Little & Lion

by Brandy Colbert

  “But you’re not getting better… you’re getting worse.”

  “First of all, you don’t get to fucking tell me how I’m doing. And second, do you really want to talk to them about me again? When you have some secrets of your own that they might want to know about?”

  “Fine.” I throw my hands in the air. “That would be really, really shitty of you, but fine. Out me to our parents if it makes you feel better, but—”

  “No, what would make me feel better is if they knew how shady you’re being with my girlfriend.”

  My skin turns cold. I want to hurt the person in front of me, the hard expression contrasting against lively freckles and bright, bright hair. But this isn’t Lionel.

  “I’m not doing anything with your girlfriend.” My voice is shaking.

  “You would if there was no way I’d find out.” His voice is pure ice. And he doesn’t give me a chance to protest. “I can’t stop you from telling them,” he says, his eyes boring into me. “But aren’t they gonna wonder why it took you so long? And if you tell them… we’re done.”

  “We’re not done.” The tears come fast and they’re rolling over my cheeks, dripping down my chin and into the crease of my neck. “We can’t be done. We’re family.”

  “Yeah, well, family doesn’t tell on each other. They keep secrets. They protect each other.” He shrugs then, and that smirk pops back up, more mocking than before. “So go ahead and tell if you want, but we’re done if you do. It’s not like we’re blood, anyway.”

  My knees buckle instantly; I barely catch the wall for support in time. I have nothing to say after that, but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t look back again. I’m invisible to him. The sister he could disown in five seconds flat.

  I stumble out to the hall, pause when I’m just a few feet from Mom and Saul’s room. I could go in there now and tell them everything and hope that one day he’d be able to forgive me.

  But I’m so weak, so tired, so hurt that I can’t pile one more problem onto this day. Maybe when I wake up everything will be different. Lionel will be receptive to his meds and he will apologize and everything will be good between us again. And if he’s not, then I have to think seriously about what my life would be like without him when boarding school isn’t the reason keeping us apart.

  I trudge up the stairs to my room. Emil has turned on the twinkle lights so everything is cast in a soft glow. He’s sitting on my bed, on top of the covers, flipping through a book of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks. His shoes are next to the bed.

  “How’d it go?” he asks, lowering the book.

  I undress immediately, dropping my clothes to the floor piece by piece until I’m standing in nothing but my underwear.

  He looks at me—at my eyes, not my body. “Suzette?”

  I start to answer him but my face crumples.

  “It’s okay.” He comes to me, wraps his arms around my naked shoulders, and walks me toward the bed. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “It’s not, though,” I say in a voice thick with tears. “He won’t take his meds. He hates me, Emil.”

  “He doesn’t hate you.”

  “He does.”

  “Come on,” he says as I lie down. He pulls the covers over me gently, first the top sheet and then the duvet. “Appa always says everything will look better in the morning and… not to sound too much like my dad, but maybe that’s true, okay? It’s been a long night.”

  Emil turns off the lights and crawls in next to me. He seems hesitant to touch me when I move closer to him, and when I kiss him, he doesn’t kiss me back. He pulls away and looks at me.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “It feels like I’m taking advantage of you, when you’re upset like this.” His voice is quiet.

  “You’re not. I want this. I want you.”

  He slides his thumbs across my cheeks, brushing the tears away as he cups my face with his strong hands. He kisses me first this time and makes up for the kiss he didn’t return. His lips are warm and understanding as they meet mine, as if he knows how much I need to be needed tonight.

  I take my time removing his clothes, stopping to touch the parts of his body I haven’t seen before. He sucks in a breath and releases it unevenly as my fingers glide across his skin. I’ve never seen a boy completely naked; even when we were up in the tree house that night, Emil never took off his boxers. Now he strokes the dimples at the small of my back as I look at him a little too long.

