Plus, I hated how these discussions painted me as the outlier. My DNA and Sunny’s were practically identical, so why was it everyone looked at me like I was adopted and not her?
This would have been so much easier if we had family photos to show people. See, here are my parents. Now do you understand how it works? I think it might have helped people do the genetic math a bit better.
We hadn’t been able to keep any photos of our parents, though. They represented our old life, and the temple was our new life. The less homesick we were, the more obedient we were, so they did whatever they could to scrub those memories from our malleable young minds.
Temple above family.
Temple above everything.
I took Sunny’s hand and squeezed it, suddenly grateful she had been destined alongside me. If she’d been a normal girl, I probably never would have seen her again. Since we were both stuck in this together, it meant I got to keep her, even if only for fleeting moments like this one. Maybe that was enough, if it meant having her at all.
I tried to imagine a life where Sunny was nothing more than a foggy memory, and it hurt too much to even fathom.
Divided was better than torn apart forever.
As impressed with me as Sawyer had been the day before, I was totally a second fiddle to how exciting my sister was.
Today Sunny was wearing a lightweight mint-green dress, and her hair was held back in a headband, the long golden-blonde braid hanging over her shoulder. I had no doubt she was wearing a bathing suit under that dress. Sunny was perpetually ready to spend the day at the pool, even in October.
Sawyer looked so dazzled by Sunny I thought the girl might need sunglasses to look directly at her. I could relate. My sister was sunshine, and I was the little black cloud that followed her around.
“So you’re a cleric to Apollo?” Sawyer asked.
We’d ordered our breakfast, and I was already on my second cup of coffee.
Sunny dunked a bag of chamomile tea in her mug. “I am.”
“What does that mean? I know Tallulah can make it rain and make lightning and all that cool stuff. What do you do?”
“Kind of the opposite, I guess. I bring sun. Apollo’s clerics do a few different things, but sunshine is my specialty.”
“Is Sunny your real name?” Sawyer asked.
“Well, Sunshine, but no one calls me that. Our parents saw our marks when we were born.” She tapped the place on her neck where her little black sun symbol was. “They knew what we’d grow up to be, so they named us accordingly.” Sunny smiled at me, and for a minute I felt like a cat basking in a perfect circle of warm light on a carpet. It was glorious the way she could do that to a person.
“So why didn’t they call her Rain?” Sawyer glanced at me.
“Or Stormy,” Leo offered with a smirk.
“You guys are hilarious.” I refilled my coffee, hoping my pancakes would arrive soon. I’d tried to eat some of the leftover Chinese before we came down, but Sunny had given me such a distasteful expression I felt too guilty to bother.
“Tallulah means leaping waters,” Sunny explained. “So they went with the theme.”
“Sunshine and Tallulah.” Sawyer made a face. “Sounds like your parents were hippies.”
That made me laugh, and when Sunny did as well, I briefly believed maybe things were going to be all right.
“No. Not hippies.” I gladly accepted my pancakes and bacon when the waitress returned, smothering each perfect golden disc with a layer of butter and syrup.
Sunny took her fresh fruit cup and cottage cheese, making the rest of us at the table look like gluttons. Sawyer, blessedly, didn’t seem to care if she was living up to the Sunny Corentine diet standard because she started to dig into her eggs and sausage with the kind of flourish that reminded me of myself.
Atta girl.
Leo, on the other hand, was far too interested in watching Sunny to actually focus on his omelet. The poor bastard was doomed. I’d seen this before. Sunny might as well have been born a siren for the way she sucked unsuspecting men into her orbit and then left them disappointed and brokenhearted when she failed to notice they existed.
It wasn’t malicious, but she was so oblivious to the effect she had on people she managed to leave a trail of distressed men behind her wherever she went. Leo appeared poised to become her next victim. Every time she smiled at him I could practically hear him falling in love with her.
Who could blame him? I was the founding member of the Sunny fan club.