by Mj Fields
“Let me know when you want to go to dinner. I’m going to go take a power nap,” Brisa says as she walks inside, leaving us alone.
Tris crosses her arms and taps her foot. “She likes you, ya know.”
I push my hands in my pockets. “I like her, too.”
“Then do something about it.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Dad got over Matteo and my age difference; he’ll—”
“Not even close to the same thing. I like her as a friend. It will never be anything more than that.”
“You’re an idiot.”
I arch a brow and look down at her.
She points to herself. “I, however, am not. I need you, so that will be the last time I point it out.”
“Good.”
“So, what did you want to talk about?” she asks.
“She’s ready to jet without finishing the last stop.”
“That’s her call,” she says with a bit of attitude.
“I’m thinking she’ll regret it, and I don’t want that for her.”
She looks mildly curious. “What’s your angle?”
“I say we do this for her, and then we do something for all of us.”
“I’m listening.”
“Can you and Matteo handle four more days? Two travel?”
“I can.”
“Good. I’ll email you the details.”
Standing in the living room, I hear Brisa grumble, “It’s so early.”
“We leave in half an hour, so it’s actually pretty late. You shower, and I’ll start packing for you.”
“Did someone die or something?” Brisa asks, serious as shit, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“No, but if you don’t get your booty in gear, I’m gonna kick it.”
“Are you okay?” she asks grimly.
“Brisa, can no one surprise you?” Tris growls.
“You’re surprising me?”
“Ohmygod!”
“Okay, okay! I’ll pretend I didn’t know. I’m going to shower.” Then she squeals with excitement.
She’s been avoiding me since we got back from Iguazu Falls and through dinner.
I knocked on her door as I have done every damn night then turned the handle so that I could give her the one thing she wants that I know I can give her.
It was locked.
Was I angry that she had broken our little agreement? No. But it sure as fuck hurt, and I sure as fuck deserve it after making her cry yesterday.
Right now, she’s sound asleep, head on my shoulder, hand on my chest, white fluffy blanket covering her body, nearly black bags under her eyes now fading, and she looks all her nineteen years. How did she end up this way?
I move the armrest, and she eventually comes to me in her sleep, just like I knew she would, and part of many reasons, I’m out, a shadow again in her life.
She’s nineteen, and I’m edging on thirty. She’s porcelain perfection, and I’m already busted inside. I was her first crush, and she’s the one who I will never forget. She’s falling in love, and I would be the luckiest man on earth if I could be so selfish, and she … she will eventually be the one thing that actually shatters me beyond repair.
I lay my head back and close my eyes, inhaling a deep breath of her and trying to relax.
The demons now dancing in my head as I try to rest are gone, but the resident that takes their place is far more lethal. Never in my lifetime have I wished they would return, but now they seem far less of a threat to me.
I startle from a state of half-asleep when the plane all but jumps.
There’s your sign, jackass. She’d never run if you woke up ugly.
“I’m sorry,” she says, moving away.
“You needed sleep.”
“I’m sure I’ll get plenty when I get home.” She starts to pull her hand, one that’s linked up with mine, away, and it takes me a beat to let go.
Regret slaps me in the face when her eyes start to glisten.
“This trip’s not over,” I tell her.
“You and I both know that’s not a good idea. Just so happens I can admit it, and you—”
“Just want to spend the next couple days enjoying this.”
She leans her head back and closes her eyes. “Okay.”
“You wanna look at me when you say that?”
“Put your spanking voice away and ask nicely.”
“I’m trying here.”
“I know what you’re trying. I feel it, remember? And I’m going to ask that you just give me space so that I can attempt to do so. I also need you to refrain from coming into my room at night.” Saying that, she then rolls her head to the side, leaving it to rest against the seat, blue green eyes no longer glistening. She’s … unreadable.
I wanted her to finish her trip, but now … fuuuuck … maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
The car ride from the airport to the base of Machu Pichu, I sit in the front, giving her space. The bus up to the top…I stay three rows back. Zack is next to her. Then I’m standing on top of the most insanely gorgeous location of all the places she’s “dragged” us to, one she was willing to give up for her sister’s mental health.
And because you were a dick, because you felt her, too, the dick on the left reminds me, while the angel on the right whispers, You felt, in a completely different tone, one of praise and congratulations.
… and I’m watching her being followed around by a llama like she’s Snow-fucking-White …
A fucking llama!
… and she’s taking pictures, capturing beautiful things to carry memories, whereas I carry ink on my body as a reminder of all the shit I have survived.
“You good, man?” Zack asks.
Answering, if jealous of the fucking llama, could be as fucked-up to say, but more fucked-up is the fact it’s true.
“Good as gold. You?”
“Yeah, sucks we’re cutting this short. Actually been nice seeing the good things around this world instead of just the bad guys.” He pats me on the back then throws his hands up. “Sorry, man.”
I’m straight-up confused. “For what?”
