I put my hand in his and squeeze. “Let’s go get ice cream.”
“No, I don’t want ice cream anymore, Santi.”
He pulls on one of my curls and I don’t know if it’s the sadness in his smile or his faraway look, but next thing I know, I’m arching up and holding his face between my hands. I place my thumb where his dimple would be if he were smiling. His hands move to my waist and I can feel their warmth through my jacket. He doesn’t pull me closer or push away but I understand he needs to feel close, and I need that, too.
Smooch
His lips are soft. I’d forgotten how soft lips can be. It’s been a long time since I kissed someone. His hands tighten in my jacket but other than that he’s still. I step in closer, angle my head, move my hands to the back of his neck, and pull his face closer. He opens his mouth, and I bite on his bottom lip, then I’m not thinking, I’m not planning the next step. His hand moves down to my butt and curves around it.
A wolf whistle breaks through the sound of my heartbeat and heavy breathing. “¡Pero mira eso!” A drunk couple hoots and hollers at us.
“C’mon.” Malachi grabs my hand and we walk back to the street we came from. He stops and pulls me toward him. Then he’s kissing me again. And I can’t think because his hands move up and down my coat and the back of my jeans, and he smells so good. And I can’t remember Tyrone ever touching me like this, like this body was a dream he was afraid to wake up from.
“Santi, you blushing? I make you shy or something?” he says, and hugs me to him. “Santi, what am I supposed to do with you?”
I snuggle into his sweater. “Nothing. We should just enjoy it. We’re in goddamn Europe, across the world; no one needs us right now. We should just . . .” I shrug. “Be.”
“And when we get back?”
I think about Babygirl. How I wake up every day expecting to see her crib and how it clogs my throat with tears not to be near her. How I miss ’Buela’s shuffling slippers, and her yelling directions at the Eagles’ quarterback. How I need to find a new job and figure out what I’m going to major in if I’m accepted into college. My life when I get back is full of people I love and the responsibilities I have. And I love them, and miss them, but I also want to hold this feeling of freedom tight in my fist, because it has wings and I know as soon as I loosen my grip it will fly straight away. “We figure it out then.”
He gives me a long look. “All right, Santi. I’m following you. Where we going next?”
And it seems like he means in terms of directions, but I know he also means in terms of us. Even though it’s a Wednesday night, two bars and one club are blaring music from across the street. I point.
Malachi raises an eyebrow and squeezes my hand.
Cozy
The bar is small and smoky; when we walk in the bartender is setting a green drink on fire.
A group of Americans take the shots and cheer. Two of them turn around and I see Richard and Amanda. They wave but we don’t walk over. Malachi grabs my hand and moves past clusters of people to a small table at the back.
We sit down side by side. I rest my head on his shoulder. “Your sweater is nice.”
“You’re nicer,” he says.
“Yeah? What do you find nice about me?”
Malachi’s hand is on my knee and he brushes his fingers up and down my leg.
“Everything. The way you dress, the way you fix your hair. The way you used to tell me we were not friends. It’s all nice.” I laugh and press my hand against his so it stops moving on my leg.
“I didn’t mean to be mean to you before. Well, maybe I did, but I just have a hard time trusting people.” I shrug and lift my head from his shoulder. Make a move to scoot away, but he wraps an arm around me and pulls me back.
“What were you saying? Talk to me, Santi,” Malachi says, and kisses my ear. It’s like now that we’ve started touching this way and kissing we can’t keep our bodies away from each other. But I pull back just enough so that I can look at him.
“When I broke up with Tyrone, when I was pregnant with Babygirl, after I was pregnant with Babygirl, guys thought that gave them a reason to be able to come up to me and say anything they wanted, to just grab me or invite me to their houses. They all treated me like a ho.” I rub my finger along the tabletop. The wood is sticky with spilled drinks and I put my hand in my lap. “I’m not. I’m not a ho. Not that it should matter if I was, but I’m still not having sex with you.”
