The Sweethearts

by K.C. Mead-Brewer

The woman isn’t a southpaw, but she’s gone and fallen in love with her left hand anyway. This isn’t something she planned; she can’t help it. Look at the saucy thing, lighting out from her arm like a sensate candelabra. She once read a poem about a woman in love with her foot, and for the first time, she felt seen, understood. Only, the poet didn’t say which foot. These things matter. Like knowing which twin brother you’re marrying versus which you’re sleeping with. (She isn’t marrying or sleeping with either of the twins, just sneaks them furtive glances from across the coffee shop each Wednesday morning.) What she doesn’t know: one of the twins has noticed her noticing them, and he’s infatuated. The woman with the impeccable taste in scarves, the sensual way she sips her tea and eats her scones, as if she were being fed them by a lover. The other twin—even he thinks of himself as The Other Twin—doesn’t notice the glancing woman or his brother’s delicate blush. No, he’s much too preoccupied with the novel in front of him, the way each turned page gives back the book a little more of itself. — K.C. Mead-Brewer lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Carve Magazine, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. For more information, visit kcmeadbrewer.com and follow her @meadwriter. Artwork by: Max Klinger