Making Pretty (13 page)

“They love you,” Bernardo says.

“Um, hi, what about me?” Roxanne says, poking him in the back while he hugs me.

“Of course, you too,” Bernardo says. “Thank you for helping our girl out.”

I guess I'm their girl. I bury my head in his neck because I don't know how that's supposed to make me feel.

It feels a little like belonging.

Karissa is taking a bath in my bathroom in the afternoon.

When she finishes, the whole place smells like roses, but I'm miserable.

She comes to my room with her hair in a towel and another around her torso and the rest of her is bare and freckled and too much to take.

“We've been missing each other,” she says, leaning against my door frame. Dad's at work, and Arizona is at her apartment eating peanut butter out of jars and talking with her roommate about who they've kissed so far this summer.

I'm here, but only part of me.

I can't tell if Karissa means we haven't been seeing each other or that we've been pining after each other, but I guess it's a little of both.

“You don't have a bathtub at your place?” I say. It comes out biting, and I can't stop thinking about the ring in my dad's pocket and the way it's bigger than all the other rings, and sharper-looking too. Meaner.

“Actually, I don't,” she says. “It's something they don't tell you when you're looking for an apartment. They don't all come with baths or intercoms or working doorbells or reliable hot water. So appreciate this place while you can.”

It occurs to me that maybe she's using my dad for things like fancy dinners and hot baths and endless supplies of toilet paper and the bar down in the basement. It wouldn't be okay, exactly, but I think it would be better than her actually loving him.

She looks like she's settling in against the door frame.

“How's Bernardo?” she asks.

“Awesome,” I say. I can't stop thinking about his family and that they felt a little like they could be my family in some perfect world. We hung out with Arizona in her apartment this morning. Roxanne brought cigarettes and coffee and I brought cookies from the bakery that Arizona loves so that we could have cookies for breakfast, and Arizona's roommate told Bernardo and me how cute we are.

Arizona didn't say too much about that.

“He seems so into you,” Karissa says. “And sort of deep, yeah? And spontaneous. Romantic. So few guys would be deserving of you, but he maybe almost is.”

Karissa adjusts the towel, and I want to pretend we're in her apartment, not mine. She looks younger than Arizona right now, all naked and makeup-less.

If I'm going to say something about the proposal that's coming, now's the time. “What about you?” I say. She lights up.

“Are you asking me how things are with your dad?” she says. Her
voice is high and eager and awful.

“Jesus, no,” I say. “I'm asking what kind of guy is deserving of you.”

“Your dad treats me really well,” Karissa says. “I know you don't want to talk about it, but he does. He's really thoughtful. And gentle—”

“Oh my God, do not say he's gentle,” I say. I have goose bumps and a cold feeling in my blood. An image creeps into my brain of my father stroking Karissa's arm and being gentle and I squirm, trying to get rid of it. I'm wondering if I can forget the word
gentle
even exists. Strike it from my vocabulary.

“Okay, all right, we'll keep taking our time with this,” Karissa says, like there's this day in the future when I'll be able to withstand the image, the word, the amount of skin she's showing right now, her comfortable way of sinking into all our couches and armchairs, my father calling her
baby
once when they were in the other room.

“You want to move slowly, right?” I say. I guess I'm going for it. Having this conversation.

“With you and me and dealing with this new aspect of our friendship?” she says. They don't sound like her words. They sound like my father's.

“Well, like, with this whole thing.” I can't bring myself to say anything close to
your relationship with my father
.

Karissa cocks her head and smiles. The towel on her head shifts and threatens to fall down. Tess had this detailed way of wrapping her hair in a towel that involved a special absorbent cloth and a butterfly
clip. She used bottles of moisturizer, different kinds for every part of her body. She tried to teach me how to do it correctly. Karissa's still dripping a little. She has not moisturized, I'm sure of it. She's barely dried off. There are wet footprints from the bathroom to my bedroom. Her shoulders are bony.

“A casting director yesterday told me I need to wear more eye makeup,” she says, looking in my mirror and apparently changing the subject. “I mean, what is that? That sucks. I'm not booking anything. Terrible, terrible actors who are really hot book everything, and I'm too weird-looking to get commercials and not fancy enough to get plays and not L.A. enough to get movies. You any good at eye makeup?”

It's impossible to imagine inhabiting Karissa's body and having any complaints about how you look, but there's always been that raw, insecure side to her. Our acting teacher told her to hang on to it.

