A Taste of Spring novel Chapter 16

A single-year age difference and Summer thought she got to claim dibs on the world.

"You fed me the fricking basics, Two," Summer called out as Spring walked toward the kitchen. "Just tell me already."

"I don't have to tell you anything. I moved here to do me. To do what I wanted and not what everyone else thinks is best for me. And stop calling me Two." Spring hated the nickname. That gift was the only thing she resented from her sweet old grams.

Spring was told on several occasions how "Two" became her moniker. Apparently, she was stricken with the horrible tag on the day of her birth when her mother, "The Witch Who Shall Not Be Named" looked into her face and said "Spring". Her mother never gave a reason why she picked the name Spring, but common sense would suggest that her mom named Summer over a year before and thought they were a matching pair so...

Grams later said that she was so irritated by the Summer/Spring thing that she said, right there in the hospital room, 'You may as well call them Thing One and Thing Two'. It was meant as a joke, at least that's what Spring surmised, but the tragedy was that it stuck like burnt grits. Now everyone in her family called her Two.

"Unlike you, dear little sister, I don't mind my nickname. It is amazing, like me."

Spring looked over the breakfast bar that separated the small galley kitchen from the living room and saw the gloating look on her sister's face. How she looked flawless despite a red nose and watery eyes was beyond Spring, and honestly it was kind of creepy. Like "Pod-People" creepy, but that was Summer, bright, happy, and flawless.

"Ugh, I hate you." Spring opened the freezer and took out an orange crème ice bar. She shed the wrapper and had the frozen goodness in her mouth before the wrapper settled in the garbage can.

"Just share and get it over with. You know if you don't, I'll just keep bothering you until you do. Remember when you tried to keep your crush on Brett Murphy a secret? How did that work out for you? It didn't. I know something happened"

"Why do you think something happened?" Spring flopped back down on her chair and glanced around the room for the remote.