Lost Ones

by Nicole French

  Layla holds my hand tight, like she’s afraid she might lose me, but takes in the neighborhood. I see her gaze float over the sushi restaurants and yoga studios, the way all the buildings are nicely painted with matching colors.

  “This is a really nice area,” she remarks after I point out a few more spots.

  Her words aren’t meant to hurt, but they do a little. Threaded through them is surprise––surprise that someone like me would be living in a place like this. She probably thought I’d be somewhere like East LA or Maywood––not because of the way I look, but because of where she knows I’ve lived before. A one-bedroom apartment shared between my mother and her four kids. A railroad up in Harlem with about as much charm as a sardine can. Compared to those places, Manhattan Beach is the Ritz.

  Lennox, one of the neighborhoods in LA that actually reminds me a lot of home, isn’t actually that far from here, and sometimes I’ll stop there for dinner when I miss hearing Spanish. But even there, I’m still an outsider. In a room full of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Salvadorans…I sound different. I speak a different kind of Spanish, a different kind of Spanglish. It’s close, and there are a lot of similarities. But it’s not like home.

  “The club must pay well,” Layla says after we cross Hermosa and turn onto The Strand, the big pedestrian promenade that runs alongside the beach. A few roller bladers whiz by us, and Layla jumps a little closer.

  “Whoa,” she laughs as I tuck her into my side.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She’s jumpy, like she’s not sure what’s about to happen next. I don’t think it’s just me.

  After we pass the volleyball nets, we step onto the beach, past the sunbathers, where we can walk mostly alone. It’s one of the things I actually like about California––unlike New York, where everyone is crammed together, here you can always find a spot by yourself, even in the middle of LA.

  Layla takes off her sandals and holds them in one hand as we walk.

  “So,” I say, reaching for small talk. “What, um, classes are you taking this year?”

  She takes a deep breath and tugs on her braid again. “Oh…well. Yeah, they’re…you know, I don’t really want to talk about it.” Another big sigh.

  “What?” I ask. “Don’t want to take them anymore?”

  “I…you’re not going to believe this.” She rubs her face, and her forehead wrinkles adorably. “I decided to be a Latin American studies major. So I could, um, get to know my culture better.” She makes a face. “Now it seems really dumb.”

  I frown. “That doesn’t seem dumb. That seems awesome, baby. Shit, I wish I could be a ‘Latin American studies major.’”

  She laughs, then blows a long stream of air from her lips. “I don’t know how I’m going to focus. I’m taking Spanish, Portuguese, and a few other classes this fall. And all I’m going to think about is, well, you”––she gives me a sheepish shrug––“and my asshole dad who just fucking abandoned me and my mom. Sounds like a great way to spend the next two years.”

  I wait for her to say more. I don’t know the whole story. I do know that her dad went from being an uptight, controlling-as-fuck Latino father to announcing he was straight-up leaving her and her mother. And yeah, I can see how that probably hurts. A lot.

  “Plus…” she trails off, looking out to the water. “I don’t…I don’t want to be like him. I thought I wanted to learn about my culture, learn about that part of me that he always tried to hide. But if Brazilian culture is what made him…I don’t know that I want any of it.” She sighs. “Maybe I should just be the nice white girl he always wants everyone to think I am.”

  I frown. She’s talked about this before. Her dad, like a lot of immigrants who’ve experienced prejudice and hate for not being “American” enough, went through a lot to keep his daughter from being different. But in the process, he alienated her from a whole part of her identity.

  “Even if you hate your dad right now…” I venture, “you shouldn’t let that make you hate what you are. He’s not Brazil, baby. He’s just one man. And that shouldn’t stop you from learning about who you are.”

  We walk a little more, letting the sound of the gulls flying down the beach fill the air. I try not to notice the way the sun gleams off Layla’s skin, or the way her legs, long and tan from the summer, are in the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen. Okay, they’re not really that short, especially by LA standards. It’s just that some animal in me wakes up around Layla, one that wants to cover her up and show her off at the same time. Because my girl is that beautiful.

