“Me, too.” I pulled my weak body off the couch.
“When you get in there today,” she said, “maybe try and do something with that hair?”
I pulled off my beanie. “You mean this?”
She took a few steps toward me and rustled my hair a little, which caught me off guard. “At least you don’t have to worry about going bald,” she said.
I pulled my beanie back on.
“Anyway, if you change your mind about dinner just come up. Doesn’t matter what time.”
“Cool.” I opened the door for her.
Haley did the “eye contact” thing, which led to the “unbalanced” thing. “Because I don’t see how a call home can take all night. But whatever.” She gave a little wave and left.
It wasn’t until a few hours later that I discovered Haley had left her towel and bathroom bag in Mike’s master bathroom.
Breaking Point
I didn’t go up to Haley’s for dinner that night.
Didn’t call home, either.
I ate the rest of Mike’s chocolate bar and drank a plastic cup full of vodka and played music in the bathroom, and then I did something kind of weird, I guess. I fell asleep in the bathtub. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I passed out or anything. I just didn’t feel like going to the living room. Or the spare bedroom. So I lay Mike’s guitar on the bathroom floor and climbed into the tub and slid down so that I could rest my head against the lip of it, and I closed my eyes and thought about my life.
Back home I had known exactly who I was, but out here, in New York, I didn’t have a clue. Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. And I was brutally hungry now. It felt like someone was wringing my insides out like a washcloth.
All I wanted to do was have one of those deep talks me and my mom used to have.
But I couldn’t.
When I woke up, I had a slight hangover and Olive was sitting on the toilet, staring at me, and I had this intense feeling of shame. Because of the cat. Seriously. I didn’t want her to see me this way. Sleeping in a bathtub. You know how they say animals can sense emotional shit way beyond what humans are capable of? I wondered what Olive was sensing about me as she sat there staring.
Or maybe I didn’t want to know.
Just as I was climbing out of the tub, I heard Haley knocking again. I pulled on my beanie and rushed to the front door. Before I opened it, though, I had a moment of panic. My clothes. I was wearing the same jeans and shirt she’d seen me in the day before. But it’s not like I could pretend I wasn’t home.
I swung open the door, saying: “I’m the one who got catsup all over myself today. I had to change back into my clothes from yesterday.”
Haley was standing there with more than a change of clothes this time. She had a plate of muffins, too. “I baked these this morning,” she said, ignoring my catsup lie, “and I need them out of my house so I don’t, like, eat every single one in the next fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling another strange surge of emotion.
Instead of handing me the plate, she pushed past me and went into the kitchen. “They’re banana nut, by the way. I’ll stick them in the fridge so Olive doesn’t—”
“No, wait!” I shouted.
But it was too late.
Haley froze, staring into Mike’s empty fridge. It took a while before she turned around, wearing a confused expression. “There’s nothing in here.”
My heart sank.
She stuck the plate of muffins on the shelf and closed the fridge and turned her attention toward the empty cupboards. I didn’t even try to stop her this time, just watched her open and close all the doors. “Why’d you lie to me?” she asked in a hurt voice.
I tried to laugh it off. “Lie to you? I didn’t lie.”
“You said Mike and Janice left you groceries.”
“They did,” I said, trying to maintain my smile. “I just … went through them already. Pretty stupid, right? It’s not even Christmas until tomorrow. Guess I’ll go pick a few things up at the corner bodega.”
Haley went to the trash can by the sink and lifted the lid. “There’s nothing in the trash, Shy.”
I leaned against the wall and didn’t say anything.
“I’m gonna take a shower.” She pointed toward the fridge. “And then we’re gonna talk.”
“About what?”
“Everything,” Haley answered. “In the meantime, eat the muffins.” Then she turned and headed off toward the master bathroom.
Soon as I heard the door click shut behind her, I went to the fridge and stared at the plate of muffins. I peeled back the cellophane she’d used to cover them and took one out and smelled it. They were still warm. Saliva pooled around my tongue. My nutrient-starved brain felt swollen and slow.
I needed to eat.
Badly.
But I couldn’t.
Not with Haley still in the apartment. She couldn’t know how hungry I was. Because if she did, she’d know how different our lives were. And she’d probably stop coming down here to use the shower.
I put the muffin back and closed the fridge and went to the couch and pretended to read. When Haley came out of the bathroom this time—hair damp, face freshly made up—she went directly into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said on her way back into Mike’s living room. “Seriously, Shy.”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I answered in an even tone.
She stared at me for several long seconds. Then she threw her hands in the air and let herself out the front door.
Once I was sure she wasn’t going to come barging back in, I flung open the fridge door and took out the plate of muffins and sat on the floor and shoved the entire first one into my mouth, and I chewed and chewed and chewed, while at the same time grabbing the next one, getting ready to shove that one into my mouth, too.
And I began to sob.
I don’t even know why.
But it was the first time I’d felt tears on my cheeks since the day of my mom’s funeral. And they felt surprisingly good. They felt alive. Mostly because they reminded me of my mom, I think. And because it felt so amazing to fill my stomach.
