Knock, knock.
Jon took a deep, slow breath before responding. Flinching and overreacting to something as simple as a knock at the door was foolish, especially at his age, and it wasn’t, he told himself, as though there was anything unnatural about it. Lots of people knocked twice. “Who’s there?”
“Dwayne.”
Jon turned to frown at the door. The voice sounded familiar, but…“Dwayne who?”
“Dwayne the bathtub, I’m dwowning!” the voice called back, exaggerating the last word, and Jon groaned as he made the connection.
Laughing, he opened the door to expose Georgie, smirking mischievously and carrying a red gift bag with silver ribbons curling off the handles. “That’s awful.”
“At least I didn’t say ‘banana,’” Georgie shot back. She muscled into his room and studied the bulletin board. “Aww. That’s cute. From your secret admirer?”
“Ha. Ha, ha.” Jon shut the door and smiled at the assortment of cards he’d pinned to it. He’d had to rearrange it to make space, leaving only his most treasured photographs. “No, that one is from my aunts. That one’s from my cousin Linda, that’s why it’s in Greek. Those down there are from Robin and Mags. And that one in the middle is from Melanie.”
“Hm.” Georgie stared at the card for a minute. It was large, ostentatious, and over the top—typical Melanie. It had shed quite a lot of glitter when he’d opened it, too, but it was still plenty shiny, featuring cartoon cats in fancy dress and outrageous puns. Jon knew she’d picked it out partly to torment him with glitter and partly because the waltzing cat couple looked exactly like Paddiwack and Cosy.
His smile turned a bit melancholy as he brushed the calico cat’s face lightly. He knew she’d been old and starting to fall apart, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been a broken heart that had done her in the end. He could empathize. Hard as it was to be separated from Melanie, who’d been his near constant companion since, well, since birth, at least he knew she was still alive and where she was. At least he would see her again.
He wasn’t sure what he believed, exactly, but even if he had been, how did you explain the concept of the afterlife to a cat?
“Well,” Georgie said finally. “Looks to me you’ve got a bit more space on this board.” She reached into the bag and presented him with a square white envelope. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Jon accepted it warmly. He didn’t have one to hand back to her, but he didn’t need one, as he’d arranged for a vase of daisies to be delivered to her with a suitable card that morning. Instead, he ran his finger under the flap, opened the envelope, and pulled out the card.
And stared.
Objectively speaking, it was…cute. The faces were certainly cute. And the pun, while worthy of as much of a groan as the joke she’d opened the door with, was a little endearing in its way, if you were into that sort of thing. The glasses were clearly drawn on, but they matched Jon’s surprisingly well.
But why, oh, why, oh why did it have to also be wearing a red bowler hat?
“‘I’m not arachnid-ing…I love you this much,’” he read aloud. “Hilarious.”
He opened the card quickly. Too quickly, perhaps, but anything to banish the cheerful little fly looking far too happy about being in the center of a web, even one strung to look like a heart, and the perky little spider eying it with such…desire, its front legs spread as wide as they could go to accommodate the stretched out this.
Mister Spider wants more.
Jon tried to shake off the memory and look at the interior of the card, but unfortunately, there it was again, the same spider in the same little red bowler hat and bow tie, now with three pairs of legs wrapped in a “loving” embrace around the blushing, giggling fly. It was accompanied by another atrocious pun—I’m totally caught in your web!—and a little handwritten note from Georgie. She did have a very nice turn of phrase, courtesy of that English major of hers, and the parts of the card that weren’t spider related were very sweet. He looked up at Georgie with a smile. “Thank you!”
Georgie’s face very clearly showed that she had clocked his less than enthusiastic reaction. Which, of course she had, she wasn’t stupid, it was one of the things he liked about her. “What’s wrong with it? And don’t say nothing,” she added. Jon snapped his jaw shut guiltily. “Is it the puns? I thought you liked puns.”
“I do like puns.” It had been something they’d discussed on their first date, and she’d certainly used them fairly often, so it wasn’t a surprise that she remembered. However, they had also had a separate discussion, more than once. “It’s just…I really hate spiders, Georgie.”
