But I’m so weak, so tired, so hurt that I can’t pile one more problem onto this day. Maybe when I wake up everything will be different. Lionel will be receptive to his meds and he will apologize and everything will be good between us again. And if he’s not, then I have to think seriously about what my life would be like without him when boarding school isn’t the reason keeping us apart.
I trudge up the stairs to my room. Emil has turned on the twinkle lights so everything is cast in a soft glow. He’s sitting on my bed, on top of the covers, flipping through a book of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks. His shoes are next to the bed.
“How’d it go?” he asks, lowering the book.
I undress immediately, dropping my clothes to the floor piece by piece until I’m standing in nothing but my underwear.
He looks at me—at my eyes, not my body. “Suzette?”
I start to answer him but my face crumples.
“It’s okay.” He comes to me, wraps his arms around my naked shoulders, and walks me toward the bed. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not, though,” I say in a voice thick with tears. “He won’t take his meds. He hates me, Emil.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He does.”
“Come on,” he says as I lie down. He pulls the covers over me gently, first the top sheet and then the duvet. “Appa always says everything will look better in the morning and… not to sound too much like my dad, but maybe that’s true, okay? It’s been a long night.”
Emil turns off the lights and crawls in next to me. He seems hesitant to touch me when I move closer to him, and when I kiss him, he doesn’t kiss me back. He pulls away and looks at me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It feels like I’m taking advantage of you, when you’re upset like this.” His voice is quiet.
“You’re not. I want this. I want you.”
He slides his thumbs across my cheeks, brushing the tears away as he cups my face with his strong hands. He kisses me first this time and makes up for the kiss he didn’t return. His lips are warm and understanding as they meet mine, as if he knows how much I need to be needed tonight.
I take my time removing his clothes, stopping to touch the parts of his body I haven’t seen before. He sucks in a breath and releases it unevenly as my fingers glide across his skin. I’ve never seen a boy completely naked; even when we were up in the tree house that night, Emil never took off his boxers. Now he strokes the dimples at the small of my back as I look at him a little too long.
I ask if he has a condom and he nods, grabs one from his jeans on the floor. But he stops and asks if I’m sure before he puts it on. I’m no surer of what I’m doing than when I was with Iris, but like when I was with her, this feels right.
We go slow, and still sometimes it is so uncomfortable I have to bite my lip to keep from whimpering. I don’t want him to think he’s hurting me because he’s so gentle the whole time, as if my body is sculpted of glass. He kisses and kisses me, and each time our lips meet, I think the strangest thing about being so close to Emil is that it’s not strange at all.
And I don’t think about Iris. Not until we’re done and he is wrapped around me like a spoon, his arms holding me tight like she used to, like he’ll never let me go.
nineteen.
I’m so sorry” are the first words out of Rafaela’s mouth when she sees me.
I’m not working today, two days after the party, but when she asked me to meet her at the coffee shop next to Castillo Flowers, I obliged. I didn’t have anything better to do than try not to drown in my worry, so it was good to hop on my butter-yellow beach cruiser and ride over here with the wind whipping through my dreads, the sun warming my skin as I cycled up Sunset. But now that I’m here, I wish I weren’t. I know it’s not Rafaela’s fault that Lionel lost control, but I can’t help feeling resentful.
Or that she’s bad for him.
She slides into the seat across from me at the wrought-iron table crammed into the small outdoor space and takes off her sunglasses. “I had no idea that guy was going to show up. I told you he’d texted me earlier and then he was just, like, there and…”
“But what happened?” I wrap my hands around my iced latte. “Something had to have set Lion off. I mean, he doesn’t just go around punching people like that. And he won’t tell me anything.”
For the first time since I’ve met her, Rafaela blushes. It’s subtle, but her skin pinkens and she stares down at her empty hands. “He’s trying to protect me. That guy is bad news.”
“Obviously,” I say, and it’s not lost on me how unkind my voice is. But I’m tired of secrets.
She purses her lips and stands. “I need coffee.”
I’m slurping the last of mine through a straw when she returns, ignoring the annoyed glances of the dad type sitting to my left.
Rafaela sits down with a hot coffee, takes a sip, and looks at me. “The last time I saw that guy, he said he was going to ‘fuck the gay’ out of me.”
The dad type huffs, not even trying to hide the fact that he’s listening in.
“What?” I say, admittedly as shocked as he is.
“He knew about Grace, and he was always really weird when other girls were around. I told you how he’d get all possessive, and that was whether or not I even thought they were cute. Like, we could’ve been walking by a woman wearing mom jeans and driving a minivan, and he’d make sure I wasn’t checking her out.” She shudders. “It was really creepy, so I started ignoring him.”
“And he couldn’t handle it.”
I remember Iris telling me something similar, about how the boys who’d flirted and tried to get her attention at her old school were angry when she rebuffed them, but especially so when they realized she wasn’t into guys at all. Like it was a direct threat to their masculinity, and they were embarrassed that they’d wasted time on someone who didn’t reciprocate their attraction. I feel lucky that Emil handled my confession so well, but I know I won’t always be so fortunate.
“No, and seeing me with another guy was apparently the last straw.” She sighs and looks at her coffee. “The night of your welcome-back party… when he showed up at DeeDee’s… I may have told him I was going to be there.”
“What?” I lean forward and lower my voice.
“I was bored,” she says. “And drunk. And I knew he’d make a fool of himself in front of everyone. He did, but—”
“That only made it worse.”
She nods. “And this last time… I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see what he’d act like if he saw me with another guy. But he was drunker than I’ve ever seen him, at Alicia’s. Calling me all sorts of names. Lionel defended me, of course, and then the next thing I know he’s just whaling on him.”