by Lila Felix
“Aren’t all guys?”
The girl, whose nametag is strategically placed, giggles and touches my bicep squeezing like she’s checking for fat content. She looks pleased to find there isn’t much fat there at all. The only thing I do is work, see the devil, and workout. No more running.
No more running is part of my prescription.
“How about a new PlayStation?”
I pick up the first thing she shows me, which is the entire gaming system with extra games. I do it mostly to get away from her. Not that she’s bad looking, but she’s not…
Afterward, I feel like the big gift looks like I’ve got something to prove.
The thing is: I do.
I have something to prove to almost everyone in my life—my parents, my friends, and mostly Aysa. But hers will have to be last.
She’ll have to start speaking to me first.
Neil and Leon are waiting for me at the apartment when I get back. Roman and I share this new apartment. I moved out shortly after Gray.
At first, I made all of the outward changes, hoping they would spark some change inside. They didn’t. The only thing they did was make me feel like a stranger in my own place.
“What’s up boys?”
Neil plops his Xbox controller on the coffee table and lets out a burp that threatened to shake the walls.
“Dude. We need to go out. It’s Friday night! Unless you’ve got another hot date.”
I closet the present for Roman and sit in the leather recliner that still feels too new to be comfortable.
“No more hot dates. I told the devil that I was done with it.”
Leon bucks up at my response. “Does that mean you’re gonna go after her? That means you’ll stop moping around. ” He cups his hands to his mouth and makes the noise of a cheering stadium.
“Eventually.”
“What are you going to do about Roman?”
I shrug. “They’re just friends.”
Leon laughs. “Have you told him that?”
“He knows. He wants more, but he knows. So, what are we doing tonight?”
“Let’s start with barbeque and beer. If we can still stand up straight, we’ll do something else.”
Neil and Leon have come out of their shells since the fallout. Sometimes we refer to it as the Graypocalypse.
Sometimes the boys just tap their chins, referring to the scar Roman’s ring put in my chin after he’d clocked me.
Sometimes we don’t refer to it at all, and that is the best scenario all the way around.
The devil would tell me that it isn’t the healthiest.
But then again, neither are her bullshit heels.
“Call the priest. He’s always up for a good time.”
Leon and my brother have somehow become friends. Neil and my brother have become friends.
I text Knox and he responds right away that he is busy. I suspect he is counseling Aysa, but whether or not he is, he won’t tell me. I hope he is. I trust him.
He will help her get through whatever.
And above anyone else, he knows how to recover from an Ezra shit storm.
Aysa
I could play this game with the priest all night.
The priest is like my best friend now.
“Just tell me, Knox. You’re pissing me off.”
“Come on. You know who it is. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“I’m not going to fall apart if you say the name, Knox. Loosen the white collar for once in your life.”
He was wearing street clothes tonight. But even when he was, I still imagined the white collar. When your best friend is a priest, there’s an automatic laundry list of shit to pick on them about.
“I’m not even wearing the collar. You have a complex about it.”
The waitress approaches our table and bends over the table right at Knox’s eye level, giving him a view of everything she has to offer along with the complimentary glass of water. He looks away, but not without a smile and a blush. He is a man after all.
“Wow. That was…”
He covers his face. “Right? That was…I don’t even know what that was.”
I pick at the bread she’s dropped on the table, taking my time in buttering it. Knox is giving me that look. He is my friend, but he was also my casual counselor. He just can’t help himself, collar or not.
“You’re killing me.”
I shrug. Playing with Knox was just too much fun.
“It’s okay. You’ll go to heaven. I heard that place is a blast.”
For that remark, I get a roll in my face.
“Ugh. Fine. Here.”
I handed him the gift, still wrapped in silver paper. I couldn’t bear to throw any of it away. Not even the paper.
He’d touched it all. Roman told me he’d wrapped it himself.
Knox’s brow furrows as he peels back the paper, almost slower than I had days before. Opening that damned thing was supposed to be a breaking point. It was supposed to cut the ties that bound me to Ezra and let me go.
Instead, when I’d opened it, I collapsed on the ground and held it so tight to my chest that it made an indent on my sternum.
I’ll never be free of my love for Ezra—never.
I don’t want to be.
“Is there—is there one in it?”
Almost worse than the gift itself was what is inside it.
“Go ahead. Look. There’s no secrets here.”
With the nail of his thumb, he pops the clasp on the box and opens it. He slips out the tiny bit of paper. My heart arrests as he read the words.
The words that ruined me once and for all.
Knox looks back at me and our eyes lock in agreement.
“He wrote this…”
I clear my throat and take my aggression out on the bread he’d thrown at me. “After Gray but before the last time I saw him. He wrote that sometime in between.”
I am grateful that Knox can decipher my generalities.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to wear it when I gather the courage.”
“Aysa, you’re made of courage. Don’t bullshit me. You don’t want Roman to see it.”
