“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.
twenty-three
Victoria and Veronica hug my legs when we get there, and Natasha gives us iced tea and cookies, and I’m proud to show them off to Bernardo.
“Are you treating Montana right?” Natasha says. I can’t read what she thinks of him right off the bat. I’ve never introduced her to anyone, aside from back in the day when she was my stepmom and I didn’t give a shit since I hated her.
“I think so!” Bernardo says. He isn’t nervous. Or at least he’s not showing it. In fact, he looks more comfortable here than he did when he hung out with Karissa. He lifts Victoria onto his lap and I lift Veronica onto mine, and I’m thinking this was the best idea I’ve ever had.
“It’s probably my job to show you embarrassing pictures of her ballet class and the Halloween she dressed up as an old man, right?” Natasha beams.
“An old man, huh?” Bernardo says. “What ever happened to, like, Cinderella or a cat or a ghost?”
“Not my style,” I say, loving his teasing. “I made Arizona be an old lady, so we could match.” I’m laughing, thinking of it, and Natasha is laughing too. She remembers.
“You bossed Arizona around, huh?” he says. I like how he’s trying to paint a full picture of me and my life. Write a whole novel on it.
“Hard to say.” Memories of growing up with Arizona are so vivid they hurt. “We bossed each other around, I guess.”
Victoria traces all the hearts she can find on Bernardo’s skin, and Veronica keeps laughing at the ones on me. Natasha doesn’t mention any of it. Everyone else in my life would say something about it, but Natasha doesn’t do judgment.
“Nothing like siblings,” Natasha says, looking at her girls.
Victoria and Veronica run around tearing books off the wall for us to read to them, and Bernardo does all the guy voices and wolf voices and elephant voices and dopey voices while I read the fairies and princesses and narrators and monkeys.
“He’s got a very gentle nature with the girls,” Natasha says when I join her in the kitchen to grab more cookies. “I can see what you like about him.” She rubs my shoulder where there’s a cluster of hearts. “The girls love these.”
“It’s silly. We’re sort of silly together. Obviously. We’re weirdos together.”
“Isn’t that perfect?” she says. “My girl in love.” It hurts like it always does when she uses the phrase my father uses. Itches, really. The off-ness. A woolly sweater two sizes too small.
When we head back to the couch, the girls have brought Natasha’s List of Things to Be Grateful For diary to Bernardo to read, but he hasn’t opened it.
“What’s this?” he asks. I love that he didn’t open it, and I think Natasha does too. I want her to see at least a dozen things that are amazing about him.