Two Faced Lovers

Chapter One (Katya POV):

Losing a twin is a kind of suicide.

Alexi loved the woods. I only ever liked it because he was there with me. There was no other reason I’d be loitering alone in the Adirondacks on a balmy summer evening if not for him. I preferred the beach. I dialed Alexi’s cell and swatted a mosquito away.

“Алло. Alexi here.” I leaned into the phone. “You have my number, so text me like a normal person.” The line cut to a beep. I texted him. Again.

I kicked another pile of leaves. “Cука!”

Two birds stopped foraging to offer beady-eyed condolences. I doubted anything would make me feel better. Cursing him out wasn’t cathartic like it was when I could do it to his face. I wandered off the trail, past a stretch of missing-persons tape. It had withered to the tree in the time since his disappearance.

This was the unremarkable spot where he vanished.

I pulled our brand of tequila from my pack, popped the cap, and took a swig in his honor. Even obfuscated by conifers, ferns and moist air, with a gummy forest-bed of dead needles and moss beneath me, I felt closer to him here. We may have been fonder of the apartment, but this was the last place I saw his feet on earth. Sacred ground.

The sun dipped below the canopy and bled a gold wash into the sky.

What I wouldn’t give to be sharing chilled sips of vodka over dinner with him, instead of drinking alone in the woods. I missed sharing midnight cigarettes on the fire-escape of our Brighton Beach apartment. I missed our exam study-sessions listening to his Spotify lists, and our beach trips to Long Island, and our petty fighting over the remote because his Netflix picks were always stupid.

The tequila burned. I sunk to the base of a tree trunk, as tears pricked at my eyes. What a miserable fucking summer. The worst of our lives, when it should have been the best. Graduating college. Getting jobs. I never learned how to live without him.

I thought that by returning to where Alexi went missing, he might’ve come strolling out of the forest, hands in his pockets and hair a defiant mess. He’d return from a missing persons bout in the Adirondacks like some people return from a trip to the corner store – casual, undaunted. But my text remained unread.

I slumped back. Golden rays streamed over the canopy. My phone startled the birds in my periphery. Mom was on the caller ID. I swiped the ringer to silence. I couldn’t stomach the sound of her unhappy sobs. Papa was easier at least, with his quiet mourning. After the Park Police called it quits, and SAR moved on, Babka and Ma’s bleak wails filled the Dacha like a funeral parlor.

I couldn’t handle it.

I swallowed another sip and grimaced. Alexi would say I was being overdramatic with all the tears, but I missed him. Losing a twin is brutal. If he were dead, part of me would be dead too. That’s how I figured Alexi was alive somewhere. I could feel it.

I eased to sleep against the bark, under the weight of the week’s unbearable sadness. I didn’t dream. I drifted in the quiet, hoping I’d see my brother’s face again. Time became a liquid thing and in the abstract chemical dark beneath my eyelids, I saw him clear as day. I recalled making dinner together, or him at the piano playing Rachmaninoff like it was some casual thing. I could never figure out the keys. Not even to start.

Excerpt from Last Chapter (James POV):

“I don’t get you.” Dimitri cautiously left the water’s edge. “I tried to kill you every time we met. You know all of my secrets, through you’ve yet to blackmail me – which I find suspicious. And despite my strongly held opinion that you’re a try-hard piece-of-shit royalist, you’ve consistently put yourself in harm’s way on my behalf. That’s a lot of effort for a man you’ve never met before.” Dimitri holstered his gun and produced a lighter.

He lit James’ cigarette. The flame warmed their corner of the garden, however briefly. Dimitri took the cigarette and inhaled a long drag.

“I’ve had a long day, too,” James said. “Do you just get off on being a dick?”  

“You want to know what I get off on, hm?” Dimitri said, dry as dust. He blew the smoke into James’ face. Despite his icy façade, his posture indicated that all of his earlier fury and loathing had passed like a summer storm.

“No. You just reminded me of…”

“Of who?”

James didn’t enjoy being trapped between Dimitri’s prying stare and the brick. “of when I was deployed…” James felt instant regret in his bones. The words were immediately like uneven ground. His tongue felt as clumsy as his scattered thoughts. “There were times where we gave everything we had, but…” James shrugged. “It didn’t work out. Bad policy. Bad people. Bad calls… And you can be two things at once.” James paused, unsure how to continue. Finding the words was new to him. And sitting with it hurt like it hurt to breathe. But Dimitri watched him, quiet and attentive. The possibility that Dimitri might want to understand spurred him on.

“You can be part of a community that you come to love more than yourself, and at the same time be an instrument in a system that hurts that community… or helps it, depending on the day. Depending on a change in the weather... You’re not a monster, Dimitri. But you are part of something monstrous, and you fed it. You can’t run from that. Killing yourself won’t absolve or erase it. You just have to carry it.”

Dimitri took another drag and passed the cigarette back in quiet contemplation. The cigarette quickly dwindled down in the thick silence between them. The heat of its embers tickled James’ skin.

Dimitri stared into the hungry dark. “What if it’s too heavy?” He lingered on the glow bugs and the fragments of their light reflected on the dark water, and the soft orange burn of James’ cigarette.

“I didn’t say you had to carry it alone. Just that you had to carry it.” The heat bit at James fingers the same as the pain in his ribs. It was an easy quiet as Dimitri ruminated.

“It was easier when Rowan…” He choked up and went stubbornly silent.

“I get it.” James ground out the stub, killing the embers. “When I got back, I couldn’t talk to other vets. I’d listen. I agreed with a lot of stuff they said, but I couldn’t…” Dimitri lingered on each word. “…share my own experiences. I only told my sister. Dunno why. Other vets say it’s hard to lean on family, but Rachel and I were always close. After she died, I leaned on my ex more than I should have.”

Dimitri chuckled. “She ditch you for someone with less trauma?”

“No.” James smiled despite the pain. “He emptied my accounts and fucked off to go do it to someone else I guess.” Wherever David was now, James hoped he was happy.

He was a thief and a savior, and it was possible to be two things at once.

Dimitri stared in awe. “You… fell for a confidence game?” James didn’t dignify Dimitri with a response. Dimitri burst out laughing. A lyre bird weaved out of his path as he stumbled and held his sides with laughter. He composed himself, wiping tears from his eyes. His mood was decidedly better.