Teófila’s Guide to Saving the Sun

by Cynthia A. Rodriguez

  “Woah, woah.” He pulls my hands toward him and leads us to the couch.

  I’m blinking, trying to keep the rejection from turning into tears.

  “There’s no need to rush,” he says.

  “Who else is gonna do it with me if you don’t?” Tears are stronger than I am, creating paths down my face. “No one else has even kissed me.”

  His thumbs are stronger than my tears, wiping them away as a small kiss douses the flames of hurt and anxiousness.

  “I’ll do it all with you. But it doesn’t have to be today.”

  My hands are released from his grip and he sits back, eyes still steady on me.

  “This is embarrassing,” I say.

  His hands pat his lap and I set my feet on them. Busy fingers make quick work of removing my heels.

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I mutter, my eyes on the ceiling. “It isn’t like you haven’t done any of this before.”

  He sighs but it’s on the verge of a laugh. When I try to pull my foot away, he yanks it, pulling me closer to him and my dress higher up my thighs.

  They catch his attention and his eyes remain on them when he speaks again.

  “But I’ve never done it with you.”

  We’re silent as his eyes travel up, as slowly as he likes.

  “Sometimes I wish I had asked you to practice sex with me. Sometimes I wish I’d been smart enough to give you every first,” he says.

  “Why would you want that?” I ask, my hands moving to pull my skirt down. But his hands still mine, stopping them from their modest course.

  All breathing ceases as he moves to lean over, those hands of his pushing my skirt higher.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, fear clawing at my throat.

  Because in every version of myself, that creature still lives inside of me, setting up a cozy home and poking me with its insistent existence.

  Change can be terrifying.

  We can set a course, follow a plan, and do our best to be the best people we can be. But it only takes a moment, a kiss, to change everything.

  I’m staring at myself in this moment; this moment where I know every moment after this will be a result of the choices I decide to make right now, with this boy I’ve secretly wanted for longer than I’ve realized.

  That desire makes me reckless.

  “Your legs are shaking,” he whispers, and I can feel his breath brush against my thighs. “You okay?”

  I nod and look down at him, settling into myself when I see him looking back up at me.

  “This is me, T. I’ll never give you more than you can handle.”

  I can feel my legs trembling, even as he gets up from the couch, taking my hand and leading me up the stairs, toward my room.

  Every step is a question.

  Am I ready?

  Can I do this?

  Why are we going to my room?

  How many times has he done this before?

  Will I always be this nervous?

  Will it always feel this way?

  Am I ready?

  “WE DON’T HAVE to go all the way,” he whispers as he removes the starfish clip from my hair.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. Is this when I assure him that I want to? Is this when I tell him that I have no idea what I’m doing or what this will mean?

  Is this the moment I push him away for good?

  He’s standing in front of me, holding me, his eyes telling me he means every word. And I won’t let fear hold me back anymore.

  “Happy birthday,” I repeat, just as quietly, my fingers trailing up the front of his button-down to push his suit jacket off his shoulders.

  “I’m serious, T.”

  All while I unbutton his shirt, he stands there, not touching, not moving.

  “Is this okay?” I ask, looking up at him, worried I’m not doing this right.

  His answer is to bend and band his arms around my thighs. A laugh escapes me as I’m dropped on the bed.

  We are wordless as he removes his clothes, item by item.

  His confidence makes me both love and fear him. He is as beautiful as he knows he is on the outside but even more beautiful inside, where I’ve hoped to be all along.

  I can’t compare…

  My mind shuts the thought down before it can grow legs and stomp all over the moment.

  Fingers wrap around my feet, yanking me down the bed.

  My panties are exposed but I’m too focused on him to worry.

  I never thought I’d ever see Elijah naked.

  He’s all long arms, strong legs, and strokes of strength line his frame. I’ve never seen him work out, but the carved abdomen tells another story.

  So do the lines of permanent artistry along his arms and chest.

  Had I been walking around with my eyes closed all along?

  Where is the seven-year-old who kicked the anthill? The one I pushed to the ground?

  He’s laying you down on this bed, taking your clothes off like he’s been waiting to do this since the day you two met.

  “Does it hurt?” I whisper, my legs shaking again.

  He nuzzles the side of my skinned knee as he pushes my legs apart. His facial hair scrapes against my skin, making my nerve endings stand at attention. A sigh escapes my lips.

  I am all senseless senses.

  “It didn’t for me, but I hear it might for you,” he says.

  Permanence is something I’ve pondered over many times before.

  My eyes are on his sun tattoo just beneath the inside of his elbow as he braces himself above me, his gaze settled where my skirt is bunched at my hips.

  The needle burned as it dug in my skin and maybe this is a different kind of permanence. The kind I’d wear forever that no one else would ever be able to see.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks, lowering himself so I feel him against me.

  “Depends. How many times have you done this before?”

  His laugh brushes against my hair, tickling and soothing.

  This is us.

  We laugh, we feel, we trust each other.