I know what saying something like that does. Dudes either stop being interested or they think I’m just playing hard to get. But I’m not doing either. I just want to be real clear.
“Look at me, Santi.” I keep my eyes firmly on the wooden table. Malachi lowers his face near mine. “I’m serious, look at me.”
I look at his ear.
He groans. “At me, Santi, not behind me.”
“I was looking at you. At your ear,” I mumble, and finally stare into his eyes. I open mine real big so he can tell I see him.
“You’re such a smart-ass.” He laughs and the fist in my chest curls open its fingers. I take a breath.
“Listen, I don’t know what other guys thought. And if you point them out to me when we get back, I’ll make sure they never think it again.” His voice is dead serious and I believe him. Malachi would fight people for me. I know that already.
“But I’m not those guys. I wanted to talk to you before I knew you had a kid. Wanted to talk to you after you did all your hair flipping, ‘we ain’t friends,’ finger waving—”
“I never waved my finger!”
“—teeth sucking, eye rolling, hip switching, lip pursing, locker-door slamming. All of that was like a damn beautiful dance and I was drawn all the way in. And cool, you don’t want to have sex. You’ve told me you want to take it slow and I get it. But, I been wanting to talk to you since the beginning.”
“Just talk?” I raise an eyebrow, and flip my hair, and wave my finger.
Malachi grins and ducks his head. “I mean, you know you fine! At first, I wouldn’t have been mad at you if you wanted to do more than talk,” he says. “But now, I know my day is better because you are in it and I want to keep you there. I hope I make your day better, too.”
Ugly Leslie
Before I can answer, Richard and Amanda come over, Pretty Leslie trailing like a little ducky behind them. I remember she was on her way home when Malachi and I left for ice cream, but she must have gotten bored by herself. She’s loosely holding a drink in her right hand.
“Malachi,” Richard says, slightly slurring his words. “Why haven’t you got Emoni a drink? You can drink at sixteen here, did you know that? We’re celebrating college admissions. I got into Penn!”
“Or rejections,” Pretty Leslie says, and takes a big gulp of her drink. Ouch. Maybe Pretty Leslie cared more about admissions than I thought. I try to catch her eyes, see if she’s okay, but she won’t look at me.
“Oh, Richard! That’s wassup! I’m so proud of you.” I give Richard’s arm a quick squeeze and he instantly ducks his head shyly until a loud burp erupts from his mouth.
“You sure figured out the drinking age quick, huh?” Malachi says, standing up. He stretches and his sweater rises, showing off a bit of skin and muscle. “Congrats on the admission. We should definitely drink to that.”
“Yeah, Malachi, get your girlfriend a drink, why don’t you?” Pretty Leslie sits down in the seat across from me, and Richard and Amanda fill in the chairs on either side of the table.
“Just some juice?” I say, catching Malachi’s eye. The last thing in the world I need is to get in trouble while on a school trip abroad. I remember clearly the waiver we signed, and while I don’t mind taking sips of ’Buela’s rum or holiday wine, I’ll be damned if I get tipsy in another country where I don’t know the area or people.
Pretty Leslie shakes her head. “Something with alcohol, Emoni. We’re in fucking Spain. It’s legal here.” She takes another big drink from her cup.
<
br /> I shake my head at Malachi before he walks away. I don’t care if it is legal. We signed permission slips and I’m not getting in trouble with only two months till graduation.
I lean toward Pretty Leslie. “You feeling all right?”
“I’m fucking dandy, Emoni. How about you? You look like you’re having a good ole time.”
Pretty Leslie always curses a lot, but usually not with so much bite to her words. The warm fuzzies from the kissing and cuddling with Malachi begin wearing off. I turn to Amanda.
She hands me her cup and whispers in my ear, “Just water; the bakery assignment is different than everyone else’s and means I have to be up at, like, four a.m. Have a sip.”
I smell it first to make sure. And then take a small drink. It’s nice and cold. I smile a thanks at Amanda.
Malachi walks back with two drinks in his hands. One is a dark liquid and has a lime and a cherry. He hands that one to me. From the other one he takes a sip.