“Confidence is beautiful,” the teacher had said, “but insecurity is fascinating. Wouldn't you rather be fascinating?”

“Wouldn't you rather be fascinating?” I say now, knowing we both loved every word that came out of our teacher's mouth.

“I'd rather be able to act,” Karissa says, shrugging. Six months ago I'm positive she would have answered differently. I can't stand that Karissa doesn't think fascinating is enough anymore. Almost as much as I wouldn't be able to stand it if Karissa became my new stepmom.

“Okay, I'm going to tell you something, but you can't tell anyone I told you,” I say. “And you're going to think this is crazy and that my family is nuts, but I warned you, so don't lose your mind.”

“I'm ready,” Karissa says, grinning. Her towel finally falls all the way off her head, and she lets it go to the ground, her hair a mess of wet curls. She's dripping even more now, a puddle forming around her feet.

“My dad thinks he's, like, going to propose,” I say. I start to laugh. Saying it out loud makes it kind of hilarious instead of totally panic-worthy. I can hear how ridiculous it is. How mismatched and nonsensical. How it will sound to Karissa. “On, like, Friday,” I say. “Do not ask me where he gets this stuff. He's sort of nuts with women. So, like, I thought I should tell you so that you can tell him not to do it. Or make it clear that's not your thing. Or be prepared. Or whatever.” I can't stop doing this low-level half breath, half giggle. I can't stop shaking my head at the absurdity of it all.

“Oh,” Karissa says. “Wow. Oh wow.”

“I know.”

She starts smiling. But the smile never turns into a laugh. It stays caught on her face, stuck in confusion.

“Oh wow,” she says again. “Oh my God! This is . . . this is . . .”

“So fucked up?”

“I can't believe someone like him can really see a future with someone like me,” she says. She weaves her long hair into a sloppy braid, missing huge chunks.

“I mean, I know, right?” I say. I can't wait to tell Bernardo. I can't wait to tell Arizona! Arizona will lose her mind with relief. She'll throw herself on me, and we can celebrate with enormous ice cream sundaes from Serendipity. We can spend the rest of the summer in the
park without this hanging over us, ruining everything.

Maybe we can even chill at Karissa's one night, near the end of the summer, when it's so over we barely remember it happened.

“Friday?” Karissa says. “Oh my God, Friday!”

She finally starts to laugh.

But the laugh is all wrong. It's happy. It's ecstatic. It's nervous.

It is the laugh of a woman who is going to say yes.

“Karissa,” I say. I can't think of a sentence or question to follow her name.

“I, like, love him,” she says. She is glowing. I'm choking on a feeling I don't have a name for that's close to disgust and panic and confusion.

“Karissa,” I say, wild now, and frantic. I think if I slap her maybe she'll snap out of it. Pour cold water on her. Remind her he's my father.

“It's okay! It will be fun. I swear. You have to trust me. This is going to be so good,” she says. I don't say anything, and in the pause she changes. Not much. Only a little. A little to the left, a little bit toward indignant and frustrated that I would interfere with her relationship. Her marriage. Her big moment. “I need this,” she says. “I deserve a little happiness, after everything. And he makes me happy. And it's going to be fantastic. I'm promising you, okay?”

I don't answer. I wonder if it's possible to faint from feelings. I wonder if this is when I start loving her a little less.

She waits for me to say
okay
but I don't.

She leaves a puddle outside my door, and I feel like I'm drowning in it.

Two days later, Bernardo and I are naked on the couch in my basement, doing everything but. We are hanging out in the everything-but stage, and it feels good.

I haven't told Arizona and Roxanne what happened with Karissa.

Instead I tell Bernardo's naked body about it.

It's Thursday afternoon and Friday feels like a death sentence, and when I tell him things, he looks in my eyes and says he understands.

“Would it make you feel better to see Natasha?” he says. I like the way his thighs feel against mine. I like that his shoulders and back and belly are paler than the rest of him. His knee is between my thighs and I like that too.

“How'd you know that?” I say. It's so obvious, that's absolutely what would make me feel better. Or if not better, more grounded.

“I know you,” he says. He shifts me off of him and looks at me hard. I want to be kissing but he wants to be staring, so we settle for switching back and forth between both.

“You're getting to know me,” I say.

