This Is What I Want to Tell You (6 page)

He looked at my eyes on the cover of the book. I felt him and I looked up. He seemed to smile at me.

Hi. I put the coffee down on the table and let my bag slip off my shoulder.

He took a drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out. He nodded at the book.

Read it? he asked.

No, I said.

Com’ere.

I walked over to him. My heart was racing all the way into my throat. He pulled me into him so his cheek was against my stomach. Then he pushed my shirt up and kissed my stomach. I felt all at once like I never wanted to be anywhere else other than that gasoline-smelling apartment, and like I wanted to throw up.

Let’s do something, I said, putting my hand on top of his head, trying to push it back as gently as I could.

He tucked his finger into the waist of my jeans, not looking up.

Mm-hmm.

Like, go somewhere. I took his hand and held it.

He finally looked up.

Where d’you wanna go?

I suddenly wished I hadn’t said anything. I felt my face flush.

I don’t know. We always—we’re just here. We could go, like, eat something.

Eat something? He smiled slowly.

What I wanted to say was, we never talk about anything. We just kiss. Then you take my pants off. Then my throat closes and my heart rushes and I push you away and you say what’s wrong and I say I don’t know. What I wanted to say was, I want to feel like you want to be with me as a real live couple. Then I’ll be ready to sleep with you.

Instead I said, Never mind. I don’t know.

And he pulled me down onto his lap.

Wait, I wanted to say. Wait. I could feel him kissing my neck but it wasn’t my neck now, it was my neck the first time he kissed me, before anyone (who wasn’t related to me) had ever kissed any part of me, neck or otherwise.

And I couldn’t say anything. The ridges of his fingers felt coarse along my stomach. I shivered. I didn’t want to say anything.

Wait, I said.

He sighed.

I couldn’t concentrate.

Last year it was easy. Run, study, ace tests, work at the food pantry, Model U.N. I had a routine. It was every minute. I knew the things I wanted to do. This year I quit the food pantry. I actually really liked being there, Molly or no Molly—there was something therapeutic about stacking can after can of green beans, box after box of Stove Top, and something comforting about packing boxes for distribution … one of everything, knowing that meals that would come out of that box would be so much more important than any meal I ever ate.

But I just couldn’t do it this year. If I wasn’t at school, I wanted to be with Keeley.

After the night she came to my kitchen door it was like we just became a couple. Keeley didn’t want to talk about it, which worked for me. But everything we did, the way we looked for each other, the way I decided everything I would do with her in mind, that must be what being a couple is like. We were just a couple who couldn’t quite tell the public truth.

I was at lunch, returning my tray to the dish window, when Keeley grabbed my arm.

Come on, she whispered.

And I realized in the buzzing crowd and anonymous noise of high school lunch time, we could sneak out in the middle of hundreds of people.

Without talking, Keeley pulled my hand down the nearly empty hallway, up the cold concrete stairwell to the second floor and, turning a corner, she pushed open the door of the boys’ handicapped bathroom. White-gray tile floors, a crooked urinal, a toilet. A fingerprint-streaked silver bar ran the length of the room to the sink that Keeley was leaning up against. I could see myself in the mirror above her head, her blonde hair at my chin. My eyes surprised me—to see myself there surprised me. I looked exactly like me but something in my eyes looked stretched, looked tense, looked almost desperate.

I moved toward Keeley.

Hi, she said.

I didn’t say anything. I kissed her. I put my hands at the base of her neck to pull her closer to me. Her mouth was warm and slow. She slid her hands up my back. Everything about her felt slow and soft. I could feel the tumbling beat of her heart through my shirt. Her tongue pressed against mine and then back. I tried to pull her closer. I brought my hand down her neck, her side; and under her T-shirt the skin of her stomach was hot. Her back folded against the sink. Then she stopped. Her whole body stopped.

Wait, she said.

I felt like I’d been running too fast to stop myself, like I’d tumbled forward head first.

She pushed against my chest.

Just hang on, she said. She rubbed her hand over her eyes, pushed her hair back.

Okay, I said. I was picking myself up, breathing like the sprint was over. I stood with a foot between us.

Are you okay, I asked, counting my breaths, trying to slow them.

Yeah, she said. She lifted her head and looked at me. She tried to smile. Sometimes it’s just really fast.

But you, I wanted to say, you pulled me up here. I didn’t say anything. I watched her. Sometimes I didn’t get it—I didn’t get her. She was holding on to something.

Yeah, I said to her. It is. It’s okay.

Her smiled was relieved now.

I mean, she said, I love kissing you. I don’t want you to think I don’t.

But I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want us to say why or why not or explain through all of it.

Hey, I said. We still have some time before next period. Want an iced tea or something?

