Speed of Light

1. THEN

In Einstein's theory of special relativity, time passes differently for different observers, depending on the observers' motion. This is illustrated in The Twin Paradox, a thought experiment in which one twin leaves earth on a spaceship traveling at nearly the speed of light while the other remains behind. When the traveling twin returns to earth he's only a little older, but his sibling has aged decades and is now almost unrecognizable to his own other half.

When I first learned about the Twin Paradox I had to go to bed and cry. The idea of one twin becoming a stranger to the other filled me with such sorrow I couldn't be roused for dinner or anything else. I lied to our mother and said I was sick. How could I explain to her the speed of light, special relativity or my grief over a pair of hypothetical twins?

I did tell Beto and he said it was stupid. That didn't help. But then he said we could just promise to never get into a spaceship without the other, and that did comfort me. Even then Beto was more practical. Besides, he said, it was obviously not a true story because shouldn't the twin who traveled be changed by his experience, not the one who stayed behind? I had to admit he had a point, as he often did.

That's how Beto outsmarted Einstein. His unerring ability to save me even from myself was one reason I loved him so much.

Everyone assumed my quiet absorption in books and school equated to greater intelligence. But it was Beto who understood the world's hidden codes.

I thought it was a betrayal of my brother to let people think I was smarter, but Beto simply shrugged, a small, unconscious movement that flexed the young muscles in his shoulders. A display of his effortless physicality. He liked that they underestimated him, he'd said. It gave him an advantage. That's how smart he was.

2. NOW

There was not going to be any good way to tell Lizzie that Beto would be coming to town. I'd perhaps underestimated the depth of her quiet disapproval of him. From strained family conversations she'd learned by discerning strained family conversations that he was in constant trouble

For those reasons she was relieved that he'd been out of touch for so long that we didn't know how to even invite him to the wedding. I knew this because her lips pressed into a thin line whenever his name came up.

"I guess he wants to meet my fiancé," I told her.

"How did he know you were getting married?" When she asked, her tone was pinched.

"Oh you know, the family grapevine," I explained. "He turned up in L.A. and crashed at my cousin Jimena's place and she told him."

"And how was his stay?" she asked, knowing Beto's history of burning bridges in his wake.

"I don't know," I answered. "Jimena didn't say exactly. She just warned us he was coming."

Beto was a master at staying with family relations just long enough to get what he needed--shelter, a meal, a temporary reprieve-- before moving on. That was usually about three days, longer if he was on best behavior or desperate. He had a sixth sense for knowing when his welcome would wear thin and when to leave. And an equally unsettling talent for knowing when enough time had passed to slither back for another reconciliation.

"Do you want him to come?" asked Lizzie.

"Of course I do. He's my brother." What a question.

"Well okay," she said, her voice cooler. "One more guest at the wedding."

"I guess," I said to her. "It's still months away. I don't know where he'll be."

She must have said a silent prayer that he'd be unfindable by then.

I could see in the set of her shoulders she wasn't happy, but what could you do? Family is family.

3. THEN

Our genes were identical, but the way things played out were anything but.

"Nando," he'd say, his voice a low rumble as he leaned on my shoulders. "You're wasting your youth, brother. Come out with me."

"It's okay," I'd tell him, my nose in my books, "I don't mind homework. I like it, kind of."

I didn't have a fake ID in any event, though I could have easily slipped one of Beto's into my wallet. At eighteen, he had a collection, and even family members sometimes couldn't tell us apart.

We were the oldest juniors, held back due to our toddler smallness, but Beto ran with an even older crowd.

Before heading out he'd nuzzle against the crook of my neck, a familiar intimacy. "If I don't get lucky you can sleep in my bed," he'd murmur, his breath warm against my ear. I could smell his cheap cologne on me later, when I went to sleep alone.

Separate beds had been our reality since the crib. That was what you were meant to do with twins, my mother said. But we often made our way into each other's, found tangled together in the sheets, a source of endless consternation for Mom.

We'd been as familiar with the contours of each other's bodies as we were with our own since before birth when we held each other as little piggy faced fetuses. Before that we were two halves in the close darkness. Before that we were one.

