Seventeen
A purple jumpsuit hugs my curves in a way I wish every article of clothing I own would, the ruffled sleeves falling over my shoulders and exposing much more of my arms than I’m used to. The material is light and breathable against my skin, which is all I ask for of any fabric. However, there’s no hiding my broadly set shoulders or the thickness of my upper arms, but for the first time in years, I don’t care.
My relationship with my body varies daily. There’s what I begrudgingly accept, what I thank God for blessing me with, and what I wish enough glaring could make go away. But I can’t pick and choose which parts of myself are worthy and which aren’t, not the way other people feel like they can when they comment on my body. And why should I? Why should I be expected to carry the weight of other people’s disdain for the body I live in?
On our most recent trip to La Cantera mall, Angela convinced me to buy the jumpsuit because she thought I looked like an Instagram model in it. I didn’t buy it because I believed her, but because I’m tired of punishing myself for all the ways my body will never be perfect.
Now I’m glad to have finally gotten over myself. In addition to my arms, much of my back is exposed, showing an expanse of golden-brown skin. The neckline dips into a heart shape between my cleavage—high enough to leave most to the imagination, but just low enough to inspire some illicit daydreams. My eyes are lined with a precisely drawn, dramatic wing courtesy of a fine-tipped pen. My lips are painted bright red, a second pop of color that looks spectacular against the shade of purple. My hair is down and swept over one shoulder in a side part. Even I can’t deny how amazing I look tonight.
Theo is surprisingly punctual, considering this double date is the last place he wants to be. I’ve just finished getting ready—slipping my feet into a pair of low, chunky heels that are easy to walk in—when the doorbell rings. Theo crowds the doorway in a simple white button-down tucked into navy dress pants. When I step aside to let him in, he doesn’t move an inch except for his eyes. They scan me from head to toe, lingering in places that make my entire body shiver. I resist the urge to cover myself with my arms, letting him look his fill.
“Enjoying the view?” My voice comes out more low and breathy than the wry amusement I was going for. His eyes snap up to mine, more black pupil than blue iris.
“You always look good, but fuck, Marcela.” He shakes his head as if to clear it, and I’m flooded with a rush of confidence from having affected him this way. I don’t need him to tell me what I already know, but damn if that doesn’t stop his praise from sinking into my veins anyway. His hands wrap around my waist, pulling me into him. “You might’ve just made this dinner worth going to.”
“That so?” My hands fist in his shirt, tugging him in for a kiss that will definitely ruin my lipstick. I revel in the feel of him, in the scratchy stubble of his cheeks against mine, in the warmth of his mouth, in the addicting taste of him. Suddenly, as desire pools low in my belly, I wish we didn’t have to leave the apartment. We pull away too soon, both of us breathing hard.
“We should probably go, before we’re tempted to cancel for a very different reason,” I tell him. My eyes catch on his red-smeared mouth, and I cover mine with a hand. “But we should clean up first.”
“I’ve never been allowed to kiss off red lipstick before.” Theo’s warm breath is in my ear, one hand closing over mine so his other can trace the outline of my lips. His mouth turns up into a smug grin, rimmed a devilish red.
After reapplying my lipstick and handing Theo a makeup wipe to clean his mouth with, we settle into his car ten minutes after we should’ve been on our way. Ben and Alice are already seated by the time we arrive, menus and water glasses placed in front of them.
“Sorry we’re late,” Theo says, pulling out a chair for me. My heart melts at the simple gesture, even if he’s just being polite. “Guess the time got ahead of us.”
“You’ve got a little something right here.” Alice gestures at the corner of her mouth, and Theo’s hand comes up to his. When I look over at him, I see a red stain from my lipstick. His cheeks go pink as he realizes what it must be. I take the cloth napkin from my side and make a show of scrubbing the edge of his mouth.
“Busted. You guys can see exactly how the time got away from us.” My tone is overly suggestive, but my laugh is genuine.
Once I’ve gotten all the lipstick off his face, we settle back into our seats with ease. Theo’s arm wraps around the back of my chair in that possesive-guy way Ben won’t like, and I lean my back against his arm. Alice eyes us with amusement, a tilt to her lips that makes me think she might be happy for us. Ben, however, is looking at everything inside the restaurant but us.
“Wow,” Alice marvels at Theo and me. “You know, when Christine told me you guys left the engagement party together, I had no idea what to think.” She shakes her head, as if she still doesn’t. “But you guys actually look really cute together.”
“Thank you.” My voice is steady, but the gratitude is entirely fake. I can feel Theo’s eyes on me like a question, but I don’t turn to look at him. “No one’s more surprised than me, believe me.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Ben says, eyes trained down on his menu. Alice nudges him with an elbow, but he doesn’t seem to register it.
“Can’t you just be supportive for once in your life?” The entire table looks up at Theo. Ben finally meets his brother’s glance, his widened eyes the only show of surprise. “Why is that so hard for you?”
But Ben is stopped from answering his brother’s loaded question when our waiter comes to take our order. I’m the only one ready to order, but we tell him we need more time to decide. Instead of opening their menus to make that decision, Ben and Theo continue as if nothing happened.
“Don’t kid yourself. We both know this isn’t gonna last.” Even though he’s speaking to Theo, the words land on me like a physical blow, despite knowing what Theo and I have is far from real. But maybe that’s why they sting: because he’s so much closer to the truth than he even realizes. “You don’t have the first clue about what real relationships are like.”