  We smile into each other as he reaches for my halter top, releasing the knot and exposing me to the air and his eyes. There’s the fumbling of trying to remove my dress and I sit up in an attempt to help, nearly knocking our heads together.

  “Relax,” he tells me, still wearing a smile. “I think I can handle this.”

  A few moments later, we’re naked together.

  Something tells me this is how we were always meant to be; bare, exposed, unafraid.

  Together.

  21

  NOT-SO-SECRETS

  I ’m lying on my stomach when I wake up. First, there is no thought. And then it all comes washing over me; the feelings, the sounds, the words, the pain, and the pleasure.

  The falling asleep against him.

  I don’t feel Elijah’s body wrapped in mine the way it did when I fell asleep.

  Don’t react. Just relax and remember.

  There’s no way I’ll sit up and he’ll be gone.

  He faked an entire relationship with a beautiful girl. He could’ve faked a few hours with you.

  There’s no way.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remind myself how special I am to him. How many times he’d assured me of that as he covered my body with kisses.

  How’d I get so damn lucky? I can still hear him murmur that as I dozed off.

  “Sleep well?” he asks from somewhere in my room.

  My smile isn’t mine anymore. Just the sound of his voice yanks it right out of me, like a jester ready to entertain its king.

  “Yes,” I answer, stretching. I turn my head to look at him and smile even wider when I see him in his underwear, on my chair. “Did you?”

  His hand cradles his faces as he nods.

  He’s silence and a questioning gaze.

  I’m nerves and a paranoia I still can’t shake.

  “What’ve you been�
��”

  My question trails off when I see something open on his lap.

  Dog-eared pages, curling up toward him in a false loyalty that makes me feel sick.

  My notebook.

  My notebook.

  I jerk up, wrap my body in my comforter, and bolt toward him. But he’s ready. He knows what I’m coming for. All it takes is for him to stand and hold it higher than I can reach.

  I’m freaking out, yelling angry words and noises of frustration as he tries to speak to me.

  “T.”

  “You fucking…”

  “Relax, T.”

  “How dare…”

  “Teófila!”

  I stop jumping and shoving, clutching the blanket against me with a huff. “Nothing you say can make this invasion of my privacy okay,” I grind out.

  His nod is slow as he brings his arm down. As soon as my notebook is with reaching distance, I snatch it away. Once in my grasp, I’m rifling through pages, fighting the urge to hit him.

  So. Many. Secrets.

  How many did he read? How many of them are no longer mine?

  I was supposed to die with so many of these.

  “How could you?” I whisper, my words as shaky as my control. “What gives you the right? Haven’t I given you enough?”

  “Do you think you have? Because I don’t,” he tells me, his voice edging on anger.

  I can feel an energy in the room that hasn’t been here before. It stands between me and him, and I don’t know what’s headed our way, but I know it isn’t going to be anything I’m prepared for.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” his tone accuses.

  The clouds are rolling in.

  “Tell you what?”

  They part, letting the torrential downpour loose.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he screams as he grabs my hands. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

  Thunder and lightning strike as I attempt to recoil, but his grip is nearly as strong as his eyes as they stare at my hands, shoving them up where we both bear witness to my personal brutality.

  In the dim light of my lamp, I can see the wounds for what they are: Moments when I reached a peak too high or a valley too low. Emotional warfare is something I never knew what to do with.

  So instead of finding a way, I made an enemy of myself.

  And I hurt her in ways only I knew; in ways I knew others would be oblivious to.

  I told myself that as long as I didn’t hurt her too badly, I was in control. And as long as I was in control, no one would ever have to know.

  Elijah’s crying in front of me and I know he knows all of my secrets now.

  I cut to feel the pain,

  outside and inside,

  until all of me is the same.

  I remember the words. I could’ve written them in blood.

  “I’m fine,” I insist. But I can’t look at him. I can’t see those eyes filled with tears and mistrust and anger.

  And judgment.

  I am not fine.

  But I have been better with him here.

  I want to beg him not to go. I want to share all of my softness and secrets with him.

  I want him to save me one more time.

  “You’re not fine,” he tells me, bringing my hands to his chest, pulling me closer to him. “Look at your hands. You’re not fucking fine.”

  “And you weren’t there!” I yell, attempting to tug myself away. “You want to know why I didn’t tell you? Because you weren’t around!”

  “I’ve always been here, even when I felt like a dumbass, wanting you in a way you clearly didn’t want me.”

  He lets go of my hands and I stumble back, my eyes wide and my heart beating in a rhythm it’s never known before.

  “It ain’t like you gave me a ton of reasons to keep coming back,” he reminds me. “So don’t give me that bullshit, T. You know you’re one of the most important people in my life. You know this. I’ve spent ten years showing it. What the hell else do you need?”

  All while he speaks, my brain hurts. The truth sounded prettier in my version of the story.

  And maybe I am the fucked-up person in all of this. Maybe I’m the reason he deceived Lea. I’m certainly the reason he was mean to Vivian. I’m the reason he got suspended and had detention for a month.

