Author's Note: ...aaaaaaaand we're back! With some minor changes. :)

Chapter 17 - You Were Packing

Whatever happens, there's usually a point with Sara where the window closes and that's it. I mean, maybe something happens and she wants to talk about it and wants to communicate and so she does, but it's usually not long before she clams up again. So we went to the back of the bus and she'd stopped crying so that moment where it was all open and raw had passed. It was all scabbed over and after a while it would be a scar that she wouldn't talk about. So when she's with me and she's talking, I'm there. I need to be there. Because it won't last and then even though nothing's fine and nothing's fixed and she's still hurting over it, it'll be like she just wants to hurt about it by herself in the dark. I'm not like that. I feel like if I talk about it enough I'll find the solution even though I'm not sure if I ever actually do. Twins are not really ever the same. Nobody should think they are.

So now it's only mid-afternoon but I'm so tired that it feels like the sun should be setting. Sara's tears have drained me, and trying to find a way to make her feel better about something that just can't be better has drained me too. I didn't cry but I feel like I did. We lay down on the bed together and she closed her eyes and I watched her face as she pressed it all down again, stopped crying, her jaw set again, refusing to feel how she felt because she didn't like feeling that way. Well, I don't either, but that's just no solution. She was tired too from all the tears so she fell asleep, and now she's breathing softly beside me and I'm lying on the bed, gazing up through the skylight while there's still daylight. In a while we'll be in the Chunnel and then there will be no more light.

I wonder if Jamie is asleep too. She probably is. I wonder what it's like for her to be in her bunk up in front while we are in this huge bed together in the back. It can't be easy. I hate the idea that anything I do is hurting her, and it must be, but I don't know what else to do. Seriously, she's pretty fucking unlucky to love me at all. My mind takes me back to last night, kissing Jamie and running my fingers over her chest as Sara pushed her thighs open. And Jamie let her, she let her do it just so she could have me there kissing and touching her again, because when else would she ever let Sara do that to her? Why else would someone like her let herself end up - literally - smack in the middle of a mess like this? I knew it was just for the chance to be with me again, which makes me feel so guilty, even though in the end I think it's pretty safe to say Jamie didn't really seem to mind anything that Sara did to her. I mean it's completely fucked, really, and I know it. We all know it and that's why Sara and Jamie haven't said a single word to each other all day. They're embarrassed and why wouldn't they be? I don't even know how to count all the ways that last night was fucked up. But I may as well not pretend that it wasn't hot, that it didn't excite me because it did. It obviously excited all of us and that's why it happened, after the accident with the cupcakes. It's shocking to me, too, but I've been with both of them without the help of drugs or alcohol so none of it was as drastically foreign to me as it was to them, I'm sure. Even with all of those mojitos in me, it fucked my head up to see Sara go down on Jamie. I hadn't done that. But Sara did. It fucked my head up and it made me want them both at the same time. And so then I think of that and I remember Sara's lips on me too and it makes me shiver a little in that big bed while she sleeps. That was an obstacle for us and we needed tequila and whisky and rum and a sexy American girl to get past it.

I turn my head to look at Sara's face while she sleeps, the tension gone from her forehead, from her jaw, so she looks soft and sweet like I know she is and I have to touch her lips with my fingers, just for a second, because they are just there and so soft and she's so fucking beautiful and it's okay for me to say that because she doesn't really look like me. So I touch her face and she doesn't wake up. She and Jamie are the same in that way. In Vancouver, one day, I woke up before Jamie and I put my hand on her stomach, and she didn't wake up. So I rubbed her stomach and she didn't wake up. So I kissed her neck and she didn't wake up. I kissed her lips, her chest, and she didn't wake up. I kissed her belly and she didn't wake up. I started laughing, and she didn't wake up. I thought about doing something else just to see if she'd wake up, but that seemed kind of over the line so I didn't.