  I ask if he has a condom and he nods, grabs one from his jeans on the floor. But he stops and asks if I’m sure before he puts it on. I’m no surer of what I’m doing than when I was with Iris, but like when I was with her, this feels right.

  We go slow, and still sometimes it is so uncomfortable I have to bite my lip to keep from whimpering. I don’t want him to think he’s hurting me because he’s so gentle the whole time, as if my body is sculpted of glass. He kisses and kisses me, and each time our lips meet, I think the strangest thing about being so close to Emil is that it’s not strange at all.

  And I don’t think about Iris. Not until we’re done and he is wrapped around me like a spoon, his arms holding me tight like she used to, like he’ll never let me go.

  nineteen.

  I’m so sorry” are the first words out of Rafaela’s mouth when she sees me.

  I’m not working today, two days after the party, but when she asked me to meet her at the coffee shop next to Castillo Flowers, I obliged. I didn’t have anything better to do than try not to drown in my worry, so it was good to hop on my butter-yellow beach cruiser and ride over here with the wind whipping through my dreads, the sun warming my skin as I cycled up Sunset. But now that I’m here, I wish I weren’t. I know it’s not Rafaela’s fault that Lionel lost control, but I can’t help feeling resentful.

  Or that she’s bad for him.

  She slides into the seat across from me at the wrought-iron table crammed into the small outdoor space and takes off her sunglasses. “I had no idea that guy was going to show up. I told you he’d texted me earlier and then he was just, like, there and…”

  “But what happened?” I wrap my hands around my iced latte. “Something had to have set Lion off. I mean, he doesn’t just go around punching people like that. And he won’t tell me anything.”

  For the first time since I’ve met her, Rafaela blushes. It’s subtle, but her skin pinkens and she stares down at her empty hands. “He’s trying to protect me. That guy is bad news.”

  “Obviously,” I say, and it’s not lost on me how unkind my voice is. But I’m tired of secrets.

  She purses her lips and stands. “I need coffee.”

  I’m slurping the last of mine through a straw when she returns, ignoring the annoyed glances of the dad type sitting to my left.

  Rafaela sits down with a hot coffee, takes a sip, and looks at me. “The last time I saw that guy, he said he was going to ‘fuck the gay’ out of me.”

  The dad type huffs, not even trying to hide the fact that he’s listening in.

  “What?” I say, admittedly as shocked as he is.

  “He knew about Grace, and he was always really weird when other girls were around. I told you how he’d get all possessive, and that was whether or not I even thought they were cute. Like, we could’ve been walking by a woman wearing mom jeans and driving a minivan, and he’d make sure I wasn’t checking her out.” She shudders. “It was really creepy, so I started ignoring him.”

  “And he couldn’t handle it.”

  I remember Iris telling me something similar, about how the boys who’d flirted and tried to get her attention at her old school were angry when she rebuffed them, but especially so when they realized she wasn’t into guys at all. Like it was a direct threat to their masculinity, and they were embarrassed that they’d wasted time on someone who didn’t reciprocate their attraction. I feel lucky that Emil handled my confession so well, but I know I won’t always be so fortunate.

  “No, and seeing
me with another guy was apparently the last straw.” She sighs and looks at her coffee. “The night of your welcome-back party… when he showed up at DeeDee’s… I may have told him I was going to be there.”

  “What?” I lean forward and lower my voice.

  “I was bored,” she says. “And drunk. And I knew he’d make a fool of himself in front of everyone. He did, but—”

  “That only made it worse.”

  She nods. “And this last time… I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see what he’d act like if he saw me with another guy. But he was drunker than I’ve ever seen him, at Alicia’s. Calling me all sorts of names. Lionel defended me, of course, and then the next thing I know he’s just whaling on him.”

  I could tell her, right now, how Lionel hasn’t been taking his meds and how I think their relationship isn’t good for him. But it’s not my place to say something. If Lion was mad at the idea that I’d tell our parents, I can’t imagine he’d be okay with me telling his new girlfriend. Just as with my parents, not telling her feels like watching a bomb slowly tick down to its explosion, but setting it off early seems just as, if not more, dangerous.

