by Mara White
“And Yari?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. She just started kissing me.”
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” Yari says. “You want to come, Lucky?”
“What about Mike?” Lucky asks.
“He’s passed out, there’s no way he could get it up anyway. Come on, Belén. Let’s go get naked.”
In Mike’s room, Yari strips me down. She starts sucking my tits and licking my nipples. I get the feeling she’s done this before. I look over at Lucky and his eyes are burning. I smile at him and giggle as Yari makes out with my breasts. I step out of my lace thong as gracefully as possible, never losing eye contact with Lucky.
“Are you coming or what?” Yari says, throwing her own panties at Lucky.
She’s naked. She’s pretty hot. I wouldn’t even have been able to tell that she’d recently had a baby.
Lucky walks over to us and Yari grabs his face. She’s kissing him and seriously going at it with tongue. She can’t always kiss like this. I think she’s still acting. I watch in awe as Lucky backs away a bit and lifts his shirt over his head. He’s so ripped now, like someone out of a fitness magazine. I guess that’s the Marines. He keeps kissing Yari but he looks at me. He puts out his hand to me and pulls me in closer. I’m wavering on my feet. I stumble in and feel my body make contact with his.
Then Lucky is kissing me. I come alive under his touch, like I’ve suddenly sobered up. My skin prickles and love rushes through me like a drug. With a surge of adrenaline encouraging me, I stand on my tiptoes and press my body into his. He wraps his arms around me and carries me to the wall. His kiss opens me up and I feel like I’m freefalling.
Lucky smashes his mouth into mine and our kiss is a battle. We’re fighting to see who can put more feeling into it and our tongues are the weapons. I forget where we are. I forget that we’re cousins. I lose myself in his kiss, because it’s a battle I don’t want to win. I want to lose and be taken, lose and be conquered by him.
Lucky pushes me to the bed and is immediately on top of me, ripping my arms above my head. He kisses my neck and grinds into me.
“Jesus Christ, Bey, I’ve missed you,” he says like he’s fighting for air. My chest is heaving too and I press my body into his. I want to die here like this. In Lucky’s arms, surrounded by his love. He’s fucking my mouth with his tongue; Lucky’s love to me is primal, this isn’t a crush. I spread my legs and push my pelvis up into him seeking to be filled. He bites hard into my earlobe and I jerk and moan in response.
“Excuse me, motherfuckers!” Yari says, clearing her throat. She’s got her hand on her hip and she’s shaking her head. She leans down to the floor and picks up one of Mike’s discarded t-shirts and pulls it over her head. “Y’all are fucking disgusting. That’s called incest, you know.”
I whimper in response and shrink away from Lucky’s chest. He responds with a strong tug on my arms. He presses into me harder, refusing the separation between our bodies.
“You fucking started it, Yari. I was doing just fine until you provoked me!”
“Luciano, I was just trying to have a little fun ‘cause we’re all fucked up and it’s Christmas. I wasn’t planning on y’all’s perverted-ass family love reunion. She’s like your sister. You sick fucks! Now get off my boyfriend’s bed, he don’t want your dirty asses on it.”
I grab my bra and tug it back on in humiliation. I pull my pants up and stand, then I run to the living room to retrieve my shirt. I’m frantic to leave. To get the fuck out of here, go back to Poughkeepsie. It’s being near Lucky that brings out the sickness in me.
“Len, slow down. Everything is okay,” Lucky says. He’s standing in just his jeans and hasn’t bothered to put his shirt on. “Nothing happened that hasn’t happened before. We can get through this. We just got drunk and messed up—that’s all.”
“It can’t happen again. That’s why I can’t come home. I can’t see you, Lucky, without falling back in love with you!”
Lucky’s eyes widen when I say it, his lips part in surprise. He stares me down like I’ve shocked him into silence. He’s got no reply.
