The Third Twin (7 page)

Her eyes narrow. “That’s mean.”

I’m always surprised to find where Ava draws the line. “Fine,” I say. “Looks like he should be on a gas station calendar? With his shirt off?”

She smiles a little wistfully. “Exactly. Where?”

“I was studying on the back patio of Café Roma, and he showed up. Thought I was Alicia.”

Maya is watching the two of us, eyes darting back and forth like at a tennis match.

“He’s been gone for so long, I almost forgot how cute he is.” She grins and twirls a piece of hair around her finger, remembering. “And you know how I am about guitar players. Especially guitar players after a show, when the tips of their hair are a little bit damp from all the sweating, and they’ve been baring their soul onstage, with every girl in the place wanting a piece of them.”

“So why don’t you just go out with him?”

“I told you, I’m exploring other opportunities right now.” She piles her hair up on her head and makes a face in the mirror. “Opportunities named Dylan Harrington. Plus, Eli drives a pickup that must be at least fifteen years old.”

I try not to picture Eli in my head. How cute his canine teeth were when he smiled. How easy he was to talk to. I can’t do this again. I shouldn’t. “Let me introduce you to a new word. It’s called ‘no.’ As in no more Alicia. Not after what happened.”

Ava turns back to the closet. “Eli’s nothing like that, I can tell.”

“You sure couldn’t tell last time,” I say.

“Maybe it’s good to try it again,” Maya adds. “You know, get back on the horse and all that.”

I turn to her. “The last guy Alicia dated ended up dead. If the date had been twenty-four hours later, I might have been with him.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Ava says.

“I don’t want you going out with Eli,” I say. “Not as Alicia.”

“Don’t worry so much. It’s fine.” She tosses her phone to me, and it lands in my lap, the text from Eli still on the screen. “Besides, I’m not going out with him. You are.”

“No. I’m not.” I toss the phone back to her.

She taps the screen a few times, then looks up at me. “I already told him that Alicia would love to see him again.”

“Then you’ll just have to tell him the truth.”

“Look, you’ve had a rough week. You could use a nice night out. Just do it one last time, and if you still want to quit, then fine, I’m with you. Think of it as your big farewell,” Ava says, sensing my resolve crumbling. “Just stay in public places. Nothing’s going to happen, I promise. What have you got to lose?”

That question hits me in the gut, just like she knew it would. Because she’s right. There’s not much left to lose.

I’m calm as I sit watching the restaurant from the front seat of my car. Alicia doesn’t worry about this stuff. She knows that all guys want her and all girls want to be her, and acts accordingly. I take out a small mirror from the clutch that Ava loaned me and check to see that the heavy eyeliner and lip gloss she helped me apply are still in place. As I move, the big, diamond-encrusted pendant around my neck catches the fading light. I actually hate this pendant—thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds set into a big gold
A
is a stupid gift for teenage girls, and as proof, I lost mine a few months ago, and Dad had to get it replaced—but it’s Alicia’s trademark, so I’m wearing it.

My phone vibrates on the seat next to me, and I jump a little, but it’s only Ava and Maya texting to see how it’s going. I answer that it isn’t yet and shut off the ringer completely. I’m thinking that I don’t even remember what Eli looks like,
when I see him walking toward the restaurant wearing a leather jacket and jeans. I take in his slightly floppy hair and easy smile and have to admit I was wrong—I’d recognize him anywhere.

I get out of the car and carefully smooth down the skirt that is way too short for Lexi but for Alicia is just perfect. I’m not a skirt person, but Alicia is. Plus it goes with the ridiculous high heels that Ava picked out. One thing’s for sure—nobody would ever mistake me for Lexi at the moment. I can’t help but notice that if the zombie apocalypse should happen sometime during this evening, Alicia would be one of the first people caught and converted into a walker, because no way can I run in all this stuff.

I walk slowly and carefully toward Eli, aware that his eyes are on my body as I approach. I’m not in any hurry because guys always wait for Alicia.