  “Do you think it’s because of his bipolar?” When I look up, she’s leaning forward, eyes more golden than green and a little scared. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I know mood swings are part of it. And he was fine that whole night and then he was so angry out of nowhere.… Is that normal for him?”

  But he wasn’t fine. She doesn’t know him well enough to read his moods, the slightest change in his behavior.

  I touch my nose ring, tap it three times before I respond. “I don’t know if I should get into that. Lion is kind of touchy about it. You should probably talk to him yourself.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m asking because I want to hear what you think, Suzette. Is this something I should be worried about? I really, really like him. A lot. But that scared me. And I feel shitty being scared. Lionel isn’t a scary person. But he didn’t seem like himself.”

  I shake the ice around in my cup as I weigh the good of telling Rafaela Lion’s secret against the bad of facing him after he finds out. My lips choose for me.

  “He’s not himself. He’s off his meds.” I close my eyes for a second to regroup, because I felt dizzy, just saying those words. Telling Emil was different. Our families are close and they’ve always known our secrets. And Emil isn’t dating my brother.

  As I sit here, waiting for her response, I wonder how much longer they’ll be together after this. I remember what DeeDee said, that Rafaela has a reputation for dating shitty guys, and my stomach hurts as I think about her putting Lionel into that category.

  And when she still doesn’t speak, I blurt, “You can’t say anything to him, Rafaela. I’m not telling you this because of what you said the other night… in the bathroom. I don’t want you to hate him. I want…”

  I don’t know what I want. I’ve mentally replayed that moment in the bathroom almost as often as my night with Emil. No one has ever implied that they wanted me when I couldn’t have them. Are we just supposed to go on pretending that we’re not attracted to each other now that she’s put it out in the open?

  “I know.” Rafaela watches me over the lid of her coffee as she takes a long drink. “And I don’t hate him. I… I feel relieved, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it would be pretty frightening if he was acting that way on medication.”

  “That still doesn’t make it okay. Aren’t you worried about him? Do you know what can happen if he doesn’t get back on track?” I feel like my mother, like I’m lecturing someone younger than me on something she should already know.

  “Suzette, lots of people don’t take their meds and they’re fine. It doesn’t always have to end in some tragic story. Some of the best artists in history had mood disorders.” She sighs. “You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to. If he doesn’t want to take his meds…”

  She trails off as if that’s the end of it.

  “You can if they might hurt themselves without it.”

  Rafaela frowns. “Has he ever been hospitalized?”

  “No. But you haven’t seen him depressed. You haven’t heard him talking when it’s really bad.”

  “Is he seeing a therapist?”

  I nod.

  “Well, then he can’t be so bad, right? His shrink would let your parents know if something seemed off?”

  I shrug. Maybe she’s right. I’m the only one freaking out about him, but he’s around other people every day. Mom and Saul know what to look out for, same as Dr. T. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe this is why Mom sent me away last year.

  We sit in silence for a while. The man next to us leaves, but not before glancing over with an expression that rests somewhere between reproachful and curious. I glare at him until he walks away.

  “Look, I have four tickets for the cemetery movie this weekend,” Rafaela finally says. “Dazed and Confused. I bought them at the beginning of the summer, figuring I’d go with Grace and the girls. But I’d rather take Lionel and you. And you can bring your dude. Is that weird?”

  I shake my head. Maybe it would have been, ten minutes ago. But her response to Lionel’s secret isn’t what I expected, and she lied to me soon after we met, about the guy from the Palisades. Something has changed, even if I can’t just turn off my physical attraction to her. And the truth is that Lionel won’t want to hang out with me if she’s not around. I’m back to giving him a wide berth and he’s back to letting me.

  “So you’ll go?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll ask Emil.”

