by Mj Fields
“And I’m pretty chill right now, so this is no argument, but I’m going to guess my dad made some poor choices, too, once in a while when he was younger.”
“My Zandor?” She feigns shock, and I can’t help but giggle. “He was always about the ladies. Even as a young boy, pre-puberty, he showed more interest in women than the others. He looked at every one of them as if they were exotic creatures. I knew he’d be a sensual man one day.”
I love how she lights up when she talks about them when they were little.
“How so?”
“Well, he loved breasts. Not only was he the hardest to ween from nursing, but he would sleep with my bras.”
“You let him?” I laugh.
“My dear girl, I had four hellions and a husband who was deployed more often than he was at home. I did not let them make mistakes. They just did on occasion, while I was dealing with one of their brothers. But back to the bra. Money was always tight, and I had one white bra, my Sunday bra.”
“Your Sunday bra?”
“The only one I could wear under my church dress that didn’t make me look any more like a woman who spent most of her time with her husband on his back than the obvious.”
Grinning, I ask, “What’s the obvious?”
“Four boys, who were full of the devil and as close in age as you and your siblings are.”
“So, how did you find out?”
“How I find everything out. One of them would ‘throw shade’ so they didn’t get in trouble for something and tell me.”
Over tea, she talks about Dad, her eyes all lit up, as I can physically feel mine turning black, as I wonder what funny stories my mother may tell my kids one day. And it hits me. I never want to have kids. And that isn’t because my parents wouldn’t have funny stories to tell them about me; it is because I never want them to feel dark, like I do right now.
“Let me use the bathroom, and then we’ll head out.” Momma Joe smiles as she slides her chair back.
I smoked pot at a party before getting booted from school. It was the first time I had ever felt so relaxed that I thought I could go to sleep without light noise, someone rubbing soothing circles over my skin, or Mom massaging my scalp.
That’s what I feel like right now, in the middle of a busy restaurant, one that I do not blend into because I’m not dressed up like everyone else. Honestly, I give zero shits, either.
I look toward the bar and see a man, kissing the cheek of a tall blonde woman as they stand.
He’s in jeans and a suit coat. I wonder if he cares that he’s one of two people wearing jeans. I bet he doesn’t, because he holds himself with confidence, the kind of confidence that can’t be faked or learned. I bet he didn’t take on the attributes of his father or those men surrounding him, to try to act grown when he was seriously just a pretty, little scowly bitch.
I bet his moves are his own and not learned from some free porn on the internet, or a play-by-play of what his equally as inexperienced, so-called girlfriend, who seriously had to basically talk him through oral because he hadn’t a fucking clue how to eat a pussy. I’m also sure the first man to eat a pussy didn’t know how to, either, but I bet he made his girl come the first time so she didn’t have to fake it to give him confidence because—
“Oh, shit.” I slide down in my seat and wish I could disappear. Maybe I’m hallucinating.
“Tris, give me one minute.”
I look up from the table to see Momma Joe holding her phone to her shoulder with her ear. She drops her black card on the table then covers the mic. “Thomas.” Then she skates. She skates right out the door, leaving me here, a-freaking-lone with him so close by—or a hallucination—I’m not sure which is worse.
I have never hallucinated. I have blacked-out from rage.
Monsters are sleeping.
Where is the waiter? I think as I look up at the wrong time and our eyes meet.
He smiles, and his deep brown eyes sparkle.
I don’t smile. I scowl and look at the woman who’s being guided out by what I assume is the perfect amount or pressure to cause nerves to tingle and pool, but not yet catch fire.
He looks away as she says something and smiles down at her. Then he looks back as he opens the door.
“No,” I say, even though I’m sure he doesn’t hear me or speak that great of English, but I’m sure he gets it, because his smile falls as he looks away, holding the door open for his blonde.
“Su cheque, Señorita.”
I look up at the waiter as he sets the slim black leather folder with the check in it. “Thank you, er, gracias … shit.”
“Volveré en unos momentos.”
I grab the card from the table and attempt to hand it to him as he turns and walks away.
“For God’s sake,” I grumble.
“¿Estás sola, Tris? ¿Estás bien?”
“Lord, just take me now,” I mumble. Then louder, I tell him, “Go away.”
A deep rumble, like what distant thunder sounds like, and I look up to see him smiling.
“You lose your date?”
He tilts his head to the side, as if in thought, and then he smiles. “Eighteen.”
“Well, go get her, tiger.”
He looks away as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps the screen.
“Oh, you do know how to text, huh?”
That sound of distant thunder sounds again as he smiles at the screen, completely ignoring me.
“God, why is that waiter taking so long?” I mumble as I sit back in my chair.
“Patience, Tris,” he says, still looking at the screen.
“Well, you don’t want her to wait too long. All that romance will be a memory. As a matter of fact, she’s probably drying up out there.”
He grins and shakes his head, still looking at the fucking screen.
“She sending you nudes now? Is this part of your game? Making her wait until—”
“You amuse me. You act far beyond your years. Yet, I still like your personality.”
