I wait for Bernardo outside after Karissa goes upstairs. If I work at it, I can pretend she's not in my father's bedroom.
“You're still pink,” I say, when he's halfway down the block. He has his scarf and combat boots on, and I wonder if this guy ever dresses for summertime.
Bernardo laughs, the best kind of chuckle that comes from surprise and not obligation. He is not a guy who laughs often, so his laughter is especially awesome.
“You're still pretty,” he says. We have matching laughs now. Matching darting eyes. Matching pink hair.
We've texted so much over the past week that I can almost forget we haven't actually been together. He doesn't know much about me, except it feels like he knows the most important things about me. Who I am, rather than anything about my day-to-day life. I probably look like a distraught mess and smell like garlic and repressed rage.
I care but don't care. I feel the same rush of closeness with him
that I felt when I first met Karissa. Like we have something vital in common.
Or maybe I'm simply becoming a person so desperate for connection that I feel it with randoms all the time. I don't know. That's what Arizona would say. That ever since Arizona and Roxanne left for college and Tess moved out, I'm all kinds of unstable and overeager and emotionally wonky. That I'm a little bit like my dad.
But I'm not pretending I'm in love and I'm not counting things I could change about Bernardo, so I can't be that Sean Varrenâesque.
I give Bernardo a hug despite Arizona's voice in my head. His arms are strong, something that matters to me.
Bernardo's someone who translates well from real life to text messages. Still, it's nice to see him and smell him and remember that his glasses get foggy in the humidity and that his nose is straight and his teeth whiter than white. The fun of pink hair makes the rest of him more serious, those dark eyebrows underlining his solemn steadiness.
“So it's you and me,” I say, sitting back down on the stoop. I don't really do coy. “Real life. No friends around. I like it.” I smile and hope he likes it too. He doesn't return the smile, but I still get the sense that he does.
“You don't need to go get your groupies?” he says.
“If anything, I'm Roxanne's groupie,” I say. The idea of me being the ringleader is preposterous. I keep trying to be my own person, but it seems like all the options are taken already.
“I don't think you'd pull off groupie very well,” he says. Nothing that comes out of his mouth is light or flirtatious. It's all so real. Words
with weight. “Groupies have to be background noise, right? You're melody. You're like a strong melody. Get-stuck-in-your-head melody. The Beatles. You're the Beatles.”
I am pretty sure my body falls through the stoop and down into the depths of Manhattan. With the mole people and the rats and the subway. I have been stuck all year between trying to be unique and trying to still fit in with my friends or Karissa. The idea that I'm actually solid and verifiable on my own feels good. Makes me fuller than the pasta and cheese feast did.
“You can't think I'm that great already,” I say. But it's a lie, because I sort of think he's that great already.
“Don't be self-deprecating,” he says. It's beautiful and unnerving not to be able to make everything into a joke.
“I'm not sure I can stand up,” I say. “All the sweetness is making me sort of shaky.” We've skipped some normal part of the dating experience. Right from nervous first meeting to swoony falling in love.
“I want to see you in the streetlights,” he says, and pulls me off the stoop and onto the sidewalk. I want to ask about his perfect hint of accent, but I don't know how. I want to know everything about where his voice, his tone, his pronunciation of the word
streetlights
comes from.
It's cool enough outside, the humidity letting up or maybe not yet sinking in. The streets are lit by streetlights and signs and still-awake apartments, but more than that, they're lit by the passing cars' headlights.
“You've always lived here?” he says. I don't know if he means the city or the West Village, but I nod because the answer to both is yes. I've only lived here. The structure of my family is always changing, but the brownstone, the red bricks, the crumbling stoop, the yellow paint in my bedroom, the view of the Italian restaurant across the street from our building all stay the same.
“Where do you live?” I ask. I can't believe I don't know the answer to this yet. I know what he ate for dinner last night (a turkey sandwich) and his favorite song (“Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits, which I downloaded and fell in love with). I know what he thought of all the books we read while silently flirting in the park last semester. But I don't know the basics of his life.
“I'm in Brooklyn. Clinton Hill. My parents have lived there forever so they'll never leave, but my school's around here. That going to be okay with you?”
“I love Brooklyn,” I say, but I don't really know if I like it or not. I basically never leave my little corner of New York. Bernardo grabs my hand and brings it to his mouth. “Do you have siblings in Brooklyn?” I say, but I know the answer. I saw them running around him at the park. I know he has a full life with lots of ease. That's stuff you can see even from a great distance, like how I'm sure my particular fucked-up-ness shines across the park at everyone too. Strangers pass me and know I'm from a crazy world.