I give Amanda back her water and hold the glass Malachi brought me to my lips: Ginger ale, some kind of syrup, a hint of Coke. No liquor, and I know the cherry and lime are just for appearances.
“So what are you two doing here?” Amanda asks, smiling between me and Malachi. She has to know this is awkward because Pretty Leslie definitely likes him, but Amanda can be so oblivious to things, I can’t even get angry with her.
“We were just hanging out. We walked around for a bit after dinner and then decided to stop by here,” I say.
Pretty Leslie keeps sipping her drink, then downs the whole thing in one gulp. Before I know it, she reaches for my cup and takes a big gulp of that.
“You always gotta be so fucking good.” She turns to Richard. “It doesn’t even have liquor in it. Look, taste it.”
She passes the cup to him and he takes a sip. “Nope. No liquor. I think. I can’t even taste things anymore.” He puts his head on the wet table and closes his eyes. Amanda rubs his back.
“What’s the problem, Santi?” Pretty Leslie sings Malachi’s nickname for me, and from her lips it sounds distorted. “You don’t want to get in trouble with Chef? Don’t worry. We won’t tell him. We won’t tell him you’re fucking Malachi, either.”
I put my hands on the table to push myself up, but Malachi grabs my arm. “No. We were here first. Leslie, we don’t have anything to explain to you. You’re mad but you got no reason to be. Don’t try to put people’s business out there, because we both know you have more than enough business of your own.”
“Fuck you, Malachi.” Pretty Leslie gets up and tries to walk away, but her fast motions and tipsiness don’t seem to mix well because she grabs hold of the table. I stand up, too. She looks like she’s about to fall. Then she lowers her head, and bends her body, and throws up all over her shoes. The bar gets quiet at the sound of retching; the bartender points at us.
“Out! Every one of you Americans, out!” The bartender runs over and he’s cursing in Spanish and his accent is so different from what I’m used to that I can’t make out every word, but Amanda pulls Richard up, and he takes one look at the vomit and the angry bartender and straightens up his big self quick.
I grab Pretty Leslie and put her arm around my waist, put my arm around her shoulder. She’s too drunk or embarrassed to push me away. I give Malachi a little smile. Pretty Leslie is stank, but she’s still my roommate.
Settled
I let us into Mariana’s house quietly and Malachi holds on to Pretty Leslie’s other side.
“Are you going to throw up again?” I whisper. No light shines from under Mariana’s bedroom door. It’s almost one a.m. She usually goes to bed at ten.
“I want my bed.” Pretty Leslie’s head drops to her chest and then pops back up when she hiccups.
We stagger-walk in the direction of our bedroom and only just manage not to knock over a lamp.
“Hold on a second.” I run my hand along the wall and then flip on the switch.
“Ugh. No light,” Pretty Leslie says, and plops onto her bed. She curls into a ball. I carefully tug off her vomit-covered sneakers and drop them to the floor, searching the room for somewhere to put them. All I can find is Pretty Leslie’s large makeup bag on the chair by her bed. She’s going to kill me, but no way I’m sleeping with throw-up shoes hanging out all willy-nilly in the room. I toss the makeup onto the chair and carefully place the shoes into the bag in such a way that I don’t actually touch the vomit. I’m going to have to mop the stairs and doorway near the entrance to make sure none of it got into Mariana’s house, but Pretty Leslie is going to have to wash her own sneakers. I cover her with the blanket at the foot of her bed.
When I’m done, I stand up straight and blink. Malachi is in the doorway, shaking his head.
I shrug. “I couldn’t just leave her like that. I’m a mom.”
“You’re too good, is what you are.” Malachi takes a step forward and I look at him. What does he think we’re going to do? Pretty Leslie is drunk but she’s alive and she’s in the bed right next to mine. And Mariana is on the other side of the apartment.
We both turn and look at the form in the other bed. As if sensing our stares, she turns to the wall and gives a loud burp.