Mike looks like he’s woken up and can’t figure out what’s happening. Yari is eyeing us smugly and shaking her head. Lucky has his arms across his chest and looks like he’s in pain. I grab my coat off the hook and run out the door. I’ve got to get away.
I barely sleep even though I’ve drunk more alcohol than ever. When I close my eyes all I see is Lucky, everywhere. I see his hard body and his soft, fiery heart. I feel his flesh against mine and I shudder all over with just the thought of his touch. I get up in the middle of the night and raid the medicine cabinet. I take aspirin for my head and Advil for my fever. I run Vaporub under my nose and across my forehead. I have no idea what for, but Mami rubbed that stuff all over me whenever I got sick, so somehow it’s comforting, just the minty, medicinal smell of it.
I’m sick, in more ways than one. I never should have come home; how did I get so stupid? Mami would have been willing to make the trip upstate. I have to stay away from Lucky. I can’t take the torture anymore.
Exhausted and desperate, I pull the jar of honey from the back of the fridge. I unscrew the cap and dip my finger into the amber goo and bring it to my lips. I suck the honey off of my finger and replace the lid. I should empty it out and release my glass heart. I should put someone else’s name in there so I stand a chance at love in this life. I should smash the jar, throw it off the top of the roof. Because my heart is suffocating at the bottom of a thick well, under a lifetime of layers of Lucky’s sweet love.
I’m too weak to resist him. I don’t know how to say no. When will my life get easier? The stress is destroying me. I don’t even know how to want anybody else.
When will I ever be freed from this sickness? When will love stop feeling like a curse?
I leave early in the morning and Mami cries when I tell her.
“Please reconsider, mi vida, the snow is coming down hard,” she says as she helps me pack my suitcase.
“I can’t be around Luciano, Mom, it’s breaking my heart.”
Mami sniffs and nods and folds up my pants. Maybe she really does understand after all. She doesn’t accuse me of being dirty or inappropriate or anything. She just tells me she loves me and tries to make me take a wad of cash. She pulls it down from the flour tin on top of the kitchen cabinet, pressing it into my hand and nodding, “Sí, Belén, toma.”
“I don’t need it, Mom. I’ve got my job at the library. You’re already doing enough for me. Save it so you can make the trip up when I graduate.”
I drag my suitcase through the snow and hail a gypsy cab on Broadway. I tell him, “Port Authority.” I like the train but the bus is cheaper and I’m okay with sitting and thinking for the next few hours. I need to clear my head and my heart of everything Luciano. I feel a little bit awkward about not saying goodbye to Titi, to Yari and the whole rest of my family. But I can’t say goodbye to Lucky. I can’t see him again. Ever. I dig the red beach glass pieces out of my pocket and toss them in a snowbank. They look so beautiful against the white backdrop, almost like they’re glowing. Someone else will find them. Someone else will get lucky. As I walk away, I can’t help but feel like I left the pieces of my shattered heart all over the sidewalk.
Lucky
Being a grunt ain’t so bad. It’s like a cool job where you’re always hanging out with friends. ‘Cept there’s never enough down time and never enough sleep. Every day we’re learning something new, and not all of it’s to prepare for combat. We learn every possible scenario before deployment. We’ve done rope-tying and rappelling off cliffs, wilderness survival and even a day spent learning how to rescue drowning civilians. Turns out I’m a strong swimmer. Who would’ve thought? I grew up in the South Bronx. It’s not like we were swimming in the East River
or up and down the Hudson.
I love the weather in North Carolina and most of the guys here are cool. There’s another dude from the Bronx in my battalion and we hit it off from day one. We got the same background so we had more or less the same upbringing.
On the weekends when we get a break, we go into Jacksonville to get drunk or to play darts and pool. I never go home even when we get a ninety-six; I chill here at the base. The real reason we go into town is to pick up women. I got my swagger and I’m as fit as I’ll ever be. It isn’t hard to get laid. I pretty much got chicks crawling all over me. I haven’t met anybody special—don’t know what I’d do if I did. But I do like fucking for sport. I’m always the winner, a natural champion.
