Gemini - 4. Jacob

Jacob's POV

I barely made it back in time for dinner. After the surprise meeting with Josh, Ethan and I had gone to the mall to hang out for a little longer. Ethan was an awesome guy. No matter how down you were, with his buoyant behavior he would always manage to get you into a good mood. He had this kind of happy persona that embraced life as it was and didn’t worry much. He was also a good friend and one of the few people who I could really trust.

We had been friends for years and didn’t really keep any secrets from each other. It was almost a bit weird, being so close to a guy, but it was a cool thing to have. It was worth a lot to have someone who didn’t judge you.

My family was poor. My father used to run a company, until for some reason, things went wrong. I never really understood what exactly happened. Somehow we were suddenly broke, and then a bit later my father ended up in a car accident, and it took him a long time to recover. That was years ago; I had still been in kindergarten when all of this happened.

I remember how we had a help and all that stuff rich people have. However, since my father’s bankruptcy, my mom had worked as a help and my father had gone from job to job, trying to get a permanent position. The accident had left its marks on him, he wasn’t disabled, but he couldn’t work in construction again, and that made things more difficult. Then there were still debts to pay off. Not much, but enough to keep us down.

We managed to get by, but six persons had to be fed and the rent for the apartment needed to be paid, we needed stuff for school and so on. I was used to wearing the clothes my older brothers had grown out of and getting by without all the fancy things other people had. My family loved me, I had a warm place to sleep and food in my stomach, and that was all I really needed.

Only at school, not everyone agreed with that. Ethan had been the one who took me for who I was from the first day and always had a smart answer if someone made a remark about me. My big brothers tried to watch out for me but they couldn’t be everywhere. Ethan and I had most of our classes together, so he had my back when they didn’t.

Luckily, I didn’t really have these problems anymore, I was way more self-confident than I used to be and could take care of myself. Actually, after those initial problems I became kind of popular, thanks to my brothers and their friends, and Ethan. Ethan remained one of my best friends, even though he was kind of crazy.

“Dinner is ready!” My mother yelled. “Hurry up before it gets cold.”

Together with my other siblings I rushed into the kitchen. There was Conrad, he was 18 and in his last year at high school. He was the total jock and would go to university after the summer, thanks to a baseball scholarship. Otherwise we could have never afforded it, obviously. My other brother was Ian. He was 16 and in an even better shape than Conrad. He played all kinds of sports; you name it, he did it.

Last was my sister, Fiona. She was only 12. Growing up with three older brothers, she was kind of butch. It wasn’t extreme, and as she had gotten into puberty earlier that year, she had started to get more and more girly, but it was still funny to see how much influence three older brothers could have on their little sister.

“I haven’t seen you all day, Jacob, what have you been up to? How’s school going?” My mom asked me with a smile.

“Been out with Ethan, swimming. School’s ok, I guess.” I replied casually.

My parents were pretty cool, actually. Some of my friends at school had really religious or strict parents. Mine did go to church, but they weren't overly religious and never made us go with them and when it came to things like curfew, they weren't very strict either. At least as long as you didn’t give them a reason to. One night, Conrad had come home after having smoked a joint. God, mom came down on him like a ton of bricks. I had thought he would be grounded for the rest of his life.

“Jacob, will you join us for some basketball tomorrow?” Ian asked me. I was a shrimp in comparison to him or Conrad, but often they would still ask me to join them when they were playing with their friends. They probably wanted to get their little brother, me, more into sports. They didn’t really care if I wasn’t as good as them, it was all just for fun and I was their brother after all. It was really nice the way we got along.

“Thanks for asking, Ian, but I already have plans, sorry. I’d love to, though. Maybe next time,” I told him, honestly disappointed that I couldn’t go. I did enjoy playing basketball with them.

He shrugged. “Your call, but you should join us some time again, the guys are already asking for you.” I was lucky, not everyone has two big jock brothers trying to include their ‘baby brother’ into their lives as much as possible. Well, as for the ‘baby brother’, I was only about a year younger than Ian, but both of them were much taller and stronger than me, so most people thought the difference was much more than only a year.

I turned to my mother. “Mom, do we have any relatives with the family name Adams?”

She thought for a moment. “No Jacob, at least none that I would know of. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason really, I was just wondering,” I tried to reply as casually as I could.