Puberty didn't create the intimacy we shared, but deepened it, as testosterone changed our bodies and our appetites, creating subtle shifts in the way our limbs brushed, fleeting curiosities in each other's changing bodies. We navigated those times with an unspoken understanding and a shared curiosity.

To strangers we were so identical as to be interchangeable. Those who knew us well thought they could distinguish one from the other, but not always. But when we looked at each other all we saw were our differences. A slight crinkle at the corner of his eye when he smiled, the almost imperceptible difference in the set of our jaws.

We were both lean, with the same thick black eyebrows and easy smiles. Healthy and fit, my body honed by wrestling, his by the physical labor for Mr. Bruno's construction company. (That summer, Mr. Bruno's offer of framing work led to Beto's immediate acceptance and my bewildered question about if he meant picture frames. My naiveté earned everyone's laughter, and cemented my non-career in construction.)

Beto's skin, perpetually tanned from his outdoor work, seemed to glow with internal heat. The way his muscles moved beneath his hide as he reached for something, the tightening in his biceps, the broadening of his chest--these small, unconscious movements sent a jolt of urgent desire through my body, strong enough to fell me.

I loved Beto and I loved his body-- the texture of his black hair, the hollow between his bicep and forearm, the rise and fall of his Adam's apple, the way the light caught the curve of his back. I loved his body more than I loved my own.

4. NOW

I hadn't heard a knock, so the sudden appearance of Beto in my doorway, duffel slung over his broader shoulder, was a surprise. It felt almost like opening the door to a fun-house mirror, my own image distorted. The man standing there, all sharp angles and a raw, mature physicality, was the intensified version of the boy my body still instinctively craved.

My breath caught like a caged bird fluttering in my chest, and our bodies collided. His arms wrapped around me, his lips pressed to my cheek and then my temple. The scent of his neck--unbathed in travel, musky, the underlying Beto-ness--filling my senses. The scratch of scruff on his jaw sent a shiver down my spine.

Even when we broke away, we held onto each other's arms, our gazes drawn down the lengths of our bodies, taking a silent inventory of the changes since we last parted. His shoulders were broader, his stance more grounded. And even through his clothes, I could sense the corded hardness of his arms. My own limbs felt weak in comparison.

"So this is the future Mrs. Doctor Isabel," he said. His voice was a low rumble as he met Lizzie's gaze.

"So this is the twin," Lizzie responded, crisply.

I wondered what she truly saw, standing there, and if she could perceive the way our DNA was inextricably enmeshed, the ways in which I was him and he was me.

"Lizzie's keeping her last name," I explained, trying to bridge the chasm between them, "and I don't use 'doctor' anyway."

"Too bad," Beto said, hoisting his duffel with a casual strength that drew my eye to the flex of his bicep. "You worked hard for it. Might as well use it."

He came in, filling our small living room with his larger presence. We talked for hours, more focused on the present than the times we'd missed. We ordered Thai delivery and talked some more. I knew Lizzie was set against Beto, but he turned on all his charm, a disarming warmth that seemed to melt some of her initial reserve.

Maybe his resemblance to me helped.

At thirty Beto looked better than ever. He was really a man now, a rough-hewn beauty with solid muscles evident under his threadbare shirt. The twin snakes tattooed on his forearms seemed to writhe with every flex of the dense muscle beneath. Bluish veins formed a roadmap running through them.

There was a silent beat when he mentioned going to bed. I said of course, which caught Lizzie by surprise. While she put things away, I opened the pullout loveseat in the room we used as an office, a sudden energy thrumming beneath my skin at the thought of Beto sleeping so nearby.

5. THEN

Even before The Incident, Beto was already in trouble.

Our neighbor Mr. Bruno said someone had been stealing goods from the properties they worked, construction equipment going missing. He accused Beto. Mr. Bruno had no concrete evidence, but accusations have a way of sticking to boys like Beto.

I was sure he was innocent. Beto had a reputation as a reckless kid, but he wasn't that bad. His grades were good. He was kind, even respectful, most of the time. But one accusation drew another and then another, forming a center of gravity that suspicions attached to. Then every minor infraction became a confirmation that he was, as people believed, simply, bad.

Later that year, The Incident occurred. It was a sharp, brutal break in the familiar pattern. Things were never the same after that. The police came, intruding into what should have been between us, me and Beto. He was sent away to a reform boot camp and came home with a new sway to his shoulders, a defiant set to his jaw.

