Fuck that.
And fuck me, for forgetting to give her a heads-up. I forgot to tell her about us cornering Vicious, but even if I hadn’t, what good would it have done? Rosie was going to run to her sister and warn her off. It only would have made things messier.
“Well…this was fun,” Rosie muttered, her smile weak when we stood by the door. I helped her into her coat, feeling like the biggest douchebag on planet Earth. Which was ironic, because that was what she called me. Earth. What she hadn’t realized was that I really was our goddamn planet. Because when I was going to explode, a lot of fucking people were going to get hurt in the process.
My sisters and mom still waved at us when I opened the door and helped her into the Jeep. Her eyes were droopy, her body slack. I always brushed aside Rosie’s illness, but it was there, looming in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to grab at her throat.
I needed to come to terms with that but couldn’t. Every time I saw her using an inhaler—including today—I got so fucking mad, the need to punch a wall took over me. Nebulizers, pills, nasal sprays. My apartment was full of them now. I had Dr. Hasting on my speed dial, her physiotherapist’s address, and knew the exact times and days she went for appointments and what to do when she started pounding her chest and hissing like a snake. I knew that the average lifespan of a cystic fibrosis sufferer was thirty-seven. I knew all of the male diagnoses with CF were infertile, and many of the women had difficulties having children.
And I didn’t want to know any of these things.
Because she wasn’t a fucking illness.
She was a person I made plans with. And those plans exceeded the ten years she statistically had left.
I started the car but didn’t release the E-brake. Staring out to the neatest tree-lined street in the world, where my family resided, melancholy trickled into my heart.
What the fuck are you doing, asshole?
“You have a secret. Big one,” Rosie whispered, looking out her window.
Rosie and I didn’t get off on the best foot in our relationship. I wanted her to get used to us before she knew I was actually a we.
Her whole package may have been explosive, but mine was messy. Very.
“So do you,” I said. She offered me a startled glance. No denial there.
“Yeah,” she said. “We already suck at this relationship thingy.”
“Are you kidding?” I chuckled. “We’re fucking killing it. It’s a bump. A little dog ear in our book of awesome.”
“In my reality, every bump can have crucial consequences,” Rosie reminded me.
“And in our reality,” I countered, “I will always be here to make sure we smooth things over.”
We drove in circles for a while, just like we did our first night together in Todos Santos. I took her to all the places we visited before we had sex for the first time. To our old school, the marina, Liberty Park, and then, finally—to that bench. People were calling us, our phones buzzing and vibrating in our pockets. My father, mother, Rosie’s parents, Vicious and Millie. So when I parked on the hill overlooking the basketball court, I threw both phones into the glove compartment and shut it before we headed to our seat. Nervous didn’t quite capture the chaos that brewed within me. I was going to place my secret in her hand. A secret no one was supposed to know but my immediate family. And I was going to bare my weaknesses before her.
All of them.
Layer by layer.
Naked and exposed.
And hear for the first time if the real me—all of me—was still worth loving.
It didn’t feel right to sit. There was too much adrenaline in my bloodstream, too much sorrow in the air. The winter nipped at our skin, and Rosie was covered head-to-toe, as she should be.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said. She coughed a little.
“I’ll only slow you down. I can’t do long walks.”
“You never slow me down. You give me time to appreciate my surroundings.” My balls protested again. Stupid balls didn’t understand that making her happy would benefit every part of my body. Them included.
We strolled downhill, past lush green knolls, dodging low hanging branches and untrimmed vines that had begun to invade the cleared path. Her hands were tucked inside her coat and mine were in my pockets.
There was never a good time to break the kind of shit I was going to tell her, so I did the Band-Aid thing and went straight to the point.
“My biological mother left me to die in a Walmart bathroom when I was three hours old.” My tone was blasé. She continued slugging ahead, her muscles tensing at my confession. “She was a crackhead. The minute she found out she was knocked up, she took off, left her family in the countryside and disappeared somewhere in the gutters of Birmingham.”
Rosie was a smart girl. I knew she was bound to suspect something was going down.
Maybe she thought I was a deadbeat dad who fucked off once things got too real. Yeah, that wasn’t an option. I always wrapped up Dean Junior. I had personalized condoms, for fuck’s sake. The only person I didn’t use a condom with in my entire life was Rosie herself. I’d never felt another woman’s pussy, flesh-to-flesh, before her.
“I didn’t…” She tried to gulp all the oxygen she could get to stop herself from crying. “Please, continue.”
“I was found by the janitor. My mother, Nina, was found a couple blocks down the road, buying cigarettes. Her dress was covered in blood. When they took her to the hospital, she called her sister to help her deal with the legal trouble she had gotten herself into. Nina’s sister is my mom, Helen.”
“Jesus.” Rosie’s lips trembled, and so did the fingers she covered them with. A part of me, the logical part, I guess, acknowledged that it was fucked up that none of my friends knew I was adopted. But this, right here, was exactly why I wanted to keep it that way.
I was powerful.
I was imposing.
I was a motherfucking god.