Maldeamores (Lovesick) (Heightsbound #0.5) (12 page)

“Yup. The red ones.”

“Good choice,” she says, unscrewing the top.

“Is it okay if it sits on top, Mom? Or is it supposed to be down at the bottom next to his name?”

“It has to be next to his name. What do you say we drop it in and it might float for a few days? It will find its way to the bottom eventually, next to Lucky.”

“It might not. It’s too light. I can’t wait, Mom. I’ve got a whole summer ahead of me without him.”

“Or longer,” she says as she opens the jar and shakes one of the rubies into her palm. My mom has worked hard her whole life and her hands are weathered to show it.

She reaches into the silverware drawer and extracts the tongs we use for fried chicken. She clicks the gas on the burner and out pops a blue flame. She plunges my beach glass into the fire, then looks at me and winks. She heats that sucker up until the little red heart is black from the smoke.

I unscrew the cap to my honey jar and Mom releases the red drop from the tongs. It flies to the bottom like a shooting star, cutting through the viscous honey, and lands right next to Lucky’s name.

“I’m not doing this so that you stay in love. I’m helping you because I can’t stand to see you sick. You will find a nice boy like Jeremy and you’ll forget you ever felt this way about your cousin.”

“I know, Mom. Thank you.” I seriously doubt it, but I’m not going to tell her that.

“Take a deep breath,
hija m
í
a
,” she says.

I sit down on the stool. I knew there was something else. I could smell it.

She passes me an envelope. Across the front is my name. The handwriting I’d know anywhere.

“Did he drop it off or did you see him?”

“It was under the door when I got home.”

“Did you read it?”

She nods her head. My face falls.

“Mom, it’s private!”

“I love Lucky, Belén, as if he were my own son. But regardless, it is my job to protect you, even if it means I have to protect you from him.”

I wait until the sun’s gone down to read the letter. Somehow I need a blanket of darkness to surround me, to cover me and shield me from the light, from anything that’s judging me. I know it’s goodbye without even reading it. I know he’s gone already, I can feel it.

Belén,

I don’t remember a time without you. This will be our first separation, won’t it? You scare me more than anything else on the planet, yet you’re the sweetest person I know. Walking straight into war with no experience scares me less than walking into your arms. I don’t know if a life without you is worth living. I don’t even know if I want to find out. But I’ll keep pushing you away, Belén, a million times if I have to. All that means is that I love you better than I love myself.

I’ve got to get the fuck out before I ruin us both. Never think that me leaving is me rejecting you. Leaving is the only way I know how to protect you. Stay away from me, Len. And try to put some of that love you got into yourself.

Your cousin,

Luciano

I take a little bite of the paper and eat it. I’m not sure why. There’s an equal desire in me to destroy and absorb it, so I let the paper grow gummy in my mouth. I swallow it down to help me accept it. I can’t even think of another way out. I guess I’ll have to spend my whole life pretending. Pretending that I want what everyone else wants. Walking away from Lucky will be my own funeral procession with the real Belén lying dead in the coffin. I’ll never let her out for anyone else to see. She’s not perfect if she’s in love with her cousin. She’s defective and so is he.

Chapter 15

Lucky

G
etting clean is easier than getting over Belén. The shakes, the tremors and the shits, a non-stop fever that keeps me nice and delirious. I use methadone the first week and Tylenol with codeine plus Xanex the next. By the third week, I do a two-day water fast and fruits and vegetables for two days after that. I’m back out training for boot camp by the end of my third week there. The rehab joint is in Florida; there’s gators and lizards and all of that. The people are nice and really religious, everything is Jesus-this and Jesus-that
.
But the price tag was something my ma could swing and they promised to keep their traps shut about me being in the program and assured us they could guarantee a clean piss test by the deadline.

