Sweating together makes me think of being naked together, and that's not the worst thing to think about while we look at the sky and the buildings and the city and each other.
“You make things make sense,” I say on the sidewalk, looking up at someone's rooftop, filled with bushes and potted plants and all the things we New Yorkers do to make the city look more like the country, to have the best of both worlds.
“I'm coming home with you. Today can't be over yet,” Bernardo says at the end of the day.
It's past dinnertime but instead of eating we kiss on the cab ride home, and the driver grunts about teenagers and being underage and the authorities, whoever they are. Bernardo pulls on my scarf while we kiss.
Maybe I don't need anything else but this.
When we get to my place, the driver has to honk his horn to get us to stop making out. We get out of the cab and almost start up again on the street, but Karissa is on the stoop, smoking. She throws her arms in the air, a mini celebration.
“You're home!” she cries. She pulls me into a hug, and I'm shaky from the kissing so I collapse into it a little. “I'm having a really hard day,” she says. “It would be my mom's birthday.” She says it right into my ear so Bernardo can't hear it, but every part of me sure can.
Her hair looks blonder than usual. Still mostly brown, but with a
sunlit layer on top. She's dyed it, for sure. I think they call that color Sean Varren blond. She's in gold leggings and a long white top, loose and linen-y.
“I'm sorry,” I say, working hard to push down the anger that rushes out of me from seeing her so comfortable on my stoop. Drinking coffee out of my dad's favorite mug. The conflicting feelings give me a headache. I love her gold leggings and the way she looks happy to see me. I hate everything else.
“I'm Karissa. Are you Bernardo?” She sticks her hand out to Bernardo when he's done paying the cabbie. Those jangling bracelets of hers make a full-on racket.
“I am,” he says. He squints, maybe trying to put together the idea of Karissa, who I'd told him about, with the reality in front of him.
“Well, great. Come on in, guys. Your dad's heading out, and I could use some company.”
I guess she is now at the level where she stays at our place even if Dad isn't here. And I guess, since it's her dead mom's birthday, I have to be okay with that.
Dad's by the door, definitely suited up and on his way out, and he does a double take when he sees Bernardo. Maybe because I'm never with boys or maybe because of how Bernardo looks. How we look together. Pink and scarved and sweaty. Matched and odd.
“I'm Sean,” he says, but doesn't even wait for Bernardo to answer with his name before he's out the door. “Take care of my girl!” he calls out from the sidewalk. I don't know if he's talking to Karissa about me or to me about Karissa. I hate both options, actually.
“So that's my dad,” I say. Bernardo nods and looks around the apartment, maybe trying to pick up clues that he couldn't catch from those three seconds with my father.
“He forgot about today,” Karissa says in that whisper again. Bernardo checks out the gold-framed full-length mirror in the hallway. Old-school Natasha.
“He forgets everything,” I say. “It actually means he cares more, not less.” Bernardo does hear this, and he looks at me with concern. Clears his throat, and I know I've said some weird truth about my dad that normal people find heartbreaking. It happens from time to time.
“He also forgets that I'm allergic to peanuts and that Arizona's birthday is in April. It's nothing personal,” I say.
I am definitely making it worse, because Karissa bites her lip and Bernardo rubs my arm as if I've said something deep and tragic.
“Well, I guess that's helpful to know,” Karissa finally says, and Bernardo excuses himself to go to the bathroom, but not before kissing my forehead.
The second he's out of sight, but probably not totally out of earshot, she grabs my arms and sings into my ear.
“Boyfriend! Only boyfriends kiss foreheads!”
If I squint, I can pretend our gold-framed mirror is chipped and adorned with cherubs and set up behind the bar at Dirty Versailles. If I work really hard, this whole moment can be something else entirely.
“He's affectionate. It doesn't mean he's my boyfriend,” I say, but I sort of think he is. “He's too cute to be my boyfriend.”
“You're smitten!” Karissa's eyes light up. They are approximately
the brightness of traffic lights stuck on
go
. “I love first love! I love smitten!”
She's a whole new person from the one who was two seconds ago talking about her mom's birthday. She is light and whirring. She goes for her iPod, which is already in Dad's dock, and starts playing oldies. The Crystals. She swings her hips with the song. I can't help doing the same.
“I met him, like, five minutes ago, okay? It's not what you're thinking.” But I am smiling and hip swinging and a little happy she's here, to do this with me.
“You have to let me hang out with you,” Karissa says. I start to say no. Arizona will hate it, and I'm not sure how long I can go on pretending she's not my dad's latest girlfriend.
Her face shifts a little. “Today sucks. I need a pick-me-up,” she says. “I'll make it epic, I promise.”
“I feel uncomfortableâ,” I try to say, but Karissa cuts me off.
“Can you wait until tomorrow to feel uncomfortable?” she says. Her eyes look a little like a stormy sea, and there's sadness there, under all the dancing and shiny clothing and bright smiles. I can feel her missing her mother, and I can't say no to it.
“As long as you let me feel not okay about all this tomorrow,” I say, and she meant it as a joke, but I mean it as a reality. I am eventually going to need more permission to feel not okay.