“Huh?” I ask, confused at his abrupt and out of place statement.
He shows me the screen. It’s a translation app.
“Stick around. You’re bound to meet more of them.”
His thick and perfectly unwaxed, or manscaped, brows crease as he reads the screen. “More personalities.”
“Yep, they come in multiples,” I joke. Well, sort of.
“Más personalidades,” he says into the app then holds it out as he says the word displayed on the screen. “Bipolar?”
For months, I have believed it about myself. I have been angry that my shrink didn’t see what I felt, and that made me not believe that she was capable of doing her job. I was a teenager, yet so are my siblings, and they don’t have epic mood swings, they don’t get depressed to the point that they take a handful of pills so they will sleep. And now, knowing Brisa has a diagnosis, I am irrationally jealous of that. There is no way that is normal. Especially since I desperately don’t want my parents to know just how bad it gets, because I know it hurts them, and as much of a bitch as I can be, it’s not to hurt them; it’s to push them away.
I should be relieved that someone sees it.
I should be embarrassed that it’s the one person whose lips felt good, but at least it’s someone. But he isn’t someone who matters, someone who can quiet the monsters in the dark.
“Please, just go.”
Again, he looks confused as he squats down and wipes a fallen year. “No, estés triste.”
“Go. Away.” I push my chair back and stand.
He looks confused.
“Leave me alone, Matteo. Just leave me alone.”
He steps back and holds his hand over his chest, and the look, although possibly imagined, looks … pained.
When I walk out, I look left and right for Momma Joe and see her talking to … my parents?
No, just no. I will not lose my shit again.
“Miss Steel.” The driver draws my
attention to him as he opens the door, and I quickly get in.
I look out the tinted window and see him, Matteo, looking around, and I slump down in the seat and cover my face, desperate to hide from him, from everyone.
When the door opens, I quickly look up and see Momma Joe looking at me sadly as she slides in.
“I just—”
She hugs me. “Don’t be angry. Your mother is having a hard time leaving you, and your father—”
“Can we just go?” I wipe my eyes and see him walking toward the car.
“Do you want to say goodbye?”
“No. No, it’s fine.” I sit back and wipe the remaining tears. “I’ve put them through enough.”
“Then they’ll never know you saw them.” She wraps her arm around me and pulls me in tighter. “Then let’s go.”
I watch as Matteo hurries toward the car and bends down. He’s about to knock on the window when the driver pulls away.
Madrid Spain
Matteo
Holding the black card that Tris left when she rushed out of the restaurant, after I made her cry because of a damn app, I tap my foot on the marble floor of The Principal Hotel as I wait to see if she messages back.
I probably wouldn’t be responding to the incredibly embarrassing amount of text messages that I have sent her after what I called her. Yet, I hold onto hope that she does. It’s a secured kind of hope.
I tap the card on the wooden arm of the chair. If she doesn’t respond, I have a backup plan, yet I would rather not further humiliate myself by using her room number, one in which I received from the concierge for a nominal price. And I would prefer her not know that I searched for her online only to find that, once again, she and I are staying in the same hotel.
I look at my wristwatch. I have two hours to get back to the gallery where several of my pieces are being displayed at tonight’s event.
After several moments, I see a woman walk off the elevators, the same woman who slid into the car that I believe Tris to be in last night while scouring the internet, panic-stricken and suffering from regret after realizing the blunder I made. It is her grandmother, Josephina Steel, followed by Patrick Steel, her cousin, and her bodyguard.
I have no idea what is driving me, or why my heart is now pumping blood faster than normal, but I wait until they have left the building so that I can apologize … alone.
When she doesn’t answer the door, and neither does anyone else, worry consumes me. I have not let worry fester inside of me for nearly two years. It’s unhealthy, like a disease. So, as insane as it seems to me, and although I normally don’t require an answer to my unease, I cannot in good conscience hurt someone who hasn’t done anything hurtful to me.
Except consume my thoughts and deprive me of sleep.
I nod to the door. “Open it.”
“Ñor Arias.” Juan mock-gasps.
I reach in my pocket and pull out a pile of bills, peeling off cien euros and handing it to him.
He stuffs it in his pocket then slides the master key card over the sensor, and I open the door.
“Anything else?”
I look back at him as I step in. “Don’t ever let anyone in Señorita Steel’s or anyone’s room for money again, or I’ll have your job here, as well as any other future employment opportunities that present themselves to you.”
“I beg your pard—”
I shut the door in his face before he has a chance to say anything more.
Hypocritical? Yes.
When I turn around, I see food—no, snacks, baskets of snacks, chocolate and fruit snacks.
Fruit snacks are the one thing I miss the most.
“I thought you were going to the airpor—Wha …? Wha …? What are you doing here?”
Apparently, she’s forgotten she had a large carton of ice cream under one arm and a spoon in her opposite hand, because they both fly about the room when she throws her arms in the air, causing an extraordinary mess.
“Oh my God, why?”
