Chapter 1 I Write Sins

• ~ WILLA's POV ~
• I’m gonna kill that motherfúcker!
• Sighing to my empty glass of milkshake, I stared at the clock on the wall and rolled my eyes dramatically. It was almost 9.30 PM. I had been waiting in this diner for over an hour and my dear brother still hasn't shown.
• Calling his phone for the twentieth time that night, I groaned when he didn’t pick up and I reached his voicemail again. “Where the hell are you, Wes? Are you even coming? Call me!”
• Putting my phone away, I stared lazily at the tall glass of milkshake in front of me. I had ordered two and one was for him, but now I finished mine and his was melting away.
• No milkshake should ever go to waste like this.
• I swiped the milkshake from across the table and slurped away. Although it wasn’t even cold anymore, it still tasted great. Getting milkshakes at Georgia’s Diner had been a tradition for Wes and me ever since our fifth birthday. We used to live in an apartment down the block and our parents would take us here for our birthday breakfast. This place had been around since the 70s and my parents were high school sweethearts that used to come here on date nights. Suffice to say, this place held a lot of memories for my family and me.
• I hadn’t been home in three years. Tonight was my first night back in New York and I was so excited to come here. I even took a red-eye flight to make sure I got here right on my birthday, so Wes and I could do this together.
• But then the motherfucker decided not to show up!
• My twin brother, Wes, was always horrible with time management, but this was a new low for him. His sister had just finished a three year modeling contract, this was the first time in three years we could spend our birthdays together, and he decided to go AWOL on me.
• “Willa!” I turned around to see Marie, one of the senior waitresses at the diner. She had been working here for years. “Oh my, I haven’t seen you in ages. You’re as skinny as a stick, girl, you need to eat more,” she ran over to me and gave me a hug.
• “Oh, Marie. It’s part of the job. How are you, how’s your son?” I asked her.
• “My son’s a freshman in high school now, can you believe it?”
• “Little Tommy’s a freshman? Wow, you better watch out,”
• “I know. They grow up so fast,” she smiled sadly. Her eyes darted to my table and the two glasses of milkshake. “Who are you with? Is Wes here?”
• “Supposed to be, but he’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere,” I sighed.
• “Oh, dear,” she paused for a moment before continuing, “You know, he was just here last week with a friend. I saw him,”
• “Well, if you see him tonight, please tell him that I’ve gone home,”
• Rolling my eyes for added dramatic effect, I fished a twenty dollar bill from my jeans pocket and put it on the table. That should be enough for two milkshakes and a generous tip.
• “Aw, okay, sweetie,” Marie smiled.
• “Have a good night, Marie,”
• “Thank you, you too,”
• I pulled my jacket tighter as I walked out of the diner, passing by the 24 hour sign outside was blinking in bright green and yellow. It was early September, so the air was cooler at night. I could be at home right now, curled under my duvet watching Netflix and eating ice cream. Instead, I was waiting at a diner for over an hour because my brother promised he would be there—but he wasn’t.
• When I get my hands on you, Wes, you are so dead!
• Walking down these familiar streets, I couldn’t help but feel a little emotional. I was born and raised in New York City, Brooklyn to be exact. When I was seventeen, Wes and I both applied to Columbia because that was always our dream since we were kids playing in Central Park after school. Wes and I were like two peas in a pod. Everything he did, I had to do too. He ran track, so I ran track. I took art classes, so he took art classes. He wanted to go to Columbia, so I did too. We fought sometimes, sure, what siblings don’t? But Wes and I loved each other, that part was certain.
• Wes ended up going to Columbia, but I didn’t. Two big things happened a few months before we graduated high school and it set the course for the next few years of our lives. The first thing was that we lost our dad in a car accident. I didn’t know much about the details, but he was driving late one night in the snow, the car swerved and he hit a tree. He died on the spot.
• The second big thing that happened that year was that I got scouted by an agent while Christmas shopping with my mom at Macy’s. I was really tall for girls my age, at seventeen I was 5’ 9” and I weighed 120 pounds. Wes was only a little taller than me at 5’11”. We both had honey blonde hair and bright blue eyes. We looked so much alike, when we were kids we used to prank our mom by wearing each other’s clothes and she couldn’t tell us apart.
• What was that? Did you think I just glanced over the part about my dad’s death?
• Well, yeah, I did that on purpose. I never really liked talking about my dad. After he died, mom buried herself in her work, she worked as a nurse at St. John’s Hospital. Anyway, that was all I wanted to say about that. I prefer we talk about something else. Let’s see, where was I…
• So, after graduation, I decided to take that modeling offer and say no to Columbia. Wes wasn’t happy with my decision, he thought it was stupid of me to throw away an Ivy League education for a career in walking. That was the first time Wes and I ever truly disagreed on something.
• Modeling was okay to me, it wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, but I enjoyed it. The thing that got me to sign that three year contract was the fact that I could travel the world and get paid for it. Ever since I was a kid, I liked to stare at the sky and watch the airplanes go by. I always wondered where those people were going and when it would be my time.
• I never liked being in one place for too long. Plus, after my dad’s untimely passing, everything at home wasn’t the same anymore. I was questioning everything, and I felt lost. But I knew that I had to get out of there, that place wasn’t home anymore, and modeling was my ticket out.
• So, I got out.
• For the last three years, I had the opportunity to travel to places like Paris, Milan, London, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg. There were a lot of jobs in New York too, but I never took them on purpose. I wasn’t ready to go back just yet. Deep down inside, I still felt like I hadn’t dealt with my dad’s passing. It was a difficult thing to do when you were only seventeen or eighteen. But after three years, I was now twenty one and an adult. I was finally ready.
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• To be continued