This Is What I Want to Tell You

by Heather Duffy Stone

  Anyway, she said.

  Just then the waiter hovered over us. He grinned as we pulled our hands apart. He put the plates down in front of us—two giant brown steaks, piles of mashed potatoes, hills of green spinach.

  Keeley picked up her knife and fork.

  Anyway, I love you, she said, slicing into her steak. And you don’t have to say anything. In fact, don’t say anything. Even if you mean it. Say it a different time when it doesn’t feel like you’re being forced to say it.

  And she shoved her fork in her mouth. She smiled and chewed at the same time, looking kind of beautiful and crazy all at once and I thought, even if I couldn’t say it, I might mean it.

  We never got back to talking about Noelle.

  After he cooked, Parker seemed distracted. He piled the dishes in the sink and didn’t seem to notice when I put my T-shirt back on.

  Thanks, he said when I started to do the dishes. Seriously.

  He lit a cigarette, offering his pack to me. I shook my head. He sat down and smoked quietly. I washed and piled the dishes and he was quiet. I felt this strange mix of content and anxiety. Like he’d just showed me this deep and true part of him and we were closer. And like I’d reacted all wrong and he didn’t want me around.

  I finished the dishes. Even though it was Friday, it was kind of late and I didn’t have a cover plan and I had to go home. I got my stuff from the couch. He had his big French cooking bible out and was flipping through it.

  I have to go, I said.

  Yeah. Parker looked up. He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. He watched me pull on my shoes and zip my coat. Then he reached his arm out and pulled me to him and tilted my face up and kissed me.

  I felt like I could fly.

  You’re good to cook for, he said.

  You’re a good cook.

  He smiled.

  I’ll see you, he said.

  It was cold outside, the just-before-the-snow kind of cold. The air felt sharp and fresh on my face as I started toward the bus stop. I felt like I’d cracked open and had a brand new skin and something completely new was going to happen in my life. I felt possible.

  That’s when I saw them.

  Just across from the bus stop there’s a restaurant that Lace took us to once for her birthday. An old-fashioned lamp hooks yellow light over the doorway. As I came up the street a couple was standing under the light. They were wrapped around each other, kissing, wound up so it was hard to tell where one body stopped and the other one started. The woman pulled her head back. She was laughing. Her hair fell down her back under a white hat. Her hair was long and caught the light—gold.

  Keeley.

  As she tipped her head back and the two bodies separated, I saw both of their faces.

  Keeley. Nadio. Keeley and my brother.

  I think I stopped breathing for just a second. Or maybe I was numb. Or maybe there was not a single thought in my head.

  And then all at once I thought I wanted to throw up.

  And then my eyes were filled with tears.

  And then I raged with anger.

  And then I ducked into the closest alley.

  I leaned back against the cold wall. I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like I’d been running.

  What did I just see?

  I wiped at my cheeks. The tears felt cold and stung and I was furious at them.

  What was happening? I couldn’t move. I didn’t dare look back into the street.

  I dug in my bag for my cell phone.

  Hello? Jessica yelled. There was music in the background.

  I need you to pick me up downtown, I said.

  Noelle?

  Yeah. I need you to pick me up downtown. I need to sleep over.

  Is everything okay?

  Yeah, I said. Please.

  There were muffled voices.

  Okay, Jessica said. Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes.

  I hung up and called Lace. I told her I was spending the weekend at Jessica’s.

  I leaned back against the wall. I closed my eyes. I tried to slow my breath.

  I felt like I’d cracked open all over again and now I was spilling everywhere.

  Dear Dario,

  I was ready to tell my sister that Keeley and I were, whatever we were. I was ready to just tell her and get on with our lives, somehow the way they’d been. But after that dinner, after that moment when Keeley said something to me I never thought about hearing, I didn’t want to tell anybody about it. It’s hard to explain. All the other stuff just became less important. I just wanted to be with Keeley. I just wanted to figure it out with her. Maybe that’s what you felt like. Maybe you felt like this so much, you couldn’t think about sharing Lace with anyone. Not even us. I think I got a glimpse of that. It scares the hell out of me.

  It’s funny. You’d think that if your girlfriend tells you she has no idea when she’ll be ready to have sex with you, it wouldn’t really do wonders for your relationship. But somehow, it made everything sort of solid between us. It was like from the moment Keeley cut into her steak at Mirabel’s, we became something different. I knew she was beautiful, anyone who walked by her on the street knew that. I knew that sometimes I couldn’t stop thinking about her—the way she breathed under my ear before she kissed my neck or pulled my belt loops into her. But then I started to think about her chewing her steak and laughing at the same time and telling me she loved me without letting me say a word. There weren’t a lot of girls I knew who would be brave like that and then just let you watch them chew a giant mouthful of food.

  Keeley wanted us to just be open about everything. She was waiting for me outside the soup kitchen on Sunday.

  Do you want a ride home? she asked.

  Do you think we should? I don’t want Nole to see us. She hasn’t been home all weekend and it might be weird if—

  Keeley hadn’t been over to our house since the soup kitchen day.