  You asshole. She’s not your girl anymore.

  The idea hurts. A lot.

  “So, your dad,” I say, just to interrupt my own thoughts. “When he bounced. Did he say why?”

  Layla sniffs. “Are we really going to spend this time talking about that?”

  I shrug. “What do you want to talk about? The weather? It’s the same thing every day here. Sunny and boring as fuck.”

  She smirks. “You don’t sound as if you like it here very much.”

  I shrug. “It’s okay. Different. But don’t think you get to change the subject that easily, beautiful.”

  For that, I get another small smile.

  “You still think I’m beautiful?” she asks.

  I stop walking and turn so I can push her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll always think you’re beautiful, Layla.”

  She stares at me for a moment with her wide blue eyes the color of the ocean, then swallows and starts walking again.

  “He just left,” she says. She lets me keep her hand in mine, but stares down at the sand while she talks. “We all went to the airport together. He barely said a word to my mom, kissed me on the cheek, and got on his plane while we waited for ours. Did you know he sold his practice? All of it. Apparently they’d been planning it since last year. I just––” She breaks off, stopping for a moment to look out at the ocean. “I just feel really stupid,” she says quietly.

  I squeeze her hand. “You’re not stupid, sweetie. Not even close.”

  She pushes her hair out of her face defiantly. “Yes, I am. All of those years, he was such a control freak. He told me what to do, told my mom what to do. I thought it was because he cared so much, but obviously not. Because if you care about someone, you don’t just up and leave them!”

  “No,” I agree with her. “You don’t.”

  She gives me a piercing blue look, and I know what she’s thinking: that I left her too. Although if she said so, I’d say I left New York, not her. More and more, I’m wondering why. I look away.

  She walks a little closer to the water, then, without warning, plops down in the sand. I fall down next to her, and we sit together, looking out at the ocean. Down the way, a few surfers flounder around in the whitewash, and a couple of others are riding the waves farther out. We watch the way they move up and down on the waves like second nature, fall, paddle back out. It’s one of those things that makes me feel like an alien in California. I can barely even swim.

  “It’s not the same,” I venture after a few minutes.

  Layla turns sharply. “What’s not the same?”

  “Your dad,” I say, but then I surprise her. “Versus someone like mine.”

  Her expression softens. She knows this is hard for me, that I don’t normally like to talk about my father, if I can even call him that.

  “Your dad stuck around your whole life,” I say. “Mine split before I was even crawling. He didn’t ever want to know me at all.”

  “So you’re saying it’s okay what mine did?” she asks defensively.

  “No, baby, I’m not. But I’m saying…I doubt he did it because he wanted to get away from you. It sounds like maybe he waited until he knew you were going to be okay. He put up with a lot of unhappiness, living in a place where people only heard his accent, only ever looked at him like a foreigner.” I say it like a dirty word. “Maybe he saw his chance to go home, and he took it.”

  It’s a
familiar story––the same one I had to tell her last spring. Under normal circumstances, I’d want to break the nose of anyone who made Layla feel like this. But a part of me understands her dad too, and I never thought I’d be saying that. I understand how it feels to sacrifice everything you want so that everyone you care about will be okay. I understand the need to escape that kind of pressure. It’s what I’m doing out here.

  “He’ll come back,” I tell her with more assurance than I feel. “Maybe not permanently, but he’ll be back for you.”

  Layla’s quiet for a moment, running her tongue over her bottom lip while she thinks things over. I really wish she wouldn’t do that; it makes it hard to focus.

  “You think?” she asks.

  I take her hand and pull it across my knees so I can toy with her fingers.

  “I know,” I say. “You’re…there’s no way he doesn’t love you, baby. Anyone who knows you would love you.”

  She stills for a second, then lays her head on my shoulder. My chest tightens. It’s crazy how easily we fit. How could I have convinced myself she was just another girl? How could I have convinced myself we were anything but right together?

