CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER TWELVE
T HE NEXT DAY she became a taskmaster. All night she had been pliant and beautiful in his arms. And now that night and day were all the same to him, the hours bled into one another seamlessly. Time had stopped meaning anything. There was only the darkness, and Auggie. He could not say that he minded it. But then she became a little taskmaster. Forcing him to memorize the layouts of the different rooms.
“This is not permanent,” he said as he stood at the threshold of what she had informed him was the living room, trying to make him navigate his way into the kitchen. “Neither my lack of sight, nor staying here.”
“But it is now,” Auggie pointed out. “It is the reality we’re both living in. And I don’t want you to break your neck.”
“You are much happier when I’m breaking your back.”
He heard her sputtering, blustering, and he really did wish that he could see her expression.
“That is a crude thing to say.”
“I rather thought it was clever.”
“You are an enigma. Because sometimes you are still that...shameless, charming playboy, and then other times you are...”
“A black hole of impenetrable darkness?”
“Yes,” she said. “That.”
“Maybe both things are true. Maybe both men are me. Though, I don’t know if I can figure out how to join the two together. I don’t know if I would want to.”
“I don’t know. I like both.”
She liked him. She liked him. He turned that over within himself. He couldn’t recall a woman ever liking him before, not the real him. What a strange thing.
He was used to the world having a favorable opinion of him. To being regarded as a highly likable person, but he knew that it was fake. Because he knew that he was fake. She knew something else about him, and she seemed fond of him anyway. She was still here.
“Why are you here with me?”
“Where else would I go, Matias?”
“Back to your real life?”
“This is my real life right now. You are my real life.”
“Because you are an endless martyr to your need to care for other people?” That was possibly taking it too far. But she had cared for her mother as a teenager, and it was entirely possible that it was what drove her now. She had said herself. They were all walking altars to their own trauma, after all.
“No,” she said. “It’s about me. It’s about... The sex, frankly. I feel more in touch with myself than I have in a very long time, and actually, I would’ve told you that were I faced with another situation where I had to take care of somebody having a medical issue, I would run fifty miles. To get away from it. To get away from them. But it doesn’t feel the same. I want to be here. With you. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“My ego is as big as it can possibly get.”
“That isn’t true at all. You are the most self-loathing person wrapped in a cloak of false ego that I have ever met.”
Her words struck him. And he decided that he was done talking. So he went on navigating through the kitchen. And he managed to do it without running into too many things. Though part of him resisted the exercise, because he was not going to become accustomed to blindness. It was not a permanent state.
In that he was determined.
She continued to work him like that for the week. But at night, she went to bed with him, and the intimacy that they built there was like a glimmering kingdom. He might not be able to see anything, but that had become more real to him than anything else ever had. It was the only reality he cared to lose himself in.
They could have called in staff, but he was resistant to it, and she didn’t seem to mind. She was the one who had to do all of the work in the absence of anyone there to cook for them. Because he was at such a disadvantage. But he found himself growing in his trust for her.
He couldn’t recall ever having trusted another person before. Growing up with a father like his, he had only ever been able to trust himself. Especially with the way he had pitted him and his sister against each other.
He was good. She was bad.
It had only made him want to protect her, to be better to keep the focus off of her. It had made him feel like...like he had to be hard on her sometimes so his father wouldn’t be. Like he could protect her with his correction because he actually did care.
It had ended badly anyway.
He navigated his way into the kitchen, listening to the sounds of her moving around. Something was cooking, and it smelled good.
“Nothing fancy,” she said. “Just some soup and bread.”
“That sounds sufficient.”
As he stood there, surrounded by a hominess that was completely unfamiliar to him, he felt as if he might be willing to make this trade. His sight for this life. This normalcy that was so beyond anything he had ever known.
Of course, she was having to take care of him, and she might feel different. He was potentially a burden to her, no matter what she said.
The girl who had been running away from this for so many years.
“Sufficient,” she said. “Don’t hurt yourself with compliments.”
“Of course I was being dry.”
“I know,” she said. He could hear the warmth in her voice.
“I made a fire in the parlor; I thought we might sit in there and enjoy the warmth and the soup.”
“You put a lot of thought into it.” It was a bland thing to say, and yet there was nothing bland about it. The realization that she had done this for him. That she seemed to put effort and thought into this care.
“It feels like... Like reliving another life here.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m going to dish everything and bring it into the parlor. Do you think you can find your way?”
He paused, and oriented himself in the room. He found his touchpoints, and then he figured out which way he needed to go to make it into the next room, locating his path and making his way there slowly.
There would be a time when he wasn’t entirely dependent on her to take care of him. He was getting better.