The priest is cursing. I love when the priest curses. I also like calling him the priest. That’s when you know the crap had hit the fan. I curse under my breath as well, but I know he heard it. He always does. “I know. I know. I’m a selfish hag.”
He chuckles. When the waitress comes back, he orders for us both. We always get the same thing. “You’re not a hag. You’ve made yourself clear to him. But here’s what you need to explore. Why do you feel like you need to hide it from him? He knows you love Ezra. He knows that Ezra loves you. Ask yourself that.”
Knox and his damned exploring. He should double as an archaeologist or Dora the Explorer. He is always asking me to explore this or explore that. It is painful.
And annoying.
The thing is, I always come out better on the other side.
One day I am going to make him explore my fist. Not really, I have a hard time squishing bugs.
“I’m hurting him.”
“So stop it.”
I shoot him my best stink eye. He is right. I am using Roman as my crutch and it needs to stop. We spends the rest of the night talking about my real issues. I’d begun hanging out with my sister more often and found that the hatred I’d assumed was just that—an assumption.
“And work?”
Knox never misses a beat.
“It’s getting better. I can get through most of the tour without thinking about him.”
The truth would be better received if I didn’t snort after I lie.
“Define most.”
“The library kills me. It was the first time I knew that Ezra wasn’t just a guy—sitting in that room with him—I knew he was going to change my soul. I sound stupid.”
Knox looks around the room. He does that often. Part of who Knox is revolves around the simple observation of peo
ple.
It makes him empathetic.
“What good is love if the person we choose to be in love with doesn’t change our souls?”
“Love is crazy, Knox.”
“Love isn’t crazy. Love isn’t a degree of insanity. Love is sanity at its purest. It forces your soul to make a rational choice—a choice to make another person’s happiness your priority, to allow them access to your heart and soul. Letting Ezra go was choosing to love him. Letting him go was the best way you knew how to choose his joy over your own. I can see it in both of you. This love isn’t one that will go down without a fight.”
I slam my outstretched hands on the table and lean in, serious as a heart attack.
“Has that waitress been slipping you shots?”
Knox smiles with one side of his mouth and shrugs with that same side’s shoulder. “Maybe.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Is that all she’s been slipping you?”
He scrubs his face with his hands. “Why is it that I have to spend twice as much time praying the day after seeing you? I wish you’d just get back with my brother again. Use all this dirty talk on him.”
Deflated, I sink back into my side of the booth.
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“Fine. Let’s go play pool.”
“Yeah, ‘cause knocking balls around is really going to put a halt to my innuendos.”
“Shut up. I’m driving.”
The pool place is packed, even for a Friday night. The smoke is thick and hung like clouds in the room.
“I’ll get a table. You just stand there and look pretty.”
I slap Knox’s back. “Aww, thanks Father.”
There is no end to the jokes at Knox’s expense. Before long he grabs my hand and leads me to a table in the corner that is being vacated. Being friends with Knox, I’ve become a pro at pool. He won’t gamble with me. He blames that on the church, but I think it’s because he knows I can whip his ass now.
We play for hours in silence. We move around each other like planets. We know where we are supposed to be and when he rotates around the sun, I do in turn.
Until he breaks my concentration by leaning in over my shoulder.
“I want you to breathe, Aysa.”
I reach up and pat the side of his head. “All this time I haven’t been breathing? I should be a Navy Seal or something.”
He takes one deep, hard breath and grabs my arm—hard. “I’m telling you to keep breathing when you look up and see what I see. Keep cool. Wait until I cross to the other side of the table. That way it will appear as if you’re looking at me.”
I swallow against the lump that has taken up residence in my throat. My chest constricts and I know—my body knows before my mind—it is him—here—in my space again. I count Knox’s steps, pretending to chalk my pool stick. Seven—eight—nine steps and I look up at his face. He winks at me. I would normally find it funny.
It’s a brotherly gesture.
He is winking as a secret sign for me to chill before I’ve even seen what I am to be shocked at.
That is the moment I heard a sound that tips me off.
I can’t breathe. The room’s other sounds pump in the back of my head. I have no defense, mental or physical, that can shield me.
It isn’t the bass of Ezra’s laughter.
It isn’t the way he talks louder when he is with the guys.
No one else in the room probably hears it. My ears are specifically tuned to that sound.
Ezra’s message tone is a squeaky, haunting closing door. I set it up on his phone after we’d joked around about our shared ghost fetish.
Even in this room full of people, I’d know that sound anywhere.
Hearing it makes me look up right into the gray eyes of the person I both love and want to be away from at the same time. He’s changed. It is like looking in to the eyes of a different person—but the same. He’s gained weight. His lips are fuller, or maybe that is just wishful thinking. He has a black rubber band around his wrist. As I look at him, he snaps the thing several times. The motion has to sting.
“Breathe, honey.”
Knox’s voice brings me out of the dream. I catch myself from swaying on the edge of the pool table. I can’t even tell if my feet are on the floor anymore.