My mother gave me a weird look for a second, but dropped it then.

When we were done with dinner, I went out for a walk. I wanted to think about what had happened earlier that day. Living with six persons in a little apartment meant that there was always some background noise that would distract me. If I wanted a quiet moment, it was easier to just leave the house. Besides, the fresh air made it easier to think.

At first, meeting Josh had totally freaked me out. Meeting someone who looks exactly like you isn’t an everyday thing. Maybe my mom could shed some light on the whole thing. Our Family was huge, my parents each had four siblings, and most of them had children, too. It was hard to keep track of all the names of our cousins alone.

Only deep down, I had another idea, rather a fear, one that I didn’t really want to think about. There wasn’t anyone in my family that looked similar to me. My whole family was blonde, I had dark brown hair. Their faces all kind of looked similar, only mine didn’t.

On family pictures it almost looked like I was a friend of the family, and didn’t actually belong to it. I pushed these thoughts back. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, but still…

I pulled out the phone that I had bought with my own, hard earned money by doing chores for some of our neighbors, and hit the speed dial for Sarah. She took only a few seconds to pick up.

“Hey J, what’s up?”

“Hey Sarah, just a short question. Have you mentioned Josh to anyone yet?”

“No, I didn’t, why do you ask?”

“Could you keep it to yourself for a while please? I wanna work through all this before everyone else knows about him.”

“That must have creeped you out quite a bit,” she said. “I mean, imagine, he’s like your clone. He could do all kind of shit and blame it on you. Hell, he could even do porn and people would think it’s you!” She added, before she started laughing.

“Of all the things possible, you would of course think of this, Sarah? Only you could do that,” I scolded her, grinning. Sarah wasn’t exactly a lady. It made her an awesome friend, for a girl. It’s not like she was a slut, I was pretty sure she had never gotten serious with a boy, but she was just open and fun about things like this. However, the thought of someone who looked like me doing porn was in fact kind of scary. I hadn’t looked at it this way yet.

“Haha, you know I can’t help it, and don’t worry, I will keep the secret about your clone safe.” She replied.

“Thanks Sarah! I might also not make it to the pool this weekend, but I don’t know for sure,” I told her.

“Aw, that’s too bad, but I do understand,” she said, the disappointment clearly showing in her voice.

We said our goodbyes and hung up. I smiled while thinking about what an awesome friend she was. I knew her since our freshman year, so that was almost two years and I had been secretly crushing on her for about a year, but I never acted on it. We were really close friends and I just didn’t want to ruin that.

My brothers were already making comments about us, but of course they did it only when we were among us. They wouldn’t be so crude to tease me about her when others would hear it. Ethan didn’t know about it yet. I felt stupid for not telling him, but I was afraid that it might change things between the three of us.

I quickly called Ethan to ask him the same thing I had asked Sarah and he promised he would not breathe a word. After that I thought about Josh. The best thing to do was probably to get to know him better first. Everything else would come after that. I pulled out my phone again and send him a text.

Hey Josh, it’s Jacob. Have you got time tomorrow afternoon? I need to talk to you. Let’s meet in the city park at the big fountain, 3pm or later, whenever you can.

His reply came almost instantly: I’ll be there.

After that I walked around the neighborhood for quite a while, thinking about all the new problems, but also opportunities, this situation entailed. Luckily our area was pretty safe, even at this time of day I could run around here without worrying. When I finally got home, Ian and Conrad were about to hit the sack. We had this unspoken agreement that we all went to bed around 10:00 pm to half past 10:00 pm.

With three boys in one small room, it was simply a necessity. If someone stayed up, it would just keep the others from sleeping. When we were younger, Conrad was kind of annoyed with going to bed when we did. Often he would hang out in the kitchen and read until he wanted to sleep, so we could get our rest. In the past two years, things had been easier. Ian and I were older now so we stayed up as long as Conrad did.

Still, I think Conrad couldn’t wait to move out of here and go to university and quite frankly, Ian and me couldn’t wait to have the room to only the two of us. Among the three of us, there was barely any space in here.

I quickly dozed off and dreamed about how Josh and I would cheat our teachers. He would write my history and math tests and I would go and do his tests in French. Languages were the only thing, besides PE, where I was of any use in school. It wasn’t that I was dumb, I think. I just didn’t take things seriously enough.

