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Sydney was not a city Ryland had expected to visit at any point soon. With his meagre teacher’s salary and exponentially growing student loans, any travel further than Canada was seemingly out of the cards for him. And yet here he was, sweating under the oppressive Australian sun. He had barely left the stuffy cabin of the plane he had spent the last 15 hours of his life crammed onto, before the heat became almost unbearable. The economy seating did little to soothe his already aching joints, and the symphony of undesirable noises left Ryland severely sleep-deprived. He could feel sweat pooling at the base of his spine, causing his shirt to stick uncomfortably to his skin. All in all, Ryland Grace was not having the greatest time.
“What am I doing here?” – the question floated across Grace’s mind like the DVD screensaver. He had spent the last 24 hours thinking just that. Every time a million different anxious thoughts flooded his brain, all the things that could (and probably would) go wrong. But one word caused all those thoughts to come to a quick halt.
Colt.
Ryland’s brother, his twin. Regrettably, the pair had become estranged in recent years. Ryland would do anything to gain back that once practically perfect bond he shared with his brother. It had all begun with grad school, his PhD and UNESCO. Ryland was not particularly proud of his behaviour back then. He had been so angry at the world, at himself, and he had allowed that anger to fester and infect his relationships. Colt had tried to be there for him, tried to mitigate his pain, but Ryland pushed him away. He pushed and pushed until the gap between them felt as big as the Mariana Trench. Only then did he realise what he had done; by then it was too late.
Two years passed between them, with very little communication. They still texted on their birthday and holidays, but the Sunday evening phone calls that lasted well into the AM had disappeared. Slowly, Ryland no longer knew exactly what city Colt was in, what film he was working on, what girl had stolen and broken his heart. A Colt-shaped hole in Ryland's heart was all that remained. But Colt did not reach out any more than Ryland. Ryland forced himself to accept that he had tarnished his relationship with his twin irrevocably. Colt did not wish to fix it, and Ryland was too pussy to try.
After he was banished from his field, his work mocked openly, and his character destroyed in all professional scientific circles, Ryland fell into a deep darkness. He had no direction. He had no Colt to lean on; his dream was crushed by his own actions. It seemed as though there was no light at the end of this tunnel. That was until he fell in love with teaching. In teaching, he allowed himself to forgive himself for his past transgressions. His apathy after the loss of his childhood dream profession was replaced by the joy of teaching. Yes, he knew his degrees and intellect could probably score him a much better-paying gig, but nothing could beat the satisfaction that came with cultivating the minds of tomorrow.
It was six months ago when, aided by three vodka cranberries and four hours of sleep, Ryland realised how much he missed Colt. The phone was in his hand quicker than a flash of lightning, the number dialled in without a second of hesitation. Within two rings, a groggy voice answered.
“Hello?” Ryland felt as if he had taken a plunge naked into the Arctic.
“Colt?” replied Ryland, his voice cracking slightly.
“Hey, Ry, it’s been a minute. Why are you calling?” Colt’s voice was still heavy with sleep; Ryland could hear the confusion in his voice. His eyes grew wetter as he prepared to answer Colt. The silence must have lasted a fraction too long because Colt’s voice once again came from the speaker. “Ry?”
The dam broke.
“Colt, I’m so sorry!” Ryland practically wailed down the phone. His voice hitched as tears began to stream down his face. “I’m such a fudging idiot, I missed you so much. I’ve wanted to call you every day for the past few years, but I know you hate me. I missed you so much!”
Ryland babbled apologise became undecipherable as chocked sobs interrupted every breath.
Shushing noises came from the phone. Colt, now fully awakened, attempted to calm his brother from several hundred miles away. “Shhhh… shhhh, Ry, what are you talking about? I don’t hate you”
“You don’t?” Ryland choked out, God, he sounded pathetic.
“No, and I never will. What’s wrong, Ry? I thought you wanted space?”
Ryland scrubbed a hand over his face, smearing tears in a way that would have mortified him if he weren’t already three vodka cranberries deep and actively having a breakdown.
“I did,” he admitted, voice thin and wrecked. “Or… I thought I did. I don’t know. I was angry all the time, and embarrassed, and every time I thought about calling you it had already been too long, and then it kept being too long, and—” He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I really messed this up, Colt.”
For a moment, Colt said nothing. Not the cold sort of silence, not the kind Ryland had feared for years, but something softer. Measured. The kind of quiet that meant Colt was choosing his words carefully, the way he always had when Ryland was one bad sentence away from completely spiralling.
“Ry,” Colt said at last, his voice low and steady, “you did mess up.”
Ryland’s stomach dropped so fast it was almost impressive.
“But,” Colt continued before Ryland could start apologising again, “that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you.”
That did it. Ryland made a sound somewhere between a sob and a wounded animal noise, pressing the heel of his hand into his eye as if that might physically stop himself from crying any harder.
