Tell Me That You're Mine

by Victoria De La O

  “How am I going to do that? You know how much I need this job.” My heart starts beating faster as I think of Diego.

  “If you want it bad enough, you’ll figure it out. Moms always do.”

  * * *

  By the time I leave work, it feels like I’m being released from a long prison sentence. I’ve been trying to call Ryan all day but he hasn’t answered. When I get home, he’s already left for work.

  I can only half focus on Diego as we play Jenga together. The whole time I’m corralling him into the bath, cleaning the dinner dishes, and tucking him in, all I can think about is seeing Ryan. I’m not proud of it. I don’t know how I came to rely on someone so completely in so short an amount of time. But it is what it is.

  Even still, I stay up listening for his car, and when I hear it, I run out to the back porch and pretend I’m reading. Smooth.

  “Hey,” he says, sounding more tired than I’ve ever heard him.

  “Hey. I’ve been calling.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I was super b-busy today.”

  “You have time to talk?”

  “Sure.” He sits down and puts his arm around me.

  I feel better already. I fist his shirt like a security blanket.

  “You’re m-mangling Kurt Cobain. Something wrong?”

  I let go of his shirt. “Yeah. Work is really shitty right now.”

  I tell him about Cara, and as I talk his hand tightens on my shoulder.

  “What a spoiled brat,” he says.

  “Pretty much. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. All I did today was compile a list of why I hate this job.”

  “What was on the l-list?”

  I tick off on my fingers. “Answering to so many different people, the sameness of everything. Being stuck in a cubicle all day. How everyone puts the company before all else. Like the time they bought the staff tickets to Cirque du Soleil, and people started shouting “Go, Jericho!” right before the show started. Who does that?”

  He laughs. “You c-could get another job.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m being a whiny child.”

  He sits up and looks at me. “Your b-brother said you wanted to go into business for yourself. Why not d-do that now?”

  I shrug. “I need the benefits. And it’s not stable enough.”

  “You can b-buy health insurance. Apply for a small business loan. I’m sure you’ll find c-clients.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  He frowns. “I know that. But that d-doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try or at least c-consider it.”

  “I have to think of Diego.”

  “Obviously. But it sounds like this isn’t about h-him. You s-seem scared.”

  “No. I’m being practical. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  He moves away from me as much as he can. “Yes I d-do. I’m not a kid.”

  “Your biggest worry is trying to pay rent.”

  I start shaking my head as soon as I say it. I know it was below the belt. I know it was nasty. And my only excuse is that I’m on the defensive, because he’s right. I’m terrified.

  He puts his head in his hands. “Shit, Eva.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I think you d-did.” He stands up to leave.

  I jump out of the loveseat. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m scared out of my mind, okay? I don’t know how to do this.”

  “What a day,” he mutters.

  “Please. I’m so, so sorry.” I put my hand on his neck.

  He sighs and puts his forehead on mine. “I’m j-just trying to help you.”

  “I know. But what if I try this and I fail? What if I lose my house, or can’t support Diego?”

  “That’s a lot of ‘ifs.’ One thing at a t-time,” he says.

  I nod. “Okay.”

  He takes my face in his palms. “I know you c-can do this, you crazy woman.”

  That fills me with hope—despite the panic, despite the fear. And that’s how I know I love Ryan. He makes everything better. He makes me happy. Even more important, I want to make him happy.

  “Stay with me tonight,” I tell him, running my hands up his chest.

  He sighs. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Anything wrong?”

  He shakes his head, but it’s unconvincing.

  If he doesn’t want to confide in me, maybe I can comfort him in other ways.

  “Come inside and I’ll make you feel better.” I run my lips up his neck as a demonstration.

  He shivers. “I don’t w-want to talk anymore.”

  “Then we won’t,” I whisper in his ear.

  He’s good to his word. We only moan out syllables and half-words, sweet nothings that are nonsense. There’s something almost desperate about the way he touches me, like he can’t get to my skin fast enough, or be inside me deep enough.