Georgie frowned. “They’re perfectly harmless, you know. And they’re important to the ecosystem. Most of them are more scared of you than you are of them.”
Jon bit back a sigh. “Yes. I know. There are plenty of logical reasons not to mind spiders, and I appreciate that you, yourself, are not afraid of them and think I’m silly to be a grown ass man who hates them that much—”
“Well, if you already know that—”
“—but,” Jon interrupted sharply, “even if it were just a—a silly, irrational phobia, phobias are still real. But I do have an actual reason to be afraid of them.”
Georgie raised an eyebrow. “What, did a spider steal your lunch when you were six?”
Jon hesitated. He’d never told anyone about this. Even Antony didn’t know. But…well, Georgie seemed interested in him, and there was a chance, no more than that, that they might…be together for a long time. And if they were, she would need to know eventually. Why not tell her now?
He sat on the edge of his bed and took a deep breath. “Look. Can I—can I tell you something?”
Georgie’s eyebrow lifted further, but she only said, “Go on.”
He patted the mattress next to him. Georgie eyed him suspiciously, clearly thinking this was some kind of ploy or joke, but she hesitantly sat down on the edge of the bed. She didn’t say anything, though, just watched him.
Jon wanted to make eye contact with her. He wanted to stare her in the face, open and sincere, so she would know he was serious about this. He’d tried telling her once about the uncomfortable, almost panicky feeling he got sometimes when he was being forced to make direct, sustained eye contact with someone, and she’d sounded rather unimpressed as she told him that sounded like an excuse not to make the effort to her. So for her, he tried, with varying degrees of success. But this…this was too much, and he knew he’d completely fall apart if he tried to do that and tell her about what had happened, so he closed his eyes for a minute and took another breath, then reached for Georgie’s hand and focused on their interlocked fingers.
“I know how this is going to sound,” he began, “but you have to believe me. I wasn’t six. I was eight. Melanie and I were in Bournemouth—my, our grandmother lived there and we had to spend three weeks out of every summer with her, i-it was a, a concession of sorts for her not getting custody of me after Mama died. We’d got in a bit of trouble at the start of the visit because we’d tried to sail to Kirrin Island in a toy box and had to be rescued by the police.”
“Where’s Kirrin Island?”
“Ah—the island from the Famous Five series?”
“I never watched it. Wasn’t my thing. Hated it on principal,” Georgie said flatly. “I had too many people telling me I was like one of the characters just because she shared my name, so I just refused to read the books or watch the show.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Georgie that she’d probably enjoy it—indeed, he looked up at her, momentarily distracted from the story he’d meant to tell with the intention of rambling at her about the overall plot of the series and how much Melanie had loved them—but one look at her eyes and he faltered, knowing it would be pushing things too far. He rallied and forced himself back on track, eyes dropping to their joined hands again. “It isn’t real, but we didn’t know that at the time. Anyway, That—Grandmother was trying to keep us inside after that, and we both liked books, but the library was too far away and we hadn’t brought many with us, so she started buying anything less than a pound at the nearest charity shops and giving them to us to pick through. The third lot she brought home, Melanie found—she found a, a children’s book. Just a simple little thing, it looked from the outside, with a spider on the front and webs all over it. He had a red bowler hat and everything. The name of the book was A Guest for Mister Spider.”
“Who wrote it?”
“I—I don’t remember,” Jon admitted. “I didn’t actually see much of it—Melanie was reading it out loud. She, she struggled with it back then—she’s dyslexic, but we didn’t know that—but she could read it easily, and we were both drawn in. It was…”
The words were seared into his memory. He could have recited it word for word, but they burned on his tongue, and with the card so close he was almost childishly afraid that if he said them, he would look back at it and the sweet little waltz would have turned into a danse macabre. “It…it was just Mister Spider at home, and there was a knock on his door, and there would be a visitor—Mister Bluebottle, Mrs Fruit, and Mister Horse—each with a, a gift. And…it rather implied that Mister Spider was eating them. The very last page said that he wanted another guest for dinner and that it was polite to knock, and there was a picture of his door. Melanie almost knocked on it, but…” He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “There was…a young man in the area who, well, he didn’t like me much, and we’d somehow wound up at the park. He took the book from us and started to sneer at us, then started to read it. We followed him down the street, and he went up to a house and held the book in front of it and knocked, and…and Mister Spider was at home. And he got his guest for dinner. We never saw him again.”
