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That night is even hotter than the ones before. There is a bitter and scorched smell to the air as if everywhere there were bonfires burning. I lean out my window and open mouth to taste ashes and the metallic flavor peculiar to standing water and old blood. I see how through Pietro's open bedroom window curls the smoke of vaporizing roses.
He lies on his back in bed and watches the smoke curl over his head. He traces lazy patterns on the air with his fingertips. I come in and cross the room and shut the window beside the bed firmly and turn to look at him. “If you let the smoke in it’ll give you nightmares,” I say. “Don’t you knock any more?” he says, but we both know his annoyance is half-hearted. He is glad to see me.
I remember when I had shrieked out with nightmares, how he had slept in the bed with me, held me in his arms.
At our first night Pietro hasn't let sleep take him until long after my breathing evens and my movements still, kissing bare shoulders and pale cheeks, trying to keep the nightmares at bay as long as he can. "I did no such thing," he snapped at me, when I thanked him for that night. His tone was blustering, but I wasn't offended because he looked so vulnerable and embarrassed, like I saw something ... too private. But such word does not exist for us. We're twins and we share everything. "You can't know what you've seen, Wanda, you were asleep," he replied a moment later. But I knew. I've always known. And I was right at our first night together, just like I was right at our hundredth. We clung to each other like our embrace is only haven in the middle of a hurricane.
And nothing has changed since.
I put a hand on his chest and push him gently down. “You need to sleep,” I say. “I can feel you not sleeping, through the wall.”
“Oh, yeah?” Pietro look at me as I get into bed beside him, flipping the sheet up over us both, demure and practical with my hair curling down over the neat smocked batiste of an old nightgown. “What does it feel like, me not sleeping?”
I reach out and take the front of his pajama shirt in a small fist, holding it tightly. “It feels like this,” I say, and lay down, still holding his shirt in my hand, gripped tight, my knuckles white as bones.
I still fit against him so well, knees tucked between his, one arm under his neck, the other around his waist.
Minutes go like hours and finally that night: it rains. The sky breaks in half and pours down water and it lashes against the windows and the walls of the house with such force that the pictures rattle on their hooks and the windowpanes shudder and seem about to crack. For a second, his room turns platinum white and moment later I can hear the roar of thunder.
I loved the lightning. I don't know what exactly drew me to it. Maybe it was its unpredictability, its spontaneity. And the fact that it is always the first to be spotted. When I wished for lightning, I kept my eyes wide and alert, because you could miss lightning. It was devious, impulsive, always trying to escape your eye. I wanted to catch it in the act. And when I saw it light up the sky in the distance, it gave me a satisfaction that made me smile even on the dreariest of days. I would watch the lightning inch closer and closer every time, until it made the dark, cloudy sky overhead light up like fireworks. I liked the quiet yet explosive spectacle, the warning of what was to come.
Pietro used to love the thunder. He loved the thunder as I loved the lightning. I don't think he knew exactly what drew him to it either. We shared that. I think I know though. I know my brother. I probably know him better than he knows himself. And I know that he likes commotion. He likes it when many things happen at once, and he doesn't have to focus on one thing all of the time. He likes to bounce around, my twin. He hates the quiet. I don't think he knows how to appreciate it. But it doesn't matter to me. That makes him who he is, the person that is my other half. He likes the rumble of the thunder, the low groans and the loud shrieks and the sounds in between, all of it. The noise gives him a more concrete thing to wait for than a flash of blinding white light. You can't miss the thunder because you can't close your ears. He doesn't like surprises. He likes to have a strategy. He likes to know what's going to happen. And the lightning for him is a perfect predecessor, the warning that tells him he can expect the thunder. He likes this predictability. When there's lightning, there will always, unavoidably be thunder.
Maybe our mutual attraction to storms says something about our personalities, I don't know. But there is a parallel. We both love different things that remind us of each other. He's the lightning, the reckless and spontaneous one. He always goes first. But he will always, without a doubt, be followed by the thunder. And I am the thunder. His thunder, his sister, his best friend, that follows him wherever his impetuous self may take him. There is never one without the other. Pietro is quick and to the point, open about his feelings, forever wearing his heart on his sleeve. I am more reticent and reserved; it takes me longer to open up, but when I do, I spill it all, the thunder that screams and moans and whimpers.
It was our night, a special moment we shared, when I told him about my theory. I was waiting for my brother to laugh at my silliness, to mock me like he used to, waiting him to say "Stop being so damn poetic, sis".
But his arms are around me tighter than they've ever been before, when he murmurs in my ear, "You and me, sister. The perfect storm".
Thunder rumbled.
But my heart was louder.