Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 120326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
He laughs softly into my skin, and I get all hot and blushy.
“I couldn’t wait to get back to you today,” he whispers. “Here, take this off.” He pulls on the corners of my robe, but I gather enough strength to stop him.
“We’re not doing this.”
“I think you’ll find that we are,” he happily disagrees, framing my face in his hands now. “God, you’re beautiful.”
I practically choke as a hundred emotions rush through me. I can’t help it — I have to confront him on this. “That’s a big contradiction to all the times you called me ugly,” I say quietly.
“You’ve never been ugly. Don’t tell me you believed that crap? You are and always have been the prettiest creature I know.”
“What?!” I exclaim, shifting backwards now. “So you lied just to hurt my feelings?”
“I might have.”
“How on earth can you tell me that with a straight face?”
He sits up, studying my appalled expression. “I can because I just did. I thought we were going to leave the past in the past, Lana.”
“The past wasn’t that long ago, Robert. And now you’re telling me that all the pain and insecurity I went through was for nothing?”
“Well, now, it wasn’t for nothing. At first I hated you. Don’t get me wrong — I fancied you something terrible, but I still hated you.”
“Why? I was only twelve. I never did anything to hurt you.”
“Ah, but you did. You stole Sasha. I needed her to be on my side, but then you came along and I was on my own. So I did what any immature fourteen-year-old boy would do, and I called you names.”
“You were jealous of me because I stole Sasha? Um, okay.”
I take a minute to get my head around that. I always thought Robert’s animosity was a simple case of me just not being his kind of person. I know that twins are supposed to be very possessive of one another, but I didn’t think it would run that deeply…that the one left behind would hate the person who took the other away.
He lifts up my hand now and runs his fingers along my palm. “After a while it was just a case of habit. I didn’t know any other way to be with you, so I kept it up.”
Gently, I pull my hand from his. “It hurt my heart every time you called me names, every time you did something to ruin my day.”
His hair gets messy as he tugs on it, staring at me with a pained expression. “But you always seemed so impervious. You’d give me a hateful look and then just walk away.”
“I walked away because I didn’t want you to see me crying,” I whisper.
His mouth forms a round “O” shape as his eyes look back and forth between mine. “Would you believe me if I told you it was actually a form of affection?”
“What?” I ask, with a quiet, melancholy laugh.
“I lived for taunting you, for getting a reaction out of you, no matter how minuscule. Maybe it’s just my personality, maybe I’m just fucked up, but I loved our fights. I found them exhilarating.”
I laugh again quietly. “There’s no ‘maybe’ about it. You are fucked up.”
He drags his palm along my neck now. “Let’s be fucked up together, Lana.”
“Not tonight,” I breathe, shooing him from the bed. He gives my lips a mournful look and then stands up.
“Hey, what’s this?” he asks, picking up the folded piece of paper from my nightstand, the one I wrote the open-mic night details down on. Shit.
He starts reading the venues out loud, looking from me and back to the paper several times.
“You’re so nosy. Give it back,” I say, grabbing for the paper. He holds it high out of my reach.
“Are you planning on taking part in one of these?” he asks, intrigued.
“That’s none of your business,” I tell him sternly as he finally places the paper back down on the nightstand.
“So you sing? Sasha never mentioned it.”
“Sasha doesn’t know. It’s just a little hobby. And it’s not like I want to do it for a living or anything. It’s more of a bucket-list sort of thing.”
“You have a bucket list? Is this because of your diabetes?”
I laugh out loud at that. “No, you idiot. How many times do I have to tell you? Having diabetes isn’t a death sentence.”
“It’s not not a death sentence, either,” Robert counters.
“Now you’re being melodramatic.”
“Let me go with you when you do this.”
“Eh…no. The whole point is not to have anyone who knows me there. Strangers are safer. That way, if I mess up I’ll never have to see the people in the audience ever again.”
“But I’m so curious,” he whines. “Sing something for me now, then.”
“No way. I’m not ready.”
“I bet you’re sexy when you sing,” he whispers, a faraway look in his eyes, like he’s imagining it.
I can’t think of anything to say to that. I expect him to try to get back into bed with me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he walks to the door. “I’m coming with you to the open-mic night, so don’t you dare even think about going without me.”
“You’re not coming.”
“Yes, I am,” he states, before blowing me a kiss goodnight and slipping out the door.
At work the next day my nerves are on tenterhooks. I haven’t seen Robert since he came to my room last night, and I keep expecting him to show up. But he doesn’t. When my shift ends at three, I feel a brief moment of relief before I realise that I have to go home, and Robert could be there. Avoiding going back, I eat dinner out and then go for a walk over to Speaker’s Corner.
Fareed is there again, and we talk for a while. He has a newspaper with him, and we look through it together, discussing the stories that catch our interest. There’s one about how all of the construction works for the Olympics are ruining people’s homes.
I don’t know why I stay and talk to this guy. I know nothing about him, not even what he does for a living, but sometimes I find talking to strangers an easy experience. There are no preconceived perceptions, so you can tell them whatever you want. It’s kind of the same as my theory that singing for strangers will be easier than singing for people who know me.