Bernardo comes back smelling of the brand of soap Tess had us stocked up on.
“So what do we think? Board games?” Karissa says when Bernardo's
back. “Drunk board games! For me at least. I can be drunk. You guys, I'm not so sure. I should probably wait before I become your official beer buyer or whatever. I bet you have Taboo, don't you? Scattergories? I bet you have Scattergories and I bet your dad has Scrabble and I bet Arizona has Monopoly. I'm so right, aren't I?”
I nod and feel like I'm betraying Arizona for about the millionth time today. She would hate Karissa guessing something about her, pretending to know her. I should hate it too.
“I'm totally kidding about only me being drunk! I'll chaperone. It's cool. We're all cool,” she says, smiling so hard the freckles on her face shift around. I hate how much I still love her.
“Drunk board games it is,” Bernardo says in the flurry of Karissa's words.
“Thank you,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Seriously. Thank you. I know this is still sticky, but I need you and it means so much to me that you get that.” I smell all of Karissa's smellâcigarettes and baby powder and musky perfume and supersweet hair spray. A combination that is oddly perfect. I grow a little, from her nice words and the way she is acting like I matter and like she gets it, and I think of things I could do to make her feel betterâget a cake in honor of her mother, toast her mother, tell her about the day my mother left.
She winks at Bernardo and sneaks into the kitchen to go liquor hunting. I press myself against him the second she's out of the room, because this might get awkward and I want him to remember what our bodies feel like together, before the situation scares him off.
“She's a lot,” I say.
“You're being good to her,” he says. “You're really good to people, even when it's hard for you. Like with talking to me about Casey today. I noticed.”
Sometimes compliments cause these heart palpitations. For me, at least.
Sometimes they hit and make me feel like I might be about to die, until I realize no, that's a good feeling, not a bad one.
That compliment hits and sparks and practically explodes in my chest. I've been spending so much time wondering what's wrong with me, wondering why I'm not a good enough sister or friend or daughter or person, that the idea of me being good is a little unbearable.
Compliments don't always sound true, but today, right now, that one does.
Once we are in the basement, Karissa takes a sloppy drink from the bottle of wine and hands it to me, like some ancient family-making ritual.
I take a sip and pass it on to Bernardo.
“So we're doing this?” he says. I guess it's a question I should have asked before going down this rabbit hole, where we don't give up our friendship even though she's also something else. It's dangerous, to be two things at once, to be blurry and undefined and weird. We are entering into messiness without asking enough questions.
So it's my fault, in some ways.
I jump right in.
“Might as well,” I say with this shrug and smile like it's all so, so cool.
Karissa, Bernardo, and I end up on the couch in the basement playing charades because I don't feel like hunting around for board games, and I don't want to have any kind of deep conversation either.
Karissa is the world's best charades player. It is the opposite of a surprise. I'm into it for about a minute, but the wine hits me fast and I'm drowsy quickly.
“You need to commit,” she says, when I try to act out
Moby-Dick
. I blow up my cheeks and point to a pretend hole in the center of my back and wiggle my fingers around to represent water spouting out of it. “I mean, come on. The word âdick' is right in the title. What are you doing not acting out the word âdick'? That's, like, a gift from the charades gods.”
I shake my head, but there aren't words to respond to that.
“Very creative,” Bernardo says. “I wouldn't have thought of that either.” He takes another sip of wine. He eyes the vodka. Dude is drunk. He reaches for my hip bone, a place that has been dying for
his touch. He purses his lips into a kissing face and strains toward my cheek, but I'm too far away and he's too off balance, so he ends up kissing the air.
It seems impossible that we've been hanging out for such a short amount of time. Maybe because Bernardo is all mine and everyone else in my life is someone I have to share, but I feel closer to him than anyone else right now. When Arizona and I were more like the same person, I felt closer to her. Like we shared cells. That's gone, but I feel some version of it with Bernardo already.
Maybe it's the pink hair. Or the way we kiss. The perfect fitting together of lips. Or the way we listen to each other.
“Should I make cocktails?” Karissa says when there's a lull in charades and conversation and energy. “Have you guys had martinis before? I could introduce you to martinis!”
I don't want to be drunk like I was at Dirty Versailles with Karissa. But there's a full bar down here, and Karissa starts clattering away with bottles and glasses and a metal shaker. I like the way the martinis sound, getting made. I like the way Karissa adds olive juice and speared olives and the way Bernardo has to lap at the top of his like a cat. I almost say no to my own precarious glass, but I reconsider the smell, the coolness of the glass, the lightness of the laughter coming out of Karissa and Bernardo. The way it felt to be Karissa's best friend at Dirty Versailles. I consider the phone call Karissa must have gotten a few years ago when she found out her whole family was gone. I consider the darkness of the night. The fact that streetlights don't reach the basement. I consider the Swedish pop Bernardo is playing from
his phone and the tinny, two-dimensional sound of music without real speakers.
I consider it all, and sip from the splashy top.
It tastes like rubbing alcohol and olives.
“Is this what it's supposed to taste like?” I ask.