  I should feel better, having told someone else the truth about my brother. Maybe the most important person to him right now, even if I don’t want to admit it. But she doesn’t agree with me or my parents or anyone else who really knows Lionel, so my effort seems futile.

  I need to tell someone who will do something. As much as I hate to admit it to myself, I have to find a way to tell Saul.

  twenty.

  We can go anywhere on our adventures, as Saul calls the afternoons we spend together. We like to explore the city, all the corners of Los Angeles that people have forgotten or don’t know about or have deemed too far to drive to. I feel most comfortable when we’re at the museum, and this time he says we’ll be uninterrupted and free to spend the day as we please.

  “See? I even turned off my phone.” He holds up the blank screen for proof.

  “I’m holding you to that,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

  I’m trying to be normal with him, but there’s nothing normal about how I feel. My stomach has been churning all day from nerves as I go over and over in my head how to tell him about Lionel. It would have been easier to tell my mother, but Saul deserves to hear it from me. I don’t want to ruin our day, so I decide to wait until we’ve walked around awhile.

  There’s a Matisse exhibit I’ve wanted to check out, but we stop at the Tar Pits first, heading down the sidewalk along Wilshire. We cross the grassy entrance and find an empty bench in front of the models of the prehistoric animals.

  “How’s the flower shop?” Saul asks as we sit.

  “Fine.” I ignore how Rafaela’s face flashes through my mind. I wish I’d never agreed to our double date this weekend. Maybe there won’t even be a date, after Saul finds out about Lionel. “Good. Ora said my last arrangement was ‘full of passion,’ whatever that means.”

  Saul raises an eyebrow. “Could it be we have a budding florist in our midst?”

  “Um, no.” I make a face. “I mean, it’s not a bad job, but I still don’t know much about flowers. And it’s not like they really mean anything. People get them to say they’re sorry. Then they die.”

  “Come on, kiddo, you’re too young to be so jaded,” he says, sounding truly disappointed. “There used to be a whole language of flowers, in Victorian times.”

  “I know. Floriography.” Ora has a couple of old books that her mother ow
ned. She keeps them in the back room, on a shelf above the counter where we prepare the bouquets. I’ve paged through one of them when I was bored and I guess I understand it—telling stories and expressing emotions through flowers. It’s not so different from art, except paintings and sculptures and photography live on. Flowers dry out and the petals shrivel up and people throw them away when the water starts to smell.

  “Well, you might miss the shop a little when you go back to Massachusetts, right? If you go back?”

  “Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”

  I haven’t labored much over whether or not to return to Dinsmore since Mom mentioned the choice is mine. Not directly, anyway. But lately it seems like I can’t do anything without being reminded of Iris; she’s wrapped up in the safety of Emil and my attraction to Rafaela and my complicated feelings of betraying Lionel. Everything goes back to her and I know, for sure, that it’s because I never apologized. I should have told those girls on our floor to go to hell. I should have been proud of what I had with Iris instead of trying to take the easy way out.

  “Have you decided yet?” he asks after a pause. “We don’t mean to push you, but there’s always a lot of paperwork and phone calls involved with schools, and the summer is just about half over…”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I haven’t… I can’t decide.”

  “How about you let us know by next week?” Saul says easily. He believes Lionel is fine, that his health is stable, so he must think my decision is based on trivial factors, like missing the food and sunshine of L.A. and the comfort of my bedroom tower.

  “Okay,” I agree. In a week, maybe the choice will be made for me; maybe Lionel won’t even want to look at me after his secret is out in the open.

  A couple of guys saunter by with skateboards under their arms, nudging each other as they look through the bars of the fence at the woolly mammoth.

  “You know we miss you when you’re gone. So much, kiddo,” Saul says, rubbing a hand over his face. Stubble is cropping up on his jawline, a darker red than the hair on his head. “But you shouldn’t stay here for us, if you want to go back. We’ll all be fine… Lionel included.”