Where Two Collide

Chapter One - Alice

Chapter One

Alice

I watched as Cat lined her eyes with black eyeliner, her penmanship practiced and swift. "Hot date?" I asked, smirking at her from across our shared bedroom. I was in my pyjamas, totally ready to settle down to some Netflix but as always, Cat was a night owl, and that meant these were her waking hours.

Cat popped the lid on her eyeliner and launched it at me, snuggled up under my duvet. "Tsk," she responded, brushing her newly bleached hair out of her face. "We don't all need a boyfriend to survive. I'm more about that party life." She raised her open palms to the roof, giving her hips a little sashay as she stood up from our dresser.

I rolled my eyes. "I don't need a boyfriend. It's just nice to have. Like a shiny bracelet. Besides..." I grabbed my phone off the bedside table and glanced at the screen. "Owen's not replied to my last text, and I was very clear that I'm done with his ass this time. So, I guess I'm single now."

Cat crossed the room to the bedroom window, flipping the latch and throwing it open wide. I felt the coolness of the night air instantly, it was freezing, but that was to be expected for March. Cat leaned out and waved her arm around, frowning. "I think it might rain."

"I just told you I broke up with Owen and that's all you have to say?" I spied her jacket on the carpet between our beds. Freeing an arm from my cocoon I reached for it, then swiftly launched it at my sister. She caught it coolly with one hand and smirked at me.

"This isn't new news. You and Owen break up every week, but you are the it couple so it never lasts longer than a few hours. Got to keep up those appearances, right?" With that, she swung her leg over the windowsill and hopped outside. Luckily, we lived in a bungalow, so it wasn't so much a fall, as it was a step outside.

"Ugh, you suck," I called after her.

"Yeah I know," she replied, closing the window and pulling a face at me through the clear glass. "Don't forget to-"

"-keep our door locked?" I laughed, "Yeah yeah, how could I possibly forget."

With that she was gone, usually till the early hours of the morning, and in the very least half the nights each week. I wasn't entirely sure where she was, as she was always vague and secretive when I questioned her. In fact, her explanation was never the same each time with it usually being along the lines of...

"I'm part of a special unit of the secret service and my job can strike at all hours of the day and night."

"I'm a vigilante and the night is my best line of defence."

"I'm a pole dancer. It's a great work out, didn't you know?"

"I am a bartender and I make cocktails like Tom Cruise does in that old movie."

And then she shows me her secret agent, superhero, pole dancer and flipping bottles moves. We both laugh, until she's distracted me enough that I stop questioning her life. We are twins, and we'd always shared everything, we used to tell each other everything, but at some point, that all stopped.

One of the first things people ask us when they find out we are twins, is if we pretend to be each other. First off, this isn't Parent Trap, and secondly, we may have looked alike once, but as we've grown, our styles, personalities and even looks in a sense have extended to completely different ends of the spectrum.

The real defining point was when she changed her hair. Her blonde verses my brown made us look as different as salt and pepper, and after spending my life having my mirror image staring back at me, it was more than a little strange.

Twins run in our family. Our grandmother was one of two, as was her mother before her, plus various other distant great great cousins and aunts. Our grandmother and her sister both married and lived happy-separate-lives, eventually outliving their husbands. Now they live together, in a little house by the sea. Cat and I had always planned to do the same, live the end of our lives the way we began it. Together. We haven't talked about it in a long time, but I'd like to think nothing has changed, although we both have. Changed a lot that is.

Flipping open my laptop, I bring up Netflix and put on a Rom Com. I've always loved a good romance. Happily ever after is my thing, but the 'will they or won't they' storyline always has me on the edge of my seat. I just know after they walk off into the sunset together that their lives are going to be great. Not perfect, because realistically I know that no relationship is perfect, but just that right kind of forever happy.

A banging at my window woke me with a jolt, having drifted off somewhere around the part where the pizza competition in the movie began. My eyes rolled straight to my sister's empty bed. It must still have been early in the night, or she'd have been sprawled out with her duvet kicked over the edge of her bed. I grabbed my phone and discovered that I had twenty-three missed calls and various streams of texts from Owen. He was angry, which was nothing new, but the rapping on my bedroom window gave me a tight panicked feeling in the pit of my stomach. I threw the duvet off me and tip-toed across to the window, seeing his glaring eyes through the half open curtains.

He tapped incessantly on the window with his knuckles, though it was clear to us both that I already knew he was there.

I opened the window. "What are you doing here Owen?" I asked, both alarmed and somewhat curious.

"What do you mean What are you doing here?" He crossed his arms and continued to glare at me. "I've been trying to get a hold of you for like two hours and you've been completely ignoring me. What did you expect after that last message you sent me, you didn't even let me explain."

"I wasn't ignoring you, I was asleep," I replied, glancing past him at the familiar car parked across the street. "Owen... how did you get here?"

Owen followed my gaze to his mum's car. "I drove here because I had to see you."

"But you don't have a license yet,"

"I know how to drive, I've been taking lessons," he snapped, then softened, taking my hand in his. "See what you do to me. You make me do crazy things just to see you."

I looked down at our joined hands and my heart skipped. "I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone."

"I know, but we still need to talk about this ok?" he said, squeezing my hand. "Hey, you know what, nobody knows I have the car and it's late so nobody will notice till morning. Let's go to that late-night café off the motorway and grab a hot chocolate."

"I'm not sure," I replied hesitantly. I was instantly against the idea but felt unable to immediately deny him.

"I'm here now, I already have the car, come on, it would be such a waste if we didn't," he smiled reassuringly at me. "It'll be my treat; we could get you some fries as well if you want."

My brow furrowed, and I looked over my shoulder at my locked door. My parents were probably asleep, and Cat was out most nights and they had never noticed. It'd probably be fine, right?

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