Twice Shy

by Sarah Hogle

Wesley does not sit. He leans against the front door, narrow eyed, arms folded protectively over his chest. I cannot get over the sight of him; it’s an out-of-body experience. It’s so weird to have to sit here and pretend I’m not freaking out.

“She loved you both, and wanted both of you to have the house. She couldn’t choose. The estate belongs to both of you.” A thick silence expands. Wesley assesses me with new sharpness, as though before this statement I was inconsequential but now I require a closer look.

“I was ordered to tell each of you separately that you inherited the house, the land, the cabin, all of it. And then, once we were all together, that’s when I could come clean that you were equal inheritors.” She straightens her shoulders, expecting to be attacked, maybe. “I’m faithfully executing Violet’s directions, so please don’t hold this against me too much.” Wesley stares past both of us and into a different dimension. I’m stuck on a loop. “Both of us.”

If you sell the property—” “No,” Wesley and I say at the same time. Then we narrow our eyes at each other.

Wesley pivots and blasts me with his powers of intimidation until all that remains of me is my ghost. “I’ll buy you out.” Brusque. Factual. “What? No way.” “Ruth told me I was the only inheritor, so I’ve already made plans. There’s so much I want to do with this place, improvements I’ve always wanted to make, but Violet wouldn’t listen to my suggestions. Let me take it off your hands.

Is he out of his mind? “I’m not giving up ownership,” I sputter. “This is my aunt’s property, so I think it should stay in the family.”

“Your definition of family is a little strange. I’ve lived here for four and a half years, but I have never seen you before. What kind of niece visits her aunt only after she’s died, and only then because she’s getting presents?” My face heats. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I’m about to ask her for clarification when Wesley takes a step closer to me and the words in my throat evaporate. He’s at least six three or six four, but that dark, burning demeanor adds an extra ten feet. The longer our gazes hold, the lower the ceilings drop, walls shrinking to box us in.

“The manor’s in horrible condition,” he says with quiet but fierce intensity. “A fire hazard. You can’t even turn the heat on until it’s undergone an inspection by the fire department. You don’t want this mountain of problems, I promise you. Give me a few months. After the appraisal—” “I can’t wait a few months,” I snap. “I don’t have anything else. I already told my roommate I was moving out. All my stuff’s outside in my car. I literally … this is all I have! I thought it was all mine.”

With her gone, now I’m alone in this cabin I sort of own but am clearly not welcome in, which sits on property I have to share with a darkly burning man who looks like that. The manor’s unlivable, and yet it appears I’m going to have to live in it. My run of good luck has already run its course.

“I convinced her to move into the cabin not long after I was hired.” At the sound of another voice I emit a scream so powerful that it could probably carry a paper airplane on its wave. I jump and turn at once, ankle twisting, toppling right onto the dead rat, which turns out to be a live possum. Which rends another terrible shriek out of me. Wesley doesn’t offer a helping hand, watching with a closed expression.

“Jesus Christ! Where did you come from?” He points wordlessly behind him. “Well, yeah, no shit. But how did you sneak in so quietly?” He’s huge.

Wesley doesn’t smile at my joke. He’s frowning at me again. I think he has a low opinion of my mental competence. “You can’t stay in here, it’s dangerous.” He’s absolutely right. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

Wesley hesitates. The worry line in his forehead cracks into a full-blown trench, and he’s silent for so long that I begin to think he’s a robot who’s spontaneously shut off, but then he opens his mouth.

Slowly, he forces out the words: “You can come stay in the cabin.” It’s the most reluctantly issued invitation in history. “I suppose...

Obviously, I am not going to tell Wesley that he’s my most recent ex and doesn’t know it,

“Not like you’ll care if I die.” Just means he’ll get 100 percent of the estate rather than fifty. Maybe I should be more suspicious.

There’s an air of unfinished business about the room, however. It has the flavor of someone going to sleep in it one night, unaware they’d be gone the next day. My imagination is running away with me again.

I WALTZ INTO MY coffee shop in the clouds and he’s already there, wiping down the counter with a damp rag. Everything goes soft and out-of-focus fuzzy, black and white like an old film.

He looks up at me, flashing a radiant smile he never shares with anyone else.

Wesley doesn’t wave. He glances at me, then dismissively away, heading right back into the house. He emerges with one of the trash bags from the grand staircase, giving it a heartless toss. I hear glass breaking.

“Violet,” he replies through gritted teeth, picking up a rust-eaten Weber grill, “liked to be difficult.”

“I want to look through that,” I declare firmly. “Can you stop for a minute? We need to discuss what we’re doing.” I can’t help tacking on a please. It’s why I’ll never get ahead in life: I undercut myself with too many pleases and submissive body language, my annoyingly timid Okay, I understand, forget I said anything, let me know how I can help that makes me mad at myself later.

Wesley shoots me a hard glare. I’m not prepared for it, for the horrible way it feels to have someone who looks like someone I thought I knew, someone who was warm and kind, direct such coldness at me.

