“What is it?”
“A feline hysterectomy,” I reply with as much confidence as that sentence allows.
I’m not going to tell him that it was originally scheduled for this afternoon or that it wasn’t evenmysurgery, but while I stood at the window, I stole it and bumped up the time. He can guess because I don’t normally deal with small animals. Beyond my weekly surgery hours, I specialize in large and farm animals.
In fact, it’s been months since I performed a cat spaying.
Miles’s eyes roll, and he picks up his coffee. I know exactly what he’s thinking. That I’m a pussy, and he’s correct.
I am.
Max’s school bag is laid out on the kitchen island, and I set about packing it up with his freshly washed and folded sports kit, a change of uniform in the very likely event he gets the one he’s wearing all dirty before home time, his holiday homework, school books, pencil case, and his water bottle.
Though before I do any of that, I rescue a glitter-covered snail I find crawling along the bottom and put it outside. Maybe it’ll crawl back to the disco where it’s clearly been.
“You’ll have to get it over with sometime.”
I shake my head and grab an apple from the fruit bowl to cut up. “No, I don’t. I never have to get it over with. Birgitta can do drop-offs and pickups forever. And if not her, then Mum or Clementine. Alex and Haven said they’d do it too. And you, apparently.”
He shakes his head slowly. “No. I’m going to be by your side or nothing.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not doing your dirty work.” He scratches through his beard, but I’m not expecting him to give up the subject. Miles is like a dog with a bone. “On second thought, do you want me to take Max? Story won’t know the difference, and I can sort things out once and for all.”
I scoff loudly, and a smile is momentarily raised. We both know that’s not true. Story was one of the very few people who could always tell us apart at first sight.
“You never know, maybe Australia has addled herbrain. Iambetter looking now. The years haven’t treated you well, big brother.”
I launch an apple at his head, only for him to catch it and bite down with a smirk.
“Fuck off.”
“Then I guess it’s down to you.”
Zipping up Max’s bag, I leave it by the door and pull out the chair next to Miles, slumping into it with a deep sigh.
“I don’t want to see her, Milo. Ican’tsee her.”
Miles leans forward in his chair. His elbow falls on the table, and his body twists so he’s as close to me as he can get without us touching.
I glance up at my twin, my mirror image, and the other half of me. When I hurt, he hurts, and vice versa. Story leaving might have broken my heart, but it broke him too. Just differently.
Miles picked me up after she vanished.
Miles helped me wade through my desolation and unravel my feelings for Story, the friend I loved, with Story, the girl I wasin lovewith.
Miles was the one who helped me get through Sienna’s pregnancy and my first year of being a father.
He was there when I cried all night because I couldn’t cope and didn’t understand how Sienna could be such a godawful mother.
It was Miles who saved me and kept me sane.
Miles carries as much anger as I do.
He knows that when I say I don’t want to see Story, I mean it.
But he also knows that Ineedto see her.
