Avra's God

by Ann Lee Miller

  He tapped the folder in her hands. “Take a look.” He drove off before she could argue. She’d come to the Battle of the Bands. A smile crept through him and settled around the ache in his ribcage.

  Avra broke Cisco’s kiss and leaned her head back against the sofa in her living room. Her body was so hungry for him that it scared her. Blue and orange light spilled from the TV into the dark living room. His hot breath fanned her neck. Overhead, the ceiling fan spun like a roulette wheel.

  Yesterday’s conversation with Kallie gnawed at her, and she tugged herself loose from Cisco’s arms. “All you ever want to do is make out.”

  “It’s fun.” He stroked her arm. “You like it too.”

  She crossed her arms, moving away from his touch. “What’s the point of heavy breathing if we’re not going there?”

  “Wish we were—”

  “I know.”

  Green from the TV turned his face to stone. “Man, Avra, all I’m asking for is a little lovin’.”

  “Yeah, like an athletic event.”

  “Listen—”

  “It’s too much.”

  “Not nearly enough,” Cisco said under his breath.

  Avra stared at the electronic light splashed on the walls. The TV droned. “No matter how much we make out, it’s never enough for you.”

  “Last I checked, I had zero fouls with you. I’m pretty dang proud of my record.”

  “Yeah, but you play it like a martyr. It’s all my fault your life is miserable, that you’re not getting sex.”

  “Excuse me for loving you, wanting you.”

  The hard edge in his voice cut into her. “I’m just saying why get all heated up—”

  “Aroused.”

  She blushed. “If we’re not going to have sex.”

  “Spell it out. You don’t want me to touch you?”

  “Can’t we go back to how we were in the beginning—a kiss, holding hands, a hug, walking arm in arm down the beach? Skip the long make-out sessions every time we’re together?”

  “You want to take away the few crumbs you’re feeding me.” Disgust laced his words.

  She stared at Conan O’Brien, tuning out his monologue. “Maybe you should find a girl who will dish a value meal, if it’s so important to you.”

  Cisco’s weight lifted off the couch. “Maybe I will.” His footfalls moved across the floor to the door.

  Avra stared at Conan’s earlobe as the seconds ticked by.

  The door opened and shut.

  Kallie breezed in, the screen door thumping behind her, and headed for the kitchen.

  Aly danced around the kitchen waving a letter, her blonde pixie floating after her. “I’ve got something you want.”

  “Who’s it from?”

  “DK.”

  Kallie snatched the letter when Aly wiggled by. Her heart tripped. A slim, white envelope addressed to her in Jesse’s slanted printing lay pinched under her thumb. She folded the letter in half and slipped it into her back pocket.

  Aly hopped up and down, first on one foot, then the other. “So, who’s the letter from? Huh? Huh?”

  “Nobody.”

  Aly lunged for Kallie’s pocket. “Then, can I read it?”

  Kallie sidestepped her. “No, you may not.”

  “Pretty important nobody if you ask me.”

  “I’m not asking.” Kallie’s hand went to her pocket to make sure the letter was safe. Why would Jesse mail her a letter? What couldn’t he say on campus? She’d e-mailed him her comments on the songs he’d given her. They were at a standoff, not exactly speaking, not exactly not-speaking.

  Kallie shut her bedroom door, muffling the names Aly shouted as possible authors of the letter. She sank down on her childhood quilt. Her hands shook. She tapped the sealed envelope against her leg. It rattled fault lines between her and Zack she didn’t even know existed.

  She took a deep breath and ripped off the end of the envelope. A single typewritten page slipped out with musical staff and notes drawn in by hand.

  Chapter 14

  Avra ran the length of the soccer field, halfway through a five-hundred-yard run. Conversation among her teammates dwindled and her mind centered on Cisco. She hadn’t seen or heard from him all day. Why had she picked a fight over nothing? He was right. No fouls.

  But it sure felt like there were fouls firing all over the place inside her. Was the wanting a sin? The relationship had felt Ever-After-innocent for so long. And now it felt like a Sex and the City wannabe.

  She couldn’t remember the last time they’d gone a day without speaking. Everything felt wrong, like a goal post had fallen on her and she couldn’t get up. She missed him.

  “Scrimmage time,” Coach Desoto barked.

  Kallie smoothed out “Kallie in the Clouds” on her quilt as though it were an archeological find instead of a sheet of twenty-pound copy paper. She held the sheet to her nose and inhaled, searching for a scent of Jesse. Nothing. Her eyes crept down the page.

  You’ve been walkin’ in the clouds for a while now,

  Breathin’ breeze, dancin’ your dreams.

  I see you, a-way up there.

  Your laughter drizzles down to me.

  And I gotta say—

  Kallie in the clouds, when you come down,

  When your feet hit level ground,

  You gotta know that I’m still here,

  And I still care, still care for you.

  So, you’re livin’ on cotton candy;

  The sugar’s meltin’ on your teeth.

  The soda you’re sippin’ is sweet.

  All the flavors taste the same up there,

  So, I gotta say—

  Kallie in the clouds, when you come down,

  When your feet hit level ground,

  You gotta know that I’m still here,

  And I still care, still care for you.