  Jesus, Nadio. She was leaning against the side of her car, her arms folded. How long are we going to do this? she asked.

  What do you mean?

  THIS. Pretend like we’re not together. Walk on eggshells around Noelle. Let her be in charge of everyone’s lives ’cause we’re all scared of her.

  I’m not scared of her, Keeley. I just feel like she’s going through enough right now.

  Enough of what? Enough of being a selfish brat. Enough of skipping school for some boyfriend no one’s ever seen? Enough of denying happiness to the people she cares about because she doesn’t have any?

  Whoa.

  Well. Keeley uncrossed her arms and rubbed her hands together. I’m sorry, Nadio, but it’s true. I just feel like Noelle is dominating our whole relationship and she’s not even in it.

  I think there is a lot of other stuff that dominates our relationship too, I said. I couldn’t help it.

  Keeley’s eyes got wide. She took a deep breath.

  Okay, she said. That’s fair.

  I’m just saying—

  You’re saying it’s not all about Noelle.

  It’s not, I said. She’s my twin sister and my instinct is to protect her. But this is weird. For the first time I have an instinct to protect someone else too.

  I hope you’re talking about me, Keeley said. She smiled.

  So how’re we gonna do this? I asked.

  We have to talk to her, Keeley said.

  But when we got home, she was asleep. Lace said she had a fever.

  I spent the weekend at Jessica’s in a state of near-living. That’s all I can say. I was walking around but it wasn’t like it was my body or even my head. I couldn’t believe things. I felt like something had happened that changed the way I saw everything. I couldn’t stop thinking, can I really be this alone? I
felt like there was nothing but cold air around me. Like if I opened my mouth nothing would come out, nothing anyone could hear. Even though I was at Jessica’s, it was like complete solitude. I just lay on her bed and stared at the television. I held my phone in my hand. Call me, call me, I whispered in my head, till it became a rhythm.

  Who was I talking to? Parker, my brother, Keeley. I didn’t even know.

  What did I see? What happened? Were they really a couple? For how long? They were kissing like it was something they did all the time. The way she laughed up at him was a way I’d never seen her. And Nadio. I’d never seen that much affection from him, the way he held on to her. I’d never seen that ever.

  I thought, I thought, I thought. I thought Parker was my secret. I thought I would have this secret relationship, I’d get something no one else felt yet, no one else knew, and it would be all mine and I would get to have this other life too. I would get something.

  Now I couldn’t even call him. I couldn’t.

  So what? he’d say about my brother and Keeley. All of us are free to decide, he’d say. The two of them together aren’t about you. So what?

  But it was about me. It was. All I wanted was for him to see that. And fill in that space.

  Jessica thought Parker and I had had a fight. She rubbed my back and brought me cups of tea. It’s all right, she said. You guys’ll work it out. I let her think so. I couldn’t explain anything else to her. I felt paralyzed and broken at once. The only way Jessica could explain that was through Parker.

  Why don’t people ever see the way other kinds of love can wreck you? What about the way being left out of love can wreck you?

  Everything always happened for Nadio. For Keeley. Being beautiful, seeing places. Winning awards. It just happened. Now there was no room.

  * * *

  It came to me on Sunday. I told Lace I was sick and faked a fever. I went straight to my room and didn’t see my brother. On Monday morning she called me in sick without even an argument. I slept through the morning after she went to work. I took a shower and shaved my legs and tried to find nice underwear but it was all cotton and sort of faded. So I picked a red-pink pair and the lacy tank top and I got dressed and took the bus to his house.

  I knew he was working but the door was never locked, not through Sammy’s. The clean dishes I’d piled in the sink were still there. There was an ashtray overflowing on the kitchen table and a T-shirt tossed over the back of a chair, but otherwise Parker’s apartment looked like a set—barren and unlived in and waiting.

  I could live here. I could live here.

  I imagined my sweaters piled on the empty shelf in his closet. I touched the sleeves hanging there. I imagined my textbooks next to his cookbooks on the bookshelf. Lace had been seventeen, a year older than me, and living alone in another country, living and eating and sleeping with the person she loved. I could do it.

  I lay down on his bed, on top of the sheet and a tangled blanket and I pulled his T-shirt against my neck. I pulled my knees up to my chest.

  I wanted to be just here.

  When he woke me up it was dark outside. He was sitting on the couch and put his hand on my arm.

  Hey.

  I opened my eyes.

  What are you doing here?

  I wanted to see you, I said, barely awake, groggy enough to admit this out loud.

  Okay, he said. His eyes were narrow, puzzled, but soft. It’s a school night, he said. And it’s late.

  I don’t care, I said.

