Chapter 31

VEDA

"Nicole, get your scraggly ass out here right now! You bitch!"

I screamed the words into the empty foyer, listening for a response as they echoed through the sparsely furnished rooms of my twin sister's fancy new downtown condo, and not surprised when I didn’t receive one. This was the third time I'd been here in the past week, and every time I had to come back, I only got more and more pissed off.

When there was still no answer, I shut the front door and laid my spare key on the overpriced marble table—I wouldn't be needing it anymore—and narrowed my eyes at the obnoxious vase of flowers she kept there just because she knew I was allergic to them.

Right on cue, I sneezed. With a snarl, I grabbed the vase, stalked as well as I could in my flip-flops across the main room to the patio doors that led out to the balcony, flung them open, and nearly chucked the entire thing over the railing. But the blast of Texas heat made me pause at the last minute and gave me time to rethink what I was about to do. Taking the flowers out of the vase, I threw them over, then dropped the vase on the patio, smiling as it smashed into tiny shards of glass. "Oops." After all, if I dropped a crystal vase fifteen floors down, I'd probably kill someone, and I really didn't want that on my conscience, even if I didn't get caught.

I went back into the air-conditioned condo and shut the doors again, muting the sounds of the city down below and the likely tirade that would be aimed at me when a cluster of daisies and carnations landed on someone's head.

Dusting the pollen off my hands, I felt a surge of satisfaction. I was done being my sister's errand runner, grocery shopper, and whatever the hell else Nicole deemed herself too rich and famous to do for herself. I'd been doing it since she got her first acting job two years ago, and as she got more and more offers for jobs, and more and more full of herself, I'd wanted to quit many times. But I didn't. Because she was my fucking sister.

But this last demand of hers...ha! This, I would not do.

Reaching into the front pocket of the artfully ripped jean shorts I'd scored at

Goodwill, I pulled out the invitation I'd gotten in the mail earlier this week. It was covered in some kind of loopy calligraphy that I eventually interpreted to be Nicole's way of ordering me to be her maid of honor in her upcoming nuptials. Where she would marry someone I, her very own sister, had never met and that I'd known absolutely nothing about until I'd received the invitation. A wedding I probably wouldn't have even been invited to if it wasn't for the fact that I was her only sister, and that at least one of our parents would be pissed enough to cut her off from the family if she didn't offer me this exalted position.

Done. I am so fucking done.

"Nicole!" I yelled again, just in case she was ignoring me. Popping my head into her bedroom, I scanned the rumpled king-sized bed with the gaudy yellow comforter—I hated yellow—before walking over to the bathroom. My sister was nowhere to be found, so I wandered back out to the kitchen and grabbed a wineglass and a bottle of something that was on the very bottom rack of her wine fridge—which meant she was saving it for a special occasion. Pulling my cell out of my back pocket, I sat down and set my phone on the couch cushion beside me, poured myself a glass of wine, turned on the TV, and put my dusty flip-flops up on her spotless coffee table. And I intended to park my ass right there until the bitch came home.

Or until I ran out of wine and needed another bottle. Or a bathroom.

Images flashed across the television screen, but I had no idea what I was watching. All I kept thinking about was how heartbroken our father would be when he found out I'd disowned my sister, but I needed a change. I needed my own life.

My mother, however...well, she probably wouldn't even notice I wasn't coming around anymore. She'd always preferred my older sister over me. Nicole was the child she'd planned on having. I...was not.

I was the unexpected twin with the damaged heart that was never supposed to have happened. Because we were premature, I was born with a patent ductus arteriosus (or PDA). Luckily, the hole was small, and a simple surgery closed the opening between the two major blood vessels leading from my heart, leaving me with two very faint, very small scars under my left arm that were barely visible now. And other than periodic checkups with my cardiologist, I've lived a normal life. My mother, however, had wanted to adopt me out and only keep the healthy baby, but my father somehow managed to talk her out of it. One of the few times he'd been successful at that. How did I know this? Because my mother told me this right to my face when I was thirteen years old.

And honestly, after twenty-two years of feeling nothing from my mother but apathy, I wished he'd have let her do it. Because even though the doctors fixed my heart, I've never been good enough for my mother, no matter how hard I'd tried. My grades were never as good as Nicole's. I was never coordinated enough to be a cheerleader like Nicole. I didn't know how to act around our parent's high society friends, while Nicole could charm them with nothing but a smile and a flip of her bleached, whiteblonde hair. Nicole's best friend was the daughter of a man who owned a multi-million-dollar company and invited the entire family out on his yacht. My best friend for the last fifteen years was Sammy, a black lesbian, which of course had to mean I was gay, too. I wasn't, but my mother refused to believe me. And to her, having a daughter who wasn't a “normal” woman was a personal affront to her family's good breeding. I'd spent my entire life feeling like I wasn't worthy. Like I wasn't "as good as."