God, so many insane things have happened over the past year, I can't even keep it straight in my head. On the way to Vancouver, my head had been fucked and I knew, I could feel how close I was to kind of losing it but my plan was to keep it together while Jamie was there. Well, so much for that. If I had managed to keep my shit together for those two weeks, so much would be different now. It really was like a slippery slope from the moment that she sat on the edge of my bed and I grabbed her hand as she got up to leave. She was nervous and sad and wanted to help and if I'd just been quiet she would have walked out of the room and left me alone because she didn't know what to do. But I didn't want her to go. I needed someone, I wanted someone warm to be with me, and she was sweet and I thought that she seemed to care about me and maybe she could just stay close and I was just so fucking sad, would it be okay to just have a sweet girl hold me? A sweet girl who had loved me and quietly followed me from city to city for years, would it maybe be totally fine and not at all selfish to have her hold me in my fucking bed while I cried my guts out and then just see if maybe she could get out of that situation unscathed? But I guess if that had been as far as it went, I wouldn't have to feel too much like I was selfish.

But where was my head that next morning? I can remember pretty well how I felt then. I was a mess in the sense that at any moment I thought I would fucking burst into tears again, and the ache in my chest kind of kept reminding me that I might be in the middle of losing everything that mattered to me in my life and if I wasn't in the middle of losing it, I would be soon enough. And it was already like half of me had been surgically removed, but not like in a nice, sterile, first-world hospital, but like in a medieval prison hospital. Half of me had been removed using some kind of vicious, rusty garden implement. I mean, I know it's a bit extreme and unbalanced but my brain works this way: as soon as there's a crisis, I immediately start assuming the worst and so if Sara says to me, this has to stop, then my brain goes to all these crazy places and comes to all of these crazy conclusions like, I will never see her again and she doesn't love me and she doesn't need me and she doesn't want me and then I'm a fucking sick twisted monster and I'm all alone, and I've destroyed my family and I've lost my sister, my SISTER and half of my goddamned fucking soul. That's what my brain does. And so that's how I had been feeling the night that Jamie put her arms around me and I cried against her chest and she was warm and gentle and I could feel her and smell her and there was some kind of chemical reaction in my brain or something because the next morning I saw her there and it was like i'd never looked at her properly before. . . and I wanted to touch her and so I did.

I don't know if it was a decision, exactly. It was more like an impulse. Like an impulse in slow motion. I'd watched her face for a few minutes while she slept. I don't know how long but for a while. I had time to think, honestly. So I can't really say it was purely an impulse because I just lay there and watched her while the impulse to touch her kind of swelled up in my guts. So I totally let it happen but I didn't really think about it. I didn't think about how unfair that really was. But I guess I can defend myself by saying that I didn't really know that she loved me. She hadn't told me. I guess I suspected something but what I suspected was only a portion of the truth.

And so then she woke up and she was surprised and nervous and awkward to find me lying there looking at her. It must have been a bit confusing. She turned red almost immediately. There's something pretty intoxicating about being close to someone, to someone new, to someone new who feels something for you and you kind of realize they do even if you don't know exactly what it is. And something had happened in my heart during the night because she was so gentle, and then it was suddenly like, fuck, you're beautiful, and you like me, and I'm fucking lonely and sad, and if a normal girl likes me, I don't know, maybe I can be normal and sane and do what normal sane people do. And when I recall it now it is kind of like I watched myself get on top of her and say those words and then kiss her and I half-expected her to be really shocked or like push me away, I don't know. In retrospect that seems almost funny because I literally cannot even imagine her pushing me away now. I mean, even though the situation is so fucked and she knows about Sara and understands about Sara, it's like she will still not push me away, even though sometimes she probably should. She will still accept me, all of it.