“Don't get all scared,” Bernardo says because he does, in fact, know me.

“Okay,” I say. “You can know me.”

Bernardo starts tickling me, and there's a manic two minutes of naked squirming and screeching and batting his hands away, even though what I want, what I really want, is for him to touch me so much more. Then he's kissing my neck and touching my thighs, not tickling anymore, and things start to happen, whirling-mind things, heart-expanding things, opposite-of-ticklish things, but he stops when I tense up. He has a knack for noticing the constant tensing and relaxing of my limbs. He said he's never known anyone who expresses so much in their biceps and toes.

There's a Sharpie on the coffee table down here from Karissa addressing big envelopes with her head shot inside, and Bernardo picks it up like he's made a decision. He draws a heart on my shoulder.

“Are Sharpies dangerous for skin?” I say, the chemical smell hitting me hard.

“Can't be too bad,” Bernardo says. He draws another heart on my wrist and sneaks down my body to draw two on my upper thighs.

“I can pretty much feel the lead or whatever it is seeping into my bloodstream, just so you know,” I say. The actual drawing feels good—the soft tip of the pen tickles my arm, and I like the intense focus Bernardo gets after we've hooked up, like I'm all he can see or will ever see in the world. He draws hearts on my knees and polka-dots my feet.

He twirls the marker like it's a baton. His fingers are sure. It's weird to feel like I know everything about him and nothing about him all at once.

He draws a ring around my ring finger. He draws a diamond and little dashes sprouting out from it so that I know it's a sparkly one.

I can't stop laughing.

“Oh come on,” I say.

“Hey, someday,” he says. I try to imagine any other guy I've been with saying or doing anything the way Bernardo does, but it's impossible. He's all raw and open and unafraid. He's an old soul and naive and strange and in love with me all at the same time.

“I wasn't kidding about the poison,” I say. “I think it's, like, pretty possible that Sharpie on skin could kill me.” I'm not all the things he is. I keep wanting to be, but it's like my brain is holding back my heart. Or maybe vice versa. I can't tell.

“Then we have to go together,” Bernardo says. “
Romeo and Juliet
style. Poison me too.”

“I love
Romeo and Juliet
,” I say.

“I figured. You have three copies in your room,” he says.

It's irresistible, the way he sees me and knows me and notices me and doesn't want me to change.

I draw hearts on all his joints and spirals on his arms. He takes the pen from me and writes his name on my back, flipping me over and running the marker along my spine. I can't stop shivering. He writes his name everywhere. Covering my whole body in him.

“We aren't going to be able to wash this off,” I say.

“True.”

“Natasha will think we are insane,” I say.

“Love makes you do crazy things,” he says. “She'll see that we love each other.” He's so much smarter than me. So much more poetic. He knows something about love that I don't know, but I want to know it.

He hands the marker back to me. I write my name on him too. The pen gets stuck in the little hairs on his arms, and it's weird to see him, one big scribble.

“We'll match,” I say. I mean it like it's sort of strange, which it is. We have the hair and the scarves and now the hearts and words all over our skin.

“We already do,” he says. “Two parts of one heart.” He will be a poet someday. Of that I'm sure.

He kisses all the hearts he drew, lips traveling over the marked parts of my skin.

“My dad's going to kill us. We're supposed to look good at the proposal thing tomorrow,” I say.

“You're going to go?” he says. “You hate everything about it, I thought.”

“If I don't go . . . I don't know. If I don't go, it's like I'm saying I'm not part of the family anymore, and I'm not ready to do that.”

“Mmmm. You still want to belong to them,” Bernardo says.

“I do.”

“And you want to belong to me. With me,” he says, correcting himself a little.

“I think I might,” I say. He rolls his eyes like I'll come around soon, and I'm sure he's right.

“So there you go.”

Bernardo has this kind of logic that turns me around. Like when you're little and playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Bernardo's the guy who straps on your blindfold and spins you around and around until you're so dizzy you don't know which direction to walk in.

He draws a line of hearts like a V-neck on the top of my chest. It feels good. I check us out in the mirror before we leave. We look good and carefree and in love. Natasha will like it. I almost convince myself of that. I look at myself in every window on the walk from my place to Natasha's with Bernardo. That's a lot of windows. I decide at some point, on window six or twelve or fifteen, that I love our reflection, the way we fit together. That I love the looks we get. That this is how to be in love.