Page 59 of The Parent Trap

“Because I don’t talk about sex!” she snaps, whirling to face me. “It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed. Not…of you. Of me.” She drops to a whisper again. “Of myself. I’m embarrassed that I let it happen at all. With you especially.”

“Why? Am I such a monster, Delia?” My voice is quiet, gentle. “I used to be, and I fully admit it. I’ll even apologize, and take responsibility.” I pause. “Look at me for this, Dee—this is a big deal for me.”

She turns her head, and her eyes are damp. “Don’t.”

“Too bad, I am.” I meet her eyes, and then sigh. “Hold on.”

I pull over, off the highway and onto the shoulder. Put it in park, turn to face her more fully. “Delia…For the first eighteen years of our lives, I was an absolute monster to you. I made your life hell. I have no excuse for how I treated you. I acknowledge that nothing I can ever say or do will make up for it, will ever mitigate the effects my treatment of you had on your life. All I can do is say I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve it. I wish I could take it back. I can’t. I can’t make it better. All I can do going forward is try to be better. Try to do better by you.”

She blinks hard, turns away, runs her fingertips underneath her eyes. Tilts her head back. “Dammit, Thai. You can’t make me cry before the biggest meeting of my career. I spent an hour on my makeup this morning, and you’re going to make me ruin it in less than thirty seconds.” A sigh. “Do you have any Kleenex?”

I laugh. “Yeah, I keep a box of Puffs in my purse.” I open the center console, pull out napkins. “I always get extra napkins when I get drive-through.”

She takes them and dabs carefully at her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Just napkins.”

She snorts. “Not for the napkins, dumbshit. For apologizing.” Her eyes flick to mine. “It really does mean a lot.”

“It was years overdue, honestly.”

She lets out a sigh. “Drive. We can’t be late for the meeting.” I pull back onto the road. After a moment, I open my mouth, but she holds up her hand. “Thai, can we just…can we table this, for now? We’ll talk, I promise we will. Just…just not now. I have to be on my A-game, and I won’t be if I show up flustered from this whole stupid conversation.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s real life. It matters.”

“Why is this so important to you? Maybe I’m mistaken, but I sort of had you pegged for the hump-and-dump type. You just don’t strike me as someone to insist on…this type of conversation.”

I growl, a wordless rumble of annoyance. “Mostly, you’d be right. But this? Somehow, this just seems different. Because it’s you? Because we have history? Because you’re my best friend’s sister? I don’t know. But it does—it matters to me.”

Her eyes go wide. “You haven’t told him, have you?”

I laugh. “Hell no. And I won’t. It’s none of his business. And it’s not like he’s the protective brother type anyway.”

She sighs, relieved. “No, he’s not. But I also know he wouldn’t be happy.”

“Do you care?”

“Wow, you’re really poking all my tender spots, aren’t you?”

“Sorry, I just—”

“Complicated, is I how I feel.” She frowns, thoughtful and pensive. “He’s still my brother. Mytwin.”

I don’t know what to say to that. “We can talk on the way back.”

She shakes her head. “I need some time, Thai.”

“For what?”

“To figure myself out. To figure out…” She shrugs, throwing her hands up. “Everything. This version of you that I just can’t seem to hate anymore. The problem is, I also can’t just flip a switch and let go of thirty years’ worth of ingrained habit. I just don’t know where that leaves me.”

I nod, and now when we lapse into silence, it’s not as painfully tense. There’s still a boiling inferno of unspoken things, still a tension.

Sexual tension? I think so.

But emotional tension, as well. By her own admission, she’s still trying to hate me—but she can’t. And she let me kiss her, let me go down on her. Let me make her come harder than she’s ever come, unless I’m totally off base. And I don’t think I am.

Point being, I can see how that would be confusing for her, at best, if not a complete mental and emotional upheaval of everything she’s ever held to be true.