There was an eternity between one heartbeat and the next. Jon started to squeeze Georgie’s fingers, but her hand abruptly went slack and slid out of his. He looked up in surprise to see her eyebrows knitted together in a scowl.
“Is that the best you could come up with?” she demanded.
“What?” Jon said, startled. “Look, I told you, I know how it sounds, but—”
“Yeah, it sounds like you thought you had to make up some bullshit to impress me,” Georgie interrupted. “Or to convince me you’re allowed to hate spiders. I don’t know how you found out why I hate tuna fish—”
“You’re vegetarian?”
“—but I don’t appreciate you making fun of it! And I certainly don’t appreciate you making up…stupid, implausible stories.”
“I’m not making it up,” Jon protested, his stomach sinking. He’d been so sure she would understand, or at least hear him out. “It happened. Ask Melanie if you don’t believe me.”
“Melanie.” Georgie’s voice dripped with venom. “If someone is playing stupid pranks on you trying to scare you, you can just say that. You don’t have to blow it up into a…monster and a haunted book or whatever. Can’t you just be honest with me?”
“I am being honest with you,” Jon said sharply. “And I don’t appreciate you speaking about Melanie like that.”
“I’ll bet you don’t.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“That I am tired of coming in second place!” Georgie didn’t exactly shout, but her voice was definitely elevated and emphatic. “Bad enough that you clearly think I’m some kind of idiot who’s going to swallow anything you feed me, worse that you’re mocking me in the bargain, but how do you think it feels knowing that I’m your—consolation prize?”
“What are you talking about?” Jon demanded, equal parts bewildered and angry. “You are absolutely not a consolation prize, and I don’t understand how you’re getting that from me telling you not to insult my sister!”
“She’s not your sister, Jon! Just because you grew up together—”
“Just because we’ve known each other since the day we were born?” Jon interrupted. “Just because she’s been there through the worst and best parts of my life? Just because she’s an integral part of who I am? We may not have the same mother, but she is my sister in every other way, and I don’t understand why that’s such a problem just because you’re an only child!”
“Oh, grow up!” Georgie said angrily, standing up and snatching the card from his hand. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s really going on. You’d choose her over me in a heartbeat.”
“Of course I would,” Jon shot back. “She’s put in the work. You don’t get to just kiss me and go to the front of the line. I’m sorry you can’t accept that you won’t be the only person in my life, but—”
“You know what I mean, and if you ever decide to stop being stupid over it and come to your senses, look me up. Until then, have a good life, Jon.” Georgie stomped across the floor, flung the door open, and slammed it hard enough that his alarm clock toppled over.
For a moment, Jon stood where he was, breathing hard. His hand stung, and when he looked down at it, he saw a thin red line drawn across the upper part of his palm where the card had sliced into the skin. All the anger and fight went out of him, leaving him exhausted and bewildered.
He dropped back onto his bed, letting his head bang lightly against the wall, and sat for a moment, then reached for his mobile phone and dialed a number more familiar to him than his own heartbeat. It was the middle of the afternoon, so he wasn’t expecting an answer, but he knew he could leave a message and get his thoughts out, at the very least. The other end rang once, twice, three times…
“The blue one.”
Jon, who had been waiting patiently for the voicemail message, blinked. “Wait, what?”
There was a deep, crackling sigh. “It’s Valentine’s Day, and it’s your first anniversary. I know you well enough to know you’re pulling out all the stops tonight and taking Georgie out somewhere nice, even if you do have class tomorrow. You’re obviously calling me for advice on what to wear to make it extra special, so wear the blue shirt with the white flowers. No tie. That’s for when you propose. Unless you made reservations at somewhere insanely fancy. You did make reservations, right? It’s Valentine’s Day, everywhere is going to be crowded.”
