Gina hadn’t expected them to become friends, but that’s what happened. He simply showed up one day and tagged along on her way to her job as a barista at Mud. She found herself looking forward to her encounters with Nick. At first, they didn’t plan on meeting. He just kept showing up at the end of her shifts, and sometimes during breaks. One day, she found herself waiting for him before walking back to her dorm, and he must have noticed because he leaned in for a hug. Her heart had nearly jumped out of her chest. She kept her body stiff, terrified she’d blurt out, “I love you!”
And Gina did love him.
If what drew her to Nick was his charisma, then what won her over was his heart. She fell for his kindness, his naked fears and dreams, the vulnerability with which he talked about his family’s legacy—he felt crushed under the weight of expectations, but also proud to own an iconic American brand. He longed to live a life that was his own. He was a Dewar and, as such, had been given every possible advantage in life: pedigree, good looks, money. Gina shouldn’t have felt as though they had anything in common, but she did. Nick wanted to make his own mark in the world, to step out of the huge imprint that Alma Boots had left for him to fill. In a way, Alma Boots was to him what the LDS faith had been to her, except he hadn’t escaped it.
She wasn’t sure how it happened, but Nick became her best friend. He was the first person to whom she opened up about her family. She found herself telling him about Alan, sobbing along the way, relieved to finally be sharing this piece of herself with someone she trusted.
When he tried to kiss her, she had resisted the urge to melt into his arms solely because the only thing stronger than her feelings for Nick was her fear of them. She didn’t want to love someone who was like lightning: beautiful, scary, unpredictable. She had come a long way since her Salt Lake City days, but she knew she would never be able to make Nick happy. He needed a woman who was cultured and stunning, thunder to his lightning. She wouldn’t be enough for him. An entire harem probably wouldn’t be enough. Gina loved his adventurous streak (he planned on traveling the world after graduation), but she wanted a partner who would settle down with her. She needed peanut butter to her jelly.
Then came Bobby. She never meant to fall in love with him, but it had happened with the ease of cold butter melting under a low fire. Bobby was everything she had ever dreamed of—reliable, kind, intelligent, and devoted. From their very first date, she experienced a prickle of electricity running between them. It was different from the pull that first drew her to Nick. With Bobby there was a hum of energy—steady and true. With Nick, it had been a whiplash—a magnet gone wild.
At first, she had been worried about breaking Nick’s heart, not because she thought he loved her, but because she knew the rejection would sting like an annoying paper cut. She was aware of how Nick defined himself according to and against Bobby. But after a few months with Bobby, it became clear that she had made the right choice, not just for herself and for Bobby, but for Nick as well. Seeing her with his brother would make Nick understand that they would never fit together. It would free him to spread his wings and fly out into the unattached, bachelor life he had always enjoyed.
Then came the night when she had alcohol for the first time in her life.
Bobby had asked her to marry him. She had broken down in front of him, telling him her life’s story. He had comforted her, taken her in his arms, whispering all the right things in her ear, but she couldn’t help comparing his reaction to Nick’s. It was wrong to compare the two of them—she knew they both resented it when their parents did it. But she couldn’t help it. Bobby hadn’t said anything wrong, but while he had patiently listened, Nick had jumped into her story, living it with her, commenting on every new piece of information she had shared. She felt wretched and guilty, but for the first time, she also wondered if she had made a mistake in dating Bobby and not Nick. It seemed unfathomable that Nick would be the man for her, but what if he was? What if being with him was one of those things that didn’t make sense in theory but that were nonetheless true, like cutting hair to make it grow faster and longer?
Bobby thought she was taking some time to consider his proposal, but the truth—the shameful, awful truth—was that Gina was spending her days wondering if she was with the wrong twin. She had been confused and vulnerable enough to say yes when Polly offered her a drink at a party. She had never tried alcohol before—it was one of the things about being Mormon that Gina actually liked (who in their right mind would drink something that made them do things they regretted?), but that night she couldn’t resist the allure of anything that promised to quiet her racing mind, even if it