  I’m the problem.

  “Why do you want me?” I ask, sitting on the edge of my bed. “All I do is make shit harder for you.”

  He crouches in front of me and it all feels too emotional for me.

  These damn highs that I threaten to dive from.

  When he places his hands on my cheeks, I close my eyes.

  These lows that I crash-land into.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do without you, T?”

  Tears slip past closed lids.

  “You’re so important to so many people. What are you doing to yourself, baby?” His hands slide down my neck, over my neck, shoulders, arms, brushing past my tattoo, and coming to a stop at my hands. “You can’t do this anymore. Please,” he begs, the tears in his voice forcing my eyes open.

  He presses kisses to my palms as I nod.

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  One word won’t make the urge disappear. But sharing the weight of my depression makes the load feel lighter than it has in such a long time.

  When he lets go of my hands, I wipe my tears.

  “Where are you going?” I ask him as I watch him gather his things.

  “I want to show you something.” His bare back is untouched, smooth in its brown beauty. He puts his shirt on, and I almost wish he could always be shirtless. “I’ll be back.”

  He bounds down the stairs. In the quiet, I hear his car start and pull away.

  And then it’s just me, my book of not-so-secrets, and my box of sins.

  MY BACK SHOULD HURT. I should feel silly.

  But when Elijah walks back into my bedroom, his laptop in his arms, I smile up at him from my place on the floor.

  The sun is out. The birds are singing.

  And the floor is more comfortable than I imagined it would be.

  He doesn’t question it, squatting down with a grunt to sit against my bed. He caresses my leg as he sets his laptop down with his free hand.

  “I want to show you something,” he repeats.

  “So I’ve gathered,” I respond, each syllable taking its time. I am the epitome of peace, which contradicts the anxiety that wants to break down the doors and barriers I’ve built within the last hour or so.

  I didn’t let myself wonder if he’d be back.

  And it did wonders to feel in control of myself for once.

  “Are you nervous?” he asks.

  I shake my head and ask him the same thing.

  “A little,” he says.

  “Why?” I’m so used to being the one worried about anything I could possibly overthink. Hearing Elijah suffer from even a fraction of nerves makes me wonder what this is about.

  And that wondering chips away at those barriers I’d built.

  Knock, knock.

  Who’s there?

  Motherfucking anxiety.

  “Because it’s my turn to share my secrets,” he says.

  He starts messing with his laptop and I’m too busy attempting to slink back into myself where it’s safe to notice he’s started playing music.

  A song I’ve heard many times before. A song he released during the time we weren’t really speaking to each other.

  There was an element of longing to it, and I always wondered how he’d known exactly what I’d been feeling.

  It was everything I’d needed to hear from the person I needed to hear it from.

  Only, he wasn’t saying it to me.

  I felt like I’d walked in on a private conversation he’d been holding with someone else. Someone luckier than I was.

  Still, the lyrics held me in a way nothing else had. My hands were empty, but my heart had been so full.

  “I know this one,” I whi
sper, my smile turning my words up toward him.

  “It’s my most popular one. It’s the one my dad’s been trying to get the word out about. A couple of people seemed interested, but we never heard back.”

  He doesn’t sound defeated and I sit up to face him.

  “Is that your secret, then?” I ask, my nose so close to his.

  I can feel his smile more than I can see it.

  “I wrote this song for you, T. Couldn’t you hear it?”

  We are all bundles of so many moments. And everything I am has been touched by Elijah Williams.

  Even when I hadn’t known he was reaching out, he’d been touching me.

  22

  NEW THINGS

  I always wondered what it’d be like to bring a boy home to meet my parents.

  I never thought it’d be a guy they already knew.

  And if I thought hard enough, never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be Elijah.

  The look on my mother’s face tells me she thought differently.

  There’s a knowing smile as she sits across from us, peeling platanos to prep them for tostones.

  “So,” she starts, “where are you guys going tonight?”

  Elijah smiles and takes my hand. I swear I can feel her eyes boring into the display of affection, but I choose to ignore her.

  “He’s taking me to meet some of his friends,” I answer, unable to stop my nerves from doing little flips in my stomach.

  “All this time and you’ve never met his friends?” My mom’s voice is a touch higher than before just as my dad walks in.

  “He had to convince her to give him a chance before he brought her around competition,” my dad says with a wink, kissing my mom before reaching over and offering his hand to Elijah. “Am I right?”

  “Exactly right,” Elijah answers, taking my dad’s hand for a second. “What time should I have her back?”

  “She’s eighteen in less than two weeks. Just have her back,” my dad tells him.

  This is going a lot smoother than I could’ve hoped for, I think to myself. Partly because I wonder if they thought I’d somehow been dating Elijah all along.

  When we get into his car, Elijah’s smile is the biggest I’ve seen it all night.

  “I bet you’re so pleased,” I say, rolling my eyes as I buckle my seatbelt.