“Hey,” I say as I get closer, inwardly congratulating myself on the casual spin I manage to put on that one word. Like I just happen to be walking by this particular restaurant and am pleasantly surprised to find him here too. As he approaches, I wonder if he’s going to give me a kiss hello. Ava said they went out twice, but I have no idea how far things got. What’s the protocol for a third date?

“You look great,” he says, leaning in smoothly to give me a kiss on the cheek. Friendly with just a hint of something more. Interesting approach. “I’m glad you came.” His leather jacket creaks slightly as he moves, and there’s a musky, spicy smell that lingers for the smallest second as he pulls away from me.

I give him just a hint of a smile and look up at him through my lashes like I know Alicia would. She’s shameless when it comes to stuff like that. “I’m glad you asked.” I inwardly gag just a little, but his returning smile tells me I got it right. Being Alicia is basically doing and saying the opposite of everything I normally would. Easy.

Eli tilts his head and gives a little laugh—not mean exactly, but now I’m confused.

“What?” I run my hand over my hair, wondering if something’s out of place.

His smile is unreadable. “Nothing.” Eli glances up at the restaurant’s sign. “So I know I told you to meet me here, but I was thinking we might be able to do something a little more fun.”

“Like what?

“It’s a surprise. Feel like going for a ride?”

The thought freezes me, and my mind flashes back to the last time I was alone in a car with a guy. I look back at Eli’s easy smile. “Okay. But I’ll drive.”

Eli looks like he’s going to say something, but changes his mind. “Great. It’s not too far.”

He walks to the passenger side of my car and squints at the hood. “I thought your car was silver?”

Crap. I didn’t even think that he’d seen Ava’s car. Dad gave us each the same car when we turned sixteen, but mine is white. I try my best to look casual. “Nope. It’s always been white.”

“Oh,” he says, nodding. “Must have been the streetlamps outside the club that made it look silver.”

“Yeah. Must have been.” I hope that sounds more convincing than I feel.

He gives me some directions as he slides into the passenger seat. It’s uncomfortably silent for the first few minutes. “So I think I totally embarrassed myself in front of your sister last week.”

I think back to his expression when the seagull stole his fry, and suppress a smile. “Oh yeah? How?”

“Well, for one thing, I thought she was you.”

I shrug, keeping my eyes on the road. “That’s not embarrassing. People think I’m Lexi or Ava all the time.”

I can feel him staring at me. “You really do look a lot alike,” he says. “I’ve had friends who were identical, and I could always tell them apart, but I see why you get mistaken for each other.”

“Hand me my phone,” I say, when we get to a red light. I scroll through the photos until I come to the right one and hand the phone to him. “There’s a picture of all three of us we took last year.” It’s really a picture of the two of us at our cousin’s wedding, with an extra Ava added in with Photoshop. I glance over to see if Maya did a good enough job to fool him.

“Wow,” he says, studying the picture. “This is you on the left, isn’t it?”

We’ve got on matching hideous purple satin dresses. I wonder if he just got lucky.

“Right! How can you tell?”

“I can tell,” he says mysteriously, and hands it back to me.

I laugh and twirl a strand of hair around my finger, something
I’ve seen Ava do a million times when she’s talking to a guy. It feels so fake, but his eyes follow my movements. “At least we don’t dress alike. Lexi doesn’t exactly make an effort,” I say. “We’re always on her to trade in that nasty sweatshirt for something nicer, but she really doesn’t care.” The light changes and I keep driving toward the freeway.

“You think so?” Eli asks with a frown. “I liked talking to her, but she’s really …” He trails off like he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence without being rude.

“Nerdy?” I volunteer. “Plain? Boring?”

“I was going to say ‘serious.’ Or ‘intense.’ You’re pretty hard on her.”

I sit back. “Lexi brings it on herself.”

“She’s definitely focused on going to Stanford,” he says.

