But over the rest of my break, we ended up fucking like crazy. Not because I couldn’t control myself, but because of what happened Christmas morning. Omar came over and lifted each of us off the ground when he hugged us and he talked easily with my mother—the first carefree conversation between her and anyone else I’d witnessed since I’d been home. He played on the floor with Dante for over an hour while my mom served him café con leche after café con leche and asked him questions about his Noche Buena, and when Leidy sank into the couch and started crying because Roly hadn’t even called, Omar slid across the carpet and told her Roly was a sorry bastard who didn’t know how lucky he was to have a kid like Dante and a girl like Leidy. My mother rushed over and squeezed his shoulders, kissed him on the top of his close-shaved head, and then sat next to me, putting her hand on my knee and squeezing that too, as if our fight the day before were over. I stayed in one spot that morning, my legs folded tight under me, while he just belonged there in a way that made me want to choke him, and so later, once I’d broken my promise and slept with him, there was no point in not fucking him every chance I got until I was drained of everything. The only thing that got rid of the hole I felt in my chest at my failure to keep the don’t-sleep-with-him vow I’d made less than twenty-four hours earlier—a hole that opened up seconds after I’d pull him out of me after finishing myself—was fucking him again, so I kept at it, tried to make myself wait longer and longer to come, to stave off the worst part of it.
So just before the first time that break that I had sex with Omar, after the morning in our apartment when I’d watched him maneuver through my problems like they weren’t even real, we said bye to my mom and got in his car—my present still a mystery—and he drove to the beach because I told him I hadn’t seen it since the summer. He grabbed my hand at the first red light and put it on the gear shift with his. The whole time I just wanted to seize his crotch in my fist and squeeze it until he screamed. But I kept my hand under his and he drove and parked and we walked around in the cold sand and he took me to the deserted lifeguard tower where we’d first made out back when we were both in high school, and he made us sit down on its steps. He put his hand in his pocket and I thought he was adjusting his dick in his pants, but then he pulled out this little white box.
He said, Don’t freak out.
He said, I’m not asking you to marry me tomorrow. This isn’t the ring you’ll have forever, so maybe you can trade it back to me when I get you the real one.
He said, I want you to know that I think we should get married someday. I want you to wear this up at school so those nerds don’t get any ideas about stealing you from me.
He tugged the ring—a silver band with three little diamonds on it—from the velvet-lined slit holding it and stuck it on my hand.
He said, There.
I felt so frustrated I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pushed him against the steps and shoved my tongue into his mouth—our first kiss since August—then straddled him and felt his dick against my underwear (I’d changed into a skirt before leaving the apartment—we both knew what that meant, though I pretended otherwise, forgetting when I can that I facilitated my own failure that day), and it was all me that did it, right there with the bright sun showing us to the world, me that broke the promise to myself as I pulled my underwear to one side and I slid him in and rocked on him, mean almost, like I was angry, like I was getting back at him: I pictured the steps digging into his spine and hurting him, doing it this new way with almost no love, just want and gnashing teeth and grunts and fuck yeses and his fingers clutching my ass trying to slow me down but no, thank fucking god, finally, there it was—my turn. When I finished, I rocked on him a little longer so that he’d come and not ask any questions, and then I pulled him out with the ringed hand, lifted myself off him and tucked myself into his side, his dick glossy and still hard as he pulled his T-shirt over it.
—Damn, El, he said. Do I need to ask if that’s a yes?
He laughed at his own joke.
I didn’t look at him—I couldn’t yet. I looked at the ring. My almost-engagement ring. A ring that said, You’re a good investment. It felt heavy on my finger.
But to anyone looking, I was still dressed, still put together enough to get up and walk away. I turned the ring on my hand and felt the sun on my face, my skin waking up and darkening in that light.
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