Do you want to get better at this?
This was the strangest thing of all. He wasn’t living his life. The life he had been living for all these years. One of endless revenge.
No. He was... Living life. In a way that he never had before. In a way he had never thought he might want to.
But this wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything he had earned. He had to stay wounded in order to stay with her. It was a strange dichotomy.
He moved carefully to his chair, feeling the warmth of the fire. He took a seat, and heard her walk into the room.
“I have a tray with two bowls on it, soup and bread.”
She was telling him so that he knew what to picture. But he didn’t care about the food. Instead, he thought of Auggie herself.
Tried to picture her face as it might be right now. The strongest image of her was of how she had looked the last night he had seen her. When they had been together as lovers for the first time. He had touched her countless times since, and had tried to memorize each dip and hollow of her body with his fingertips.
But he missed her face.
“What are you wearing today, Auggie?”
She chuckled. “You used to actively avoid calling me by my nickname.”
“It’s a silly name.”
He heard her set the tray down on the table. “Hold your hands out,” she said.
She placed the bowl of soup in his hands.
“I agree,” she said. He heard her settle down, heard the clanking of her spoon on her bowl. “It is a silly name. I wanted very badly to be called Gus. That, I thought at least was a bit edgy. Sort of a nice, boyish name. Auggie sounds like somebody’s pet dog.”
“That isn’t quite what I thought. But a valid concern.”
She laughed. “I got used to it. It’s just what stuck. There’s not much you can do about that. I always wonder what my mother was thinking, though.”
He took a cautious bite of soup. It was sweet and spicy. There was a hint of curry to it.
“Curried sweet potato,” she said. Which made him aware that he must’ve made a face, and she had responded to it.
“Very good,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Your mother was always single?”
“Yes,” said Auggie. “She never married. She didn’t give me any details about my father, not really. I mean I know I could do a DNA test or something, and find out more about him, but part of me is hesitant to do that. Once you open Pandora’s box you can’t close it again. What if he’s married, I mean, what if he was married when they got together? Or what if he’s a bad person? Or what if he’s dead. And then it’s just more grief that I didn’t have to sign on for.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” he said. “Life has proven to me that it is more often cruel than not.”
“I’m not sure that’s my takeaway. But I’m also not sure that I want to take on any more family members.”
“You had a lonely childhood.”
He felt her stillness. The way that it shifted the air around her when he said that.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I did. I knew other kids who had very strict parents. Who had to be mature because there was some expectation being put on them. Because their mother or father didn’t really like them being children. But that wasn’t what happened with my mother. She needed me to be there for her. She didn’t want that, but at the same time, I think she was very grateful that she had a daughter who could help take care of her. Her own mother lived far away and wasn’t able to help care for her. She died before my mother did. There was just no one else in her life.”
She paused, and he heard her shift in her chair. “It’s funny I... I feel like talking to you about your past, it’s making me think of mine differently. I always had the feeling that she had made a lot of decisions that put her in a very lonely place, and that she regretted it, but I didn’t know how to talk to her about it. I was caught in a place where I still saw her as my mother, and therefore not only human, not fully frail. But she was. I did my best to be there for her, but it meant not being there for myself. But I had limited time with her, so... It isn’t like I could have deferred caring for her until I was older. And if not me... It would’ve been just home care nurses, and a rotating group of them at that. It wouldn’t have been the same. And how much better would my life be if I was off at homecoming or prom instead of at home watching movies with her. They’re memories I don’t have the chance to make up for again.”
She sighed heavily. “And she really was a wonderful mother. She did everything she could. She tried. We went for walks in the evening when the weather was nice, even when she didn’t have a lot of energy. She told me that I was smart, and that I was brave. I was lonely, but I often don’t think that I really have the right to be. Because she was there for me. It’s just not the same as having friends and toys and a social life. It’s not the same as having easy. I think you can have a life filled with all kinds of different love. And when you’re a child often that love is free of responsibility. It’s easy. I never really got to experience that love. For me, it always held responsibility.”
Something tore at him. This image of a child who didn’t know what it was to have a love that didn’t have cost. He was not often moved by other people’s stories, his own was so difficult, it was often difficult for him to find empathy.
But not now. She got beneath his skin. She touched him.
He knew exactly what that was like. To never have love or care feel like something you could take for granted. He knew what that was like. All too well.
He felt undone by this. By the heavy feeling in his chest. She hadn’t chosen that life, and she had emerged from it strong.
So many children were born into loving, easy families. But not her. Not him.
If she hadn’t chosen this, then perhaps he...
He pushed that aside.
