Across the way there’s a whole bunch of scaffolding—buildings getting torn down or built up. I try to remember what used to be under the bars. Maybe a bakery or a frozen yogurt place. Somewhere I used to go when Natasha and I would meet my father after work. Now who knows. It will probably be a bank.
“You know what I love?” I say. “That your dad makes rice every night and guac on Sundays and that you get pizza every Thursday and watch TV with everyone and that your mom grew up with in the place you now live.”
I must look like I’m going to throw my shoe through the window or something, because Bernardo holds me unprompted. Pulls me to him. Lifts my face up.
“It looks like something perfect,” he says, “but it’s not. There’s no room there to be your own whole person. They want me to be the oldest kid and not much else. And I don’t want pizza every Thursday. Some Thursdays I want sushi. Or steak. Or pancakes for dinner. And guess what? I don’t like rice. I don’t like rice and beans or knowing what’s going to happen next.”
“I want to know what’s going to happen next,” I say.
“I don’t,” he says. He runs his hand through my hair and smiles at the way it curls and splits and knots.
“I’m tired of everything changing,” I say.
“We’ll change together, then,” he says. And maybe he understands me more than I think. Maybe he has some instinctual blueprint of me. He touches my face but doesn’t hold it to the light to examine it. His fingers find their way to my mouth and he traces my lips. Pulls on the bottom one a little. He’s about to kiss that same spot, maybe pull on it with his teeth, something I didn’t know I’d like so much, but I get an idea and stop him before his lips have landed on mine.
“I should pierce it,” I say. I didn’t even know the words were in there. I’ve never wanted a pierced lip.
“Your lip?” Bernardo looks fully surprised. He finishes his journey to my mouth and kisses me so hard I think I might faint. His hands tug at my hair, and I’m glad I’ve kept it long and messy. There’s so much of it for him to pull and play with and weave through his fingers. When we’re done, I have the chaos of my hair as proof of passion, and I like it. I won’t brush it out when we’ve broken apart.
“Maybe not my lip,” I say, and I can tell from his rare smile that that was the whole point. He likes my lips the way they are. A lot.
He looks at my face for a long time. Pedestrians have to change their paths on the sidewalk. They sigh and their dogs bark and little kids barrel into our legs because we are taking up too much room. It’s one of those gorgeous summer weekends and the Upper East Side is packed, absolutely drenched, with men in bright-colored shorts for their weekend-wear and women in expensive sundresses that are meant to look inexpensive. We get whiffs of cologne after terrible cologne, a parade of smells and frustrated noises and elbows and shoulders banging against our bodies, but we don’t move until he’s done looking.
“I got it,” he says. “Nose.”
I almost say yes. It feels natural, to let him look at my face and tell me how to change it.
Until it feels awful. I start walking toward the subway and let him follow behind me, asking if I’m going to do it. I get Karissa and my dad out of my head.
“Eyebrow,” I say.
“Cool. Me too.”
“Really?” I reach behind me for his hand and pull him so we are walking side by side. It’s annoying for everyone else on the cramped sidewalk, but I don’t care anymore.
Shit, I’m in love.
“You definitely don’t have to do it,” I say. He’d look good with an eyebrow ring. It would fancy up those serious eyebrows.
“We’re in it together,” he says.
“I love you,” I say. Nothing has ever felt so true or big. Everything is melting away. Or I’m melting into him. Or maybe it’s so hot and humid on the streets of New York today that it feels that way, and that’s close enough. Maybe we’re simply melting, period.
“Let’s go say fuck you to the world and pierce our faces,” he says, which is basically the same as I love you too.
We take the subway down to the East Village and find a place that’s the right mixture of dirty and clean.
“Here?” I say. There’s graffiti outside, but the pretty kind. The artsy kind. Inside there are chairs that look like they could be in Dirty Versailles—gold arms and red velvet seats—and a neon sign.
“Here,” Bernardo says, completely sure of himself. “I’ve heard of this place. They don’t check IDs.” I wish I could have a little of what he has, so I launch myself at him and press against him, sucking on his neck a little, like sureness and stability might be something I can extract from that one place.
I’ve never thought of myself as a girl who would get a facial piercing, but that’s sort of the point.