Fifteen hours later I made my way to the city park, excited about meeting Josh again and still trying to figure out how to handle this. Together we would come up with something good. It was odd but despite how little time we had spent with each other, I already felt like there was something special between us.

♊

Josh's POV

It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon. The sun was shining and the temperature was perfect. Not too hot, yet cool enough to run around in a shirt. I saw Jacob approaching me and rose from the bank next to the huge fountain.

“Hey, good to see you again,” I told him. I wasn’t sure if I should shake his hand or do something else, or just nothing at all. For a moment he looked just as unsure as I felt, but then he offered his hand and when I took it he pulled me into a half-hug. The kind that keep you at a certain distance because you shake hands at the same time and only hug with one arm.

“It’s nice to see you, too,” he told me. “This whole thing is very confusing and I really needed to talk about it.”

“I feel the same way, I mean, who would not.” I replied with a shy smile.

“Let’s go somewhere less public” he said, and pointed towards one of the paths that led into the huge park. We walked for a while, until he left the path and walked into the woods. After a few minutes we reached a clearing and when we sat down on the grass, I took off my backpack and opened it.

“I brought us some sandwiches, if you’d like” I offered him one. “Peanut butter and mashed bananas.”

“Awesome, thank you!” Jacob grinned. “It’s my favorite.”

“Yea, mine too” I replied. “But that shouldn’t surprise us by now, should it?”

We laughed at that, exactly in the same way. When we had stopped laughing, we looked at each other and started laughing again.

“This is really cool.” Jacob observed. “I still feel like I’m dreaming.”

Sitting here with him, chatting, I felt totally at ease. “Yea, me too.” I said. “It’s pretty amazing.”

“So did your mother tell you anything interesting?” I asked carefully. The topic changed the atmosphere instantly. We both tensed up.

“She said she didn’t know anyone in our family with the name Adams. I’ve been thinking about it. My siblings and parents really don’t look like me. It’s hard not to notice, but I’ve never thought much of it. Just that it was odd that I didn’t inherit the looks and that my brother Ian is only eleven months older than me.”

He gulped before he continued. ”Meeting you changes that a little. I suspect I might be adopted.”

I looked at him thoughtfully. “I’ve thought about this a lot, too. There aren’t really many options. I’m not saying this is what happened, but theoretically, my father could have slept with your mother, or your father with my mother. That would make us half-brothers, but it doesn’t seem likely to me. I don’t look like my parents either.”

I paused for the effect. “I am actually pretty certain that both of us are adopted.”

He looked like he had an epiphany . “When is your birthday and how old are you?”

“3rd of July, and I’m fifteen, you?”

“Well, I don’t think that’s a coincidence. My birthday is on the 3rd of July, too, and I am fifteen as well. I guess we must be twins, but were adopted by different families.”

I shook my head. “It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? I mean, how likely is it that something like this happens?” I mused. “Two twins get separated through adoption and then coincidentally meet again. How do things like this happen?”

He didn’t have a reply for that. Neither did I.

“You know,” he said, sounding a little desperate. “This is really fucked up. I really love my family, but I don’t get why they never told me. What will my brothers think and how will they react if they learn about me being adopted? It’s just a lot to deal with. This completely changes how I look at my life.”

I didn’t even need to look at him to know how he felt. Usually, I wasn’t big on physical affection, but maybe that was because I had nobody I really cared about. Seeing him like this almost broke my heart. I scooted over and laid my arms around him, holding him against my chest. I could feel the tension ebb from his body, as if it would leave his body through me and my touch, and then flow into the ground.

“It’s a bit different for me,” I said. “I don’t think my parents ever loved me. “Maybe they did, I don’t know, but if they did, then they were never good at showing it. Still, I guess a lot of what I believed my entire life wasn’t true. My family is pretty traditional. Probably my parents just adopted me because they couldn’t have a child of their own and they needed an heir. As absurd as it sounds, if you put the pieces together, it fits. It’s still quite a hit.”

I held onto him, comforting him, and myself. Our physical closeness probably helped to heal our inner turmoil more than hundreds of hours with a shrink would have.

After a while we pulled apart and slid back to where we sat before. I saw him wiping a tear from his left eye. Weird, this time I was able to contain myself and someone else wasn’t, but it was probably a much bigger hit for him than for me. I never felt that close to my parents anyway. Trying to get rid of the awkward situation, I grabbed another sandwich and handed him one, too. He thanked me, grateful that I didn’t make any further comments on what had happened.