“Oh my God,” he choked out. “Don’t say nice things to me right now, I’m hanging on by a thread.”
A soft huff of laughter crackled down the line. Colt’s laugh. Familiar enough to make Ryland’s chest ache.
“Well, that’s your own fault for calling me at”-there was a rustle- “Jesus Christ, Ry, do you know what time it is here?”
Ryland squinted blearily at his microwave clock. “Um.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“Have you been drinking?”
Ryland considered lying for all of half a second. “A little.”
“How little is ‘a little’?”
Ryland exhaled through his nose. “A medium amount.”
“Ryland.”
“Just three drinks, I swear.”
There was a pause.
“Okay,” Colt said. “That is, unfortunately, exactly the amount of alcohol where you’d decide calling your estranged twin brother for the first time in two years is a reasonable plan.”
“It felt urgent,” Ryland muttered.
Something in Colt’s voice softened again. “Maybe it was.”
Ryland swallowed hard. The shame was still there, hot and ugly under his skin, but it no longer felt quite so terminal. “You really don’t hate me?”
“No,” Colt said, immediate and certain. “I was hurt, yeah. I thought you didn’t want me around. I thought if I kept pushing, I’d only make it worse. But hate you? Ry, come on.”
Ryland let out a weak, watery laugh. “I don’t know, I’m very annoying.”
“You are,” Colt agreed.
“Oh, wow.”
“But you’re my annoying twin, so I’m sort of stuck with you.”
For the first time that night, Ryland’s laugh came out sounding almost real. And so began a new chapter in Colt and Ryland’s lives. Slowly, the twins grew closer once more. Not quite to their childhood levels of co-dependence, but something softer. And that was how Ryland found himself in this situation, sweating his tits off under the blazing Sydney sun.
It was summer break back home, the kids were out of school for the next ten weeks, which gave Colt the wonderful idea to fly his brother out to Australia to watch him film the new Tom Ryder movie for the next month. Despite Ryland's initial reservations, with his meagre salary not giving budget for international travel, Colt had insisted. He claimed it to be mandatory payback time for the two years of brotherly bonding Ryland had caused them to miss. Ryland was half sure his brother just wanted to show off his cool job as a Hollywood stuntman, but Colt would neither confirm nor deny. Colt had paid for the flights and the hotel, meaning Ryland had no excuses. Despite his earlier anxieties, he was rather excited to see his brother again and meet the mysterious Jody who had his brother so whipped.
He spotted Colt before Colt spotted him. It was almost ridiculous, really. Ryland had spent years being able to pick his twin out of any crowd in seconds, and apparently, estrangement had done absolutely nothing to change that. Colt was leaning against a pillar near arrivals in sunglasses and a faded production tee, with an effortless aura Ryland had deeply resented purely on principle. He looked older, broader through the shoulders, a little more sun-worn around the edges, but still unmistakably Colt.
For one paralysing moment, Ryland stopped dead. All the confidence he had managed to manufacture on the plane dissolved instantly, leaving him standing there frozen like a baby goat, as his mother would say. His presence must have set off a twin sense in Colt, like Spider-Man but lamer, as he immediately looked up to meet Ryland's eye.
A cheshire cat-like grin immediately grew on his twin's face, lopsided and full of adoration.
“Ry!”
And then Colt was moving, weaving between tired tourists and families with luggage trolleys like this was the easiest thing in the world. Ryland barely had time to put his bag down before Colt collided with him in a crushing hug.
It knocked the breath from his lungs. Colt had always hugged like he meant it, all sincerity and no self-consciousness, and Ryland found himself clinging back just as hard, face buried briefly against his brother’s shoulder. He was dimly aware that he might be sweating all over Colt’s shirt. Colt, mercifully, did not seem to care.
“Jesus, you look terrible,” Colt said, pulling back just enough to look him over.
Ryland stared at him. “Hello to you too.”
“No, I mean it affectionately,” Colt said. “You look like you were folded into the overhead compartment.”
“That’s because I basically was.” Ryland wiped at his forehead. “Why is the air spicy?”
Colt barked out a laugh, bright and immediate. “Oh, you are going to do great here.” He took Ryland’s carry-on before he could protest and slung it over his own shoulder. “Come on. I parked in short stay, and if we don’t get moving, I’m going to have to sell a kidney to cover the fees.”
The walk to the car park was a blur of bright light, heat, and Colt chattering with the sort of easy momentum that made something unclench in Ryland’s chest. It was mostly nonsense at first- the traffic, the weather, how one of the actors had nearly concussed himself trying to look cool jumping off a platform- but beneath it Ryland could hear the effort Colt was making. A bridge built out of small talk was still a bridge.
Ryland smiled, short and sweet. Maybe this trip would be great time after all.