Part 26 (1/2)
Five hours later, Shay was still getting over the shock of seeing her twin standing in her doorway. Julianne had departed shortly after Teryn arrived, saying she needed to get back to Owen. The two sisters finished the small amount of packing relatively quickly. Shay's belongings fit into five small boxes. Everything else she was leaving to Goodwill.
”Don't you have to cheer this weekend?” Shay asked.
”It's an away game.” Teryn peeled the pepperoni off her slice of pizza.
”But what about work?”
Teryn dabbled in modeling and she made some appearance money as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, but not enough to support her. To make ends meet, she worked as a receptionist for a celebrity dentist in Dallas while she was putting herself through hygienist school.
”Lordy, Shay, what's with the twenty questions? I do get vacation days, you know.” She poured herself a Diet c.o.ke.
”It's just that I thought you'd rather spend your vacation doing something other than a three-day road trip with me.”
”I've never been on a road trip with you. It might be fun.”
Shay doubted three days in her cramped Corolla with her sister would be fun. The two girls had seen each other rarely these past seven years. After graduating high school early at seventeen, Shay had taken her swim scholars.h.i.+p and finished undergraduate school and earning her master's degree in four years. During that time, Teryn had been homecoming queen, prom queen, and fifth runner-up for Miss Texas. While Shay was slaving away in graduate school, trying to help Mama, Teryn had been parading around in short-shorts and pom-poms enjoying the good life.
Now, she'd suddenly shown up here in Baltimore in an act of supposed sisterly love. Shay wasn't buying a word of it.
”Who paid for your plane ticket?”
Teryn jumped up from the small card table, tossing her half-eaten dinner into the trash.
”Jesus, Shay! Am I so incapable that I can't even afford a plane ticket? Or do you think I batted my eyelashes and shook my girls in front of some sugar daddy and he gave me the plane fare?”
”That's not what I meant.” Except it was and a twinge of guilt began to unfurl in Shay's belly.
”I don't know why I bother. You're just as bad as Meemaw.”
Those were fighting words. ”What did you just say?”
”You heard me.” Teryn marched over to the door, where her overnight bag was. ”All my life, do you know what I've had to listen to? Why can't you be as smart as your sister? G.o.d gave your sister all the common sense and you the b.o.o.bs. You're not going to amount to anything other than a rich man's trophy wife, while your sister is going to be the CEO of a company someday. No one ever gives me credit for having a single thought in my head that's my own because of your big egghead!” She jabbed a toothbrush at Shay. ”Thanks to you, I'm just a dumb, washed-up beauty queen. At twenty-four! While you're a PhD. You open your mouth to speak and people actually listen instead of staring at your b.o.o.bs!”
Astonished, Shay contemplated what her sister said as Teryn charged into the bathroom and vigorously brushed her teeth. Apparently, their Meemaw hadn't discriminated in her narcissism. But that wasn't Shay's fault.
”Hey,” she yelled at her sister over the electric toothbrush. ”Don't you dare blame me for the things she said to you! She was doing the exact same thing to me, you know. G.o.d gave your sister all the beauty, and when he got to you, there was nothing left but ugly. It's a good thing you have a brain, because otherwise we'd have to put a bag over your big head.”
Tears were streaming down her face now. Teryn spit into the sink before turning to pull Shay into her arms, the two of them gulping in sobs.
”I hated when everybody made a fuss over me and they ignored you. I swear it. I did,” Teryn cried. ”But I was young and felt so inferior to you, that I . . . I didn't know how to stop it.”
They slid down the wall to the floor where they sat holding each other.
”Do you think Mama knew how she treated us?” Teryn asked when their sobs had subsided somewhat.
”I think Mama was in a fog for so long. She was all alone after Daddy's accident and betrayal. There were medical bills and legal bills, not to mention child support. And she had no one to help her. What choice did she have but to leave us in Meemaw's care? She had to make a success of the salon.”
”She should have divorced Daddy.”
Shay looked at her sister in stunned silence. Teryn had always been Daddy's girl.
”I know,” Teryn said. ”She can't divorce him while he's incapacitated. But still, I hate what he did to our family. And we have a brother out there who's living large, while our Mama works her fingers to the bone. I swear I'm never going to give a man that kind of power over me.”
”What do you mean by that?”
Teryn shrugged her shoulders. ”You can't get hurt if you don't ever give a man your heart.”
Shay's own heart clenched. She knew all too well what kind of trauma a woman could suffer when she gave a man her heart. Something must have shown in her eyes because Teryn pulled her in close again.
”Oh, baby, you fell in love with him, didn't you?”
She didn't bother denying it, instead letting the tears fall on her twin's shoulder.
”When I saw pictures of the two of you, he looked at you as if he felt the same way. And that was most definitely not pretending. h.e.l.l's bells, in most of the pictures he looked at you as if he were going to gobble you up. But not in the same way men look at me. It was almost . . . almost as if he couldn't believe how lucky he was to have you.”
Shay sobbed harder as her sister stroked her hair.
”And that idiot was lucky to have you,” Teryn went on to say. ”Because you are smart and beautiful.” She pushed back to an arm's length. ”Well, not at the moment. Right now you look horrible. But we're gonna fix that in a jiffy. When I get through with you, we're going to parade you around Baltimore and make that boy sorry he pretended anything.”
Shay pushed to her feet, stabbing at the tears on her face. ”We're leaving, remember. I have to get home and get ready for my new job.”
Teryn got to her feet behind her. ”That's another thing. How come you get to play martyr and rescue Mama? No one asked me to help.”
She turned to see Teryn with her hands on her hips, genuinely angry.
Baffled, Shay tried to make her words not sound harsh. ”You're still establis.h.i.+ng your career. How can you help?”
”I've been offered a quarter of a million dollars to pose for Playboy,” Teryn said swiftly, looking everywhere in the room but at Shay.
”Teryn!” Shay hissed. ”You can't do that!”
”Who says? Apparently that's all I'm good for. I'll get kicked off the squad for sure, but I'm pretty much aging out anyway. Thanks to that blogger, I have a little notoriety. Why shouldn't I make a little money to help Mama?”
”Because you don't want to, that's why,” Shay argued.
”Do you want to work in a prison?”
The room was quiet for a moment as they both stared at one another, the enormity of the decision weighing on them. There was no way Shay was going to let her sister pose for Playboy. Mama would be humiliated. But Teryn very much wanted to be a part of the solution and Shay didn't want to shatter the fragile bond they were reforming.
”Remember how we used to decide who got the last Popsicle in the box or the last cookie?” Shay asked.
”You wanna flip a coin?” Teryn's face was incredulous.
Shay smiled as she thought of those days gone by. ”Yeah. We'll flip for it. It's the fairest way.”
Teryn sighed as she reached for her purse. ”I guess so. But one flip. Winner gets to be the martyr.”
”Deal. But not here. We'll do it under the magnolia tree behind the house, just like always.”