We have group therapy and I’m so fucking different from everyone else. First off, I’m the youngest person here. I’m the only New Yorker. Everyone else looks like an old biker and the worst problem is always the meth. We don’t got a lot of tweakers in Manhattan, though I’ve seen more and more meth coming into the Bronx. But I’m indiscriminate when it comes to drugs. I do a little bit of this and that here and there to keep the edge off. God knows some weed helped me get through some rough patches in life. But I’ve got to shake all that shit out of my system. I’m just here till I can guarantee a clean test.

The real drug I’m hooked on is my cousin Belén. The real sickness I’m kicking is
her
in my system. She’s gotten into every little corner and taken over. I can’t escape her when I’m sleeping; she’s almost all I see in my dreams. I can’t stop looking for her during waking hours, half sleeping, half dreaming that she’ll walk in the door. No rehab can cure me of that problem. I’m lovesick.
Tengo maldeamores
.

In group therapy there’s this one bald white guy, he’s got to be around fifty years old. He wears a leather vest and he’s got a tat in the middle of his forehead. I just stare at him, wondering where this dude went wrong. When he talks he doesn’t sound like he’s crazy, but he musta been at some point. He pegs me right away as his
amigo
and we smoke outside together between breaks for coffee. He’s the only person here I tell about Belén. He’s cool and he gets it right away. He says I’m not in rehab for shooting smack since the age of fourteen. I’m not here for selling weed. I’m in rehab for a serious addiction. Her name is Belén and I gotta fight to work her out of my system.

Brett is his name and he cries at the meetings, but somehow he still manages to look tough. His fingers are stubby and he has trouble moving. Rheumatoid arthritis and deterioration of his heart lining, on account of years of injecting so many drugs. I tell Brett I have heart deterioration too, but we gotta work no matter what the cost. I get him outside and doing some pushups—dude could use a little weight taken off. He watches me work out in the afternoons and times my sprints. He gives me a high five when I come in under time and keeps a cold bottle of water waiting under a towel. It makes me wish I’d had a dad all those years. Someone to high five me, someone to encourage me. It’s weird to be sober.

I don’t even call my ma when I’m here. She and Belén are just too close. I’d be calling a phone two floors away from her phone and I don’t think I could take the stress.

When I graduate the program there’s a ceremony with a minister. I get a certificate with my name in cursive and I get my very first clean piss test. Brett wears a tie to the ceremony and we take a picture together in front of the coffee station. My one-on-one counselor Virginia gets lipstick all over my cheek. People make speeches and say nice stuff about me. Brett breaks down when he says how proud he is of me, that he himself always dreamed of being a Marine.

“It’s not like I made it through boot camp yet, guys. Don’t get all carried away.”

They groan in protest and say I’m a shoe-in. But it’s not so much my physical stamina that has me worried; I’m actually looking forward to running myself dead. I think I can handle the mental stuff too—you just obey whatever they say and always give your best. And it’s not like I can’t survive being away from her, because I’m pretty sure I can do that too. I’m fucking terrified of going back home again. Seeing her when everything‘s changed. What happens if one of us moves on and the other one can’t move at all?

Belén

I chose Vassar for the campus and the name. I guess maybe I’m shallow like that. The scholarship money is enough for Mami to at least relax a little. She cries so hard during parent week that she has to take a tranquilizer. I didn’t realize how much it would feel like a goodbye. I promise her up and down that we’ll Skype and visit as much as possible. The Amtrak ride isn’t so bad and we’re at least still in the same state.

My roommate is a butch lesbian from Chicago named Lucy. I think they put us together because we’re both Hispanic, but I’m not sure how the roommate mix-and-match works. I like Lucy right off the bat. She’s serious about studying but she’s also really funny. She has me in stitches within minutes describing her drop-off, and offered to let me have the top bunk. We get dinner in the cafeteria together and it turns out she eats like a hulk. She downs two bowls of macaroni and cheese and then finishes what little was left of mine too. I love her already.