  I could see behind him. The night was black outside. I reached up and pulled the collar of his jacket down to me. I kissed him. I tried to swallow him. I dug my fingers into the back of his neck. I could feel him pushing back into me, all of him. I moved my hands down under his T-shirt. His skin felt strange and familiar at once. He stretched and bent until all of him was on top of me like a blanket. I knew what his body was going to do. That was suddenly familiar. Everything was reaching and immediate. I moved my hands to his belt, digging into my hip. I fumbled at it. I could feel the wires and muscles in all of his limbs tense and strong at once. My hand stumbled, his belt pressed into my hip. He pushed my hand away and undid his belt in a moment, a second—he pushed my hand back toward the waist of his jeans then as his fingers flipped back to my stomach, my zipper. My skin jumped. His mouth fought against mine. Our jeans peeled down almost at once. The skin of my legs against his skin. His hands kneaded at me. He lifted his head.

  You okay?

  I nodded. I had nothing left to say out loud.

  As I nodded everything happened like a waterfall—fierce, rushing, crashing. Our clothes gone, it was just skin and the strength of his arms and hands against me and the heat from his skin. We ripped and pulled at each other and pushed against each other. He held my head back and kissed my neck and my fingers pushed his back and we breathed. I stopped thinking at all. I stopped everything that wasn’t right there.

  And it was over.

  It didn’t hurt especially. It just was.

  He fell asleep. It was almost immediate. Stretched out snake-like, still on top of the twisted sheets, his breaths even and deep. He was sleeping. I sat up. I traced my hands along the designs across his back, and down the length of his spine:

  what

  does not

  destroy me

  makes me

  stronger

  I traced my fingers lightly up and down the letters. Wake up, my head whispered. Wake up.

  He did finally. I heard his breathing catch as he came out of sleep and twisted to look at me.

  What’re you doing, he said. There was nothing in the way he said it. It wasn’t sharp or angry or tender or sweet. He was only asking.

  What’s this one? I asked, my finger against the base of his spine.

  He looked at me. He blinked.

  It’s, uh. It’s a reminder.

  Of?

  It was something I needed to remember at the time. You know? That my family bullshit wasn’t going to be … it’s my journal entry or whatever. It was that time. It’s a reminder. He reached out and squeezed my knee.

  You okay? I’m beat. I gotta sleep.

  As I began to nod, he turned back onto his side. In seconds his breathing was even, in, out, the perfectly unconscious pattern of sleep.

  Last night Keeley told me the truth about what happened in Oxford. We went up to her house to study for a Chem exam. Sitting on her couch facing each other, our legs stretched out side by side, she told me the truth about this person who makes her throat close and the muscles in her stomach clench and her skin turn cold even when it’s me who is touching her.

  The part that I never wanted to say out loud is this: when Keeley was telling it, I could feel what he was feeling. Just for one second, I knew what he felt like.

  That’s the part I can’t get rid of.

  I have to tell you something, she said.

  About Nole?

  No. About me.

  Okay.

  You’re not gonna like it.

  Somehow, I knew that before she even said any more.

  Okay, I said out loud.

  His name was J, she said. But that wasn’t his real name. His real name was Jameson something something but he always just went by the first letter.

  Jameson what? I pushed. I wanted the details that didn’t mean anything. I wanted all of the things she didn’t know.

  She didn’t answer me. I wanted to string her story along. I don’t think I really wanted to know how it ended.

  She didn’t even know his last name. She knew he went by J and she said sometimes she thought he was made out of wax. She said his skin and his joints were like rounded, constantly moving waves and almost seemed carved to perfection.

  I couldn’t believe she to
ld me that.

  Why are you telling me this?

  I need you to know it all, she said.

  Now?

  Yes, now. I’m tired of keeping stuff.

  I need all these details?

  Please, Nadio. Just listen to me.

  She said she met him in a place called Georgina’s where she used to sit and read. Georgina’s is upstairs in the covered market, with heavy tables and weird thin bagels—it’s like a secret hideaway and a hip Oxford student place all at once. And Keeley would sit there and read. On purpose, she said, she read things like US Weekly and Angels and Demons—things her parents would scoff at and no Oxford student would be caught dead carrying.

  She said J found her there. He asked if he could sit with her. This was okay because Georgina’s is so small that sharing tables is just part of sitting there. But right away he started talking to her. And he didn’t say a word about the magazine she was reading. He nodded at her bagel.

  Are you American? he asked her.

  Yes, she said.

  Only you Americans eat those things.

  But he didn’t say this with any kind of disdain. She said his accent was slow-moving and sharp all at once—like a carved-out, deep, booming movie accent. And every time he said anything, he said it with this slow smile that wrapped all the way around her and reached deep inside her like there was suddenly no one else at Georgina’s. And Keeley wanted to reach across the table and open her mouth against his and—

  She stopped there. She said, You know what I mean, Nadio.

  I knew what she meant. I started to feel sick.

  Keeley and J were basically never apart after that. For exactly three and a half weeks. The end of it all was what she was leading up to, when she started talking in the living room after everything around us was asleep. It was so deep between night and morning I didn’t even know what to call it. I put my hand down over her legs, but she pushed me away, she drew her knees to her chest so we weren’t touching at all.