The Black Bear Saloon is teeming with bodies—mostly students from Whitney Briggs University, where the spring semester has just taken off on its icy tracks. January in the mountains of Hollow Brook should be banished of all living creatures, with the exception of billy goats and mountain climbers equipped with ice picks. North Carolina in general has been reduced to frozen tundra.
“And to whom do I owe this Pop Tart psychiatry to?” I quip to my lookalike sister without bothering to actually get my proverbial feathers ruffled. I’ve known since we were in utero she likes to get her point across, be it with an elbow, the sharp corner of her knee, or simply her barbed tongue. “The great Caila Jace? Or perhaps the peach schnapps you’re nursing?” Caila Jace. I almost want to smirk at the fact she’s hijacked her Christian name to use as a stage name at the strip club where she rakes in her six-figure income. Unlike me, she didn’t opt for the scholastic route. Instead, she bypassed go and collected a hell of a lot more than two hundred dollars at that penis farm where she makes a killing night after night. Although, to be fair, Caila doesn’t consider herself a stripper, rather an adult “entertainer”—which, in my opinion, sounds far more salacious and tawdry by a teasing-taking-off-your-clothes-to-porn-music mile.
She flexes her cheek in lieu of a smile. That’s my sister’s signature move once she’s irritated. Caila Jace Clayton gives exactly zero fucks about anything, with the tiny, precious exception of her three-year-old daughter, Jacey. I love that little peanut princess like she were my own, and according to that carbon copy face of her momma’s—mine by proxy—she very well could be.
“What do you care?” She pulls the cherry from my daiquiri and bites down over it with her paper white teeth, twisting the stem into submission as if her life depended on it. Ten guys in the vicinity just sat up and took notice. Not surprising—cherry stem withstanding. Not only is Caila drop-dead gorgeous, but she works hard to polish herself to perfection daily with the aid of the cosmetics industry. Caila undergoes a grueling beauty routine that in some civilized nations might actually qualify as torture techniques. The low-cut top and suicide heels she’s donned help somewhat in drawing attention her way. There’s not a person who can’t help but look at Caila when she’s in the room. I’ve always admired that about her. “You never listen to a damn thing I say.”
“Honey, after you replaced salt for sugar in that snickerdoodle recipe and fed it to me for kicks—it’s been hard to believe you’re human, save for that face. The things that you say? I take them with a grain of salt.” I gift her a hard wink right along with my well-seasoned rebuttal. True as God, that girl laughed her little pink tits off after trying to do me in with sodium chloride. God forbid our grandma Mimi actually ate the condiment-laced confection—she would have stroked herself into eternity.
My sister waves her favorite finger at me with a laugh.
Caila is tough as nails, has more self-confidence than an entire high school of girls will ever need in one lifetime—not to mention, she’s damn beautiful, and she knows it. That’s where her deepest irony lies, her beauty. It’s hard to believe someone so well put together, big blue doe eyes, porcelain skin, long blonde bone-straight hair—dyed trailer park platinum and heavily ironed into submission—can be so ever-loving crude. Caila can make a sailor blush with that brash mouth of hers, but she’s stunning enough to make him beg for more.
I guess it’s odd venerating my twin’s beauty, but after nearly having half of my face chewed off, I stopped seeing us as doubles long ago. From that point on, I’ve seen her as perfection, as what could have been, and me as the twisted Brothers Grimm nightmare gone awry. My spirit broke and shattered that day right along with my features, while Caila soared to new, untouchable heights since the time of my father. I bore the curse of our family. She bore the beauty. I’ve often wondered where my life would be today if I hadn’t met up with a pack of hungry carnivores who saw me as a walking T-bone. I probably would have laughed at Whitney Briggs University and would be honing my twerking moves right alongside my sister.
A frat boy over at the table to our right winks at me before startling to attention. I can feel the searing heat of his unwelcomed lust-riddled gaze as it whistles through me like a nuclear wind. He belches and licks his lips as if those very acts were enough to land me on his inebriated lap. And, trust me, if I were an equally inebriated sorority girl, it just might be. If it’s one thing I noticed, there’s not a whole lot of coital discretion going on at Whitney Briggs—not that I’m complaining. In fact, I plan on getting in on some of this non-discretionary coital affection sooner than later myself, just not with the belching douchebag who’s currently running his tongue along the rim of his glass and nodding me over with a greasy smile.
Caila follows my gaze and grunts, “Tell me this isn’t happening.”