The Girl With Two Names

Is this it?

"Are you happy there, where you are?" James, Lilly's twin brother's voice cracked through the badly connected Messenger app. 

"No seriously, is this it for you?" 

"What do you mean? I'm good, I'm earning money, I just moved out of my shared apartment and I can work from home at this job, sometimes." Lilly blurts out after a few seconds of rumination. 

"I don't know, I just never pictured you as a software person, I mean you hated computers back in the day, now you are an office person... I can just imagine you going nuts in your cube." James cautiously states. 

"Well, yeap. I do go nuts, what do you expect. I have suuuch a fulfilling j.o.b." Rolling her eyes as she thinks about the mundane, repetitive function of her current position. One that is basically dead end, pays well and hosts beer and pizza Fridays, but really, is pretty dead end.

"I've been here 5 years now! I got an additional week of vacation!" 

"Well, umm wow. That's nice..Anyway, hey, not giving you any pressure, I just wanted to check in on you there. You are by yourself out there, moving to a new state and all. I mean, that was a brave thing to do but was that the right thing to do? For your happiness? All your friends and family are here and...well I mean, it takes a while to really appreciate the You." James gently pursues the challenging topic. He has always been the one his family thought would be the one they would worry about. He was kind of a riffraff in school, skipped class and only did well in subjects he liked. 

Lilly on the other hand was the active,  overachieving twin sister that he always got compared to. She was the quirky type that never really took herself seriously and said the weirdest things, but people used to just gravitate towards her. She had this thing about her, that when you talked to her, you realize that she sees the world through different eyes, and you want to see the world that way too. She had a goofy way about her that made people underestimate her intelligence though. In school, it was easy for her to break down that initial misconception, since the teachers lauded her academic standing eventually, but in the real world she is prone to being underestimated right away, and she is not the type to fight against, or even care about what people think. 

 She got into a prestigious university and into a course that was even harder to get into. Her creativity carried her through her four years of university and made her a popular student among the creatives in the industry she interned for.  James just coasted on a less famous university, in a course he thoroughly enjoyed. 

Everyone had high hopes for Lilly coming out of uni, and she did have a few offers from big marketing firms back in Manila. But pressure from their dad made them move to the U.S. to join their mom. While the move was a great opportunity for James, it was a blow for Lilly, as the career she wanted was in marketing. And in that industry, who you know, the school you're from, and your experience, mattered. 

She struggled to find work that was related to Marketing and Advertising that did not require experience in the U.S., plus they moved to a state where they didn't really know anyone. Whereas James was able to climb up the corporate ladder easily with his aptitude for software and coding. Lilly ended up putting herself further and further away from her original goal. Starting from "for the mean time" jobs that lasted 3 years until her list of job experience became irrelevant to the actual career she wanted, and her skills have become obsolete. Now everything is social media this, SEO this. She used to create TV and radio ad campaigns, now she has no idea where she would even start if she tried pursuing Marketing and Advertising again. 

"I'm ok James. I actually like that I'm in a place no one knows me, its like a blank slate, I can be anything I want. I can actually be not weird!" Lilly trying to inject positive silliness to her voice. She does understand James' concern, she does think of those things, has cried over other those things she can't even verbalize. 

"Hey we are still young! I have time to start the next Amazon.com haha!" 

"Yeah right, you can't even clear your search history on my laptop properly!" James counters quickly and they both collapse into laughter. 

"Don't be shy to ask me for help if you need it. And don't marathon too many Anime either, you look like a raccoon that ate too much ramen." Lilly guiltily makes a face since he was pretty spot on with the not sleeping thing. She had this inkling to revisit her old time faves this week and she just finished marathoning The Vision of Escaflowne the Friday she came home from work. It is Saturday morning now, and she had just sat nursing her coffee after finishing about 13  hours of content. She was marinating in that empty feeling of "what do I do with the rest of my life now" when James' face bubble popped onto her laptop screen. 

"Seriously, promise me you are going to do something fun today. Aside from watching anime or reading manga! Get out, go out! It's our Birthday!!! big 3-O!"James moves his phone camera wild to make it look like a party, jumping around his living room with his dog. 

It was like they swapped personalities as they grew older, Lilly becoming more introverted while James started to come out of his shell, even got himself a gorgeous non-annoying girlfriend. He even looks way more put together than Lilly now, when back in the day, he didn't care about fashion. Now, his long lanky frame is a bit more filled out, years of tennis has given him an athletic build. This height was also a sore point for them, since of the two, he looked like he stole all the inches from his twin sister, standing at almost 6 feet. Tall for a Filipino. 

As most Filipinos tend to be, they were a mix of Chinese,  Spanish and native Filipino. But being that their dad was 50% chinese, 50% filipino, and their mother was basically the daughter of two Spanish descended parents and was called a "mestiza", these were more pronounced on Lilly and James' features.   Lilly and James are fraternal twins, and definitely not identical. It seems that both of them took a scoop out of the same bunch of gene pools but decided to take a part the the other didn't have.

He was significantly taller,  paler skinned, and had more of the Chinese blood from their dad's side of the family showing in his facial features. His "chinito" eyes were slanted a bit more, and were a dark brown shade typical of Filipinos. He had lightly wavy  brown hair though, that seemed to come from their mother's side, the Spanish blood from Cebu. 

So, James looked like a Chinese person with some European blood. While Lilly looked like a Spanish girl with some Asian heritage. 

That Spanish blood was very apparent in her eye color. A very light brown which sometimes looked hazel in certain lights. Deep set, with thick, dark eyelashes. Those eyes were an exact copy of her grandfather's, her mom's dad. Her hair though was exactly her dad's, jet black, thick, and stick-straight. Her skin was on the mestiza side but she can get a nice tan if she wanted to, thankfully she didn't completely get her granpa's pale freckly skin since she liked to spend a lot of time at the beach, growing up. 

The only thing they  really shared was the tall nose and the face shape but otherwise people even question if they were siblings at all. Well, until they started talking. They used to complete each other's sentences and they had the same sense of humor, even the same laugh. 

Lilly, realizes how much she misses James and her mom, but she pushes the notion away, trying not to be depressed on this day, of all days. 

"Ok ok, I will! Happy Birthday to you too bro! Love you!" Lilly yells at the screen over James' abhorrent rap remix version of "Happy Birthday to us"  

" Love you tooo! K gotta go! Sarah's calling, bye stinky!"

The silence in Lilly's apartment was thick after James crazy antics. She used to be the loud one, has she really changed that much? Is the person she thinks she is, the one from years ago, is that still her? 

" Well, shit. Now I guess I have to shower." Lilly mumbles as she reluctantly gets up, still cozy in her big fluffy panda jammies and slips on her oversized, overly soft  Totoro slippers.