All through first semester I convince her Jeremy is my boyfriend. We chat on the phone and email and he even comes to visit me one weekend. Jeremy is blonder; he looks tan, has lost some of the pudge. He’s decided to do a three-two program at Wharton at UPENN in Philadelphia. He teases me a bit about my four-year liberal arts degree. The kids at his school apparently have a lot of money. Some of them live off-campus and drive fancy cars; they’ve already got their jobs secured after graduation and are using this time to party hard and do coke. I don’t ask him if he’s selling or dealing. I don’t ask him about home. He takes me out to dinner and we share a bottle of wine over pasta without getting IDed.

“You look amazing, Belén. Even better than in high school,” Jeremy says and runs his socked foot up my shin bone. It doesn’t feel natural. It seems like he’s acting out something he watched on a bad TV show.

“Thanks, Jeremy. You seem really grown up. I wish my goals were as clear as yours are. Knowing your path that well is really enviable.”

In the car on the way home he’s got his hand up my skirt. I’ve never been hot for Jeremy after that night in the bathroom. We made out a few more times after the incident and went on a lot of dates. All the romance fizzled out, but we’ve always remained close friends. My apathy toward Jeremy’s hand makes me think there’s something wrong with me.

“Pull over, why don’t you? Maybe we should kiss first.”

Jeremy pulls into the parking lot of an empty strip mall. All the stores are closed and the lights are low. I shed my jacket and turn to him and touch his face. There’s a lump in my stomach as I lean in to meet his mouth. I let him tongue me and I try to keep up his pace. There’s no heat in my veins, no blood pumping to the places it should. He takes my hand and moves it down toward his cock. He’s hard through his pants and I give him a squeeze. He unbuttons my dress and slides his fingertips inside my bra.

“Remember that time, Belle, at my parents’ house in the bathroom? We’d known one another five minutes and we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other?”

My blood runs now because he can’t say my name. I told him in the beginning that it doesn’t rhyme with Helen. That the first part is “Bey”, just like “sitting on the dock of the
bay
” and for the second part say “lend” without the “d”. I want to scream it now because I’ve told him so many times and he obviously didn’t listen. It’s not too much to ask, that he at least try, is it? And the sexiest thing about that night was when Lucky inspected me ruthlessly in the elevator, while I, humiliated, pulled up my underpants in front of him.

Nothing is sexy now about his pointy tongue and hot, hard, poky dick. He gropes my tit with his sweaty hand and it reminds me of dancing with the awkward kids at school dances—who asked you to dance but had absolutely no swagger. Their hands were always humid and shook a bit with nerves. The pimples, the braces, seeing your friends—well at least Yari—laughing from the wings at the awkwardness. Feeling sorry enough for the guy to accept the dance but brave enough to call it at one. I don’t want sex to be like this. It wasn’t ever awkward with Lucky. I honestly think I got so far with Jeremy in the first place because I was so turned on by Lucky.

“Let me tie you up, Belle. I’ve got handcuffs and rope in the trunk,” Jeremy says and continues to finger my nipple.

“WHAT?” I’m so taken aback that my head starts to hurt a little. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Let’s try it. Come on, it’ll be fun,” he says, pinching hard on one breast while he palms at the other one.

“I think you should probably take me home.”

Jeremy sighs and moves back into the bucket seat of his Audi. He adjusts his penis in his chinos and pushes back while he restarts the car. He peels out of the parking lot so fast that it scares me a little. He says nothing while we drive and glares straight ahead at the road. He pulls up at my dorm with a screech, jerking hard and unsettling me even more. I’m at least glad he took me home and didn’t suggest any more weird foreplay.

When I lean back down to the car to say goodbye he says, “You could have at least finished me off, you know. I came all this way.” He’s looking straight ahead, his hand on the wheel.

“Oh, is that what you came for? You should have specified over the phone. I could have saved you a lot of driving time. I’m sure it’s easier to find a quick hook-up at home.”

“Yari was right, Belle. You’ve always been a cold fish.”

“Oh my God! You fucked Yari too? When, that night after Lucky’s party?” I ask, wondering if that’s the only reason Lucky came to me instead.