We fell back into the familiar rhythm of our shared intimacy, a physical language that was ours alone, that separation couldn't erase. But it wasn't the same.

Afterwards, nestled together in my bed, his body against mine, familiar but subtly altered, I said, "You're different, Beto."

He didn't disagree.

I didn't know what happened to him there. But there was a new tension in his muscles. A guarded look in his eyes that hadn't been there before. He seemed older, while I remained the same.

It turned out a mostly good kid at a reform camp learns from the actually bad kids how to be more like them. Beto lied and stole. He manipulated. And there was a disturbing glee when he did, as if he enjoyed proving his critics right.

We still had our thing together, a space where his newly acquired edges softened. It was the one place where a flicker of the old Beto remained. But I worried he was becoming as bad as people said he was. And it was all my fault.

6. NOW

Lizzie turned in for the night and I said I'd show Beto where he could sleep. Set him up with towels for the morning. The office door behind us hadn't even finished its soft click before Beto and I lunged at each other. Our lips crashed together, teeth glancing, clawing at shirts and belt buckles.

"How could you sit there that whole time looking like you do?" he asked in a rattling whisper against my ear, his rough hands running under my shirt.

He dropped to his knees, his hands fumbling with my zipper, yanking my pants down around my thighs. A sharp gasp tore from my chest as his hot, wet mouth engulfed my cock. The pressure was immediate and intense. Simultaneously, I saw his hand disappear into his own jeans, the unmistakable bulge of his erection a mirror of my own.

My back pressed against the cool wood of the door, blocking Lizzie and anchoring myself against the wave of sensation Beto was unleashing. His deep swallows were relentless, bordering on brutal. When a panicked instinct made me try to push him away, his grip on my wrists tightened, his fingers biting into my skin. There was a disregard for the risk we'd undertaken that thrilled and terrified me.

Streaking stars of pure sensation bloomed through me with each forceful movement of his mouth, each suffocating snort. He was so good at this. The taut lines of his neck strained, the muscles in his jaw released with each deep swallow. My hips thrust forward, to meet his demand, fucking his throat, slicked with thick mucous.

It didn't take long before the pleasure crested, a raw groan rising out of me as I bit my lip to contain the sound. My cum flooded him and I felt the shudder that ran through his body as he swallowed, again and again. There was a hard exhalation through his nose as his gulps continued, leaving me weak and trembling.

He rose up like a king cobra, his breath hot against my face, and then his tongue was in my mouth, thick with my own taste.

"Beto," I whispered, my fingers fumbling at the button of his jeans, desperate to reciprocate.

His hand shot out, catching my wrist in his firm grip, refusing to let me touch him the way I yearned to. "Shhh," he whispered, his eyes dark and intent.

"Take tomorrow off."

"Maybe -- I don't know if I c--" The words came out breathlessly.

"Call in sick," he whispered, his thumb tracing a line across my wet lower lip.

He pulled me close for one last, hard kiss, his lips lingering on mine, then shoved me on my way out the door.

I staggered to my bed, where Lizzie was stewing.

She said it was bizarre meeting Beto, the uncanny resemblance coupled with so many differences she couldn't count them all. I asked if he was more attractive than I was, not out of fear but to confirm my own conviction that he was. Some childish part of me wanted her to admire him as much as I did. To have someone to share my devotion with.

She laughed it off, but I felt she must have at least some curiosity. He was so manly, how could she not feel some pull of the forbidden.

We whispered about the mundane logistics of the week, the arrangements for Beto's continued presence. Even with the lights out, he was in her head. What did Beto care about my professional title, she asked? What business was it of his? What right did he have to comment?

I offered no answers.

Lying there with the taste of Beto still lingering on my tongue I imagined him in the office bed, his serpentine cock erect, calling. Please save it for me, I thought. Tomorrow seemed forever away.

"It's like a sitcom where the same actor plays the lookalike cousins," she whispered, a nervous laugh. "At least I'm marrying the good twin."

7. THEN

In our twenties our lives truly diverged. Mine narrowed to academia, Beto's ran to chaos.

