“She’s not my sister,” I say, because that’s my mantra.
“I’m asking if you’re gonna tip well,” the cabbie says. He’s angrier than I’d noticed, and I wonder if maybe the Axe cologne and french fries were his, and not the people before us. It’s weird, when you think about it, that we let strangers drive us around when we’re wasted. It’s not safe. I want to tell Bernardo my epiphany, but he’s handing over a twenty and sighing.
Karissa groans and Bernardo covers her mouth with his hand, like she’s going to get us kicked out despite the ridiculous tip.
It’s nice, though, having someone take care of me.
The cabbie slams the brakes at a red light, and all three of us pitch forward. Karissa and I hit our heads on the glass. It hurts.
“Do you really need to stay here for this?” Bernardo says, like the inside of the cab is all that my life and my city really have to offer.
“We’d go to California?” I say. All I know about California is palm trees and a warmer ocean than the one we have here.
“Or Portland. Or Seattle. Or Hawaii. Anywhere you want,” Bernardo says. “I just thought you might want to see your mom first.”
“Maybe I do?” I say, but it seems like a big, huge question. I’ve seen the rest of them. The almost-moms. Do I want to see the actual mom? These are questions I don’t want to answer in a stopping-and-starting cab next to the biggest liar I’ve ever met.
“We don’t need any of this,” Bernardo says. The cab’s pulling up to my brownstone. It’s gorgeous in the streetlights. Tess’s potted plants are still on the stoop, and they’re drooping in a kind of tragic beauty.
I can’t stop thinking about Bernardo’s mother’s empanadas and the way his littlest sister hangs on to his legs even when he’s walking. The tiny coziness of their apartment and the way they sit around reading books on the two couches every Sunday night.
“We don’t?” I say. I’m trying to fit the things he’s saying in with my feelings. I thought love had something to do with feeling the same things in the same moments, and I want that back.
“Okay, here we are,” the cabbie says. “Get her out. Bring her right inside. Lay her on her side so she doesn’t choke. Put water by the bed.” He’s listing it off like he’s said it a million times to a million drunk people. Bernardo piles Karissa into his arms. We bring her upstairs and tuck her into bed. We keep her on her side. My father’s nowhere to be found.
We go back to the stoop when we’re done with Karissa and after we’ve downed a frozen French bread pizza to soak up the alcohol and the feelings.
It’s humid and smells a little like garbage, but everyone in the world walks by and I make up stories about them in my head and listen to their private conversations and think about the sidewalk as being a quilt of moments, and man I’m deep when I’ve been drinking.
I take out a cig and offer one to Bernardo. We sit like chimneys on the stoop, blowing trails of smoke into the sky.
“I really meant it. We should go,” Bernardo says. “Aren’t you tired of being the one who stays here and takes it?”
I am.
I really am.
“I’d have to check with Arizona first,” I say. It doesn’t make sense, since she doesn’t live here anyway, but I don’t want to not have anyone to check with. I don’t want to be quite that free.
“Fair,” he says. “We can tell her tomorrow. But she’s not deciding for us, okay? It’s our decision. As a couple.”
I nod, and the cabs blur together on the street in front of us. I’m still too drunk to move my head painlessly.
“I don’t want to tell my dad about Karissa,” I say. “I don’t want to be part of it.”
“Okay,” Bernardo says.
“She’s not mine,” I say, and it’s finally and totally true.
“Agree,” he says.
“None of it’s really mine,” I say, meaning my family and my life here and all the things I thought were real. But I don’t say any of that. “I guess we could go away after the wedding.”
I light another cigarette. I can’t pause, can’t let my hands still. Bernardo puts a hand under my butt, so I’m sitting on it.
I’m thinking maybe Bernardo is the only thing that is right about my life.
I get an intense urge to tell the people I love about my engagement. I have no idea what I was thinking telling Janie and Karissa first. It’s the first time I’ve been scared of my own actions. Like my impulses are all off, and some sort of terrible neuron is firing in my brain that’s making me do the opposite of the things I should be doing.
I want to tell Roxanne and Arizona and Natasha. I don’t want to let go of those things. When Bernardo keeps saying we should be over NYC, I’m not sure I can be over them.