Bending down to grab the upturned carton of ice cream, I tell her what I have been practicing most of the day, utilizing several apps, not the one that got me in trouble to begin with. “You left your grandmother’s credit card at the restaurant. I wanted to see that it was returned, and—”
“And what? Tell me I’m crazy again?”
“I know that you’re—”
“Obviously, I’m right. I left a card on the table, and wigged out, and forgot to pay, and grab my card, and—”
She’s talking so fast, too fast to keep up with, and moving about, grabbing towels to clean as she continues to go on about being crazy.
“I do not think you are crazy. It was a misinterpretation. I came to apologize.” My head begins to pound to the beat of my racing heart.
She’s wearing my shirt and something about that pleases me greatly.
I squat down to take her hands to stop her from cleaning the spot that is already clean. “Stop.”
She looks up at me, appearing angry and shocked. Her eyes, though, they appear tired, so very tired.
“Rest your thoughts. Rest your mind.”
“I can’t!”
“You must.”
“You don’t know me.”
Words, so many words.
Without thought, I take the back of her head as I sit back against the sofa and pull it against my shoulder. “Rest.”
It isn’t until she grips my shirt, as if it’s some sort of anchor, and releases a sound that mimics pain and frustration, that the realization of what my actions must be telling her.
I hope the ones she’s wearing now brings her comfort.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
The only response I can give her in my current state of exhaustion, due to the fact that I spent the entire evening and much of my morning preparing for this moment, is the truth. “I’m sorry.”
What I wasn’t prepared for is to feel a connection to her that is deeper than any kind of attraction she may feel. Not to mention, she is a beautiful, young woman, but I’m drawn to her hazel eyes. Eyes that seem to tell a story, making her appear to have lived even longer than I.
She’s confused, she’s tired, she thinks there is something wrong with her, and the hand I played in her present state will haunt me for the rest of my time on earth, because I understand those feelings more than she will ever know.
“I feel”—I pause and consider my words before finishing— “a connection to you.”
She looks up at me. “You shouldn’t. You should run and never look back.”
I pull her head back to my chest. “Descansa, alma hermosa.” Rest, beautiful soul.
It has been far too long since I have held a woman to comfort her, and although I do not take consolation in her pain, I have never felt more like a man than I do at this moment.
“Be my friend, Tris.” I kiss the top of her head as I untangle my legs so that she and I can get into a more comfortable position. I couldn’t have sculpted a more perfect fit. I kiss the top of her head again and repeat, “Be my friend.”
“I don’t know how to be anyone’s friend.”
“No entiendo.” I don’t understand. “No friend?”
“Only family. And I’ve made them hate me.”
“Hate? No es possible.” Not possible.
“You should go.”
Holding her head tight to my chest, I tell her, “No. Rest.”
Within minutes, she’s asleep, purring like a little kitten, curled up against me, her breathing slow and steady. She is calm. I like her this way, too.
I rest my head against the arm of the sofa behind me and close my eyes. It’s been some time since I have had a moment like this, a moment that makes me wish life were different.
I wish with everything I am that I could tell her to embrace the love that surrounds her, because love is truly a gift.
Startled by the vibration in my pocket, I open my eyes. How on earth did I fall asleep? Did I fall asleep or�
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The thought is interrupted by the second vibration that wakes Tris, who sits up quickly, picks at the hair that is stuck to her full and soft pink lips, some of the deep brown is stuck to the chocolate from the ice cream that dried there amongst the chaos.
“Gross,” she mumbles, making a face that implies its meaning, and I once again and easily find delight in her. She shakes her head, and I see the change in her beautiful features. A metamorphosis from strikingly relaxed to agitated and anxious. “You have to go.”
Stretching my legs out on either side of her, I reach in my pants pocket and pull out my phone. Looking down at the screen, I tell her, “Un momento.”
“Matteo, you have to—”
“You have a beautiful soul, Tris Steel,” I quickly read from the screen. “I see it in your eyes, in their depth, and in hues of greens and browns, all equally as striking. However, when you woke rested, even the morning sunrise across the Mediterranean would pale in their splendor.” I look up to see her eyes widen in surprise and tell her, “Be my friend, Tris. I would like that, mucho.”
She looks between my eyes, at a near frantic pace, and I smile, hoping she can see that I am being nothing but sincere.
“If you do not take this man, this poet, up on his offer of friendship, bella regazza, I may.”
She jumps up, and I look behind me to see a woman, the woman, her grandmother, sitting across the suite at the table, sipping coffee.
Tris begins talking much too fast for me to keep up with as she picks up the carton of melted ice cream and towels that she used to clean up the mess.
I stand.
Señora Steel smiles at me as she interprets what Tris just said as I stand. “He just came here to return the card. I left it at the restaurant last night. I’m sorry. I can’t believe I did that.”
She then replies to Tris in English. “You were tired; no need to be sorry. I should have called Thomas back instead of leaving you alone in a strange place. It all seems to have worked out for the best. You’ve made a new friend. And artist, like yourself.” Then she repeats it in broken Spanish.