  I close my eyes. I don’t give a shit about the sunset that’s starting in front of us. I just want to focus on this feeling. The solid weight of her nestled up against me. The smooth skin of her palm under my calloused thumbs. The scent of her. It’s not coconut anymore––she stopped using whatever it was that made her smell like a piña colada. But a hint of something sweet is still there, subtle and intermingled with whatever intoxicating thing makes her smell like her.

  I kiss her lightly on top of her head. She sighs.

  “You okay, baby?” I whisper.

  She exhales. “I’m fine,” she says. “I’ll be fine.” Then, so quietly I wonder if she even wanted me to hear it: “I miss you.”

  But I did hear it. And it fuckin’ guts me. I miss her too. More than I’ve ever admitted to myself before now. But I can’t say it back, because then I’d have to admit that this whole fuckin’ thing was a mistake, that I never should have left New York, never should have left her.

  And I’m just not ready to do that yet.

  I shift, and she sits up and looks at me. I lean in and press my forehead to hers, my eyes closed. Without me thinking about it, my hand cups her cheek. I can feel, rather than see, her shudder, can feel the skin of her forehead frown against mine with the pain. I get it, baby, I want to say. Neither of us can pull away.

  Fuck it.

  “I…it’s not enough,” I admit.

  “What’s that?”

  “Saying ‘I miss you.’ It’s weak. Like something you’d say when you’re away from home for a weekend. Not…not like this.”

  My hand slides down her shoulder, and Layla takes it between both of hers.

  “Brazilians have a word for that, you know,” she says as she sits back and plays with my fingers. “Saudade. It’s…it’s hard to explain because there isn’t a translation. But the way I had it explained to me, it’s like when you yearn for something or someone. Like your heart speaks to their heart, and when they’re gone, it’s that emptiness that remains. It’s a longing, maybe for something that never even happened.”

  Slowly, I nod. “Sow-dodgy?” I repeat, trying out the unfamiliar syllables. They say Portuguese and Spanish are twin languages, but they sure as fuck don’t sound like it to me.

  Layla smiles and nods. “That’s pretty much it.” She repeats the word, but smooths out the syllables, so it sounds less choppy and more like a waterfall.

  Damn. That’s one hell of a word. And it fits perfectly. Because it doesn’t make sense why we should miss each other like this after having, what, a few months in New York? We’ve been apart longer than we were ever together. But it only took one second of seeing Layla again for me to see a future I could never have with her, and for that hole in my chest to open up all over again. Saudade? Yeah, I get it.

  “So how do I say it?” I wonder. “I saudade you, baby?”

  She chuckles and shakes her head. “It’s not a verb. It’s something you have. Like, I have saudade.” She looks at me, and her eyes match the color of the sky behind her, and my heart pounds in my chest.

  “Eu tenho saudade,” she whispers in Portuguese

  Her eyes lock with mine. They shimmer like the ocean next to us, deep and open. I could get lost in those eyes. I’d look at them the rest of my life if she’d let me.

  “Para tí,” I whisper back in Spanish, so low my voice is almost carried away on the wind. But not quite. For you. Only for you.

  “Sim,” she says.

  “Sí,” I say.

  Yes. Both words mean the same. They sound the same. Spelled out, there’s one letter of difference, but when you say them, it doesn’t matter. The differences don’t really matter.

  We lean into each other like magnets while the sound of the waves crashing on the beach overwhelms the air. Eu tenho/Yo tengo saudade indeed. I’ll long for this girl for the rest of my life, whether I’m with her or not. I know now this longing will never go away. I had it before I even met her.

  She leans into the pain, rubs her nose against mine, searching for something until her mouth finds mine. Her lips are soft, open, pliant, and fuck, it’s like they’ve never been gone. It’s a kiss that’s full of sorrow and longing, a kiss where Layla pours out her grief, and I take it. I cup her beautiful face with both hands and guide her again and again. I can’t go with her where she’s going next week. I can’t help her bear the weight of what’s happening to her family. But right now, I can help absorb some of that pain. I’d take it all if I could.

