Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Tess
It’s been at least fourteen years since I last needed to sneak out of my hotel room without alerting anyone. To say I’m rusty would be the understatement of the century. But despite my lack of practice, I like to think I manage to shut the door and slip down the hall expertly, leaving Kit completely unaware.
I’m not hiding from him, per se, but this is a moment when I most definitely need space.
Somehow one reluctant agreement to go parasailing with him spiraled into spending every waking moment of the last few days together. I realized it this morning when I found myself already up and brushing my hair at the crack of dawn in anticipation of his familiar knock and the iced coffee that would accompany him when he returned from his daily run. I sat down on the bed and stared out the balcony window, wondering how in the hell I went from resenting his presence to having our own damn routine.
It’s been one of the best weeks I’ve had here since my parents were alive, which should be a good thing, right? But each night when my head hits the pillow, shame slices through my center like a hot knife. Shame that I haven’t thought of them all day. That for a moment I was happy having forgotten.
So I resort to the only thing I can think to do—I visit my parents. Or the closest I can get to them these days.
It’s the middle of the night when I exit the cool air of the lobby in favor of the boggy outdoors. The worst of the heat has leached from the pool deck, leaving it comfortably warm against my skin as I sit down beside our handprints. I feel each sharp ridge of the concrete pressing into me through my thin flannel shorts. A nearly full moon peers down on the Carmen, bathing me in its white light. Distant thunder competes with the sound of waves lapping at the shore.
I rest my hand inside the print my mother left, nearly filling it perfectly. It’s as though I made the impression myself. To the right, my father’s dwarfs hers. And there, in the middle, lies the little handprint I made. Proof that I was once small and safe between my parents. That we were happy.
Above them all, true to my father, is a whole sand dollar, forever memorialized in the concrete slab. My chest constricts. To think that by the end of this summer this snapshot of our lives will cease to exist makes my stomach turn.
Grief swells in my chest, fueled by all the love I still feel but am unable to give to them. To anyone, really. I meant what I said to Kit at the aquarium. The risk of not just pain but true suffering is too much to bear.
Warmth like a fever floods my cheeks as I picture him leaning in beneath the blue glow of the overhead tank. As I took his advice and stood very, very still.
I shake my head while mentally shoving thoughts of him as far into the recesses of my mind as I can. What kind of daughter am I? Wasting the time I’m meant to spend remembering my lost family on some guy I barely know. Shame rejoins the grief, becoming so thick I’m certain I’ll suffocate from the weight of it pressing on my lungs.
It hurts. The effort it takes to hold on to it all.
“How do I let you go?” I whisper, though there’s not a soul around to hear me speak.
With tears blurring my vision, I snap a photo and send it to Gary, alongside the caption, Can you believe my hands were ever so small?
I expect him to be sleeping, but within seconds, he responds.
Gary B
Yes, mostly because they aren’t that much bigger now!
For some reason when I laugh, it sounds sadder than if I’d let out a sob.
Me
Miss you, Gare Bear.
Me
Sorry I didn’t tell you about Kit. Are you mad?
Gary B
Never, Tess. He’s a good kid and so are you. Though I can’t wait to hear how all this happened when you find some time.
I promise to call, and he wishes me good night, not once questioning why I’m up so late in the first place. It’s how I managed to keep from spilling my guts about what happened with Kit when my uncle visited at Christmas. Even if he’s always down to listen, be it to gossip or a true undressing of the heart, Gary doesn’t prod. So I didn’t mention it, much as Kit had been weighing on my mind since I left. It was over, anyway. A one-time ordeal. Or so I thought.
My lips are soft to the touch. Warm. There’s no evidence of the way Kit burned himself onto me, and yet I feel it. Haven’t been able to stop feeling it since that moment in the aquarium. Yet he hasn’t pushed for more, or even another kiss. I get the sense that the ball is in my court, and he’s waiting for me to make the next move. Too bad I’m waiting for me, too.
Waiting to figure out what the hell I want from this life, beyond surviving it with minimal pain from here on out. If I stand still like Kit suggested, what will catch up to me? How much hurt have I been evading by never settling long enough for it to float to the surface? What little leaks through is bad enough. Anything more and I’d be incapacitated.
“Tessa? ?Qué haces? ” Mo steps into my line of vision just as I glance up, startled. His gaze settles on my palm, still resting in the outline of my mother’s, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes soften. “Oh, querida. My brother told you, didn’t he?”
I nod. “But it’s okay; I mean, I understand—” I’m interrupted by my own hiccuping sob. A sound that says it’s very much not okay and I most definitely do not understand. I bat away the tears slipping over my cheeks and draw in a ragged breath. “I’m sorry; I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“I think I do.” Mo lowers himself to the cold ground and wraps me in his embrace, that familiar tobacco scent soothing me like nothing else does. “It is okay to be sad. I was, too, when they first told me it was a possibility.”
“They’re just handprints,” I say, though the words are interrupted by more tears, followed by sniffling.
He rubs the goose bumps decorating my bicep rapidly, like he might kindle a fire. “I know. But they belonged to people you loved.”
It’s the past tense that splits my heart in two. “People I love,” I correct weakly.
I feel his chin brush the crown of my head as he nods. “And whom I love as well.”