“I—oh.” Actually, Georgie had been the one planning their night—that was, in theory, what she’d been coming over to tell him, was where they were going. Jon ran a hand over his face. “I…think we just broke up, actually.”
“What? Hold on.” Jon vaguely heard the sounds of voices, then a door shut before Melanie’s voice came back through stronger. “Okay, I’m back in my room. Run that by me again. You and Georgie broke up? On Valentine’s Day?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea,” Jon said. Unconsciously, he drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his free arm around them. “But she just stormed out after telling me to have a nice life, so. Seems fairly terminal to me.”
“Damn.” From the scraping noise, it sounded like Melanie had just seated herself in her desk chair. “But you said you think. Maybe she’s just mad and she’ll come around when she cools off? What were you fighting about, anyway?”
Jon rewound the conversation in his head, picking at the threads and trying to figure out which one had been the actual fight and which ones had just been sparks to tinder. “I’m not…entirely sure. A lot of things. Spiders. You.”
Melanie snorted. “Yeah, I got that she didn’t particularly like me when I came for the May Ball last year, but I reckoned that was just because she thought I had designs on you or whatever and that she’d back off once she realized we were twins.”
“Well, that was part of it. She doesn’t seem to actually…believe that.” Jon sighed. “She outright said you weren’t my sister—which I’ve worked very hard not to get into fights about all the time anymore, but I made an exception. I think she just assumes we’re close friends who think of each other as siblings, or maybe that because I’m theoretically adopted means we’re willing to ignore how we were raised.”
“Did you tell her about the Arrangement? Or try to, I guess. I reckon if you’d actually managed to explain that we’re actually biologically half siblings in addition to being legally siblings, she wouldn’t have left.” Melanie paused. “Or maybe she would have, because our family is too…different for her.”
“I don’t know, and no, I didn’t—I was too busy being angry that she somehow believed that the fact that we were in a romantic relationship meant I should automatically put her in front of everyone else in my life. I don’t know that I would have told her even if I had been able to calm down. It’s none of her business, really,” Jon mused. “But…well, she wasn’t exactly in the mood to believe anything I said anyway.” He paused, then added carefully, “I tried to tell her about…I did tell her about Mister Spider. I-I thought, well, if we were going to—that would be her business, right? Or at least something she needed to know.”
Melanie was silent for about ten seconds. Finally, she said, “You really know how to make an anniversary special, don’t you? Why bring that up today?”
Jon winced. “The card she bought me had a spider on it. In a red bowler hat.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. It—I tried to play it off, but she could see that I wasn’t fond of it and…I felt like I owed her an explanation.”
“You couldn’t have just said you were afraid of spiders?”
“She knew that already. I just thought I’d explain why.”
This time the silence stretched out for almost thirty seconds. Jon was just about to check to make sure his mobile phone hadn’t dropped the call when Melanie spoke in a low, dangerous voice. “She knew about the arachnophobia and she still went out of her way to buy you a card with one on it?”
“I think she thought she was helping,” Jon said, aware of how lame that sounded. “You know…exposure therapy.”
“You don’t spring exposure therapy on someone without their consent!”
“I know, I know, just—I really don’t think it was malicious on her part.”
“Wait, no, let me get this straight,” Melanie demanded. “You told her you were afraid of spiders. She thought so little of that that she deliberately triggered your fear. And when you tried to tell her why you hate them so much, she—accused me of wanting to date you and broke off your relationship?”
Jon replayed the conversation again and, for the second time that afternoon, felt like an idiot. “Ah—no, I think she accused me of secretly harboring feelings for you and only dating her because I couldn’t get you to say yes. But before that she accused me of making up stories and—making fun of her. Something about tuna fish? I—I didn’t exactly understand that part. But she seemed to think I was making up some excuse to…I don’t know, avoid admitting you’d played a prank on me?”
“Well, if she thinks you’re pulling a Dollanganger on me, that would make sense.” Melanie huffed. “Fuck her, Jon.”