Being here makes me feel like somebody different, and I don’t mind being a number, it takes all the pressure off. I’m one of those guys who looks forward to deployment. Some of the Marines that’ve been around a while say it’s typical of a grunt to be itching to get out of here. They say it can be boring over there—that you can get stuck for weeks on a mission where all you do is sit and wait. Or that shit can get grueling, you trudge for miles in uniform carrying weapons and weight only to trudge right back again in the dark to where you came from without ever firing your damn weapon.
But I don’t know, I’m still itching to go. I want to fucking do something, it’s like I gotta get it out of me. There’s a part of me that’s unsettled and I don’t know how to put it into words. The fire is always there. It’s continually burning. I feel like nothing gets me going enough anymore. Even when we’re running and taking cover in ditches, firing weapons or learning hand-to-hand combat, I’m still not getting enough of a charge—that feeling where adrenaline rips through you and all you can hear is your own heart slamming in your chest; the drumbeat deafening your own ears, just to remind you that you’re made of blood and guts even though you feel indestructible. I crave that feeling—the ultimate high. I used to get that shit easily back in the Heights with a needle in my arm.
I had another source too, that would never run dry. I could get that same feeling just being around Lenny. Breathe in her scent and my heart is on fire and my blood is racing down the speedway. She turns me into a fucking animal whenever I’m around her. All I can think about is fucking her into senselessness and dragging her away so that nothing and nobody will touch her. Belén—the sickness comes back even when I just let myself think of her. She’s the fucking thorn in my side, but she’s also the secret spark that ignites me.
Belén
Spring semester I win the Anthropology honors award for my paper on consanguineous marriage in North Africa and how it preserves cultural continuity. I like to study what I know and I can’t get enough of researching that particular subject.
Lucky is deployed for the first time and I hear from both my mom and my aunt. He’s been sent for a short tour in Iraq. Titi tells me not to worry, that Lucky is excited to go and anxious to get some real experience. I watch the news like a hawk and I pore over the papers. I study the conflict history like a maniac and get CNN and Google alerts on my phone, so that I never miss an update.
I never miss group therapy, either, and Safari Guy and I have become friends. His name is Bryan and we sort of naturally fell into becoming each other’s sponsors. But in co-dependency group therapy you have to watch a really bad and dated forty-minute video about how not to become co-dependent with your sponsor.
So Bryan and I go out for pie and coffee after our session. He talks about Jan and I don’t really talk about Lucky. She’s still drinking and the latest is that she totaled their truck. So Bryan takes the bus to group and these days and he has to walk to work until the insurance kicks in. Jan doesn’t work. She sleeps all day and heads to the bars at night. She’s got liver cirrhosis now and has to take medication, she isn’t supposed to be drinking.
“Bryan, you work so hard for your part. Have you ever talked to Jan about going to rehab?”
“And leave her alone with the bills and the house? There’s no way. I couldn’t.”
“Uh, I meant Jan. She could probably use a stint at Betty Ford or one of those places. I think, and it’s just my opinion, Bryan, that you are getting enough help for yourself. Let’s make Jan take some responsibility. See how she does without you.”
“I can’t be separated from her, Belén, I’d be miserable without her. Plus, she’d never survive. Who’d make sure she didn’t OD? I count her anti-depressants, all of her meds every night!”
“I think that’s the point, that you’d let go to get healthy,” I say, taking a bite of my chocolate-peanut-butter pie, which is comprised basically of pudding and candy bars in a wedge shape pressed on top of a cookie.
I don’t ever want to be Bryan. I’d rather never see Lucky again than hang on his every breath and obsess over his well-being, which is kind of what I’m doing. I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. I put it on silent and pay the tab for both of us.
The door to our room is open and I catch Lucy walking out with our television. The cords are dragging along the floor and she’s sweating.
