I shrug nonchalantly. ‘My Lord isn’t blessing me with his wide range of expert f**king’s, so we’re even, aren’t we?’
He laughs, and I’m a little annoyed that I’m not facing him because if I was, I know I’d see the sparkle in his eyes and the light fans at the corners. ‘But she’s still blessing me with her filthy mouth.’ He gives me a little tweak above my hipbone, and I perform a little jerk and a yelp before he lets me settle again. The silence settles, too. I know his mind’s cogs are racing because I can hear them. It’s almost like he wants me to force him into spilling, but I’m not going to. We’re in a silent stand-off.
He eventually sighs and starts circling tiny rings with his fingertips on each side of my bellybutton. ‘His name was Jake.’ He doesn’t say any more than that. He just gives me his twin’s name and says no more, and I just lie quietly on him, waiting for him to elaborate. He needs to do this in his own time and without any encouragement from me. I know that he wants me to lead on from here, but I need him to confess everything willingly. ‘You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?’ he asks. He knows, so I remain silent. And then he sighs again, my body rising and falling with him. ‘He idolised me. He wanted to be me. I’ll never understand it.’ He sounds angry, and I’m suddenly moving, being turned around to face him. I’m now on my stomach, spread all over him and looking up into green grief. ‘I can’t do this on my own, baby. Help me.’
My instincts kick in and I push myself up his body, settling higher so I can get my face in the crook of his neck. ‘Were you not alike?’ I ask. Twins must surely be alike.
‘We were the furthest away from alike you could get. In looks and personality.’
‘He wasn’t a God?’ I ask quietly, thinking maybe I ‘ve just suggested that his twin brother was ugly. I didn’t mean it like that, but it would be the furthest away from Jesse.
His hands caress my back gently. ‘He was a genius.’
‘How is that far away from you?’ I ask.
‘Jake had his brain to get him by, I had my looks and I used them, as you well know. Jake didn’t use his brain. If he did, he wouldn’t be dead.’
Oh? I take back all previous thoughts because now questions are popping into my mind left, right and centre, and I can’t hold them back. ‘How did he die?’
‘He got hit by a car.’
‘How would that be not using his brain?’
‘Because he was pissed when he staggered into the road.’
Realisation in dawning, and it is dawning very fast. I stepped into the road on Friday. I was also drunk. ‘Carmichael isn’t the only reason you don’t talk to your parents, is he?’ I ask.
‘No, the fact I’m responsible for my brother’s death is a major contributing factor.’ He says it with no emotion at all, almost sarcastically. The resentment is gushing from him. ‘Carmichael and The Manor came after and kind of put the nail in the coffin.’
‘Jake was their favourite?’ I hate saying that. It makes me angry to think it, but I’m slowly working this out. I don’t know Jesse’s family, and I have no desire to after he told me that they’re ashamed of him and the lifestyle he led. But all of this is telling me that the rift isn’t just a result of The Manor.
‘Jake was everything they wanted from a son. I wasn’t. I tried to be. I studied, but it didn’t come as naturally to me as it did to Jake.’
‘But he wanted to be like you?’
‘He wanted the small piece of freedom I gained through being considered the one with the least potential. All of their attention was focused on Jake, the genius—the one they could be proud of. Jake would go to Oxford. Jake would make his first million before he was twenty one. Jake would marry a well-bred English girl and breed well-spoken, polite, clever children.’ He pauses. ‘Except Jake didn’t want any of that. He wanted to choose the direction of his own life and the tragic thing is, he would’ve chosen well on his own.’
‘So what happened?’ I’m so intrigued. He’s really in his flow now.
‘There was a house party. You know, full of drink, girls and… opportunities.’
Yes, I know, and I bet Jesse was a regular at these house parties.
‘We were coming up to our seventeenth. We were prepping for our finals, ready for the Oxford application. Of course, it was my idea.’
‘What?’ I’m not sure I like where this tale is heading, but I know I’m going to find out.
‘To go out and be teenagers, get away from the constant grind of studying and to stop trying to live up to our parents expectations. I knew I’d pay for it, but I was prepared to face my parent’s wrath. We were going to have a few drinks together, like brothers. I wanted to spend some time with him, like normal kids. It was just one night. I never expected to pay so severely.’
My heart is breaking for him. I pull myself from my snug place in his neck and sit up. I need to see his face. ‘You got carried away?’
His eyebrows shoot up. ‘Me? No! I’d had a few, but Jake was throwing back shots like he’d never drink again. I virtually carried him out of that house, then it all came out. How much he hated the suffocation, how he didn’t want to go to Oxford. We made a pact.’ He smiles mildly, fondly. ‘We agreed to tell our parents together that we didn’t want to do it anymore. We wanted to make our own decisions based on our dreams, not based on what would impress the snotty f**kers who my mum and dad socialised with.’ Now he really smiles. ‘He wanted to race motorbikes, but that was considered uncouth and common. Reckless.’ His eyes clench shut and re-open, and he loses his beam. ‘I’d never seem him so happy at the thought of rebelling with me, doing what we wanted for once, not what we were told to do. And then he walked out into the road.’ He keeps his eyes on mine, gaging my reaction. He wants to know if I think it’s his fault.