  ~

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Layla

  We kiss. And then we kiss some more. We kiss until the anger and sadness and desolation I’ve been carrying around with me for the past three days actually melts a little. That’s what this man does to me, what he’s always done to me. And the longer we sit together, enveloped in each other’s touch and taste, the more I’m ready to get off this stupid beach and go somewhere we can be alone.

  “I, um,” I try to speak as Nico cups the back of my head to pull me into yet another kiss that sweeps every painful, conscious thought away.

  “What?” he grumbles before slipping his tongue in to dance with mine. “What is it, baby?”

  My hands grip his t-shirt, and I’m having a hard time finding words. There’s only one thing I want right now. It doesn’t matter that we’ll have to say goodbye again in a week. I just want him closer, in the closest way two people can get.

  “Go,” I manage to get out. “Alone. You. Me.” Finally, I manage to evade his next kiss so I can look him in the eye. “Please.”

  His lips tug to one side with a smirk that reveals a dimple. Then he opens his mouth to answer, but his cell phone rings. When he pulls it out, a name is flashing brightly, even under the glare of the sun.

  “Who’s Jessie?” I ask

  Nico presses the silence button and shoves his phone in his pocket.

  “Um, yeah. Jessie’s my roommate. I wish…” he trails off before placing a light kiss on the top of my head. “I wish you didn’t have to be so far away.”

  “Me too––” I start to say before I realize that I don’t have to. New York has been calling my name, it’s true, like a ghost I can’t quite shake. My family’s house in Washington is gone, and I’m certainly not at home here in my grandparents’ museum of a house. I might only have a dorm room to go to, but it will be filled with my best friends, and one small corner will be mine. I can’t wait.

  But. My mother does live here now. It would be a simple thing to get state residency, and I could transfer schools. I could come to LA, I could stay, and maybe this ache that’s been in the pit of my stomach since May would finally go away. New York, I love. But maybe I love someone else more. Maybe he’s sitting next to me right now.

  I’m just about to open my mouth to say so when a name echoes from down the beac
h.

  “Nico!”

  It’s a woman’s voice, and she calls his name again as she jogs toward us.

  “Fuck,” Nico mutters under his breath as the woman approaches. His arm falls from around my shoulders, and I try not to be hurt when he scoots slightly away.

  We both watch the woman as she comes closer. The first thing I notice is that she’s stunning––tall, thin, blonde, and tan, and showing it all off in a pair of skin-tight leggings and a sports bra that bares an incredibly toned stomach. Her sun-streaked hair is pulled into a high ponytail on top of her head. From the way her skin glistens slightly in the sun, it’s clear she’s been out for a run.

  “Oh my God,” she says as she comes to stand in front of us. She reaches an arm over her head and stretches, making her belly even flatter than before. “Do you ever check your phone, hon? I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour.”

  Hon? I tense further, and her sharp brown eyes zero in on the movement.

  “Hi,” she says as she extends a hand. “I’m Jessie.”

  My voice freezes in my throat as I hear the name. Jessie. Nico’s roommate. Who looks like she should be on the cover of a fashion magazine and who also happens to call him “hon.” This is Jessie?

  Beside me, Nico is rubbing the back of his neck and assiduously avoiding either of our gazes.

  I look back at the Amazon standing in front of me. “I-I’m Layla,” I say, accepting her handshake. “I’m…a friend. From New York.”

  “She’s just in town for a bit,” Nico finally breaks in. “We thought we’d catch up. We, uh, go way back.”

  Jessie quirks an eyebrow between us. “Huh. Must be way back. You never mentioned Laura before.”

  Nothing. Nico says nothing.

  “Layla,” I say with a sharp look at him. “It’s Layla, not Laura.”

  She blinks at me like an owl, and then flips her ponytail back and smiles brightly. “Lara. Got it. Well, I have to finish my run and get going. I have that photo shoot tomorrow morning, so I need to get to sleep early.”

  She looks at me as she says photo shoot, as if I’m supposed to be impressed. Well, mission accomplished. In all her blonde, statuesque glory, Jessie makes me feel like a freaking hobbit.