  He grabs my thigh and lifts my leg, until it’s twined around him.

  “There,” I say, so he thrusts harder.

  “Why me?” he says, as I bite on his shoulder so I don’t scream.

  “Because you’re the best person I know.” And then I’m dissolving into particles, and he’s muffling his own cries.

  I drift straight from bliss into sleep.

  * * *

  I wake up in the dark with Ryan’s arms coiled around me, a little disoriented. I know instinctively that he’s awake, too. It’s as though I can feel his mind buzzing.

  I rub my nose against his chest so he knows I’m awake.

  “Maybe being a good p-person isn’t enough,” he whispers.

  It takes me a minute to remember what I told him as I fell asleep.

  “Why are you so sad tonight?”

  “Feeling rootless, I guess.”

  I put my hand on his hair, let the soft locks sift through my fingers. “And yet you’re totally grounded. That’s why I love you.”

  He sets one hand on my stomach, as gently as a leaf coasting to the ground. He slides it up my body, stops at my chest, and draws an “X” over my heart.

  “I w-went to meet my father.”

  I trap his hand with my own. “What? When?”

  “Today.”

  My stomach tightens. I’m almost too scared to hear what happened.

  But Ryan is already telling me without saying a word. His breath is hitched, his body is stiff. He’s holding something powerful inside, and I know it’s not pleasant.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “Not much to t-tell. He d-didn’t show u-up.”

  That son of a bitch.

  I picture Ryan sitting somewhere, all alone, and I can’t catch my breath.

  I’ve never faced that kind of primal rejection. Marco was the closest I ever hope to get, and it wasn’t the same. He didn’t choose to be sick.

  But Ryan’s father had the chance to make things right—to step up for his son, to be a man—and he decided to abandon him all over again. My hatred of this man is fierce, but Ryan doesn’t need anger now. He needs love.

  I try to put my arms around him but he stays rigid.

  “I’m so sorry. He doesn’t deserve you.”

  “We’ve g-gone this long without h-him. It’s fine.”

  His voice is toneless. I wish I could see his face, his expressions. But maybe the darkness will make us both braver.

  “It’s not fine.”

  “He doesn’t w-want to know us, so . . .” His voice hitches and then dies.

  His body starts to shake, like he’s at the epicenter of an earthquake, and silent sobs rock him. He falls to pieces, his tears wetting my cheek as they course down his face. He goes limp and I hug him tight, as though I can hold these pieces together.

  “I’ve got you. Let it go.”

  He cries out the pain and betrayal—the despair that he and Jude really are alone in the world. Except they’re not.

  “I love you so much. I pull his mouth toward me and kiss him. “You’re not al
one.”

  That makes him cry harder so I whisper it over and over until his tears stop falling and he lets my words sink in.

  I reach over and grab him a tissue from the side table.

  Eventually he goes quiet, absentmindedly stroking my arm for comfort. I can still feel him thinking.

  “Let’s go away for the w-weekend. Just me and you.” His voice is hoarse from crying.

  “When?”

  He traces his fingers over me. “Next time Marco has Diego for the weekend. Let’s go to the c-coast.”

  The world has been so dark lately and we need some light. The thought of lying with Ryan under the sun, away from everyone, sounds like heaven.

  “You got it.”

  Chapter 21: Ryan

  Eva is a sight to behold in her red bikini. It reminds me of being a kid and getting one of those giant swirly lollipops that I couldn’t get the wrapper off fast enough. She is miles and miles of smooth skin, stretched out on a blanket that’s warmed by the sand. She’s getting more golden by the minute, while my chest turns pink.

  “It’s getting colder. Windier,” she says, her floppy beige hat shielding her eyes from me.

  “Because of the shiokaze. That’s s-sea breeze in Japanese.”