“I just touched you, and you don’t look like you want to kill me?”
Peru
Machu FU
Brisa
I am flipping through the pictures I took today, expecting them to be shit, because the end of this trip has been just that—shit—not even close to how I imagined. It wasn’t Wyatt Dalton telling me what I wanted—needed—to hear. He wasn’t confirming the connection I felt, one that was true and real, one giving life to a promise of love conquering all things.
Our happy ever after should be a promise from him that he forgives the way our first kiss happened but admit that he felt it then, too. In my head, I pictured him telling me that he believed as deeply as I do that it wasn’t about a forgotten phone or lost keys; it was fate directing two soul mates to meet for the very first time. Two people—us—who couldn’t be together just yet but giving the unspoken promise that, when the timing was right—when I was legal—they would meet again, and nothing would stop them.
I am well aware that I, in fact, had to manipulate the hell out of the situation, grease the ever-loving fuck out of that cog to get the wheel turning … so it would turn, so to speak. But when I learned why he was the way he was, the unspeakable things that caused him to build a wall so high he couldn’t love, it only made me push harder. I felt his anger, his self-loathing, and then I felt him, and I never want to feel anything but him every day … until life is no more.
After I found out about the hell he went through in his life and felt his angst for being in a place that brought him back, yet he pushed through—hell, he took me on what felt a lot like a fairy tale “date”—I knew there was an even bigger shift.
The protected became the protector, and not only did he allow it, but we also slept together all night, without incident. Waking that morning, we both knew … well, I thought we had, that our fated
and destined love was as high as the mountain we had stood on today, and that it would last as long, too.
But nope, none of that happened, and the highlight of my time was a tall blonde with huge, soulful eyes, a funky haircut, and a beautiful, velvety snout—a llama who was straight-up in love with me. That thing followed me around from a distance until I petted it. The rest of the day, she followed me everywhere, and it was seriously the brightest spot of the day. Not gonna lie, if I thought I could get away with it, I would have packed her up and brought her home with me.
Tris sits down next to me in the suite at airport hotel. “Can I see?”
“Of course.” I hand her the camera.
“Freaking llama.” She shakes her head as she looks down at the screen. “What an asshole.”
“She was not!”
“She so was. Wouldn’t let me near her, but she was lovin’ all up on you.”
I nudge her. “Maybe she sensed you had all the love you’ll ever need in the world.”
She smiles as she flips to a picture of her on Matteo’s back. “My forever.”
I reach over and flip it back. “My forever.”
“Not true.” She turns to me, her eyebrow arched knowingly. “And, Brisa, the first breaks your heart, the next makes it whole.”
“Well, the first I love you was Miles, and—”
“Oh my God, please don’t with that preppy, stiff, wax figure motherfucker. That wasn’t an I love you, that was I want arm candy who doesn’t need my daddy’s black card and is sweeter and more caring than I deserve. He was your training relationship. You never loved him. You’ve only ever gushed over one person.”
“Yeah, well …” I shrug.
“Yeah, well, you now have something to compare it to.”
“Oh my God, what are you talking ab—” I stop when she palms my face.
“Crazy people are not stupid. I mean, look at serial killers.”
“Oh my God, do not say crap like that. You’re not crazy. You have mood swings.”
“Of epic proportions.”
“Well, you do everything epically. It’s not a bad thing. You’ve obviously made it work.
“Stop changing the subject. You may feel things, but I see them. And I see a very strong, young woman who deserves to be loved by a man who never needs a second chance because he didn’t fuck up the first chance.”
“You and Matteo broke up and—”
“I messed up. I did. He never wavered, and when I came back, I came back to arms wide open. I didn’t have to grovel. I didn’t have to apologize. Hell, he knows how messed up I am and he never stopped loving me. Not once. You’ll find that kind of love. I wish that for you more than any person in my life. Well, any person but Matteo. When I left him and came home, I wished the same for him. Hand to God, I wished you for him.”
“That’s sweet but also awkward.”
“No, awkward is knowing the person who keeps you safe from not only others but yourself and knowing he’s blind as a bat to what’s right in front of him. I should fire—”
“Don’t you dare. Honestly, Tris, it was all me. He never led me on, and it was just sex.”
“Just sex?”
I grin. “Really, really good sex.”
“You sure you’re ready to go home? You can come back—”
“The second you need me, I’m there, but I think I should crawl back in the womb, lick my wounds, and go start college.”
“Don’t go into psychology, Brisa. It will be too hard on you. You’ll get too invested and—”
“Imagine all the people I can help. People like me and you.”
“You’ll end up with ten cats and—”
“No way! I’ll have a llama. Or, better yet, three.”
“What the hell would you name three llamas?”
“That’s the question you’re gonna ask me when I tell you I’m going to be living in the basement with a llama?”
Grinning, she nods. “It’s a legit question. I know a perfect name for one, but three? I don’t think I could even come up with that if I were manic.”