“Four. Two of each. All younger,” Bernardo says, and I blush at how badly I want to fold myself into his life.
I'm jealous and a little scared I can't compete with all that.
A year or two ago I would have bragged about Arizona and the way we operated like two parts of one brain. I would have thought maybe Tess was going to be The Stepmom, the one who was lasting. I would have explained that Roxanne is like a sister, so I almost had two sisters and almost had a mother.
I don't know how to explain anything anymore.
“Sorry this is totally like an interview, but I want to know more about you,” I say. I think it's that I want to know more, and not that I want him to know less.
“I don't mind being interviewed by a cute girl,” Bernardo says with a straight face and a squeeze of my shoulder.
“Do you speak Spanish?” I say, even though it sounds awkward and weird and like I'm curious about the wrong things.
“I can,” he says. “Sort of. Badly. But I don't. Sometimes with my dad. Terms of endearment and swears mostly.”
I smile. Bernardo puts a hand on my back, rubs for a moment, and keeps walking. He doesn't smile, but not in a bad way.
I take note in my head: Bernardo is a boy who doesn't depend on smiles. Bernardo is a boy who swears and loves in Spanish.
“I had a crap night until right now,” I say. He hasn't asked, but I feel like it must be obvious, from my messy, lipstick-less face.
“I had a crap year until I saw you in the park a few months ago,” he says, turning the conversation into something sweet and large again.
“I'm the worst, seriously. Or, like, not the best.”
“I said no self-deprecation!” he says, but his eyes glint. “Look, I want to fall in love with a girl who reads and does weird stuff and has crap days and sends funny texts and sits at park benches drinking hot
coffee when everyone else is drinking iced.”
“We're not in love,” I say, leaning toward his ear and whispering into it. I smile when I pull back, and my body is trying to hold too many feelings for one single night.
“Wouldn't it be nice, though?” Bernardo says. I smile and look down and try to stop the happy laughter from bubbling up like a water fountain. It would be nice. “I don't know. I'm a romantic. Call me crazy, but being in love is the best.”
“Have you been?” I say. It feels like it would take something away for him to say yes, but I can't put my finger on why. I want one big love, and only one. The exact opposite of my dad.
“Yeah,” he says, and my stomach drops. “That's how I know I want it again.”
“It was good?” I say, so that he knows I haven't been there.
“It was great until it was gone,” he says. He winces, like the pain is physical and still sore.
“I'm sorry,” I say. An ambulance rushes by, all sirens and whooping and so loud we have to stop talking for a moment. “That it hurt. Not that it's over.”
Bernardo nods.
“It's not the worst thing, being hurt,” he says. I want to ask what that means, exactly, but he takes my hand and squeezes and I think that is as much as he wants to say right now.
We end up at our park. I don't know that either of us made the decision to come here, but feet followed feet and the park is lit up by people smoking and checking their phones, little dots of bluish and orange
light, so it feels safe and the strangest kind of romantic.
Bernardo sits on his bench. I try to follow, but he nods at the bench I usually share with Roxanne and Arizona, so I sit over there. He's at his bench, I'm at mine, it smells like weed and someone's McDonald's, and that is when Bernardo finally smiles at me. He watches me from there for a moment before joining me on my bench.
“You're weird,” I say. It's the most flirtatious I know how to be.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “It's even more fun to watch you from over there when I know I can do this after.” I don't have time to ask
do what?
And I don't have a chance to pull back and worry about how it will be. I don't have a chance to think about before and after.
He kisses me and there's only now.
Karissa is downstairs the next morning. She is sitting on the counter. Not on one of the bar stools next to the counter, but actually on the counter. She's got a face-size to-go cup of coffee and she's glowing in the general direction of Arizona, who has her legs crossed and her own enormous coffee and is at her normal stool, the one closest to the fridge that she claimed when we were little kids.
“Finally!” Karissa says. I'm in an extra-large Knicks shirt and gym shorts and I'm not at all ready for contact with humans.
“You're all here,” I say. “For breakfast?”
“Karissa called me. Told me to bring coffee and pastries. She's making French toast. With the pastries.” Arizona is giving me a look that usually means she hasn't had enough coffee to deal with whatever is going down, but in this case must mean something else, because she has literally the most amount of coffee possible in her hands.
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” I say. I can't tell if it's sleepiness or all the kissing that's got me hazy and confused this
morning. I had no idea the aftereffects of a great night with a cute guy were so close to exhaustion.
