This chapter is plot line convergence for Dana and David of Chapters 1, 2, and 4 with Robbie and Simone of Chapter 3. There's recap in introducing the last of the twins to carry the Point of View and the revelations of secrets learned and reckonings for decisions made in the earlier chapters. I hope I did them entertainingly enough to keep your attention until the action starts. All characters are eighteen years old or older.
*Robbie*
I was sitting in my car in a cell phone waiting lot at the airport. I was waiting for my Mom's flight to arrive and I was worried about concealing what I was feeling.
My name is Robert "Robbie" Bowman, I am an eighteen year old freshman at Arizona State set on going Pre-Med. People who know me well say that I am really good at concealing what I'm feeling. People who don't accuse me of not having emotions at all. I do have emotions, quite a lot recently, but for some reason it's as if I have to consciously choose to show any but the most intense. Dad had said that I was born with a poker face.
The only people who could reliably tell what I was feeling were my Mom and my twin sister Simone. Simone had taken growing up watching me and turned it into a near superpower of spotting people's tells. She called it "training on hard mode" and that other people were easy compared to me.
There were times growing up that I thought that having that skill might have been bad for her. Simone had been really shy when she was little. We started school and her instinct to run from confrontation was only magnified by being able to see the desire for confrontation on a potential bully's face. That would trigger the bully from "potential" to "actual", and I wasn't about to let that happen.
I got into an actual, fist-flying, wrestle-to-the-ground, fight in first grade with someone who had been picking on Simone. That got me a call to my parents and a suspension. Mom had and still ran her business from home, so she made sure I did not enjoy the unscheduled vacation days. Dad got home and sat me down to talk. He told me that while he was proud of me for standing up for my sister there were better ways to do it. He said that he knew I could be calm and brave like I had been the time we had been in a bad car accident. Dad told me that loud and angry doesn't know what to do with quiet and brave. It worked. It only took a couple of times stepping in on someone harassing Simone, and later her tiny best friend Lynne, and the bullies just moved on.
I missed Dad. At least as he was then. Something changed in him over the next few years. When we were ten Mom found out he was cheating on her and she filed for a divorce. Dad left, but he came back at random times, pounding on the door, screaming vulgar names at Mom, saying he was going to take me and Simone from her.
That was when I met Mom's brother David for the first time. He was on leave from the Army to visit, the only time he ever did. Dad showed up a few days into that visit. David stepped outside to talk with him. Simone and I peaked through a bedroom window to see what was happening. We couldn't hear what they were saying, but I remember feeling betrayed by Dad being loud and angry and Uncle David being the quiet and brave one. Dad walked away then, but the one I loved had been gone for some time before that.
From then on it was me, Simone, and our Mom, Dana. We were close, but things had changed over the summer and the last week in particular.
Simone and I had become lovers. And obviously Mom didn't know.
Mom loved to sing, lullabies, oldies and pop songs with and without the radio. Simone starting singing with her, and it was like watching a field of flowers bloom after spring rain. She asked to take lessons and performed recitals. The feeling I had watching her, the shy little mouse hiding in my shadow becoming a powerful presence on the stage, I could only describe as awe.
Over time she developed enough courage to face everyday life as it came. She and Lynne, who all along had been learning classical piano, started a band. They were really good, goth metal with Lynne creating orchestral accompaniments on synthesizer and Simone singing with either operatic power or screaming intensity. The awe I felt only increased as she became ever stronger.
Then there was the graduation party. It was at a classmate's house, not a particular friend for either me or Simone. I was dating Monica at the time, right up until the party as a matter of fact. She never got me when it came to my lack of emoting. She came down on the side that I didn't have emotions and that letting our break up be a show for everyone would be no big deal.
It did hurt, though. I wasn't intending to let on that it did, but Simone saw it go down and saw I was hurt. She jumped to my defense, getting in Monica's face. I was briefly shocked that she did that. Normally I'm a quick thinker, fast with a reply, but Simone left me speechless. That was something she would prove adept at over the next months.
I couldn't snap out of it until Monica threw down the "Robbie the Robot" slur. That was guaranteed to get my anger up, but I had never yet let it break through. So I simply told Monica that she was a bad kisser and had bad breath. I may have said it in a way that left Monica speechless, earned some "Damn"s from onlookers, and got us a start of an exit.
Monica threw out, "Bye Jamie! Bye Cersei! Have fun tonight!"
It wasn't worth responding to, although Simone turned to flip her off with both hands.
We had to walk a block to get to my car. I was thinking about how it all went down. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that reference to the Lannisters, yet another thing I typically let roll off my back. That time, though, I had the idea that I had just heard my little mouse roar. No stage, no music, no singing, yet she stepped up and was awesome. I let a chuckle out.
"You really let her have it back there," she said.
"So did you." It suddenly connected that she had roared for
me
. A cascade of feeling set to tumbling in me. An alchemy of emotions was changing my awe of her into something improper. "Whatever happened to my shy little sister?"
"That wasn't Simone, that was Stage Bitch Lead Singer back there."
"No, that was the Simone
I
know, Stage Bitch couldn't do it unless you already had it."
Simone went silent at that. Then she made me stop and look her in the eyes. She was so beautiful in that moment. She gasped, and I knew that she saw what I was feeling.
"We should get to the car," she said.
We walked to the car in silence and drove home in silence. For the second time in a night and the second time I could ever remember I couldn't get my mind to settle on a course of action. Whenever I got close to settling, that one thought, that I had just defiled my relationship with my twin sister with a mere look, would rise up and start the spinning all over.
Eventually we pulled into the driveway. I turned off the car and we just sat in silence for a moment. She didn't go bolting out of the car like I feared. Instead I heard her shift in her seat. I looked and saw she had turned towards me. Simone was fantastic at reading emotions but simply normal at concealing them. I saw she was feeling the same mix of hope and fear that I felt.
We leaned together and we kissed with more passion than I had ever felt with anyone before. I was utterly and thoroughly in love with my sister, and she was with me.
