Page 80 of For Your Heart
As I fill the underwear drawer, I wonder if it’s weird that we share even those. Declan looks at me at the thought, though it doesn’t appear that he’s actually seeing me.Is it weird?I have no idea. But… they’re clean. It’s not like we put them on after the other wears them. So… that makes it okay, right?
Speaking out loud feels like such a chore today since we’re fucking exhausted; so we just stare at each other as we toss back and forth whether this should concern us. In the end, whether it’s because we’re exhausted or because we really don’t care, we just pile the underwear in the drawer and call it a day. It’s not like we’d know whose is whose at this rate, anyway. We’re all the same size. Short of writing our names on them or wearing color-coded clothing, we’d never remember.
We just finish fixing the bed with our new bedding when Simon stands in the door. He looks around silently and then glances into the hall as if he’s trying to determine whether he’s in the right place.
I laugh and pull him into the room, wrapping my arms around him. Declan is there a second later, pulling his bag away and wrapping around him from the other side.
“I’m so tired I can’t tell if I forgot what our room looks like, if I’m in the wrong room, or if everything is different,” he says.
Laughing, I nuzzle my nose into his neck, enjoying when he sighs and turns boneless in our arms.
“Didn’t sleep either, huh?” Declan asks.
“Not at all. It was the longest two nights of my entire life,” he says.
“How about we take a nap and then we’ll talk about everything after,” I suggest.
“Yes, please.”
We don’t bother to undress. Just pile onto our new bed, on top of our new bedding, in the room with new furniture, freshly painted walls, and brand-new carpet. With the curtains drawn, we fall asleep and end up sleeping through the night, despite it being only four when we closed our eyes.
* * *
I lookat our single dresser in the closet of our condo and smile absently. Simon grinned at us when we told him what we did all those years ago. He loved the single dresser, the two desks, and the new bedding. He was relieved that our mom didn’t make him move into the room next door or make us get bunk beds.
I was sure to tell mom that later. She needed to know this wasn’t something that we chose for Simon. He was completely on board with it. He felt the same way.
When mom greeted us the next morning concerned that we slept for fourteen hours, we were more than happy to make sure she understood that we don’t sleep well when apart. Those two nights were fucking miserable. I think Simon’s agreement and decision not to spend the night at his grandparents again without us, finally made our mother see that this wasn’t Declan and I being overbearing. We weren’t smothering Simon. He was affected as much as we were.
That’s when we started to hear the word ‘codependent’ pop up around the house. At fourteen, we didn’t know or care what it meant, and we didn’t look it up. By the time we were seniors in high school, we knew and we didn’t care. Even if we understood that maybe,maybe, it was slightly accurate. Like, a smidgen.
But Declan and I are twins. How the hell are we supposed to act? Just carry on as if he’s not always in my head? Like my skin doesn’t crawl and my stomach doesn’t turn sour when he’s too far away for too long? I can’t fake that shit. My head turns into a goddamn lightning storm until I can touch him again. That’s just how it is.
You can’t turn off that connection. It’s not something that’s just going to go away with time. We were supposed to be a single person. Some of those things remained a single person, and it’s painful to be stuck in two separate bodies.
I finish hanging the few hoodies that came out of the dryer and return to the living room to find said brother on his phone, typing away with a smile on his face. We’re expecting our mother within a few hours, which is why we actually did laundry instead of leaving it to pile up until we ran out.
In all honesty, not waiting until we ran out of clean clothes before doing laundry would save us an entire day wasted on actually doing laundry. And really, it was nice to see all our clothes in our drawers and hanging in the closet. There was the added benefit of everything smelling fresh too.
That we didn’t recognize every third article of clothing told us that Simon really had reintegrated back into our shared home. He wasn’t here now, but he and Stommer would be here later. After mom got here and settled.
While we wait, I pull my phone out and dial Sage. I’ve been calling him more when we’re apart. Just because I want to hear his voice.
“Hi!” he greets when he answers, and I grin at his unbridled enthusiasm to talk to me. Or be around me. Or hell, just meeting his eyes across the gym.
“Hey,” I say. “Did I interrupt anything?”
He laughs, the sound making me grin. “No. I don’t know why you think I live the kind of life where you’re ever going to interrupt something.”
“You could have been with your friends. Or running,” I say.
“Yeah, I guess. I’d still take a break to talk to you.”
Is that my stomach that flips or Declan’s?
“Yours.”
Liar.His did too. Did Zarek say something sweet like that at the same time Sage did? Is that why we’re getting all sappy and mushy at the same time?