“I can name my own llamas, thank you very much.”
“As the god-llama.” She laughs. “Did you see what I did there?”
“Yeah, but god-llama or not, it’s my llama to name. You just have to buy it gifts and pretend to love it.”
“Look, I’m not having kids, so you have to let me name the first llama, and you can name the rest of them.”
“It better be a good name.” I pull out my cell, and she grabs hers off the cushion next to her. “Okay, on everything that Forever Steel means, you can’t just vote on your name when mine is better.”
“If yours is better, and that’s a big if, then I will vote accordingly.”
We both open our text app and type our names then look at each other.
“On three,” I say.
“One … two …” she continues just like we did when we were little and playing this type of game with the whole crew.
“Send!” we both yell.
Tris: Barrack O’llama
Brisa: Dolly Llama
We both fall into a fit of laughter, and I can’t stop, because she thinks I’m joking, and I’m not. I am so getting a llama.
Tossing and turning, unable to sleep, anticipating a knock on the door, I try to decide how to react when it happens.
Do I continue being strong and ignore it?
Do I open the door and tell him how selfish he is?
Do I cave just so I can feel him one more time …?
When I look at the clock for the last time, it’s three in the morning. Our flight leaves at five.
He didn’t knock, and it’s just as devastating as it would have been if he did.
Mexico
Crushed
Ranger
Last night, I pretended not to hear the conversation between Tris and Brisa from the balcony, but I heard every word, and Trouble, my boss, hit the nail on the head—Brisa deserves someone to love her like she aches to love and be loved, and fucks her like she deserves to be fucked.
She’ll move on, find someone.
Someone you’ll want to kill, devil dude on the left all but dares me.
That someone is you, angel in La La Land conveys.
Swear to God, as much as I’ve been brushing off my shoulders lately, I should be in a fucking Head & Shoulders commercial, or a psych ward. It’s straight-up insane.
Deep down, I really fucking wish I could be that someone. Reality is that I’m too old, have too many scars, don’t have the means to take care of her the way she deserves, her father would fucking kill me, and that would stir shit up with the people who need me in a legit, nonsexual way.
The other side to this is: what if I hurt her more than I am already hurting her? I have never been that dick, and I’m not about to start with a young woman whose mere mention has taunted me for four years, and in a bat of a lash she had me by the balls, breaking every fucking self-made rule I have set on myself.
I can’t be that dick. I’ve never been that dick to a female. Not to one I’ve been inside.
When I fell asleep, I had the first nightmare in many nights, and she starred in it. She was stunning, smiling, and in a wedding dress. The groom wasn’t me. It was Cairo. I woke up, boxing the air, and it took a good twenty minutes to talk myself down from calling him up and telling him that I would drop his ass back in the hole that I saved him from and ended up in if he so much as looks at her.
Now, here I am, standing back, just like I have for the past four fucking years, avoiding her. This time, though, it’s not because of a set of lips on mine and a few texts back and forth … from a fucking fifteen-year-old who, thank God, never got carried away, but because I’m guessing this—what I’m feeling—is what fifteen-year-old me would have felt like if I had gotten my heart broken.
Shit’s no joke. It fucking hurts.
I hold up my phone when no one’s looking and take a few pictures of her while
she’s taking pictures of Trouble and Matteo, just like I have been this whole time because, apparently, I’m that guy now.
When my mom used to get depressed, or when she fucked up, there were times she would play the same damn song over and over and over again. That song? “Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone” by Cinderella. Clearly, whoever wrote it hadn’t a clue that it’s the part before that, the part when you know you’re looking at someone you’re losing, that is soul-crushing, because I know exactly what any other motherfucker can and will have with Brisa. Everything a halfway honest man wants in a partner. Just so happens that motherfucker can’t be me.
So, suck it Cinderella.
I check the time before shoving the phone in my pocket and look at yet another pyramid. This one in Chichén Itzá. We have two hours before we are scheduled for our tour of Cenote lk Kil.
I’m not a believer in ancient superstitions—or any superstitions, for that matter—but, while bored out of my fucking mind and trying to focus on something other than Brisa, I’ve read up on this next place.
It’s basically a sink hole, completely opened to the sky above and eighty-five feet below ground level. A body of water two hundred feet in diameter and a hundred and sixty-four feet deep.
I’m guessing Brisa initially added our next stop because of the superstitions are said to have healing powers. The nutrients in the water alone are supposed to be good for healing whatever ails you. Maybe she was hoping to fix one of the parts she sees in herself as broken.
I’ve seen her from every angle, and there isn’t one fucking part of her, physically or mentally, that needs to be healed. But maybe, just maybe, it will heal the bruise to her heart and ego that I’ve just punted into the great unknown. I hope so … or, at least I think I do.
Walking down the stone steps to the rock platform, passing signs that say “Swim at Your Own Risk,” I’m expecting none of them would decide to do the opposite.
