That last night, he made his sad faces and looked into my eyes more than usual and handed me all his excuses (But I trimmed the hair around my dick and everything; I showered with that soap you like instead of the soap at the gym; I brought baby wipes, the ones with the aloe stuff you say makes your skin soft), which is why I gave in to his pleas not to use a condom. That, and I’d been on the pill since Leidy learned she was pregnant, just over a year by then—something I couldn’t tell Omar because he’d think it meant I planned on sleeping with other guys now that I was about to be one of those college girls. Before that night, we’d only had no-condom sex when I was on my period and when he remembered the towels—had them waiting in the Integra’s trunk—to put down on the backseat.
He’d pulled out, and I’d cleaned up, and then we sat there, sticky and holding hands, his thumb not stroking the back of my wrist in a soft way, but instead each finger gripping around to my palm, owning it. Every minute or so, he’d squeeze it and hold the squeeze, sending some secret code through our hands, his pulses reminding me of just a few minutes before, when I’d felt that same kind of throb up in me—that sudden fullness meaning I needed, quick, to slide off and get out of the way. I thought I could sense Omar’s thoughts, and in between those squeezes—the weird smell of bleach and musk surrounding us, a balled-up baby wipe in each of our free hands—I was sure that we’d stay together. That we wouldn’t break up the way our school’s guidance counselor, a sad woman I’d only talked to twice who never weighed in on anything, warned me we inevitably would if I left. That his plan to maybe get married, maybe the summer after my junior year of college, could actually happen. Yet at that same instant, Omar’s hand squeezing mine, I saw some foggy future me—flanked by smart women with tame hair—already looking back at Lizet in the car, there in the backseat, with her hair matted at the base of her neck, her chest slick with saliva and sweat, saying to that animal girl: No, no, no. I don’t know how, but I believed both versions: I believed we would find a way to be together, and I believed there was no way I could let that happen.
I turned to Omar and shoved my face into his neck. I bit him around his ear, tugged with my teeth on his fake diamond earring. He squeezed my hand again.
—Me and you need to have a serious conversation, he said.
I dropped the baby wipe on the car floor and splayed the fingers of that hand and mashed his mouth with my palm, laughing to myself and poking my fingertips into his eyes. I pushed his whole face away from me and swung my leg into his lap. He let go of my hand and grabbed my thigh, pulled it then slapped it, then grabbed it again.
—See? he said. Now why you gotta go and do something like that? Fuck it, El, you’re making this tough.
Puffy little bags hung beneath his eyes, each shiny with sweat. He was trying to tell me, through the slats of my fingers, that this was hard for him, that he wanted to not miss me, to not want me to stay. He pulled my hand off his face and bit my palm, my wrist. I flipped him off, then tried to pick his nose with my middle finger.
—Maybe I don’t need to be worried, he said. You’re too weird for anybody but me to want.
—That’s true, I said.
I was convinced he was right, but I could’ve only felt that way in Miami, in that car.
He pinned my wrist behind my back and pulled me toward him. He breathed out hard through his nose—something he did a lot and a sign he was mad at himself for liking me so much. He imagined himself a tough guy; he thought of us as a couple that shouldn’t be but had to be, that some outside force made him want my perceived weirdness despite his better judgment (and I was weird, in that neighborhood, in our school of five thousand people with only a slim percentage of us going off to college full-time). He had to think this, because otherwise he had to admit I was always on my way to being too good for him. He kissed my forehead, and it felt less like a goodbye and more like the start of something much more dangerous for each of us: the beginning of who we were going to be.
He put his chin on the top of my head. He said, You really don’t think your parents are gonna work to save their marriage?
His stubble scratched my scalp as he said this. It was such a formal, unnatural way for him to phrase the question that I knew he’d practiced it in his head, had maybe heard some TV doctor say it. He must’ve felt a change in my body, a tensing, because just then he slid his hands under my ass and hoisted me up onto his lap all the way, pulled my hips toward his and held me there, my stomach against his half-hard dick, so that I couldn’t squirm away or look at his face. I loved and hated his physical strength—the way he could just move me in and out of his way. I wanted it for myself.
I pushed what probably sounded like a snarky laugh through my nose, but mostly, I was just tired of thinking about my parents. Before my dad forced our frantic move by selling the house, I’d imagined both parents at the airport, a send-off that was officially and formally impossible. Now I couldn’t even picture my dad waving goodbye to me at the gate. Omar didn’t know the details behind what I’d called the choice to sell the house; the three of us—me, Leidy, our mom—all agreed it was too ugly a thing to admit, even to Omar.