OVERHEAD

Chapter two

The very first thing he notices upon entering is the scent of pineapple—strong and sweet—bringing him back to his earliest childhood memory of it attacking his tongue, the discomfort lasting for days on end. He wouldn’t have recognized it if it hadn’t been his least liked fruit.

He purses his lips, finding more and more reasons to detest this exile. He was nineteen, for f**k’s sake, and already he’s being subjected to this tormenting experience.

He lets his eyes wander as Patricia shows him around, her voice effectively tuned out when the environment surprises him. He sees children, most of them ranging from eight to thirteen years old but some, a good 20% in estimation, were younger. They were all doing various activities. Some were drawing, some painting, others playing board games or tag. It was a flurry of movements inside the house.

Edward moves back just as one kid slips past him, chased by another, both of them running around with giggles before one caregiver reprimands them. With disappointment on their faces and slumped shoulders, Edward watches as they sit together on the floor instead, pencil and paper on both hands.

Patricia leads him into the kitchen and the much potent aroma of the fruit wafts through his nose. Two more women are there, almost the same height, both brunettes with subtle gray strands. When the one on the left turns around, her apron dusted with flour, Edward realizes they’re twins. Twins! Identical, at that. An odd thrill courses through him, not having met any twins before despite his wide network. They both send a smile his way, and Edward marvels at how even their dimples were matching.

“Edward, these are Aurelie and Edelie,” Patricia smiles fondly at both of the women, her laugh lines showing, before turning to face him, “this is Edward, he’ll be keeping us company.”

“Hello,” they say at the same time before breaking into chuckles when Edward’s eyes widen in amazement. His lips curl up on their own, his own dimples popping out.

“They came from here,” Patricia says, to which the twins nod in unison. “They’d been volunteering ever since they were old enough to help out.”

“We love the place,” Aurelie waves a hand in the air, and Edward notes the accent, a faint French tainted with the northern British. “Spent almost our entire childhood here. It’d be rude not to come back,” she says, a hint of humor in her voice.

“That,” Edelie agrees, her voice lower than her twin’s, “and because Patty here wouldn’t survive without us,” she teases, returning the fond smile directed at them. Patricia only shakes her head in response, the adoration on her face not disappearing as she ushers Edward to another part of the huge house.

She begins talking and Edward tunes her out again, his thoughts telling him that for now, the only thing worth his time were the set of adult identical twins in the kitchen.

He finds the idea of having a twin to be terrific, to have a literal duplicate of himself running around with the same everything. Soulmates were a different thing of course, he muses, but still marvelous. It was corny, and he would never admit it to anyone, but he believed in the idea. The world was far too big, far too densely populated, for a person to be alone. Somewhere out there, either on the other side of the world or one’s next-door neighbor, was one’s other half.

He was in the middle of weighing the slim chances of finding his when he becomes alert at the feeling of being watched. The hairs on his nape stand up in attention, his body stiffening and becoming more guarded. It wasn’t Patricia, as she was still blabbering about the building and its history.

Edward had just stepped near the stairs when the feeling increased tenfold. He looks around, his skin prickling either in excitement or anxiety, he wasn’t sure, but it definitely was something. Edward freezes when he locks eyes with a guy about his age, the only one he’d seen so far despite the many occupants of this building.

The male was tall, at least he appeared to be, as he leaned against the wooden railing headed up to the second floor, a mere fifteen feet away from Edward. His eyes were so strikingly blue, it was like the sky had decided to take permanent residence in them, looking down at him. And his hair, his hair was brown and coiffed up, messy but still looking like it had been styled that way, some of them peeking out from the back of his neck.

In his hand was a book opened in the middle. Before Edward could get a peek of what the guy had been reading, it shuts with a thud, and the guy keeps it pressed to his side, the cover purposefully angled away from prying eyes. The corners of his lips point down as he stares at Edward, an uncordial look on his face that seemed to highlight his facial features more, high cheekbones and thin lips that screamed ‘unfair’ at how it fit right in on his overall look.

Edward is snapped out of his reverie only when Patricia reappears in front of him, eyes worried. “What’s wrong, dear?”

Edward looks to his left, expecting to find the teenage male there, but is instead met with nothing. He frowns at the thought of the guy leaving without introducing himself. There was nothing he hated more than terrible manners.

“Is he a volunteer here too?” Edward asks the old woman.

Patricia frowns in confusion. “Who?”

Edward glances at the empty space again, the outline of the male still fresh in his mind as he tries to figure out how he’s moved so swiftly without detection. “The one who was standing there, holding a book.” Edward tired to recall the guy’s clothing but could come up with nothing. He curses himself for being too enthralled by the guy’s face. “Fair-skinned, blue eyes, brown hair, about my age,” he adds.

Patricia’s eyes light up in recognition but she doesn’t produce a fond smile like she did when they met with the twins, irking Edward a bit. “He’s not a volunteer. He’s been here the longest out of all the children,” she explains, already turning on her heel and ready to resume the tour to the children’s quarters.

Edward falls into step beside her. “Well?” He prompts. “Does he have a name?”

She looks at him, puzzled, with a hint of suspicion on her face. Edward schooled his to look like he was just mildly curious, which seemed to have worked as Patricia shrugs almost imperceptibly and begins her tour again. “Will. His name is Will.”

Will, Edward repeats in his head, his mouth moving without his consent as it seemed as eager to test how the name would roll off his tongue. He shakes the thought off of his mind, his long legs catching up to Patricia’s strides as she ratted on and on.

Will needed to learn some manners, he notes in his head.