  Two kids—a stratosphere apart—

  Connected by a slender thread

  That weaves through then and forever.

  Today it sparkles in the sun

  And reminds me to say—

  Kallie in the clouds, when you come down,

  When your feet hit level ground,

  You gotta know that I’m still here,

  And I still care, still care for you.

  She read it again, then a third time, humming the notes until the tune branded her heart. A breeze puffed through the jalousie windows, lifting the song from the bed. It swished in graceful arcs to the floor.

  Her gaze flew to the clock. Ten minutes late meeting Zack. She snatched the page from the floor and slipped it into her nightstand with her letters to God.

  Cisco threw his books on the snack bar table and jerked his head toward Billy. “What are you trying to say ’bout my girl? That she’s a bowwow? What? Why don’t you just say what you mean? If you don’t have the cojones to get your own girl, don’t go insulting mine.”

  “Whoa.” Billy backed up. “Chill. I’m just saying she’s not the type you usually go for.”

  “I got my reasons. Leave it at that.”

  Billy smirked. “Yeah, I bet you do.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.” He got in Billy’s face. “She’s not that kind of girl. And you’re going to remember it.” He threw a punch hard to Billy’s midsection.

  “Ooof.” Billy buckled at the waist.

  Thirty minutes later he kicked dirt hunks into the sunset-scorched river. Billy was an idiot. He deserved that punch. But what really ripped him was the grain of truth in Billy’s words. He could do better. He could get a prettier, more popular girl—one with fewer moral convictions. Part of him wanted out.

  He pictured Avra’s athletic body—her natural beauty. The bigger part of him wanted to stay connected to her—even when she was being freakishly unreasonable. Sometimes she was too naïve for her own good. The only way she was going to get a stone-cold boyfriend was if she dated a gay. He launched a clod of dirt into the rose-tinted water and watched it dis
solve on the way to the bottom.

  Cisco stuck his pen in the pocket of his Walmart uniform shirt. He looked up and saw Isabel walking through automotive toward him.

  Her gaze clamped onto his. She brushed against him on the way past the service desk. “Don’t be such a stranger.” She angled herself against the counter to expose the olive skin between her blouse and jeans that hugged every curve.

  His body responded. “You’re trouble with a capital T. I’ve got a girl, chiquita.” He put the desk between them. “Leave me alone.” He glanced over his shoulder. Where was Enrique when he needed him?

  Her gloss-slicked lips pouted. “You didn’t want me to leave you alone last summer.” She leaned over the counter toward him, her dark hair brushing the Formica.

  He closed his eyes, shutting out the crease between her breasts. But when he opened them, she hadn’t moved. She toyed with him like a panther batting at its prey. His gaze slid to the rounded skin, the trace of lace and away. His mind remembered the rest. He ran a hand over his face. “You stalking me again?”

  Isabel stood. “Waiting my turn, chico.” Triumph glistened in her eyes.

  Enrique shuffled in from the car bay, his nose buried in a sheaf of order forms.

  “Later.” She pivoted and walked back down the aisle.

  He watched the sway of her hips a heartbeat longer than he should have.

  Avra stepped off the last step of the bus onto the curb. She closed bloodshot eyes against the brightness of morning. Muggy spring air rolled over her. The bus belched and moved on.

  Cisco stood against the wall watching her.

  Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re here.” She walked toward him.

  He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve been here every morning for eight months.”

  “Except yesterday.”

  He reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “I missed you, mi vainilla.”

  “I’m sorry about the other night.”

  “You meant what you said.”

  “So did you.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I don’t want to fight. I guess I could have said it more nicely.”

  Cisco gave a humorless laugh. “That you don’t want to kiss me?”

  “That we could do other stuff sometimes, spend fewer hours wanting what we can’t have.”

  “We do a million other things. We’re together every day. You make me sound like I’m an animal or something. It’s all about expressing love to each other.”

  “We have the same argument over and over. We’re never going to agree. We’ve got to compromise.”

  Cisco quirked an eyebrow. “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? You’re not a compromising girl.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. I don’t want to fight either. I’ll try. All I can do is try.” He pulled her into a hug.

  The Cisco she didn’t know faded. The one she knew returned. Avra let her breath out. “Me too.”

  Cisco released her.

  “I didn’t really mean you should find another girl.”

  “I know.”

  Jesse slouched near the front of the church mentally thumbing through all the things he’d rather be doing—rehearsing with the band, jamming in the shed, sleeping. He yawned and stretched an arm across the back of the pew. Unchallengeable family law said you showed up twice on Sundays. It was his own fault he hadn’t moved out by now.

  Had Kallie gotten “Kallie in the Clouds”? Would that spark he saw in her eyes come to life? He shifted on the unforgiving wood of the bench.

  Jesse’s gaze drifted to the guest preacher. A soft, white hand lifted from the Bible on the podium and forked shiny—from oil or hair products, he couldn’t tell—black hair off his forehead. The guy was maybe thirty and wore that somber, I-have-a-message-from-God expression that made Jesse’s gut say, oh yeah?