“Even if we were still together, I wouldn’t,” Jon said dryly. “Which is probably another problem we were running up against. I know she’s been wanting…more out of the relationship, and I’ve been avoiding the topic so I didn’t have to have that conversation.”
“Are you telling me that you were willing to serve up one of the most traumatic experiences of your life as some kind of penance for—what, not hiding that you didn’t like a stupid valentine better—but you weren’t willing to set a hard boundary?” Melanie demanded.
Jon paused. “Well, when you put it like that, it makes me sound like an asshole.”
“Sorry. I’ll rephrase. Are you telling me you thought it would be easier to tell her about an inexplicable, unprovable experience we had when we were eight that left you hating spiders than it would be to tell her you didn’t want to have sex—not with her specifically, just not with anyone? Because that doesn’t sound like a healthy relationship to me.”
“Because you have so much experience with relationships.”
“Just because I haven’t had a romantic relationship that lasted more than six months—”
“You had one that lasted six months?”
“Have, present tense, and shut up, we’re not talking about me right now. Point is that I wouldn’t put up with that bullshit from anyone I was having a relationship with—romantic, sexual, platonic, whatever it was. You shouldn’t have to feel like you can only say you don’t like something if you have a deeply traumatic back story for it.” Melanie snorted. “And the fact that she didn’t respect the line you did try to set tells me she’d have pushed you way past what you were comfortable with anyway.”
Jon bit his lip. “That might have been different. I mean, it’s more…”
“Invasive? High stakes? Likely to result in criminal charges?” Melanie said pointedly. “A boundary’s a boundary and a phobia’s a phobia. If she’s not going to take you seriously because you feel some way that she doesn’t, it’s not going to matter whether it’s about spiders or sex.” She paused, then added, “And for the record, I did like her, and I’m probably almost as pissed off that she’s like this because I thought you two made a good couple as I am because she hurt you.”
“Thanks,” Jon said, choking down a wild urge to laugh. “I…didn’t realize she hurt me, actually, but you’re right. About all of it. We wouldn’t have lasted long term, I suppose. Best we found that out now rather than when I tried to make an expensive mistake.”
“Murder’s cheaper than divorce,” Melanie said flippantly. “What time are your lectures tomorrow?”
“Uh?” Jon was slightly thrown by the shift in conversation. “I’ve got one at nine, one at noon, and one at four. Why?”
“Mm.” There was a rustling sound. “My last lecture ends at three. I can be there by seven. Is that enough time for you to meet me, or am I walking to Cambridge myself? And is that enough time to get me a guest room or am I sneaking into your room and sleeping in your chair?”
“Melanie, you don’t have to—”
“Jon,” Melanie interrupted, practical and matter of fact, “you just had your heart broken. I’m letting you have tonight because I know you’ll kick my arse if I play truant from my lectures tomorrow, but I’m not letting you spend the weekend alone. I promise not to hunt Georgie down and beat her to death for what she did to you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need me.” She paused, then added, “But if you do need me tonight, just give me five minutes to let Zig know I had a family emergency and I’ll be on the next train out.”
Jon swallowed at the lump in his throat. “I don’t want you to lose your relationship just because of me.”
“If they can’t understand you’re always going to come first, it’s not a relationship worth having,” Melanie said simply. “Should I take that to mean ‘yes, come out here, I need a shoulder to cry on’?”
Finally, the tears welled up in Jon’s eyes as the last hour came crashing down on him. “Yes. Please. I could use the support. I—I’m not sure anyone here would understand.”
“I’m on my way, Jon. Just hang on. I’ll meet you at the station.” There was a creak and a shuffle as Melanie—from the sound of it—got up and slid into her shoes. “I’ll call when I know what time I’m getting there. Love you, Little Flame.”
“Love you too, Little Moth.” Jon ended the call, set his phone down carefully, and hunched over his knees for a moment, letting the hurt wash over him.
He didn’t know if he was ever going to be able to fix this one. But at least his sister was on her way. At least he wouldn’t be alone.