I flinch, remembering my favorite Stanford sweatshirt that is now at the bottom of our trash can. I couldn’t even bear to put it into the donation bag. “She didn’t get in,” I say, biting my lip to keep my emotions steady, glad I can look at the road, because I don’t want to look at him. It’s the first time I’ve actually said that out loud.

“Really?” He looks surprised. “Well, maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.”

For some reason I don’t want to kill him for saying that. Coming from Eli, it sounds almost reasonable. Not meant to be—like a good parking spot at the beach or the last sesame bagel at Roma on a busy Saturday morning. Or a future.

“Maybe you’re right.” I’m feeling like this conversation is circling uncomfortably close to my real life. “So, how’s the
band going?” Ava told me what his band is called, but I’m totally blanking on their name at the moment.

“Good. We’re putting out a demo sometime next month. Adam’s got a studio going in his garage, so we’ve been recording there as much as we can.”

“Is that what you want to do? Play music?” I can hear the challenge in my voice and realize I sound just like Dad. Next I’m going to be telling him that he needs to have a backup plan and an English degree so that he can at least teach when his music career goes down the toilet.

He raises his eyebrows and looks amused. “Is that a problem?”

“No. It’s just that only a tiny percentage of musicians ever make it.” I shrug, wondering why I even started in on this. Not like Alicia would care if he ended up some broke musician living out of his dented Econovan.

“Well, someone has to be successful,” Eli says with a confident grin. “Why not me? Why bother doing anything you’re not passionate about?”

I have no idea if he’s any good or not, but at this moment, I’m not sure it matters. I try to push all of the Lexi responses out of my head and figure out how Alicia would think and feel. Lexi knows that he’ll probably end up playing in dive bars for seven drunk people who won’t even notice he’s there, long after he should have been discovered, but Alicia … Alicia might just believe in him. She’d be able to picture Eli at the front of a stage that overlooks thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people, all screaming in unison for the first notes from his guitar.

“Listen,” he says. “I’m sorry about Rebecca that night at the club.”

I’m caught totally off guard—Ava didn’t say anything about a Rebecca. “It’s fine,” I say noncommittally.

“She can be a real bitch sometimes, but that’s no excuse,” he continues. “She’s had a hard time since we broke up, and sometimes it comes out in unexpected ways. Rebecca’s crazy, but I kind of feel bad for her. It’s like the band became her family.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, hoping that’s the right response. You think Ava would mention a fight with a crazed ex-girlfriend.

“Thanks,” Eli says, looking relieved. “I was hoping you’d understand.”

We get off the freeway somewhere near the zoo, in a neighborhood I’ve never been to before. “Where are we going?”

“Just up here,” he says, pointing out the front window. “Take a left at the light.”

“The drive-in?” I didn’t even know there were still any drive-ins left.

“Sort of,” he says, still grinning maniacally. “Just be patient; it’s worth it.”

“I’m not really the patient type,” I say as we turn into the giant parking lot.

“Really?” Eli says in mock surprise. There are a ton of other cars parked around the edges, and a bunch of brightly painted trucks are arranged in a sloppy semicircle toward the front, where the screen rises several stories into the air.

“Taco trucks?” I turn and look at him.

“Not exactly,” he says, opening the door. “Although some of the best are the original taco trucks.”

We get out of the car, and my stomach starts rumbling right away at the amazing smells coming from the far side of the lot. People are scattered all over the asphalt, some just sitting together right on the ground. Some are perched precariously on thin concrete parking bumpers, and one group has set up a table and folding chairs in one of the parking spots, complete with a tablecloth and tiny vase filled with roses.

“It’s Food Truck Friday,” Eli explains as we walk toward the trucks. Each one has a fairly long line in front of it, and I squint, trying to read the menu boards posted on the sides.

He rubs his hands like an excited little kid. “Where should we start? Sliders? Soup? Vietnamese?”

“You do this a lot?” I say, enjoying his enthusiasm. The choices are kind of overwhelming.