Page 20 of Almost Ours

My hands go cold, my vision blurs, and I start to feel woozy. He’s wrong though. Bonnie was my girlfriend. James and Bonnie shouldn't have been hanging out at all—let alone forming fucking friendship circles together.

Every day since he left, I find out something else that guts me.

My chest tightens so fast I feel winded. I can't look at Oscar. I can't look at Cam. I can't look at anyone.

I would rather chew my own fucking arm off than ever talk about any of this. But it's not realistic. James was popular; he was liked. He was so fucking loved. Everyone who met him liked him, remembered him. Adored him.

Taking a deep breath, I decide to get it over with. There's no avoiding it. Not with Bonnie here. Not when they knew James. "It's me. He was my twin."

Cam's eyes widen. "No shit. How is he? It’s been ages."

Dead and buried, mate.

Six feet under.

No longer with us.

“He’s—uh—” I cut myself off, scratching the back of my neck and wishing the world would take me here and now.

Oscar frowns. “What do you mean was?”

“Hm?”

“You said he was your twin.”

I force myself to look Oscar straight in the eye. They’re brown and nothing like his sisters. The cold wind blows against my hot neck, and my body shivers. "He's dead."

After nearly three years, it hasn’t gotten any less alien to hear myself speak it.

A lot of the time, my grief feels exactly like fear. Every phone call sounds like bad news. Every knock at the door turns my stomach. Every person I love feels one heartbeat away from disappearing too.

Oscar's face drops and Cam's mouth falls open.

I try to take another breath through the steel lodged in my windpipe. "I don't like talking about it.” Anything else will break me. I gesture to the field. “Can we, uh, play?"

There’s a silence that goes on long enough I have no choice but to look at their aghast faces. Then they shoot each other this weird, almost knowing look. Oscar's whole expression changes quickly. He's looking at me with some kind of understanding of what I must be feeling, which is crazy because I just had coffee with his very alive twin who is bursting with personality.

Cam's arms fall to his sides. The jokes and the manic energy—it all evaporates. "Shit, mate. We didn't know."

"Why would you? You're not from our town."

Oscar clears his throat; eyes soft with sincerity. "I'm really fucking sorry.”

"Yeah," Cam echoes quietly. "I'm sorry too. That's... yeah. That's rough."

Rough doesn't even begin to cover it.

I shrug with one shoulder, looking at the ground and feeling an array of emotions. "It's fine."

"It's not fine," Oscar insists.

"It doesn't matter.”

"It does," he replies, steady but not lecturing. "I know how it feels—"

"Doubt it, mate." I quickly interject, needing this shit and their pity to be over. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, alright?”

I hate when people say that; they know how it feels. They can’t, because my twin was the better half of me and now, he’s gone. The only person who knows this grief is me. That’s not to say Oscar hasn’t suffered in his own way. I’m sure he has; everyone has their own shit to deal with. But he doesn’t know my grief. He can’t.