“It's something I made up when I was little. I know it sounds insane, but it's delicious,” Karissa says. She's whisking eggs, so I guess she's serious, she's actually going to slather the pastries in eggs and fry them up like normal people do with challah bread. “I want to share with you two what my sister and I shared.”
“Oh,” Arizona says. Karissa wipes away a tear, and this is probably why Arizona asked if she was unstable.
“My sister died not long ago,” Karissa says. “My whole family did. So I get a little sentimental. Especially in the mornings. That's something you should know about me.”
Arizona has no idea how to respond. She raises her eyebrows at me, but I don't know how she should respond either. I thought that information was something I had earned the other night, something secret and special and hard to get to. I'm surprised to hear it slip out of Karissa so easily in front of Arizona. Surprised and something else too. Jealous.
“I want us to know each other. Like Montana and I know each other. Like your dad and Iâ” Karissa stops herself, hearing the sentence before she says it aloud.
This all came out easier when she was drinking with me. Drunk people are more prepared for heavy topics. The morning is time for magazine reading and risk-free conversations about pizza toppings or Sunday-night television.
“I'm so sorry. Losing your family must be . . .” Arizona can't finish
the sentence, so now we are in a sea of broken sentences. She looks at me, and I know she feels a little of what I feel toward Karissa. If only for a moment.
“We're all just trying to survive the last terrible thing that happened to us, right?” Karissa says. She jumps off the counter and takes an apple fritter from the box Arizona brought over, starts coating it in egg. She trips a little over her extra-long bright-purple silky pajama pants.
There's silence, and it's the not the kind I had with Bernardo last night.
“What's the last terrible thing that happened to you?” Karissa asks.
“I'm sorry?” Arizona says. She keeps grabbing different things on the counterâa spoon, a Post-it note that my father doodled body parts on when he was talking on the phone the other day, her cell, an almost-bad banana.
My mind does a little jump, and I try to remember what I have told Karissa over the last six months about my sister. And about my father. And about my life, of which she is now a part in a wholly new and unexpected way.
I told her that the guy Arizona liked didn't call her back after they hooked up at some party. I told her all the terrible things Arizona had said about her roommate. I told her that Arizona got crappy grades this last semester and lied about it to Dad. I told her about Dad's other wives. I told her way too much.
“My family dying is the last terrible thing that happened to me. The thing I'm still trying to survive. What about you? A breakup maybe?
Or something with school?” I can't quite tell if Karissa remembers everything I told her about Arizona, or if this is coincidence. I can't seem to interpret any part of this moment.
“I'm pretty much fine,” Arizona says.
The kitchen fills with a cinnamony smell. Bliss.
“I wish I was that kind of strong,” Karissa says, and Arizona rolls her eyes. Karissa catches the tail end of it, and her face breaks a little. Her eyes well up, and I want this to be going more smoothly. I want Arizona to see what I love about Karissa and for Karissa to see why she should not be in our kitchen cooking breakfast. I want everything to reset.
“So, I kissed Bernardo,” I say. I wait for it to fix everything, to make us all friends or something. Arizona clears her throat and drinks more coffee and touches more things on the counter: a glass of water, Dad's business cards, the set of knives in their wooden stand.
“You kissed him or he kissed you?” Karissa says. Arizona's run out of random objects to touch, so she starts picking at the French toast chocolate croissant Karissa drops in front of her and is doing this rabbit thing with her mouth and nose.
If I concentrate, I can pretend Karissa is here because I invited her over to meet my sister. I try to telepathically communicate that plan to my sister, but it doesn't go through.
“Both?” I say. I will Karissa to leave my father. If she left him today or this week, it would still be soon enough to salvage our friendship. If she left him this summer, even, we could maybe someday go back to the way things were and the way they were going to someday be.
“He's one of those . . . big gesture people,” Arizona says. She sounds exhausted, but I love her staying here when I know she wants to run out the door. A part of me wants to run out the door too, or fight with Karissa, but I think I don't know how. “He's like sappy, sort of. Stylish and sappy and intense.”
“I'm gonna count those all as positive qualities,” Karissa says. She's fried up two halves of a muffin, a doughnut, and a half a bagel in this round. The kitchen reeks of nearly burned egg and powdered sugar and simmering butter. Sort of delicious and foreign and a little bit awful. It's not the way our home has ever smelled. “I want to meet him!”
“Montana's barely met him,” Arizona says. “I've barely met him. I don't think you'll be top of the list.” It comes out calm and cruel. Karissa jangles her bracelets around her wrists, like silver and gold hula hoops, and my heart jingles and jangles too.