I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time.
Eating and crying.
Crying and eating.
Trying not to think about anything but Haley’s muffins.
What Would It Be Like?
Maybe I’m more like my old man than I realize.
Remember how I said my sis has to sometimes drag him to the dinner table? That’s pretty much what Haley had to do for me tonight.
She came down at around seven, but she wasn’t looking to use the shower. She grabbed me by the wrist, without saying a word, and led me out of Mike’s place, onto the elevator, then into her amazing-smelling apartment where she sat me at her dining room table. “Stay,” she said, like I was some kind of German shepherd. Then she marched into her kitchen and pulled open her oven door.
I sat there, looking at my hands and thinking about back home.
Christmas Eve is always better than Christmas for us Espinozas. All the cousins and aunties and uncles show up at my grandma’s, and the whole place smells like tortillas and chile colorado, and Auntie Cecilia brings in heaping plates of sweet tamales, and my uncle Guillermo sneaks us hits off the Patrón bottle he always dresses up in Christmas wrapping paper (“A little present for my own self, esé!”). In the living room, all the men tell stories about work, while the women in the kitchen tell stories about the men. And the whole apartment is filled with nonstop laughter, even when one of the little ones knocks something over, a glass frame or crystal figurine, we all just laugh and laugh and laugh, even Grandma as she sweeps the glass shards into her ancient metal dust pan.
Home, man.
I missed that shit so much.
I missed them.
“There’s no way I’m going to let you starve down there on Christmas Eve,” Haley said, walking
back into the dining room with a plate full of food. She set it down in front of me.
“I wasn’t starving,” I said, staring at her beautiful dinner.
She lowered her eyes at me. “Yes, you were, Shy.”
“Okay, maybe a little.”
Why was she doing all of this for me? I wondered. Because I’d loaned her Mike’s shower? If that was it, she was definitely getting the raw end of the deal. All I’d had to do is let her in the front door. Judging by what was on my plate, she’d busted her ass in the kitchen. She’d grilled some sort of white fish and made roasted potatoes and sourdough bread and these broccoli pieces with long stems I always forget the name of.
“You want a Pinot Gris or a Chardonnay?” she shouted from the kitchen.
“Are you talking about wine?” I called back.
She came out with a second plate of food and set it down across from me. “Of course I’m talking about wine. What else would I be talking about?”
“When it comes to that stuff,” I told her, squirming in my chair, “you’re gonna have to dumb it down a little. All I know is red or white.”
She stood there, staring at me. “Well, they’re both white. White goes with fish.”
“So, that settles it then,” I said. “We’ll go with the white.”
“I know, but—oh, forget it.” She went back into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of wine and poured our glasses full. “Cheers,” she said, holding up her glass.
“Salud,” I said, the way my old man always does.
We clinked glasses.
After the half dozen muffins I’d wolfed down for breakfast—that’s right, I ate every last one of those bastards—I was no longer desperate. But my entire body came alive when I started putting down Haley’s perfectly grilled fish. This was real food. With real nutritional value. I felt like I was turning from a floppy, stuffed bear into an actual human being.
The wine wasn’t hurting, either, and Haley was quick to refill our glasses.
“Oh, and don’t think you’re getting off the hook,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“The truth game,” she said. “Just because I didn’t take a shower tonight doesn’t mean we’re not sharing.”
“This dinner’s amazing,” I said, pointing at my half-empty plate.
“It’s just baked cod.” Haley paused for a few seconds before adding: “But thank you. I need to be better at taking compliments.”
“You go first this time.” I stabbed another piece of long-stemmed broccoli. I don’t know why, but I was excited to hear what Haley had to share. Maybe I was kind of getting into her corny game.
“Okay.” Haley took a sip of wine and then just sat there, holding her glass, like she was thinking. “Sometimes I worry. About myself, I mean. I don’t have a … ‘thing.’ I got good grades all through high school, right? Strike that. I got very good grades. I was valedictorian. And I scored high on the SATs. And I had all the extracurriculars my counselor said I should have for my college applications. I volunteered at a mental health clinic during sophomore year, but I only did it because I knew it would look good. Messed up, right?”
It was at that moment that I realized how truly beautiful Haley was. She had a perfect complexion and high cheekbones and there were these cute little freckles surrounding her nose. But I don’t just mean physically. A lot of girls look good to me—I have what you might call a flexible aesthetic. But there was something about Haley that went beyond looks. Like how she had these dimples whenever she grinned. And when she said something self-effacing, she’d shrug her shoulders a little and tilt her head and glance at her feet. And sometimes when her light brown eyes locked on to my dark brown ones, it was like she was reaching a hand all the way into my chest, like she was digging around in there for the most honest thing she could find. It made me want to quit hiding, even though I’d be taking the chance of her not liking what she discovered.
