She was perfect.
Perfect for me, but perfect nonetheless. Her name rolled off the tip of my tongue like our mother's sweet tea. "Clar-ee." I could say it all day. I did. I said it every morning, and every night. Every breakfast, and every dinner. It was whispered in the most intimate of times, and the most casual. Her name was engraved in each crevice of my mind, my soul. I watched our mother pick it out, her stomach heavily swollen in pregnancy. How much a fool I was to not care about her then! To feel her fetal kicks. To talk to her when only the coursing of blood was her lullaby. Amusing how even though I was here before her, she was our mother's true daughter. Our father's baby girl. I was the adopted son. The thing that was there because.. well, because she wasn't suppose to have happened. It was supposed to be impossible.
I had hated the idea of her.
My mother would knit blankets, asking me if I wanted to join in. I wanted to burn her white crib to the floor. Tear off the pink wallpaper that bordered her room walls. I wanted to get rid of her. When I expressed my fears of abandonment to my grandmother, she said it was just sibling rivalry. I liked that word. Rivalry. It meant I hadn't lost yet. I wouldn't lose at all. My mother was my momma. My father was my poppa. I wouldn't share them. I couldn't. No matter whose blood ran through me. Claimed me. I was theirs.
When my mother when into labor, I fretted her arrival. I prayed that something horrible would happen to her. That her heart would give out as she was brought into the world. I wanted her existence to cease. I wanted the very idea of her to crumple. To disappear.
My father walked me to the hospital room, smiling broadly. I could hear the thing gurgling. Whimpering. Mother was cooing down at her. I witnessed tears in her eyes. Her first day here and she already made our mother cry, maybe this was a good sign. "Would you like to hold her?" No, I didn't, but I held my arms out anyway. The baby wiggled around, surprised at the sudden movement.
The urge to throw her away was strong.
Her skin was pink, her eyes so… aware. In that moment, I swear our surrounds disappeared. The more I tried to fight my feelings, the stronger they grew. Her hands reached out, and I gave her my finger, gasping when she gripped it tightly. I vowed that I wouldn't let go.
I didn't.
Now, she was my everything. My sun, my moon. I adored the giggles that sprung from her pink lips. My heart nearly burst when she would say my name. She was..
Now, she was nearly six feet tall in Jocelyn's heels.
Attitude soaring past the trees.
Hair a red mess, curls tangling around each other until the only way to undo it was through painful brushing that only our mother was skilled at.
She had on white socks that reached her smooth knees. Ruffles at the edges.
Her green eyes pulled me to her like a leash. I was nothing more than a drooling dog when it came to her. A mongrel… an animal.
"Jace?" She giggled, standing in front of our parent's bedroom mirror, hands on her barely-there hips, mouth open to release laughter. "I look like Mother!" She cried out, pointing at herself with a hand cloaked in an expensive silk glove. "Don't I?" Turning around, I had to catch my breath. She really did look like our mother.
Copper lashes casting shadows on those high cheekbones. A nose, perfect and pointed. A sprinkling of freckles across said nose. Her lips were the color of a ripened strawberry, just ready to greet my mouth…
"I think you look more like our father." Was all that could escape my clenched teeth. She frowned, unsatisfied with my answer. Instantly, I wanted to be at her knees, kissing her feet and begging for forgiveness. How could such a small girl do that to me? I was a head taller than her, muscle wrapping around my bone like wire, my strength impressive to our father. By the time I felt my legs wobble, she was already facing the mirror again, puckering her lips as if to kiss her reflection.
"I don't see it." She commented. "If anyone looks more like father, it's you. You're tall, have blond hair, and strong." Her words were laced with velvet. Rich in tone. Not the incessant squawking like others her age. I swallowed hard, breathing deeply, glad that I could control my mouth, if not my thoughts. "And you're handsome," she seemed to whisper to herself. Or maybe I couldn't hear her over my heart's continuous thud.
Because, for whatever reason, I was madly, painfully, in love with this five foot something, red headed sister of mine.
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