“What’s wrong is that you’ve decided this all by yourself.”

“You, on the other hand? You’re a stranger. You appeared from out of nowhere. No offense, but I don’t believe DNA gives you seniority over me.” He’s calling me an opportunist. Julie Parrish’s girl, through and through.

“That’s because you didn’t know her.” Wesley isn’t fazed by my crossed arms or formidable scowl.

“Those can be recycled.” “I’m paying extra for the trash company to sort through it for recyclable materials. Part of the premium service package.” That sounds made-up. And possibly sarcastic. He’s saying whatever he thinks will get me to stop talking to him.

He’s been waiting around for my aunt to die so he could do whatever he wanted with her home.

Whenever I’m warm and sweaty, my hair both frizzes out of its ponytail and plasters to my face, which goes as red as a stop sign. When I blush or get overheated, I don’t get two cute splashes of pink on my cheeks. My face incites alarm.

The idea of him having ever been a child is ridiculous. He looks like he was born with a five o’clock shadow and some sharp words for the nurses.

I resent my intimate familiarity with what he looks like, which is at rotten odds with the coarseness beneath his surface. I know every inch of that face, thanks to my dumb, deluded self not running Jack’s pictures through a Google reverse image search.

That kind of face should come loaded with a cocky grin and eyes that twinkle with teasing humor. In the game of Who Wore It Better?, Jack wins, and he doesn’t even exist.

Wesley threads his fingers through his hair, rumpling the every-which-way waves, darting a peculiar look in my direction, then away again. I watch him a while longer while trying to be discreet about it, but now his attention stays firmly fixed on his task.

It’s a feeling too familiar to be mistaken. I’m unwanted in my home. “Zero points for originality, universe,” I mutter. “You’ve given me that story line loads of times and I’m still here.”

Our being equal inheritors of my aunt’s estate is going to be a circus, I can already tell. But if one of us is going to give up, I know it won’t be me.

Now I’ll never get the chance to make things right with Violet. Wesley doesn’t carry any such guilt. Maybe he feels the inheritance was owed to him, after taking care of Violet. He must’ve had his hands full as a caretaker, because he certainly wasn’t doing any groundskeeping. The landscape looks like a child’s drawing of a tornado.

What a Grinch. If anybody’s going about this the wrong way, it is him, ignorer of Wish #1. Violet held on to her belongings for a long time, so I can’t picture her being thrilled with our tossing out too much. If I can find a use for something, then I will. Wesley walks away shaking his head, and even though we don’t know each other and his opinion shouldn’t affect me, I can’t help but feel like I’m failing a test of adulthood.

Watching Julie’s decision-making was a lesson in what not to do. I thought I’d surely be married to my soul mate by thirty, not necessarily with a teenage daughter in tow but definitely a slew of pets, living happily ever after in a cute cul-de-sac Cape Cod.

I’m now at the age my mom was when I thought she was a letdown and it’s terrifying to still be in this stage, bewildered, guessing my way through life on shaky baby-deer legs. No soul mate husband, no down-for-a-good-time best friend. Too many failures to speak of.

When I catch his eye, I get that pang again. That oof right to the chest, when, for a split second, before the scowls and the curt responses, Jack McBride could be real. I miss knowing somebody out there cared if I didn’t text for a couple days.

I want to hold his gaze for just a little bit longer and pretend he’s someone who cares.

“It was definitely pink when I was ten.” The corners of his mouth turn down, hardening in place. He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m off my rocker.

“Well.” Mom’s cold detachment brings me back to earth. “She was old.” I swallow. “Still sad, though.” “So you’ve moved in already, huh? You find a job there yet?” I’m abruptly reminded of why I don’t call Mom often. “No.”

“It’s kind of an insult that Violet gave you the house, don’t you think?” The left-field question catches me cold. “How so?” “The fact that it’s trashed. Which! Hah!” Mom snorts loudly. “She thought we were trash. You and I.”

“I’m assuming I didn’t get anything, huh?” She tries to mask her hope with flippancy, but we grew up together. I can read Julie better than anyone. “No. Sorry.”

Also, I haven’t forgotten that Mom begged to live there, too, back when I was ten and she dropped me off. Violet wouldn’t let her inside the house because Mom had tended to fill her pockets whenever she visited as a preteen.

“Maybe I’ll visit.” The ten seconds of dead air that follow are confirmation that this call is like every other call, in which she gushes about how much she wants to see me but stops short of solidifying real plans.

I’ve never met Alessandro in person. She usually doesn’t answer my calls if he’s home because he doesn’t like kids, even adult ones. It’s why she hid the fact that she had a daughter from him for months—I’m a relic of her old life, which she’s worked so hard to shed, and even though she does love me, she has been, from the start, bent on outgrowing her maternal role as quickly as possible.

It’s rough when you have a nature that begs you to avoid heartache at all costs but also makes you wear your heart on your sleeve.