I head there at lunch because I’m starving, but also because I know she’ll be there.
I walk in the back and scan the rows of bodies facing a large projection screen. More than half the guys are wearing baseball hats, so she blends in surprisingly well. I’m about to give up when movement near the back catches my attention and I spot her profile as she leans in and whispers something to the guy beside her. He chuckles quietly and shakes his head.
She presses her hands together pleadingly, but he crosses his arms over his chest then nudges his head toward the video like he wants her to be paying attention.
Interesting.
I wonder if she’s taken his wallet yet.
“This food isn’t half bad,” Hudson says, coming up to stand at my left with a full plate. We hired a catering company to provide meals for the crew during the duration of the project. It’s not gourmet dining by any stretch of the imagination, but there shouldn’t be any complaints. For lunch, they’ve prepared baked potatoes with chopped beef. Hudson has so much barbecue sauce poured over his it’s about to spill over the sides.
“Bring mine out to the site, will you?” I ask, already turning for the door. “And go easy on the sauce.”
Hudson’s job doesn’t usually involve preparing my lunch, but today it does.
I wanted to check up on Taylor and I have. I’ve confirmed she’s where she’s supposed to be, even if she’s not doing what she’s supposed to be doing: paying attention to the training videos. Out of everyone on the crew, she’s easily the least experienced when it comes to construction. She should be up in the front row taking notes, acting like a star pupil. I guess it doesn’t really matter though. She won’t be anywhere near heavy machinery starting tomorrow.
That evening, I make it back to our cabin before Taylor, though I’m not surprised. In fact, if she comes back here at all, I’ll be shocked.
I take a quick shower and change into a pair of lounge pants and a t-shirt. The sun hasn’t set yet, and I owe my sister a call, so I take my phone out onto the front porch of the cabin and sit on the top stair before I dial.
“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” she says, unable to pull off sounding truly menacing.
I smile. “Hey. Did you get that email I forwarded yesterday?”
“Yes. It was hilarious. I sent you back an interesting article I stumbled across during our morning meeting. It’s about pandas. Seems random, but just read it. Trust me.”
I shake my head as she launches into a full summary of the article, therefore making it unnecessary for me to read it myself.
Isla is my twin sister and we’re close, mostly due to her persistence and relentless pursuit of a relationship with me. Growing up, I wanted my distance from her. I wanted my friends to be my friends and my life to be my life. Our parents didn’t think that was necessary. Whatever afterschool activity I did, Isla did too. Track, swimming, basketball—even though she doesn’t have an athletic bone in her body, not to mention she’s only 5’3”. The team photo of the JV basketball team includes a dozen girls close to six feet, and then there’s Isla standing off to the side like someone’s kid sister. I have it framed in my office back home.
By our senior year of high school, I finally realized she’s actually pretty funny and I like being around her. If she weren’t my twin sister, I’d still want to be her friend. We ended up at the same college, and even now, we hang out in the same circle of friends. Her apartment is ten minutes from my house in downtown Austin, which means she routinely shows up unannounced, but I never really mind because she usually brings beer or some kind of dessert. She bakes a lot, which is by far my favorite hobby of hers.
“This sucks that you’re in the middle of freaking nowhere,” she says, shifting gears now that she’s exhausted the panda topic. “Jace and Alice want to go get drinks tomorrow, but I don’t feel like going because you know how they get.”
“I bet they hold hands the whole time.”
She groans. “Handholding is one thing! At dinner the other night, she did this thing where she rubbed his earlobe between her fingers for like for five minutes. It was the weirdest shit