“What about your mother?” she asked.
He paused. “I... I don’t even know how to talk about my mother. She is still living. I never hear from her. I guess you could say she was never a major influence in my life. My father took control of everything, my mother sat back quietly. She spent his money...she gave him his heirs. I’m not angry at her. I’m not. She can’t even grieve her own daughter properly because he won’t allow it, because he says she can’t cry for a person who caused their own death. He owns even her thoughts, and I can only pity her. I am not angry with her.”
He sat there for a moment, and wondered if that was true.
But their father had not abused them with fists. He had ruled over them, had manipulated them. But their lives hadn’t been in danger. In truth, they had all been like frogs slowly boiling in water.
“Were you ever happy?”
“I never thought about it. I just... Lived. As any child does.” He was silent for a moment. “Were you?”
“I suppose it was the same for me. I didn’t think much about whether or not it was all difficult until it was over. No. That isn’t true. Toward the end it all got very hard. And knowing, I think that it would end I started just wishing that it would. It made me feel... Terrible. Once she was gone. Like I had made it happen faster. Like I had been impatient, selfish.”
“No one wants to watch someone they love die. I understand. I...” It was very hard for him to get out the words that he needed to speak now. “My sister was lost in her addiction for a long time. I worried about that phone call. The one that we eventually got. There was a time when I did treat her as if she was fragile. And then I got angry. And my father’s anger fueled me. I forgot my fear. Because part of me just thought... If it happened, then I would be able to move on. That I would be able to live. Without thinking of her all the time. Without worrying all the time. The first thought that I had when I found out she had overdosed was that at least I didn’t have to worry about her anymore.”
That tore at him. It made his stomach ache. It made him feel like he was falling. And surely she would tell him what a monster he was. Because it was a monstrous thing to think. It was. Truly.
“I understand,” she said. “I do. When my mother died... The night that she was the most poorly, I gave her pain medication, and I went to bed. I woke up at four in the morning. She was gone. And I felt... Relief. It was like all the breath left my body, and like everything that was tying me to that town, to that house, was suddenly just released. The worry. I didn’t realize how much worry I carried. Because every time we would think she was getting better, I would just find out later that she wasn’t. Waiting for test results. Waiting for everything. And I hadn’t realized how much it was weighing me down. And of course if I had a choice I would choose to keep her. Of course I would. But nobody gave me that choice. So in the end... In the end, there was something easier about just being free.”
“Do you still feel free?” he asked, his voice rough.
“I don’t know. Not every day. I feel like I don’t recognize myself sometimes. Like the life that I live now is so different from the life I had then it’s like I’m someone new.”
“I don’t feel free,” he said. “Because in that one moment when I realized that I was happy, I didn’t have to worry about my sister anymore, I also realized that I was the one that had pushed her. I was the one that had done it. I was the difference between her staying and going. And I could’ve changed the entire time, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t know how. Because... My entire foundation is rotten, but that is not an excuse. It just isn’t.”
“Why isn’t it? You didn’t choose to have the parents that you had. Neither did she.”
“No. But it... I don’t want to think about it anymore.”
It was too painful. All of this. Just too damned painful.
“We don’t have to. Tell me one good memory from your childhood.”
He laughed. “That’s the problem. There are no good memories. Not anymore. It’s just... Everything that was good is now sustained by grief.”
“No. It’s like this. Like this moment, completely taken out of time. Remove it from time. Nothing came before, nothing came after. Tell me.”
He took a deep breath. He didn’t have to close his eyes to block anything out. And he could see in his mind, a clear view of the olive groves, of the cypress trees that he and his sister used to ride horses through. The only time that they were free. “I remember being young with my sister. Pretending we were vagabonds. That we were running away. We would pack up green apples and bread, and put them in a pillowcase, and ride our horses until we reached the edge of the family estate.” He could see it so clearly. The horizon stretching out before them. There had never been a wall there. But they had acted like there was. Like that boundary was impassable. “I don’t know why we didn’t just keep going. We should have.”
They had built a fence with their own minds. But it had been as real as it needed to be. It had kept them in line. Their father had created it with his cruelty. With the control that he exerted on all of them. He had waged a battle with their minds when they had been only children, and he had won.
Does he still wage that same battle?
But then, she was there, putting her hand over his, and he could feel the warmth of her body, could taste her breath. It was sweet, and lovely just like she was. And when she pressed her soft mouth to his, he allowed that warmth, that need, that desire to spread through his entire body. This was real. Everything else... It could wait. Everything else... It didn’t matter. No. How could it? This time out from his real life felt like the most consequential thing he had ever experienced. He could not explain it. He would not try.