“There is one thing we need to think of, though,” I said hesitantly. “What if we’re wrong and we really aren’t twins?”

He got a pensive look on his face and took a minute before he replied. “There really is no other explanation for it. We can take a DNA tests, and we probably should when our parents find out. Until then, it seems so obvious to me that we should just accept it as the truth. To be honest, even if it is not true, having a twin, a doppelgänger, sounds really cool. I doubt that we’re wrong though.”

I listened to him intently and when he had finished, I nodded thoughtfully. He did have a point. I couldn’t really ask my parents anyway and there was nothing cooler than the thought of having a twin. Even if it wasn’t true, we were still practically clones of each other, and he was right, it was very unlikely that we were wrong.

“So where do we go from here?” I asked, trying to think practical.

“I don’t want to confront my parents about this yet,” he decided. “So far only Sarah, Ethan and us know about this. I asked Sarah and Ethan to keep it a secret for the time being and I trust them to do so.”

“Yea, it would be better to keep it a secret for now,” I agreed. “If my parents find out, they might deny that I am adopted and try to keep the two of us apart. Actually, I’m pretty sure they would do exactly that.”

He nodded in agreement. “Alright, we’ll keep it a secret.” We remained silent for a few moments, and then he changed the topic. “There is another thing I want to talk about: I would like to know about you and your life.”

“Yea, I would love to hear about your life, too,” I replied. “Maybe we should just start with that, and leave the rest behind to worry about some other time. Do you want to start?

He agreed and started telling me about his parents and siblings, and about his friends at school, especially Ethan and Sarah. I tried to store as much information as possible. He went into great details and shared many little stories about his brothers, Ian and Conrad, and him, school and many other things, like the time when he broke his leg or when he first met Ethan. He also talked a little about his childhood and his father’s bankruptcy.

I felt like I was drawn into another life that, in some way, was also mine. It might have very well been him in my position and me in his. For a short moment I felt jealous. Despite his poor family, his life seemed happy, but that jealousy didn’t last long and was quickly overruled by the thought that he would have had my life then, and I didn’t wish my parents upon anyone.

When he got to Sarah, he hesitated shortly before he continued. “I have never ever told anybody about this, because there was no reason to, but I kind of feel I should tell you.” He paused and blushed. “I’ve been crushing on her for over a year, but I just don’t want to risk our friendship. It’s been weighing on me for quite a while.” He smiled. “It feels good to say this, but keep it a secret, please.”

‘Well we found at least one thing we don’t have in common then,’ I thought to myself.

He looked intently at me. “Do you have a girlfriend or a crush?” Ouch! I didn’t want to lie to him but I didn’t want to tell him the truth either.

I thought quickly. “It’s getting late and I got to be home for dinner. I will tell you all about me tomorrow, okay?”

He looked a bit disappointed but it really was getting late. “Sounds good. I get off early on Fridays, I can be here shortly after 1pm.”

I smiled big at that. “Me too. Let’s meet here, not at the fountain. This is an awesome place.” The clearing really was beautiful.

We said goodbye and parted after a long bear hug, him going home with anticipation and me with concern about what I would possibly tell him tomorrow.

Telling him was a huge risk. I didn’t even know how he thought about gays to begin with, and if he pushed me away, I could be in big trouble. Not only would I lose Ethan along with him, but he could even out me to others and the rumors might get to my parents.

Then again, he would find out eventually. I wasn’t even sure whether I could lie to him now, let alone when we got to know each other better. Letting people into your life could be dangerous, I noted mentally, but I somehow felt, like I finally had someone I could actually tell about me being gay.

So, there was my urge to be honest with him, and also the longing to not have to hide any longer from everyone, and it was fighting against my prudence. Because if this went wrong, then I could be in deep shit.

I decided to wait until tomorrow before I made a final decision.

Alright! I hope you enjoyed the read. Nosty and I were sitting for hours on this chapter - after the editing was done. I found some paragraphs that kind of sounded weird to me, so we went over it again and again, and changed stuff until we didn't know what was what anymore. I hope we got all the mistakes out, if not, I take all the blame on me!
Always happy about a comment, an opinion or also critique!