  Natural Bridges is filled with bodies today, Santa Cruz tourists and locals drawn by the hollowed-out rock arch that makes this beach special. There used to be three rock bridges, but only one is still standing.

  “Do you want to go?” I ask her as she pulls a shirt out of her bag.

  That thing is like a bottomless pit, filled with creams, sunglasses, her e-reader, my D.H. Lawrence novel, and, if I’m not mistaken, the season one box set of Scandal.

  “It’s so pretty. Let’s stay a bit longer.”

  “It’s lucky we got this warm of a weekend in November. But I’m nothing b-but goose bumps at this p-point.”

  She pouts. “Just five minutes.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  She flicks sand at me and turns on her stomach.

  “So tell me about the girls in Japan,” she says.

  “What?”

  “The women. There must have been someone.”

  “Well, there w-were several someones.”

  “Oh, that must have been fun,” she says without the slightest hint or jealousy or concern.

  “It was. For a while.”

  She props her head on her hands. “What do you mean?”

  I try to shift into a comfortable sitting position on the blanket, but it’s not my body that’s uneasy. “I was rebounding k-kind of hard for a while.”

  “So what you’re saying is you were whoring it up in Japan?”

  “Whoring?” I smack her on the butt, which distracts me for a second and she pushes me to the ground. I forgive her when she lays herself on top of me, her toes tickling my calf.

  “Did it help you get over Lizzie?”

  “We don’t have to t-talk about this.”

  “Why not?”

  Of course she would say that. She approaches everything like a bull charging a red cape. I run my hand down her spine, wishing she wasn’t wearing a shirt so I could somehow absorb all that strength. Siphon it, like a guy sucking gas out of someone’s tank.

  “It helped rebuild my c-confidence at first. But then it made me lonelier. Can’t outrun your n-nature, I guess.”

  “Which is what?”

  I stare up at the shifting clouds, one of which is shaped like the crown Max wears in Where the Wild Things Are.

  “There’s been a clock counting down in my h-head since I was eleven.”

  “When your mom died.” Her pinkie is playing with the hair on my forearm and it tingles.

  “Yeah. There’s an urgency—like I can’t s-start my life soon enough.”

  “But you’re living it now. Every day, no?”

  “Yes. But when I waste t-time, it makes me crazy. And random hookups felt like killing time.”

  “So your nature is to dive into a relationship.”

  “I guess so. Yeah.”

  I wonder if that scares her, or if it makes me sound desperate. But it can’t be any surprise given how fast she and I have moved.

  “When you dive without looking, you might hit a shallow bottom,” she says.

  “Then m-maybe one of us needs to stay level-headed.” I don’t mean that in the slightest. Fuck logic and caution and common sense. I want wild, crazy love with someone I’m going to grow old and die with. Because I don’t know when that last part is going to come, and the universe couldn’t care less about my fifty-year plan.

  She draws circles on my arm. “Yes, one of us should be sensible.”

  Thankfully, I can tell she doesn’t mean it either.

  I tap her on the shoulder. “Then tag, you’re it. Because it’s t-too late for me.”

  “Damn you, Ryan,” she says, right before she kisses me under the blue sky and the rolling clouds, next to a rock bridge that has withstood time and the elements while everything else around it crumbled into the sea.

  * * *

  The window of our hotel room is open, so I can still feel the ocean air on my skin—especially since I’m not wearing a stitch. Unless you count Eva, who’s draped across me.

  “I’m getting hungry,” she whispers, tickling my chest with her breath.

  “Starving.” We haven’t left the bed since we got home from the beach. Although most of that time she was making me binge-watch Scandal, which I’ll admit was pretty good. “We should probably get dressed for d-dinner.”

  “I don’t want to move,” she says, her voice slurred like she’s drunk. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve done nothing? It’s amazing.”

  After the TV marathon, she took a half-hour bath and I gave her a foot massage. And you would have thought I had given her the best sex of her life, the way she moaned.