Instead, he just let her kiss him. Instead he just pulled her onto his lap, and saw his way into her beauty with his fingertips. Moving them over her soft face, down her back. He pulled her shirt up over her head, and then unhooked her bra with deft skill. He stripped her bare and learned her every curve. He moved his hands down her hips, and then pushed one between her legs, feeling how wet with need she was. That she could see him like this and still want him, that she could hear those pathetic stories from his childhood and still be like this...
He was grateful, and even that made him feel like less, but when her mouth rained kisses down upon his face, his neck, when she pulled his shirt up over his head, and continued down to kiss his chest, down his abs, he did not feel anything like pathetic. And yet at the same time this did not feel like a return to the man he had been. It did not feel like the real wakening of a playboy. It felt like something entirely new. Something he had not yet experienced before.
She slid off of his lap, and he could feel that she came to rest on the floor between his legs. Her hands moved to his belt, where she undid that, and the closure on his slacks. She pulled his pants down just slightly, freeing him. And then she leaned in, her mouth soft now on his shaft, her tongue making dark magic as she tasted him, as she took him into her mouth, sucked him deep.
He felt like pushing through the darkness inside him, and he wished... He wished that he could see her. Wished that he could see her with her head bent over his lap like this. Because he hadn’t seen Auggie enough time since he had truly begun to see her, in ways that his eyes could never have comprehended. And now that was lost to him.
They had that night. That night when he had really understood, how beautiful she was, how singular she was. And all the times before that, he had been bringing women on his private jet, women who weren’t her. He had been satiating himself on bread and water when there was a feast on the other side of the door. Because as lovely as those women were, they had not fit him in this way. It wasn’t the same. There was something singular at work between himself and Auggie. He would’ve said that he was not capable of a singular connection. He would’ve said that he wasn’t capable of connection at all.
That it was lost on him, wasted on him.
He had learned to feel one thing. The driving desire for revenge, and it blotted out everything else, but with her he had found something more. It was not the loss of his sight that had heightened his senses. It was her.
Knowing her, talking to her, feeling for her. Wanting to know her, rather than simply wanting satisfaction for the death of his sister. And he wanted to resist it, but here and now he simply couldn’t. In the same way he couldn’t resist her.
He had decided that he would no longer feel helpless. That was the thing. He had decided that there would be no more invisible fences. He had taken his life and fashioned it into whatever he wished it to be. He had fashioned himself into an instrument of revenge. He was not at the mercy of anything anymore. Not of his feelings, not of the way he wanted another person, but right now he was.
And he wanted to believe that it was all right, that he could have it because they were here, and he couldn’t see. Because he was being forced to take a break from everything he was.
But it felt like something deeper than that. Felt like something more powerful.
And as she drove him to the brink with that clever mouth, he gave himself over to her.
In the same way he had given himself over to revenge all those years ago. Right now, in this moment, his only loyalty was to Auggie.
He was drowning. In her, in the sensation.
And just as he was about to be pushed over the edge entirely he lifted her up and brought her down onto his lap. He found that she had nothing on beneath the skirt that she wore, and he found the glorious entrance to her body, and thrust home.
She gasped with need, and he drove up into her, pushing them both toward the ultimate end. Toward their glorious satisfaction. And when they both found their release, they clung to one another. And he knew something in the stillness that was almost like peace. He didn’t want to move for fear he might shatter it. He didn’t want to breathe for fear that it would prove to be only an illusion.
He held onto her. He was afraid to breathe.
She rested her head in the crook of his neck, and he put his hand on the back of her head, holding her there.
How long had it been since he had the chance to comfort another person. To be there for them. How long had it been since someone had done so for him, and in this moment they were doing it for one another.
He felt whole in a way he had not in so many years. Perhaps ever.
He wanted to sit there in that.
“We can do the dishes tomorrow,” she whispered. “Let’s just go to bed.”
He nodded in agreement. And he let her take his hand. Allowed her to lead him up the stairs, because it felt good to let someone care for him. Because it felt good to be cared for. Because for some reason he had the deep and certain sensation that this was a very fragile thing. And that when it broke there would be nothing that could be done to stop it. And so when he went to bed with her that night, it was with the knowledge that the dawn wasn’t guaranteed. Nor anything afterward.
And the last thought he had before he drifted off to sleep was that losing her would never be a relief.
Because this was something he had never known before. A weight and responsibility that felt like joy. And he had no idea what to call it.
No idea what to do with any of it.
He was satisfied.
Without his sight, without his revenge, in this out-of-the-way manor, hiding away from the world, Matias Balcazar finally understood what it was like to have everything.