Okay.

Keeley moved forward. She leaned up and kissed my cheek.

You’re kind of amazing, she said. She looked almost sad. Let me walk out first. I’ll meet you outside the cafeteria in five minutes.

Okay, I said. I’ll be right behind you.

It was like this a lot with me and Keeley. We found all of these hiding places—her attic, groves in the orchard, even that second floor handicapped boys’ bathroom. We had to find hiding places because neither one of us was ready to tell Noelle. And the truth was, what would we tell Noelle anyway?

Sometimes Keeley and I couldn’t get enough and she leaned into me when I slid my hand up her stomach and under her bra, and she tried to pull me closer to her and even sometimes she bit at the skin on my neck under my left ear. But then sometimes she froze and stopped and turned off and pushed me away.

There was no way of knowing how it would go when we were together. And those times when she pushed me away, she looked so sad that I couldn’t do a thing. That I swallowed that sharp ball of frustration and sometimes even anger. I thought I knew where the anger was coming from, though, and it wasn’t just her.

* * *

I finished
Walden
, I told Lace after dinner one night. I was helping her do the dishes. Noelle had just left, claiming she was going to Jessica’s to study. I could see that her backpack was empty as she walked out the door. Lace shook her head.

Be careful, she called out. But Noelle didn’t look back.

What did you think? Lace asked.

Well …

Dario, he … your dad. He said he loved America when he read that book. He said, for him, he didn’t even know what solitude felt like. He said Italians smother each other. The only way you get to know anything about yourself or the world you live in is through the eyes of your family.

She was looking down while she talked, scrubbing one spot on the plate in her hands over and over.

Ironic, huh? She smiled at me.

Mom? Why don’t we ever talk about him?

She stopped washing. Noelle and I hardly ever called her Mom. Ever since we could talk, we’d reveled in the sound of her name.

Do you want to?

Kind of.

She wiped her hands on a dish towel and sat down at the kitchen table. I sat across from her.

I know, I said, because she seemed nervous. I know you were seventeen. I know you were traveling in Italy. I know that for a whole year you were in love and then, when you were pregnant, he disappeared. I know this part, Mom, and I hate him for this part. But I feel like I need to know who he was.

She nodded.

Shit, she said.

I started to feel guilty. I couldn’t help but think how she and my dad were just about the same age I am. Noelle is. Keeley is.

I was so independent, Lace said. I graduated high school early, I’d lost my parents, I knew what I wanted. I was never afraid of traveling alone …

I knew all of this but I let her talk. I felt like she was warming up. My whole body felt tight, like I was waiting for something to break open.

He was just beautiful, she said. He was exactly what I needed, right then.

Lace reached across the table. She put her hand over mine. She was staring over my head.

Nadio, it was like … it was like when I met your dad everything opened. He just pulled me everywhere. He spoke the language and suddenly everything was possible. People seemed to know him everywhere. They didn’t, of course, but he was just so fucking charming.

Her hand gripped mine on the table.

There’s so much about him. He knew—he just knew. He knew where to dig for truffles. He knew the back roads. He knew about the widow in every village who had rooms and would cook us breakfast and dinner. He read books in three different languages. He knew all about growing and harvesting grapes and cooking the most amazing meal with four ingredients. He made me feel like there was no one else in the world.

She stopped. Her eyes slid back into focus. She looked at me.

That was really what it was—being the only two people in the world. You’ll feel it one day and you’ll know what I mean. It’s different for women, though, I have to say, Boo. I don’t think you need to feel needed as much as we girls do. Her grip loosened. Am I wrong?

I don’t know, I said. I’d never thought about it that way.

She squeezed my hand again. This time it wasn’t desperate. It was comfort.

Don’t hate him.

I stood up, pulling my hand away carefully. I leaned down and kissed her head.

Thanks, Lace.

Her eyes were gone again.

Okay, she whispered.

Parker’s back was to me. My tank top was twisted high around my stomach.

I felt naked.

I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I thought about Lace and our dad. I thought about how they were so close to my age. I thought about how they were on the other side of the world and there was no one else but them. That’s what she once said it felt like. It was weird to think about them while I was here. But some part of my mind just fell to them.

There was no one in the world but Parker and me. I imagined it for just a second. It was just the two of us and nothing else was on the other side of the bedroom door.

But the apartment was freezing. The sheet was wrapped around him. I reached out to pull it toward me. I stopped. It was wrapped around his waist and through his legs. He was sleeping. I couldn’t wake him.

Jesus, Noelle, what’s the problem? he’d said.

I just feel … I could never finish my sentences with him.

He was sitting up. His eyes looked raw. He pushed his hair back, rubbed his hand across his face. He was somewhere between exhausted and angry.