“Look at me, Aysa. Look at me.”
I do at once. Knox’s face is the only thing keeping me sane.
“What?”
“It’s your call. Do you want to leave?”
I pull from every nook in my body, begging the courage to come forth. “No. I’m staying.”
“Good girl.”
This is when I become a teenage girl again. It’s pathetic, but absolutely cannot be helped. I sway my hips just a little bit more than I normally would. I laugh just a little bit louder than Knox’s jokes warrant. I suck down my coke in long, lingering swallows. I bite my lips until they hurt.
By the time we leave, I feel like I’ve just put on the show of my life. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve left Ezra alone to do whatever he’s doing—especially if it’s making him look better and better every time I see him.
It was pure torture seeing him again.
“At least I got that over with before Roman’s party.”
“Yeah, you got it over with all right?”
I turn to Knox in the car and shout. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t think an Oscar winner could’ve put on a better show than you did tonight. If Ezra’s not buying what you’re selling by Roman’s party, I’m thinking about taking a shot.”
I laugh and he does too.
“Come on Priest, remember the vows, man.”
“Hey, I took vows, no one took my eyeballs.”
We fall silent until he drops me off at my car. “It’s a good thing I know you’re joking around. Otherwise, I might be concerned.”
He gave me that look, the one that told me the priest was back in town. “Laughter is good for the soul and even God’s people need a day off. Goodnight, Aysa. Call me tomorrow.”
I smile until he pulls away and then I just can’t hold up the charade any longer.
Crushed, that’s what I am. It’s that moment when reality doesn’t even come close to fantasy. I’m so disappointed. I’ve drummed up at least a dozen scenarios for the first time I saw Ezra again and none of them, I repeat, none of them, includes me acting like a hormone-raved lunatic and hyperventilating.
None—of—them.
I pull into the parking lot of my apartment complex thoroughly disgusted with myself. I intend to strip down and soak the Ezra out of my system.
I truly thought I’d gotten a grip on it all.
I was dead wrong.
I groan out loud when I see Roman stick his head out of my apartment door. Somewhere in my despair, I thought it was a good idea to give him a key. I guess I was thinking that he could get to me in the case that I was comatose or something equally as debilitating.
Like, I don’t know, thinking about that boy.
Now, I regret that decision.
Roman is here all the time. I mean, once in a while, a girl wanted to walk around in her best panties and paint her nails without the roaming Roman eyes.
Sometimes a girl wants to eat cereal in the bathtub while The National rocks her world.
In pure exhaustion, I thump my forehead on the steering wheel. Maybe he’ll think I passed out. I can just pretend to be knocked out for the rest of the night and then maybe he will leave.
Or he will stay like he always does.
And then pout about having to leave the next morning.
I bite down hard on my lips and pretended to scratch at my temple to hide the rolling of my eyes.
I had to end this—tonight.
Ezra
I almost expected a new version of her. In my mind, she’d evolved from Aysa in my heart to Aysa in my fantasies.
There was no way I could’ve prepared myself for her tonight.
And not in a good way.
My Aysa was someone I didn’t even recognize.
Every time she moved her head, red wisps of hair tickled her face. She was wearing two ponytails at either side of her face. Neil later corrected me, telling me they were pigtails, which made the description even worse.
Her clothes were even wrong. She boasted a yellow dress. She was desperately trying to emit a false impression of sunshine and happiness.
I was probably the only one in the room who saw her eyes tick to the floor more than once.
No one else saw her tug at the hem of her personified sunshine because she thought it was too short.
Though it was thin and there was no use in doing so, she spent the time between turns trying to hide behind her pool cue or standing behind a barstool.
It didn’t work.
I could never not see Aysa again.
“Earth to Ezra!”
I’m not happy to see my brother so chipper this early in the morning.
“What?”
“Talk to me.”
“I can’t talk to you. You’re counseling her.” He opens his mouth to protest. “Don’t deny it. I don’t even want to hear it. I’m ready, Knox. I can lie to you up and down and tell you that I did this for me and I wanted to make myself healthy. But I did it for her. I did it so I can be the kind of man that can protect her—take care of her—even if she doesn’t need anyone in the world. I want her to need me.”
He remains stoic. “I want to tell you that you should change for you, blah, blah, blah. But I’m just going to lay it on the line here, Ez. There’s this connection between you two. It’s transcendent, almost. It goes way beyond love and friendship. It’s as though your souls are connected. I don’t think you two could truly get rid of each other if you tried. And, honestly, I don’t think God would allow it. Plus, you’re both getting on my nerves.”
God. That’s where my brother and I disagree and yet, agree.
I hate the process more than anything. God could’ve just written me an email that said to be careful, not to get anyone pregnant and Aysa would come along sometime.
Just wait for her.
She’s your perfect fit.
No…we had to go through trials and learn lessons.
I am done with the lessons.
I just want to move on to the good stuff.
“Is it wrong for me to pray for us to be together?”
