Rose
A woman yells outside our room and I open my eyes, waiting to feel if Abel is awake. So far, the room is silent and still. And then he lets out a deep sigh, even and quiet.
Those fingers that’d been inside me were curled up just beside his face. Those fingers that’d given me the most pleasurable experience of my life.
The man who’d spanked me unlike I was a child, making my body clench with elation. But it was worse than liking it; it was this idea that I’d deserved the sting of pain accompanied by the dip of pleasure.
I’d never known anything in my entire existence that could make me as disoriented, as divided, as Abel when his hand smacked my butt. Now that it’s happened, it’s all I can think about. I even allow myself to wonder when it’ll happen again.
This time a man starts yelling and I have to clench my fists, so I don’t get up and shoot them both. As if they know what I want to do, I hear a car door shutting, an engine starting, and someone pulling away. All is quiet again as I roll over onto my back.
I stare at the ceiling, and the sounds of each of Abel’s exhales remind me that the world is without one more person this morning. I imagine, or hope, it’ll take the authorities a little while to find her dead body in that empty house that no one visits.
I am the last of the Montgomerys .
Abel is the last of the Cartagenas .
We are the ones that will last.
In my hope, I am buoyant. Foolishly so.
As I mull over these thoughts, Abel’s breathing begins to shorten, and he turns to face me before opening his eyes slowly.
The sight of his dark eyes makes me giddy. That his mother had hated him because of them makes me itch to desecrate her grave.
“Show me your pain,” I whisper, like it’s a secret only he and I can know.
Abel reaches for my hand. His is much warmer than mine and I squeeze his for a moment before he slides his palm down so he’s holding onto my fingers and pressing them to the skin on the back of his shoulder. I can feel them, raised and bumpy under my fingers but I want to see it, so I sit up.
The circles and half-moons that he received from being his mother’s ashtray when she was too drunk to know what she was doing. He’d done the work of getting them covered in tattoos. It all looks innocent enough except I’d heard the story and I know the scars weren’t an accident or from chicken pox. There’d be no funny anecdote to follow.
I can only offer my sad silence as I run my fingers over them again and again. He doesn’t move, only the slight rise of his form as he inhales, then lowering again as he exhales.
I wonder if Abel screamed each time she did it. I wonder how much he bled or if he had trouble healing from them. If they stung when he’d sweat. If anyone else noticed them. I didn’t ask Abel these things because I secretly worry that the more intense and personal my questions become, the more he’ll see through the image I’ve tried to hold in place.
Love can heal , people say. Love can change you , I’ve heard.
Love can do all these things, but it’ll never make me stop killing people. I still crave it. Only now, afterwards, I’ll come home to Abel and let him love me.
That’s love, in my world: saving the best parts of yourself for that one person and giving your worst to everybody else.
Like the woman who burned scars into Abel’s skin.
If I could bring Abel’s mother back, I would. So I could slit her throat and call it even. But I know such things aren’t in my power. Just as I know I wouldn’t be able to simply slit her throat. I’d cause pain, enough that her screams would make my toes curl.
Abel turns over on his back and sits up. “What’s goin’ on in that head of yours, espinita? ” he asks, like he truly wants to know.
And I don’t want to lose the way he looks at me so I lie. “Nothing.” Just thinking of all the ways I’d kill your mother if I could.
It’s the first time I’ve ever lied to Abel. But if I lie with good intentions, surely it can’t be as bad as others make it out to be. I’m lying to save us. To save him from watching the person he loves turn into someone he doesn’t recognize.
He may think he’s already seen me at my worst, but he hasn’t.
I can get even messier.
“Show me yours?” he asks. He doesn’t whisper the way I did.
And I wonder if it’s because my pain isn’t our secret. My pain is merely the beginning of everyone else’s.
I lift myself higher and pause. Abel’s eyes are on my breasts. They’re not very big but I like the way he stills and stares. I look down and learn that my nipples like it, too.
I try to turn over, but Abel does it for me, pulling me back and turning me in one fluid motion until I’m sitting up and my back is facing him. I can feel how warm he is, and I hunch forward a little so he can see where my mother shoved the blade inside me.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Everything is slightly fuzzy before it happened, like a dream. I was so invested in what I was doing, hitting him over and over, almost like I was asleep. And then he wasn’t moving anymore and I kind of woke up. I saw my mother standing behind me with a kitchen knife in her hand in the reflection in the window. Before I could ask her what she was doing, she stabbed me. She stabbed me so she could make it seem like I was alone in the act. Like I was going to kill her next.” I exhale, remembering the sound of her frantic lies when she called the police. I was bleeding so much, I’m surprised I was conscious. “I felt like a fool.”
Abel starts to knead my shoulders and I groan, my head tilting back.
“She can’t hurt you anymore, amor. ” He whispers those words against my skin like my revenge should only stay between us.
And it should. If anyone found out, they’d take me away again. I’ll fill graves before that happens.
“What shall we do today, Mr. Cartagena?” I ask as I turn to face him, changing the subject. I bring my legs up toward my chest and hug them.
He smiles and presses a kiss to one of my knees. “If I told you what I wanted to do, you’d be scared of me.”
I open my mouth to argue but he kisses my lips, silencing me.
“Someone’s birthday is tomorrow,” he says, his voice sing-songy. “Let’s throw you a fucking party.”
I can’t help the cock of my eyebrow at the mention of a party. “You do realize we’d have to have friends to achieve the type of party I’m sure you’re used to.”
He rolls over with a groan, shoving his face into a pillow. “People are lame any fucking way.” He peeks up at me, one eye looking at me, the other covered by his arm.
I press my lips together to keep from smiling. “Did you have friends before?”
Before, before.
He blinks one eye and I wonder if I have to explain what I mean when I say “before”.
Before .
Before Silverwing.
Before being my salvation.
“I thought I did even before everything happened. I had friends in school but then mami died and I had nowhere to go. No one wondered about me so I just pretended everything was okay and I sold drugs to keep the lights on. Graduated high school and everyone kinda disappeared once I gave up street life. It wasn’t always fun, being me.”
I place my hand on his head and run my fingers lightly over his hair, which is silky and sliding against my fingertips. I envy his hair. I would love nothing more than to live against him, to be perpetually warmed by him. To die with him. To live with him his whole life.
“By the time I got arrested, I was just trying to stay alive.”
I stop stroking his hair.
What would the world be like without Abel?
The thought alone makes me shiver. “A lot of people would sympathize with you. Some would even empathize,” I say, not offering either.
“And you?”
That one eye staring up at me may have seen my lips twitch at the idea of sweet satisfaction. “I’d like to hurt every person that ever hurt you. I’m not sure if anyone in the world understands that but you.”
He’s quiet and I worry.
In my worry, I am the clouds rolling in and he is the wind that pushes me.
His eyes show me nothing, his mouth unmoving and hidden from me.
“I do,” he whispers.
He says those two words like a vow, like they’re binding.
“I love you, you know,” I tell him as I slide down and reach for his arm, placing it over me so I can move against him and kiss his nose.
He shifts to face me and I can see all of his face, even the stubble forming after his most recent shave.
“I know,” he says.
Love can change you. Love can heal you.
Love can stop the storm from rolling in and destroying the world around you.