  I pull my arms out from under her so I can rub her shoulders. “What about when Marco has Diego?”

  “I’m always hustling to catch up on stuff I didn’t do during the week—oh, that feels so good,” she says as I rub away her knots.

  “Then let’s d-do this more often.”

  “Okay. I promise next time we’ll have sex the whole time.”

  “Liar. You’re g-going to sit out on the deck reading one of your spy novels all day.”

  “Actually, I want to lay on a lounge chair and have someone feed me grapes, like in those old Cleopatra movies.”

  “Would I have to d-dress like Julius Caesar or something?”

  Her laugh echoes through the room. “What’s it with you and costumes? And by the way, you do get that you’re the slave in this scenario, right?”

  “Oh, of course. Sorry.”

  She traces her fingers down my hip. “Okay, good.”

  As much as we want to stay in bed, our hunger drives us out. I watch Eva over my shoulder as she gets dressed—slipping on a dress, fussing with her earrings, glossing on some lipstick. The rituals of a woman.

  So I button up my pressed shirt. Slip on a pair of new khakis. Slide on a leather belt. Because for Eva, this is a resurrection. She’s reviving the woman she was always meant to be—the one Marco buried. I don’t know why she chose me to do it with, but I’m going to make it worth her while. Meet her toe to toe.

  We walk to a restaurant with an ocean view. It’s too dark to see much, but we can still hear the Pacific rolling and thundering.

  We bend our heads together while we eat seafood, talking about everything and nothing, encapsulated by the dim interior of the restaurant and the glow of the small red candle on the table.

  Every once in a while, Eva’s eyes dart to the couple next to us.

  “What are you l-looking at?” I ask, voice lowered.

  “I’m eavesdropping, obviously.”

  “Not very well.”

  “I know. It’s a bad habit but I can’t help it.”

  “What are they s-saying?”

  She pushes her wine glass to the s
ide. “She doesn’t like this woman he works with. She’s jealous of her.”

  “Should she be?”

  She tilts her head to listen while pretending she’s stretching her neck.

  I almost spit out my wine. “Don’t ever b-become a detective.”

  “Shush. I can’t hear.”

  She’s looking at me but still leaning over.

  “You’re going to f-fall out of your chair.” And if she does, I’ll laugh so hard I’ll be next.

  “Yes. She should worry. He sounds sketchy.”

  “She should t-trust her instincts.”

  Maybe I said that with too much intensity, because Eva turns her full attention back to me.

  “Does it still bother you?”

  “What?”

  “Lizzie and Jude. Breaking your trust.”

  I look down at my hand, which is flipping my fork side to side, over and back. “Americans use f-forks like a shovel, but the Brits—they turn it over and p-pierce their food. There are two w-ways I can look at what happened with Jude and Lizzie.”

  “So which way do you choose to look at it?”

  “He betrayed my t-trust, but I know he tried his best not to. And Lizzie did me two huge f-favors.”

  “Which were what?”

  “She was Jude’s salvation. If he hadn’t f-found her, he probably would have b-been an alcoholic by thirty and I would have lost him anyway. Loneliness is a shitty disease.”

  She slides her hand over mine, the pads of her fingers skimming my knuckles. “I know it is.” Her eyes are reflective in the candlelight. “What was the other favor?”

  I grip her hand more tightly.

  “She led me to you.”

  Chapter 22: Eva

  We walked on the beach until midnight, stopping to collect shells and making out under the moon like kids. He wanted me right on the sand, and I wanted him right back.

  “What should we do t-tomorrow?” he asks me in that deep voice, his long arms holding me, because somehow I ended up on top of him again. “Besides the g-grape eating.”

  “I don’t want it to be tomorrow yet. I want to lie here all night and fall asleep to the sound of the ocean.”

  “And then?”

  “Mmm. Maybe we could go on a hike. Or eat so much we explode.”

  “There’s a p-park in Pescadero we could hike. You’d like it.”