much peace and quiet for me.”

At the end of the road there’s a small shingled house with a sprawling rose garden out front. The roses are red, which strikes me as overly romantic. I wonder if they were planted when the people living here were newlyweds.

We pull into the driveway, and Aidan says, “This is us,” and gets out of the car. I run this pretty little house through my brain, trying to reconcile how a person as pretentious as Dan could come from a home as unpretentious as this. There’s a low wooden table by the front door with a serrated knife and a bucket of recently cut roses. We are inland from the ocean, but when I get out of the car, I can still smell a bit of the salt air.

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