“Everyone needs to meet him! But, like, after I've kissed him more,” I say, and it's a thing I would have said at Dirty Versailles with Karissa before, so it almost sounds right.
“We could do a start-of-the-summer party!” Karissa says. “Next weekend! Bet I could convince your dadâ”
“No. No, thank you,” Arizona says with a sour look on her face. “I don't think we need that, right, Montana?” She wants me to choose her, strongly and positively in this moment, and I do. Of course I do. But I also can't. Because even if Karissa is with my dad, Karissa is still Karissa.
“Maybe for the, like, the Fourth of July or something. Maybe later,” I say. In my head, in the stupid part of my head, I think maybe
it will be over by the Fourth of July. Maybe on the Fourth we can have wine and pickles and fireworks and “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Karissa's cozy apartment and laugh about how she used to have a thing for my dad.
But for now I'm here and it's June and my sister hates me and Karissa has house keys and knows where our spatulas are kept.
“Even better!” Karissa says, not catching the moment. Or catching it and dismissing it and trying to make it something new. “Fourth of July was my parents' favorite holiday. It was a whole thing. With sparklers and flags and booze and tiny hot dogs.”
Arizona and I go silent. We nod and look serious, because apparently we both deal with someone else's grief the same way. Solemn muteness.
I try some fried muffin. It's buttery and beautiful. I love it.
Arizona scratches her nose, which I'm sure isn't itchy, and starts playing with the magnets on the fridge. Most of them are from medical conferences or pharmaceutical reps.
It's hard to keep hearing about these people who aren't in the world anymore. When we were in acting class for all those months, Karissa said nothing about them, and now it seems like they're always in the room with us.
“I'm sorry, guys. I'm really sorry. I don't mean to keep talking about them. Being with your dad is bringing up all these old feelings, and it's making me a weirdo. So. I'm sorry for all this.” She gestures at her tears. She's a pretty crier, with delicate wet eyelashes and eyes that get even greener and ocean-ier when they're filled with tears.
“Breakfast is great,” I say. “And obviously you can always talk to me. Cry in front of me.” I mean it, even though I have to force my mind to forget the thing she said about being with my father. I have to pretend that sentence didn't exist.
Karissa hugs me, tightly, bringing me in close to her, and she doesn't let go right away. I pull away the tiniest bit, not wanting Arizona to get any madder at me, but Karissa hugs even harder before releasing.
“I really need to go,” Arizona says. Her face is red, and when she stands up, I think again how much she looks like Tess and Natasha and Janie now. I swear she's wearing Tess's pale-pink flats. “Park tomorrow, Montana. Karissa, please, please do not make me try this again. I'm sorry, I know you're probably very quirky and cool and my heart breaks for what you've been through, but I can't pretend that's enough for me to want you to be in my house. With my father. Trying to be my friend or something. I'm sorry. I'm an awful, terrible person. But we want our dad. Not you.”
I don't agree or disagree with the word
we
.
“You don't have to leave,” I say to the counter. I am saying it to Arizona and Karissa both. I don't want this moment to be happening at all.
“You feel the same way I do,” Arizona says.
I shake my head but only when Arizona is gone.
“We'll be okay,” Karissa says. “We'll win her over.”
They both seem to be positive I'm on their side. But no one's really asked.
Maybe we will be okay, when Karissa and my dad are done. Maybe I'm this wonderful type of person who can forgive things and move on but also be strong and principled. I'd like to think I have that fair, kind, excellent person inside of me.
A month ago Karissa took me out for Vietnamese sandwiches, which I'd never had before. They are delicious and vinegary. She laughed in a horsey way at everything I said. She told me about her first kiss when she was
twelve and talked me through her first time when she was fifteen with some pointers on positioning. I'm pretty sure other patrons heard us or at least saw me laugh so hard I spit up a sip of water.
Which is all to say, I want Karissa and my dad. I want them both. Just not together.
Karissa pours orange juice and I smile a lot, so she knows I like her weird breakfast that is partly a memorial to her sister and also that I still like her. I feel a little sick, maybe from the crazy French toast or maybe from the things Arizona said or the circumstance we've all somehow ended up in.
“I'm not one of them. The evil stepmoms or whatever. I'm different. I promise,” Karissa says.
I don't reply. I don't know how to, but I know to keep my eyes on the counter so that she can't do one of her forceful stares that convince me to agree with her.
“Tell me everything about the boy,” she says. And I do. Because my sister left and Karissa's right here.