I hated to see him in trouble. The charges themselves -- petty theft, marijuana possession -- seemed minor in the grand scheme of things, but our parents were horrified.

Dad, a pharmacist, and Mom, a dental hygienist, were careful, meticulous people. Compliant. They were utterly unprepared for the messy world of trial courts and calls from the police. Each ended with Mom's voice tight and Papa red faced.

When our baby sister Iris had her quinceañera, Beto was absent. That was not surprising. He'd broken free of the gravity of our family, and like a comet came by in erratic, ever widening loops.

That day someone broke into all our cousins and aunties' houses while they celebrated, taking jewelry and DVD players, and anything easy to pawn. As the stories rippled through the family, a chilling realization settled on us. It was not random. Neighbors were not touched. Only our family had been targeted. The perpetrator was someone with intimate knowledge of our schedules and homes. It was someone in the family.

No one publicly voiced the accusation, to spare Mom and Papa from the shame. But everyone knew it had to be him. Beto was the only one absent, the obvious culprit.

That no one said it out loud didn't stop the shame from almost killing Mom. Papa told Beto he was not welcome in our house anymore. He said anyone who steals from his own family is the worst kind of trash.

I sat there in silence. Even though I didn't agree with Papa, it had gone too far and there was nothing I could do.

Beto and I saw each other less and less. It wasn't a conscious decision, but the natural consequence of our diverging lives and his banishment. Sometimes months, then years, would pass between our encounters. The absence of him in my life was a constant ache.

By the time I was immersed in the abstract beauty of astrophysics, he was adrift, in and out of jail, a transient figure traveling up and down the West Coast. relying on the strained kindness of distant relatives. I was on a path to my PhD, he was acquiring convictions.

But whenever our paths did cross, a magnetic pull would snap us back together. The years of separation would dissolve in the heat of our embraces, our connection renewed through our bodies, finding comfort in the familiar press of skin against skin.

8. NOW

Lizzie and I dressed for work and walked out together, separating at the corner for our own metros, as we typically did. When she was safely out of sight I went back, almost woozy with anticipation.

In the apartment I called the research lab to say I was sick. Beto watched. My cock was already throbbing in my pants.

Stripped bare, the harsh angles of his body were starkly defined. My eyes devoured him first-- the dark nipples cresting on his heavy pecs, his firm belly, the thick veins throbbing in his erect cock. My fingers, clumsy with desire, traced the raised surfaces of his tattoos, the snakes entwined on his forearms. Over his heart, the word "Fernando" in ink. I licked it before my lips closed over a hard nipple, sucking with a primal urgency.

My hands and mouth roamed his body--his powerful chest, the tight curve of his ass, the corded muscles of his thighs. I mapped the constellations of tiny freckles and brown specks on the expanse of his back, always my favorite cosmos. The dark fur at his lower back made my cock surge precum, and his husky admission that I shared the same sent a jolt of pure lust through me.

I sucked his cock greedily, a frantic mirroring of the night before. I inhaled his musk at the root, taking him deep, the velvety head filling my throat. I swallowed hard, spiraling my head with each rise and plummet from head to root, teasing a surge of precum out of him, slicking my throat to swallow him more smoothly, pulling his hips to facefuck me, bringing him just short of a shuddering release.

He pried my head from his cock, a string of spit hanging from my lip as I gasped for air and lunged to consume him again. Instead he pushed me back and rose up to flip me roughly onto my belly, spreading my cheeks. He jammed his tongue into me, spitting and rubbing it in with his fingers, rubbing the meat of his hand and then his thick forearm along my crack.

He pulled back to admire my hole--his hole, for the taking, his dark cock streaming.

"You're thicker," I gasped, turning to take in the sight of him behind me.

"You're slicker," he growled, his eyes burning into mine as he traced the wetness between my legs, pushing his fingers in.

The blunt head of his cock pressed against my slick heat, teasing me before sliding in in one smooth stroke, stretching me wide. I gasped at the sudden intrusion, lights flashing in my closed eyes, my breath catching.

He ground into me in long smooth strokes, a strong hand pinning me down at the shoulder as I hiked my ass up to meet his thrusts. I turned my head to see us both in the mirrored closet door, to see how his body moved with such brutal grace, mounting me like a beast.