We sit there, tangled in a haphazard embrace, for what feels like hours but may only be minutes. Long enough that he eventually releases me to remove a cigarette from his pocket, which he lights before offering it to me. I accept it, and he retrieves a second for himself. I’ve only ever smoked while drinking, which has been infrequent as of late, if the pack of Camels gathering dust in my underwear drawer back home are any testament. But it feels right to do this with Mo, under a mostly starless sky thanks to a bright moon casting everything else in its shadow. It gives me something to focus on rather than the erratic breaths still struggling to find their pace in my lungs, or the tears that have dried sticky-taut on my cheeks.
Mo releases a plume of smoke that climbs the air above us like a chimney. Our gazes meet, and he purses his lips the way he always does before asking a question he shouldn’t. “How are things with your novio? ”
I narrow my eyes at him and take a long drag. When I finally speak, my voice is threadbare. “If that means anything close to lover, I’ll fight you.”
He chuckles around his cigarette.
“We are friends,” I clarify. “Just. Friends.”
Somewhere above us, a balcony door closes. Neither of us reacts. Mauricio watches me for so long that my skin begins to itch. He must notice me squirming, because he finally relents. “Did you know Alex and I have a cousin who works at the aquarium?”
No fucking way. My eyes close in a grimace against my will. I have to pry the left one open to peek at him. “Are you related to everyone around here?”
He huffs a laugh. “She said a young couple put on quite the show a couple days ago. You went on Wednesday, right? I wondered if you saw them.”
I smoosh the tip of my cigarette into the concrete and then let my body follow suit, becoming one with the rough surface. It chills me to the bone, but it’s better than facing a man who might as well be family as I admit to making out with someone in public. “It’s very complicated, Tio. ”
He sinks onto the pavement beside me, though a guttural groan gives away our age difference. “Love is always complicated. That’s why it’s wonderful.”
“Says the perpetual bachelor,” I grumble.
“It is because I love to fall in love that I remain alone, Tessa. I can never give it up.”
“Ah.” I turn to look at him. His face is cast half in shadow and half in stark moonlight, like he’s wearing the mask from The Phantom of the Opera. “And here I thought it’s because no one could put up with your shit.”
He flattens a palm over his heart. “You wound me.”
Our soft laughter is quickly caught and carried away by a breeze coming off the Gulf. We sit in silence until that silence fills my chest to the point of bursting. I need someone to talk to, someone who is unbiased. All Alicia has been telling me to do is go for it. Get laid and get it out of my system. But it’s deeper than that, even if I can’t bring myself to explain that to her, though I don’t know why not.
“I can’t let him be more than a friend to me.”
“And why’s that?”
I chew on my bottom lip. Though it offers no solace, it buys me time. After a minute and some intense eye contact with the moon, I crack open the door to my heart ever so slightly. “I’m scared he’ll be another split decision I make that I can’t come through for, because it hurts too much. And where will that leave him?” Then, softer: “Where will that leave me?”
There. I did it. The thing I couldn’t admit to my best friend, because it felt too much like admitting it to myself. Now out in the open air for him to call ridiculous. Inconsequential.
But he doesn’t, of course. Mo would never.
“It leaves you with us,” he says.
In the quiet that follows, I swear I can hear the fissures of my heart cracking and splitting apart. A feeling like a fossil appears through the cracks. Something I didn’t even realize was there, waiting, just below the surface. It’s painful to look at. Impossible to ignore.
An invisible fist closes around my throat, and my stomach twists in on itself. I grab Mo’s hand and hold it tight so he can’t leave, even though that’s exactly what it feels like I’m doing by voicing the terrible feeling aloud.
“What would happen if I stopped coming here, Mo? To the Carmen, I mean.” I focus on the lone palm tree swaying in the breeze, caught somewhere between me and the glowing moon. “I just— What if it’s time for me to move on? To figure out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, beyond grieving.”
He doesn’t panic. Doesn’t argue. He simply squeezes my hand twice and sighs.
“I’ve been running in circles,” I say, quieter now, like I’ll offend the universe if I speak my doubts too clearly. “And I don’t really know how to stop. Only that I need to, if I ever want to be able to hold on to anything or anyone long enough for it to matter.” The image of Kit rushes back to the forefront of my mind. Just as quickly, it’s replaced by that of my parents, whose handprints I can still feel beneath me in the concrete. My words catch up to me, roaring like a betrayal in my ears and in my heart. How ungrateful am I? How selfish?
I turn to Mauricio, pleading leaking into my voice. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what I’m saying. Please don’t tell Alex or Jenna or Mara. They would be devastated.”
Mo meets my gaze, brown eyes wide open and serene. The exact opposite of what I expected. “You want to know what I think, Tessa?” I nod, and he does, too. “The Carmen is just a place. But the memories you have made here, and how my family feels for you, will never change, querida. You could go anywhere in the whole world, and both of those things would still be with you.” He lifts our entwined hands to catch the stray tear that escapes my eye, smudging it with his thumb. “If you’re looking for something steady, let that be it.”
I swallow, but it doesn’t fix the thousand knots suddenly tying my throat. So instead I offer a trembling smile. My weakest yet. I’m a terrible actress tonight, and something tells me Mo never bought my performances anyway.
“ Gracias, Tio. ” I release his hand to pinch his cheek. “You are so wise.”
“It’s the gray hairs.” His white teeth flash in a quick smile. “You’ll see some day.”
I offer a close-lipped grin in return. “One can only hope.”
At that, I’m offered a second cigarette. And I accept.