“Get over it, Belle. We were all kids!” he says and pulls out with a flash, spinning the tires, upsetting the fall leaves on the curb and leaving me in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

I walk back to the dorm feeling like my body weighs a thousand pounds. I wish I wanted to get laid. I wish something turned me on. Whenever I masturbate I think about
his
body and
his
kiss. I only want to touch myself when I think about Lucky; I don’t even have normal fantasies.

Lucy has her face an inch away from her book when I close the door behind me. I try so hard not to cry that my face probably looks distorted.

“How was dinner with the boyfriend?”

Lucy has a black longshoreman’s wool hat on over her closely-cropped black hair. She’s wearing thick-framed hipster glasses and bright red lipstick. I feel like I’d rather make out with her than Jeremy and I’m not even gay.

“Good,” I say. My throat hurts from being such a faker.

“Bey, is he really your boyfriend? That dude vibed me out and you’re vibing me right now, girl.”

I shake my head and the tears start to rain. Lucy grabs our coats and drags me to a local bar that we know sells to under-age. We get pints of beer and sit at a dark booth in the back by the pool table.

“Okay, BeyBey. Spill me the beans now, please,” Lucy says, taking a sip of her beer.

I tell her the whole story. From the first feelings to the first kiss to the note when he left, which I’m too embarrassed to tell her still sits in my wallet. I tell her about Jeremy, the bathroom, the graduation party, even the kiss and the handcuffs. How nothing turns me on and how at nineteen, I’m still a virgin.

She listens like a pro and takes off her glasses to clean them. She looks at me as she exhales onto the lenses and then wipes them on her shirt. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“I haven’t. I don’t even ask my mom or my aunt about him.”

“Is he deployed or is he here?”

“I think he’s overseas. But I don’t know.”

“Can you come when you masturbate?”

“Yes.” I blush a little and take a sip of my beer.

“Have you ever tried to masturbate and think about Jeremy, or anybody else for that matter?”

“Yes, but it always goes back to Lucky.”

“Are you attracted to other people? Do you think anybody is hot even if they don’t make you horny?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

Lucy nods. “Want to play a game of pool?”

“Huh? Okay. I thought maybe you were evaluating and forming some kind of answer.”

“Yeah, right! I don’t think there’s an answer for you. It’s a weird situation, Bey. Do you think you’ll ever get over him?”

“I was really hoping you’d have some insight.”

“Nope. Just listening. Being a good roommate.”

“Do you think it’s disgusting? Do you think that I’m sick? We slept in the same crib. Learned to ride the same bike.”

“I think that
nobody
can help who they love. That shit just happens and you’ve got to figure out how to deal with it. I don’t believe it’s a choice. Ever.

Lucy looks sad, like she’s talking about her own experience.

“Your story is really sad, Bey, and it’s also kind of hot in a way. I feel like it’s too bad he would never fuck you because, you know, then maybe you’d figure it out. It seems like that’s where the answer is. Or at least that’s where you got hung up and now you can’t get past it.”

“He would never do it, no matter how hard I tried. And believe me, I tried.”

“That’s weird, ‘cause you’re hot. You know that, right, Bey?”

I just shrug.

Lucy creams me at pool.

We hang out every single weekend.

I make the dean’s list and Phi Beta Kappa and get a work study position in the library.

I decide to do Continuing Ed and stay on campus for summer school.

Lucy says I’m crazy. She’s going to Spain.

Everyone leaves. This place is a ghost town.

She writes me two post cards from Ibiza and I stare at them in the library. She says the pussy is hot and she’s eating octopus, calamari, and Manchego every day. She’s taking Spanish classes and learning to dance Flamenco.

I write her back and tell her that I’m the only one left here except for some high school students getting credit for college. That the entire operations crew knows me by name. I’m honing my pool hustle nightly. That I accidentally racked up so many credits in the past sixteen months that I’m already a junior. Whoops.

I don’t go home to the Heights once.