“Need more olive juice?” Karissa asks.
“Needs less . . . everything,” I say.
“I guess I'm not a great bartender,” Karissa says, and Bernardo and I nod and cringe at our drinks, and I wonder at the way she is imperfect and still somehow perfect.
“You guys are so comfortable with each other for having just met,” Karissa says, slurring and spilling some martini down her shirt. “It's so much like me and Sean.”
I put down my drink. It's disgusting, and I won't be able to stomach it if we talk about him. About that. About it.
“I don't want to talk about my dad.” I take the bottle of wine back from her. It should go to Bernardo next, but he's getting all particular about which Swedish pop band is the best Swedish pop band for late night in the Village while drunk on white wine and having an awkward relationship talk. Turns out, it's the musical stylings of Club 8.
“Right. Of course,” Karissa says. “Let's talk about Bernardo's dad!” When Karissa's drunk, she's good at sliding between topics, at finding hidden doorways into new conversational spaces.
So we talk about his dad for a while instead. How he loves poetry and the History Channel and didn't get mad when Bernardo said he didn't want to play any sports, even though his dad loves baseball.
“He's Mexican from Mexico?” Karissa says. She asks questions that I don't know how to ask.
“Yeah. Met my mom when he was visiting here. Couldn't bring himself to leave her. Or the city. They're stupid in love.”
He talks a lot about love, for a guy.
He's all lit up. He's beautiful. Holy shit.
We play more charades and drink more wine until I'm even drunker than either of them. I want to text Arizona and tell her about the night. She'd hate that Karissa is here, but I want some part of her to know I have a life, that I can move forward too. That if she can become a whole new person, so can I.
I drink martinis now, for instance. And think about having sex with a boy with pink hair. I can even wonder about love, in this state. I can be less afraid of it.
“You guys totally saved this night,” Karissa says. “I needed that.” She starts dancing, like it's reason to celebrate.
“Maybe I'm drunk, but I want to say something to you,” Bernardo says, leaning over to my shoulder, which he kisses. “I needed this too. You. I needed you. At this particular moment in time.”
I blush. It's a little too much, but in the good way. Like being stuffed from a delicious meal. Overdone but for all the right reasons.
“Okay, good,” I say. I smile at both of them. It's cozy down here, wine-drunk and love-happy. “I think I sort of love you so far,” I say to Bernardo, words plucked from some part of my brain I didn't know was there. I mean to say it in my head, but the wine makes me say it out loud and in a bedroom-y voice that isn't my own.
I count the number of days I have actually known Bernardo. I multiply that by the number of days I spent watching him. I divide that all by the things he's said that fit perfectly into what I need. It's some kind of crazy relationship math so I can ignore the voice in my head that says loving someone this early on is insane.
I have my hand on his chest and I swear his heart stops beneath it.
“I like that. I love you so far too,” he says. I somehow hadn't realized I said it first.
“Did I just see the first time? Was I a witness?” Karissa says. She hasn't stopped dancing since she started. She's tripping a little now, her dance more a series of stumbling steps and sloppy hand movements.
“So far!” I say, too loudly. “I said so far!” I'm giggling in the best way. Loose and sloppy and giddy. Saying
I love you
feels effing good and I had no idea. It's like a drug. It's better than wine.
I can be a girl who says I love you first and fast to a boy who deserves it! I can!
I wonder if everyone feels like a superhero after a few sips of martini and a ton of wine.
Bernardo keeps looking at me like I matter, like I'm his. And Karissa does too.
“Guys? I like wine,” I say when we're all dozing off. It doesn't really sum up everything I'm feeling but will suffice. Everything seems okay. For this one drunken moment. Even Karissa and my dad being together. Even that.
The room fills with the sounds of deep breathing. I'm too full to sleep. Full of wine and feelings and anticipation and giggles and mistakes.
“We have to get you home,” I whisper in Bernardo's ear, giving him a little shake. Karissa's hand falls from her stomach to the ground with a thump. She doesn't make a sound, she's that far gone. She looks younger than me, and sad in her sleep. It moves me, the things she's survived. I have to tell Arizona and reach for my phone to text her immediately, but I'm just un-drunk enough to think better of it.
“No, we have to sleep here. On the floor. Together,” Bernardo says. He keeps touching my face. With only his fingertips. He traces every feature like he can't believe how lucky he is to see them all up close and personal, and it feels even better than the wine.
I try to push him to his feet, but it's so tiring and he is radiator-warm and comfortable and my legs are already all wrapped up in his, so I rest my head on his chest for a moment and fold into him. He wraps his arms around me.
“It's a lot,” I say.
“Can you use more words?” Bernardo says, and I sigh, because the whole point is that sometimes a few words are enough to sum up something very large and unmanageable. Tonight is large and unmanageable. I don't answer but instead let Bernardo fall asleep, and before I can stop myself, I fall asleep on top of him.
I wake up a few hours later and manage to carry Bernardo out to the street and pile him into a cab. He is heavier than I had imagined. He smells sweet, though. Sweet and a little sour, too. An exciting smell. A smell that means he is living.
I smell the same way.