“The problem is,” Haley went on, “I never understood why I was doing anything—other than I knew it was expected.” She refilled both our glasses again. “And I’m not even saying my parents pushed me. Or my counselors at school. It was me. I wanted to excel. But every decision I made through high school was based on how I thought it might make me look on paper. I never once stopped to think about what I actually liked to do. That’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“More like honest.” Usually, I liked to keep quiet. I liked to listen. But the wine was just reaching my head, and I felt oddly comfortable, so I let myself talk. “Here’s a question,” I told her. “Would you rather be great at something you like, or just okay at something you love?”
“Jesus, I don’t know,” Haley said. “That’s hard. What about you? Sounds like this is coming from a personal place.”
I stuck my silverware on my empty plate and leaned back with my wineglass. I felt like I was in a movie or something. One about rich British people, like the show Haley had mentioned before. Talking all deep in a beautiful New York apartment. Swirling damn wine in an actual wineglass. The only other time I’d had wine, me and Jessica drank it out of shot glasses, because that’s all we could find at her stepdad’s place. “The one thing I know I love,” I said, “besides my family, is music. Guitar. But I also know I’m not that good at it.”
“You play down there sometimes, don’t you?”
“Me? No way, not at Mike’s. I’m talking about at my own place.” Stop lying! “Okay, maybe I mess around a little. Not for real, though.”
“I knew it,” Haley said. “At first I thought it was the radio, which must mean you’re pretty good.”
I shook my head, embarrassed. “Anyways, let’s just move on.”
Haley laughed. “Looks like I’m not the only one who could be better at taking compliments.”
After a short stretch of silence, one that didn’t even feel that awkward, I said, “I guess I don’t really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don’t know where to aim it yet. Is that kind of what you mean?”
“Exactly. And sometimes I get worried I’ll never know where to aim it.” Haley emptied the rest of the wine bottle into our glasses, but there were only a few drops left so she got up and opened the second one.
We talked for hours after dinner. When the second bottle of wine was gone, I raced downstairs to grab Mike’s bottle of vodka. When I came back, Haley fixed us vodka cranberries and we sat on the couch in the living room and we talked and talked and talked. Haley told me what it was like growing up in Oregon. I told her about life near the Mexican border. Haley described what she’d be doing back home right now—dinner at a fancy restaurant with her mom, dad, and little sister, followed by each of them opening one gift by the fire—and I told her about Christmas Eve at my grandma’s.
By midnight I was officially drunk, and as much as I liked talking to Haley, I also wondered what it would be like to kiss Haley, so I started down a very different road. “Hey, Haley,” I said.
“Hey, Shy.”
“Maybe it’s my turn to make up the rules.”
“Uh-oh.” Haley looked away from me, sensing where I was going. “This isn’t my game anymore, though. This is just two people talking. Please tell me you know the difference.”
“I know,” I said. “But I just maybe … sort of…”
“What?”
“I wonder how it would feel to, like, you know, hold your hand. That’s all.” I set down my wineglass and faced her. “Like if we were on an actual date.”
Haley forced a laugh. “We wouldn’t be on an actual date, though. Because I have a boyfriend back home, remember?”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “The patient guy. I almost forgot about him.”
It was true. I’d gotten so caught up in the moment I completely forgot about the world outside of the apartment complex. I picked up my wineglass again, sipped a little more vodka cranberry.
/> That’s when Haley did something that surprised me. She set down her glass, then took my glass out of my hand and set it down, too. “But it’s not like you’re talking about getting married, right? You’re talking about holding hands. Hypothetically.”
I swallowed hard. “To test the feel.”
“Which I suppose is pretty harmless in the grand scheme of things.”
“Though, I’ll be honest.” I touched Haley’s bare ankle. “A small part of me might also be talking about marrying you.”
She slapped my hand away. “See, this is why I never should’ve taken a shower down there. Showers can lead to hand-holding, which can lead to.… People are better off growing Christmas dreads.”
Haley smoothed her pretty hair behind her ears and reached for my hand.
I could barely breathe.
It was everything I wanted, but at the same time, it was scary as shit, too. Because I knew myself. I felt the “unbalanced thing” to the point that I couldn’t even think straight. Haley’s eyes locked inside mine. Her hand in my hand, which was making my whole arm tingle, my whole body.
“It’s a pretty good fit,” I managed to say.
She made it so our fingers were linked and, for a few long seconds, we just looked at each other. I glanced at her lips before forcing myself back to her eyes. Her face grew more serious, and she cleared her throat softly. “I have to admit something. It’s kind of bad.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, nervous she was going to pull the plug.
“I didn’t really procrastinate. I bought my plane ticket home weeks ago.”
In my drunken state it took me a few seconds to realize what she was saying. She’d chosen not to go home. Which meant she was avoiding something. Possibly someone. My heart pounded against the inside of my chest.
“I just never went to the airport,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m a coward.” She scooted a little closer to me on the couch. “Do you think less of me now?”
“Why would I?” I said.
She shrugged. “What are you thinking, then?”
I swallowed and stared at my drink for a couple seconds. When I looked back up at her I said, “I’m thinking about what it would be like to kiss your cheek.”
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 8