So I don't know if it was like I wanted to touch her, but then I kissed her to see what would happen but she didn't push me away. She was kind of too surprised to really do anything, though, but there's a lot you can feel about what is happening to someone while you're lying on top of them. Like the first moment I kissed her, I could feel her kind of suck in air and then stop breathing. Well, it was exciting, and in a moment I almost forgot about all the shit that had made me fucking cry all night. You feel someone's lips and you feel their body and their warmth and all the thoughts go away, and her warmth started to fill up my entire body. Her hands touched my hips and that is not a neutral place to touch someone. When you touch someone's hips, I think, it shows something, doesn't it? So I kissed her again and then after that, holy fuck, she was completely, obviously really hot but also kind of overwhelmed and shy and I'm not going to lie, that was hot and cute and pretty great for my ego. And yeah, I guess I was also kind of playing games with her because everything I did had such an effect on her, and I admit I loved it. I put my hand up her shirt and pressed it against the centre of her chest and she was breathing all funny, erratically, and her heart was like racing, I could feel it against my hand. Because of me! I mean it's pretty incredible to have that effect on someone, like, for the person to be so affected by your touch, just by your nearness, that they can hardly even say or do anything. I slid my hand softly over her breast and she stopped in the middle of her sentence. And so while she had this look on her face like she might pass out, I watched her as my hand moved down her body and into her underwear.

Well and I didn't think about it at the time but she didn't really give me permission, did she? Like I didn't ask her and she didn't say anything to let me know that it was okay. I mean, was it proof that it was okay when my fingers found how wet she was? Is that proof that she wanted me to touch her? I guess I can say that I sensed that she wanted me to touch her. And I know I wanted to. I wanted to touch someone who wanted me and who didn't fill me up with poisonous guilt and shame. Compared to how I'd been feeling about Sara and our sick fucking mess, touching Jamie felt like such a pure and innocent thing. It might not have felt like that to her.

And so I touched her and she hardly moved but there's enough in a person's face, in the way they breathe, in the sounds they make and their hands on you to tell you what you need to know. And I was struck by the way she kissed me. Because when Sara kisses me, I can feel all of the same need that I feel, and all of the struggle that comes with that. Sometimes, when she kisses me it feels like she's angry with me for making her want to kiss me. But the way Jamie kissed me was more like she wanted to tell me ten thousand things and she would only have one chance so she didn't know what to say first. I can't explain it. It moved me though. Because it's like the way you see something that is so beautiful that it kind of hurts your heart to know that some day that thing will not exist anymore? Or when you hear a song and it fucking stabs your guts out but you can't explain why it does and that feeling you have when you need someone to understand something and you just can't express it? What the fuck am I talking about? I mean it sounds completely arrogant for me to say all of that but believe me, it surprised me to feel it. It surprised me to feel that kind of intensity from someone when they had never said or done anything to really let me know it.

And it also surprised me that she came so fast. . . but maybe it shouldn't have. I think back to the first time I felt Sara's fingers; I remember how I came in what seemed like seconds, every sensation in my body completely out of my control, overwhelmed, my heart pounding, breathless. . . and the comparison fills me with a sympathetic ache because maybe that's how she felt about me? Almost, anyway? And when she grabbed the front of my shirt and pressed her face against my shoulder to hide her face, to stifle her voice, it completely squeezed my heart. I called her sweet after and she was so fucking shy, it killed me, God. And I didn't need anything right then and didn't need to be touched because somehow I just felt satisfied and wanted to sleep.

I did it for me, really, if I'm totally honest. I didn't really know how she felt about me, so I was really just taking each step and waiting for a rejection and each time I didn't get a rejection, it was like I felt a little less sick. If I'd known then what I know now, I don't know what I would have done. Part of me hopes I would be a good enough person to keep my hands off of her if I knew that she was in love with me and knew that Sara owned so much of my heart that all I would have left for anyone else would be scraps. But I still don't know if I'd make a different decision because there's something between Jamie and me that keeps me connected to the real, sane world. And she doesn't demand anything from me, doesn't make anything harder for me, and loves me even though she knows how fucked up and twisted I am. That and all the rest of it makes me love her too but it's sad and unfair that I can have her whole heart and she can only have the vacant bits of mine. I shouldn't have ever put her in that position. . . but if I'm going to tell the truth about it, I would probably do it again.