JANUARY
Everything was quiet except for Callie's mind which bantered a mile a minute as she lay in bed. It was early, barely six a.m., and she knew her husband Jeff wouldn't even move for at least another three hours but what she wanted to do was ask him the questions that were firing in her brain: What can we do, how can we help, there must be a way. It took everything in her not to shake him awake but she knew what he'd say -- "Callie, this isn't your problem" -- and even though he'd say it nicely and mean it with no ill intention, she was frustrated with him even in this imaginative state.
"Poor men," she mumbled, studying her husband's sleeping profile. "They get in trouble even without doing a thing."
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled her Boston University hooded sweatshirt off the floor and over her head. Standing up, she shuffled out of the bedroom and into her home office across the hall where she sat down cross-legged on a swivel chair and fired up her desktop computer. The wallpaper backdrop on the screen was a photo of her with her cousin Rachel at a family wedding the previous fall. Callie loved the image of the two of them, laughing and so full of warmth it packed a tactile punch every time she saw it. Everyone in the family called them "the twins," not only because they were both pretty girl-next-door brunettes with slender frames and crooked noses but because they had the same literal birthday: May 23, 1979. Callie was born at 12:31 a.m. and Rachel came along shortly after at 2:14 a.m. -- or New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day, they liked to joke. Their mothers were sisters who couldn't be more opposite in temperament or appearance, so the fact that their offspring could come across more like sisters than they did was the butt of many a family joke. Here are the twins with their first bikes. Here are the twins on their first day of school. Here are the twins with their Varsity soccer letters. Here are the twins at prom. Every milestone a memory they shared together, even moving from suburban Ohio to Boston for college, though attending different schools, and so on and so forth until Callie met Jeff and the big divide was forged.
"Thought I heard you up," a groggy voice said from the doorway.
Callie smiled at her twin slouching in the door frame. "Did I wake you?"
Rachel shook her head. "I'm not sure I ever fell asleep."
Down the hall in the main vein of their Somerville apartment was the remains of a drunken New Year's Eve party. Callie had slipped off to bed around two a.m. while Jeff and Rachel had stayed up hosting their lingering guests.
"Anyone still over?" Callie asked, already knowing the answer.
"Just Andrew," Rachel said nonchalantly.
Callie looked back at her computer screen and sighed. "Right," she said.
Rachel barely even reacted to Callie's obvious wish to talk about...to avoid talking about...to talk about...to lecture her about Andrew, instead nodded towards the computer. "Are you getting ready to do some writing?" she asked.
Callie blinked and turned her gaze back at the glowing screen. "Research," she said lightly. "But it can wait."
Rachel walked in the room and flopped on the blue striped couch that was once in their first post-college apartment. They'd bought it together, this nearly-new-at-the-time piece of furniture, as a joint birthday gift and had vowed to keep it with them until it wasn't still recognizable as a couch. They'd felt so grown up and proud that it wasn't a futon or free-from-Craig's List but a piece of real furniture, a sign that they were making it on their own in the big city. And even though that was nearly a decade ago, they still insisted on keeping this couch in the family, even if it meant shoving it in Callie's office where no one but Rachel would ever see it. Now, Rachel propped her head up with one hand while she played with the frayed edges of fabric on the cushion with the other.
"Urgent six a.m. on New Year's Day research?" she asked nonchalantly.
Callie spun her chair sideways and sighed again. "Well, urgent might be a strong word."
Rachel chuckled. "Everything with you is urgent," she teased.
Callie spun all the way around to face her twin and folded her arms across her chest. She thought of the questions running through her head while she laid in bed with Jeff and it brought an acute ache to her chest when she thought of them with Rachel in her sights. "I just..." she began.
Rachel tensed for a brief moment, seemingly reading the words her cousin had not yet spoken, and then relaxed before the next exhale. "You just threw one helluva New Year's Eve party," she said, changing the subject.
"We did," Callie said. "You, me, and Jeff."
"We're quite a team," Rachel agreed.
"Thanks for seeing it through -- I just had to go to bed," Callie said, yawning to punctuate the sentence.
"You didn't miss anything," Rachel said, her eyes rolling up in her head as she searched her memory for an anecdote. "Just a lot of drunk people disappearing one at a time."
"Except for Andrew," Callie said cautiously.
"Except for Andrew," Rachel agreed.
Callie gripped onto the edge of her chair to keep from spewing all of the thoughts in her head at this moment -- about her cousin, about Andrew, about what him still being in their house meant to her, about how the research she wanted to conduct was inspired by this exact scenario and how she'd made the first New Year's Resolution of her entire adult life just because of it -- but a simple glance at Rachel was evidence enough that this was not the moment.
Plus, she needed to get Jeff on board first.
"Did you make any resolutions this year?" Callie asked, releasing the grip on the chair.
"Actually, yes," Rachel said.
"Well, out with it," Callie said.
Rachel sat up. "I want to do a headstand without any assistance," she said with a great deal of authority.
Callie laughed and sank back in her chair. "You've got a free membership at the studio -- I hope this means you'll be using it," she chuckled.
Rachel nodded once. "This year, I really will," she said.
"I'm teaching at 11 a.m.," Callie said with a wink. "Get your yoga pants on."
Rachel's grin was sleepy. "I'd better go to bed and rest up first," she said, standing up and then leaning over to give her cousin a hug.
Callie squeezed back tightly and then let her go. "OK, sounds like a plan," she said, watching Rachel drift out of the room. She waited until she heard her cousin shut the door on her bedroom before nimbly getting to her feet and sprinting down the hall where she found Andrew sleeping, mostly clothed and face down with muffled snores, on their sectional. The worry line on her forehead eased up for a moment, relieved that at least he wasn't tucked in bed behind closed doors. Spinning on her heels, she turned back towards her office and sat back down in front of the computer.
"Screw Jeff," she muttered, certain he wouldn't be awake for hours and by then she might already be at Equal Standing teaching the first of her three yoga classes for the day. Slowly, she typed o-k-c-u-p-i-d-.-c-o-m into the browser and her eyes grew big as the site appeared. "Hell yes I want to create a new account," she continued to mutter, her mind already splintering between what screen name to choose and what profile picture would represent Rachel the best.
Read more in Parts One and Two of A Somerville Love Story...
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