“What are you doing, Lucy? Do you want me to help with that?”
“Getting rid of your news feed. I can’t fucking take it.”
“I’ve turned into Bryan,” I say, setting down my backpack.
“I can’t room with you, BeyBey, if you continue to obsess. He chose what he wanted to do and you can’t control it.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t even know what he’s doing over there! For all you know he could still be on base cleaning toilets!”
I stay up all night deleting the bookmarks from my computer and taking the alerts off my phone. I email my mom to tell her I’m news-free and that if anything really big happens I’m relying on her to email me.
Lucy and I plan on getting an apartment together off-campus for our senior year. I’ll have to convince her I’m sane if I ever want that to happen.
The following morning I tell her I’ve cleaned up my act. That I’m done being lovesick and I’m moving on with my life.
“’Bout time, you lunatic. Let’s go celebrate with pancakes.”
After breakfast I do something I never thought I’d do. I call Jeremy and invite him up for the weekend.
“But I thought you didn’t like him?” Lucy says when I tell her. “That kid creeped me the fuck out, I’ll tell you that much.”
“I don’t think I do, but I’m going to find out. Dr. Davidson always brings up the point that I got wet and she thinks it’s significant.”
“Belén, don’t bring up wet pussy while I’m eating my breakfast.”
Chapter 18
Belén
I’ll graduate before Lucy; I’m more than a semester ahead. But I think I’ll stick around and figure out what I want before jumping straight into grad school. I’d like to travel and see the world, maybe join the Peace Corps. I don’t want to ditch her with our lease either, but Lucy swears she’s cool either way. But I don’t believe her.
We’ve got a short break coming up and Jeremy has invited me away. Turns out his family has a time-share that Jeremy has the keys to and can use whenever he wants. He’ll drive me back to the city and from there we’ll fly to North Carolina for the weekend.
Jeremy has come up a few times since I’ve tried to rekindle our thing. We made out pretty heavily and I tried giving him a blowjob. I don’t know if I did it right, but he did come all over me. I don’t feel that much attraction, but in truth, I’m desperate to feel something and lose my virginity before I graduate from college. I’ll feel weird with a bachelor’s degree and not enough sexual experience to impress a twelve-year-old.
Jeremy and I drive to the hospital and grab Mami on her lunch-break. She hugs me hard and surprises me by pulling Jeremy into a warm hug as well. We take her to lunch at a new
, fancy bistro meant for rich doctors. I urge her to order appetizers and we try a bunch of stuff on the menu. Jeremy is so sweet to her and it kind of melts my heart. He insists she order dessert, even if it’s to-go so she can take it home. We talk about my upcoming early graduation and how Jeremy and his parents are planning on coming.
Mami kisses me and hugs me hard when we part ways and whispers, “Belén, I can’t believe how much you’ve grown up.”
We go to Jeremy’s beautiful place so we can see his parents. I’ve met them briefly before but this is the first time I sit and chat with them. Jeremy’s mom, Belinda, has his shocking blue eyes. She’s impressed that I’m graduating early and surprised that I majored in biology.
“I don’t know, Belén, I always took you to be the artist type.”
She tells me about the Outer Banks and how her family used to vacation there when they were young. But then after Jeremy was born they started staying near the Emerald Isle. Jeremy’s dad, Tom, gets a call on his cell and he stands up to take it. He laughs heartily with whomever he’s talking to and then says, “No, Jeremy is here with his girlfriend.”
I’m shocked and a little frightened at the word and my eyes search out Jeremy. He’s dragging his packed suitcase to the door and he smiles and winks at me. I feel warmth flush through my body and think, this is going to be the weekend when I’ll lose my virginity—like it or not.
The flight is effortless and Jeremy has champagne and I drink sparkling cider in first class. He toasts to our first weekend away together; clinking his glass to mine, he says, “To us!”
It sounds ridiculous, like something out of a manual for spending meaningful, quality time as a couple.