  The first organ notes grated across his eardrums, tensing his shoulder muscles. He reached for the hymnal and shoved it back into place without opening it when he recognized the song. “... Thine the glory. Amen.” Like gum chewed too long, the words had lost their flavor.

  “Open your Bibles to Genesis, chapter twenty.” The preacher’s voice was high and came from his throat and not his diaphragm. At least Jesse had learned something from Kallie.

  Jesse flipped his Bible open, turned two pages, looked at the ceiling. It was a skill he’d honed growing up a preacher’s kid. He could usually get to the Scripture passage in less than three motions.

  “Abraham was a liar.”

  His eyes swerved to the preacher.

  “Abraham claimed Sarah was his sister. Sure, Abraham rationalized that she was his half sister.”

  Jesse’s gaze wandered over the potted palms in the corner and across the front of the church. How many dead bugs had accumulated in the baptistery since the last baptism months ago?

  “But what was Sarah in his heart? She was his wife. Abraham exposes our duplicity.”

  There was one of Kallie’s ten-gallon words.

  “Maybe you’re two-faced—”

  Jesse’s attention skittered from the piano, across the sanctuary, to the man in the pulpit.

  “Maybe you show one face at church, another someplace else. Which one is the real person? Proverbs 6:17 says, ‘God hates lies.’ Maybe you’ve been lying for so long you don’t even know what’s true anymore. What’s the truth in your heart?”

  Cisco was the same person when they were climbing through the woods, when he was on campus, with Avra, with his mamá. That’s what the dweeb preacher was talking about. He rubbed the back of his neck. How did you live like that?

  “God hates lies because He wants our true heart to connect with His. He doesn’t want to have a relationship with the person you are at the office, the social you ...”

  Jesse half listened, absorbing, not so much what he said, but how he said it. The guy spoke with certainty, yet there was an absence of trying to impress. Jesse’s “crapometer” said the guy was authentic—no posturing, affected speech, jerking the emotions.

  As the church emptied, the preacher shook the last hand and walked back to where Jesse had been snagged by his sister begging for a ride to Dairy Queen.

  “Fine. Be that way.” Missy flounced out of the pew, her curls flinging into the man’s coat sleeve.

  The preacher sat down beside Jesse—a little too close—and crossed his legs.

  Jesse rubbed his hands on the thighs of his Dockers.

  The man held Jesse’s gaze. “You’ll never be happy estranged from God. One day you’re going to bare your real heart to God, and He’s going to step into it—just as it is.”

  Jesse watched the guy’s Adam’s apple move in his throat.

  The man stood and walked the length of the church and out the back doors.

  Jesse shook his head. The man was weird, like an apparition. He half expected to look up and see his dad bobbing his head to the closing hymn, like every other Sunday night. But the sanctuary was empty. Someone turned off all the lights, except the ones around the altar.

  He leaned forward, staring at the play of shadow across the red carpet. For all his feminine mannerisms, the guy was a real man. He stood for what he believed.

  Who was he in his heart? The guy who said, “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” to his dad? The one who siphoned giggles and longing glances from the girls? No, the real Jesse only came out in the dark—in his room when he couldn’t sleep. His heart slipped into his music, and Kallie was the only one who ever noticed. Cisco knew all his faces—it came from growing up together—like you knew all the creases in your favorite ball glove without actually sitting down and staring at the thing.

  Jesse stood. So, the ninety-eight-pound weakling that lived inside him—that had to inflate himself like a blowfish to even exist in his fishbowl—that was the guy God wanted to permanent-bond with? Like that was going to happen.

  Avra walked across Old Fort Park toward Cisco, who
waited under a Spanish oak. The lights from Washington Street splayed across the grass, falling short of where he stood. Even though weary from their arguing, electricity buzzed through her like the seconds between the coin toss and the kickoff of a soccer game.

  “Come here.” His voice, Brillo rough, raked her toward him.

  She stepped into his arms and he wound them around her.

  He held on, not moving, his chin resting on her hair. Oak leaves rustled overhead, shading them from the moon. The light turned green and a string of cars crossed Riverside Drive heading for the beachside.

  “Mmm, you smell good,” he said.

  She smiled against his cheek. “I missed you.”

  "Yeah. Me too.”

  Their kiss wove wordless conversation between them. I’m sorry-You’re so precious to me-We can work this out.

  “I love you,” Avra whispered.

  He bent toward her again. His lips settled against hers, tentative.

  We’re good. We’re going to be fine. Gratitude swam through her veins, its current washing her against him.

  His fingers tightened on her shoulders.

  Tendrils of warmth unfurled. Nothing was going to happen in a one-block park, twenty yards from the street. She could relax and enjoy being with him.

  Her body, hyperaware of Cisco’s, ferried her to a place she wanted to be. Why had they argued? She couldn’t remember.

  His arms folded her in.

  She moaned and melted against him, ice cream running down a cone.

  Cisco ripped away from her. “You’re so sweet and hot and innocent.” His breath heaved in and out. “Can’t you understand that I want more?”

  She clenched her arms at her waist, damp air chilling her skin. “Are you asking?”

  “I wish I hadn’t promised your dad. I wish I had a girl that didn’t play by your rules.”