I laugh a little. “I think you’d better leave.”
He nods. And we walk to the door. “You could have talked to any of the girls back at Schomburg. Why were you so stuck on me?”
He tugs a curl. “I could only think of you.”
I cut my eyes at him. “Malachi,” I whisper. “Are you spitting game at me? Is this all so you can get the panties?” I raise an eyebrow but he just shakes his head.
“You ever going to believe me when I say I like you? We only have two more days here,” Malachi says. “Think we can spend them together? I’ll show you it’s more than just that.”
He pushes his thumb against my bottom lip. I hadn’t even realized I was biting it.
I nod and he gives me a quick kiss.
“Good night.”
Boys Will Be
The thing is, a part of me is still so afraid to believe Malachi. It had started like this with Tyrone, too. He’d been all smooth with the compliments and the small gifts. Showing up to school to walk me home. Taking me on dates to the movies. I wasn’t his first and although he knew he was mine, when his parents insisted he get a paternity test, he didn’t defend me.
He also didn’t argue when I was five months’ pregnant and accused him of cheating. Angelica had friends at his high school and they’d seen him walking around holding hands with some other girl. And when I told him this, said how they’d sent pictures to my phone, he just shrugged. “You’re big as a house, what’d you expect me to do?” Just like that. And Tyrone is good with his words. He knows exactly how to make them land soft as a kiss or cut sharp as a pocketknife. So I knew then that he was over us. He wanted to walk away but didn’t know how. And I would have respected him if he’d just said, “I don’t think this is working for me,” instead of saying, “I don’t understand why you’re getting so mad; you don’t even know her.” And I could have spit fire the morning he shrugged when I told him he would have to be my baby’s father but he could no longer be my man.
And every couple of months he comes back and wants to try to work things out. Or acts jealous if he thinks I’m flirting with someone.
That’s what I learned, about him and most guys: who they are when they’re giving you flowers and trying to get in your pants is not who they really are when it’s no longer spring and they’ve found a new jawn to hang out with. And I know the past isn’t a mirror image of the future, but it’s a reflection of what can be; and when your first love breaks your heart, the shards of that can still draw blood for a long, long time.
Heart-to-Heart
Pretty Leslie wakes me mid-dream and for a second, I forget where I am. I think it’s Babygirl’s voice startling me from sleep until the words penetrate.
“Emoni, I think I drank too much. I feel awful,” Prett
y Leslie moans from her bed. I flail around trying to find my phone. It’s six a.m.
“Good. You should, after drinking so much and talking so greasy to me,” I say, sending a quick text to ’Buela saying good morning and asking after Babygirl. She usually goes to sleep by eleven so I know she won’t read it for another seven hours, but at least it will be there when she wakes up. I stand. “Lucky you, my grandmother made sure I was a walking pharmacy and I’ve got some Alka-Seltzer in my bag. I’ll go get you some water.”
I walk through the dark house, running my hand along the wall to find my way to the kitchen. Pretty Leslie is curled into a ball when I get back to our room. I drop two Alka-Seltzer tablets into the glass and hand it over.
“Here. I think this should help some. My ’Buela swears by this and ginger tea when I have any kind of ache. Does your throat hurt from throwing up so much?”
“I threw up?” Pretty Leslie asks. At least I think that’s what she says, since it’s muffled by her pillow.
“Yeah, all over your shoes.”
She groans and eases her way to sitting in order to take the glass of water from me. She downs the medicine.
“What do you remember?”
“Umm . . .” She bites her lip. “Being at the bar. You and Malachi came in, too, right? I think I sat down with you all, but I don’t really remember much else.”
I shake my head. “You said some really terrible things. You basically called me a ho. And you embarrassed yourself.”
Her eyes widen and for the first time I see a Leslie who isn’t performing the diva, or pouting, or trying to get over on someone. This girl has mascara dust on her cheekbones, her falsies twisted out of shape, and vomit crusted on her lip—a lip that’s quivering as if she’s about to cry. “Oh my God. How did I get home?”
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