“Ben, don’t—”
“You, of all people, can’t possibly tell me I’m wrong.” Ben turns to Alice, using a tone I’ve never heard him use with her. It’s cutting and sarcastic and not at all like him. But Alice doesn’t even seem fazed. Her shoulders slump in a resigned way, and her eyes roll just before they shut closed. She shakes her head to herself, almost like this is a conversation she’s had before. Like it’s one she’s tired of hearing.
“You’re the one who knows him better than anyone else at this table. Do you really think—”
“Ben, stop.” Heads turn around to eye us at Theo’s raised voice. Some wear startled expressions, others openly glare, and some even ogle us like we’re dinner entertainment. His eyes are hard as they stare his brother down, the two locked in a silent battle. My stomach drops, replaced with a sinking dread. I’m missing something key here, something staring at me straight in the face. I just don’t know what it is.
When the waiter stops by a second time, I order two plates of chicken parmesan for myself and Theo. Then I take his hand and intertwine our fingers. He looks down at me, expression softening immediately.
“We can leave,” I tell him, because suddenly this table is the last place I want to be. “I didn’t know—” I take in a breath, shaking my head. Ben’s eyes are on us, and it’s making me over-warm. I didn’t know it would be this bad. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have made you.”
“Marcela, don’t go,” Ben tells me. “There’s something you need to know about my brother. If you’re going to keep seeing him, which I’ve already told you multiple times is a bad idea.”
“And telling her who she can and can’t date isn’t?” Alice says suddenly, the question posed more as a statement. Her voice is calm and carefully measured, eyes cutting on her fiancé. Another conversation they’ve had before.
“This is different, and you know it.” But he’s not looking at her. His eyes are trained on his brother’s. “She deserves to know what she’s getting herself into, don’t you think?”
“Theo?” I squeeze his hand, trying to anchor him to me, but he’s not looking at any of us. His chest rises and falls with quick breaths, his other hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist beneath the table. He rises from his seat, breaking contact with me. Before anyone can say anything else, he walks straight out of the restaurant. Ben has the nerve to look smug as he watches Theo’s back. I narrow my eyes on him, hating myself for how stupid I’ve been. Is this really the same guy I’ve been pining over for almost a decade?
“What the hell was that about?” It takes everything in me not to scream at him. As it is, we’ve already made an audience for the other dinner guests.
“He’s in love with my fiancée.” For a moment, all I can do is stare at him, dumbfounded. They know. Alice is pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes shut. “He has been for years. That’s what I’ve been trying to warn you about.”
My mouth opens, but I can’t think of a single thing to say, aside from the question ringing in my head I can’t ask either of them. You knew all along?
“There was no reason for you to be a dick about it,” I say instead, then leave the table to catch up to Theo.
There’s no sign of him outside the restaurant, or any of the surrounding shops. The straps of my low heels are digging into my skin the longer I walk, until I’m forced to shuck them. Theo is nowhere to be seen. The cobbled courtyard is speckled with a few pedestrians ambling around and chatting on benches. I duck my head as I take a seat at the edge of a fountain and pull out my phone. When the call goes straight to voice mail, I curse under my breath. I know he wouldn’t leave me behind, not after what he said yesterday, but I wish I knew how to help him.
The edge of a shadow crosses my vision, but when I look up, it’s only Alice. I place a hand over my chest as she takes the spot next to me. “You scared me.”
“He’ll be back,” she says. “He’s not the abandoning type. He probably just needs to clear his head.”
“If you say so,” I say, hating suddenly how well she knows him. He said once he’s never been able to deny her anything. That’s why he’s never abandoned her, but the same can’t be said for me.
But that’s not what I’m worried about right now, even though I should know better after last week. I’m more worried about how Theo’s feeling. I should never have let Alice push me into this, and I never should’ve pushed Theo further than he was willing to go. Clearly, he was right to be worried.
“Why did you ask me to bring him tonight?” I snap at her, even though part of me knows she doesn’t deserve it. “You had to have known something like this would happen.”
“Believe me, I didn’t think it’d get this out of hand,” she says calmly. “You don’t know how hard I’ve worked to get Theo and Ben to repair their relationship. It’s exhausting enough without Ben making things worse.”
“Yeah,” I say with a scoff, shaking my head. “You know it’s not your job to fix them, right? Especially not if they don’t want to do the work themselves.”
She doesn’t say anything, but her face almost looks like she wants to. I recognize the way her eyes shift away from me for what it is. Guilt. “It is when I’m the reason they’re barely on speaking terms.”
That’s why she feels responsible. Why she’s never let Theo cut himself off from either of them for long. She wants to bring them back together because she’s the one who tore them apart to begin with.
“Theo’s a great guy. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him so happy.” She must see the surprise on my face because she adds, “Ben drama aside, that is.”
I’m tempted to tell her that none of it is real. That the only reason we became friends was to stop him from ruining her engagement, and that we haven’t even hooked up in the way everyone thinks we have.
“I told Ben not to tell you,” she says. I glance back at her in surprise. “I was afraid you wouldn’t give him a chance if you knew, even if you guys only started as a hookup. He deserves someone great, and I thought you could be that for him. Maybe that was selfish of me.”
I can’t tell her the full truth, but I can give her this much. “He told me.” She tilts her head at me. I heave a deep breath. “He was honest with me from the beginning. I knew what I was getting into.”
“You did?” she asks curiously. She looks like she wants to say something else, but then I catch a large, shadowed silhouette over her shoulder, stepping into the light of the streetlamp. I make out Theo’s blond head, his dark eyes piercing even from feet away. His hands are in his pockets, shoulders slumped in defeat.
I’m not sure what Alice sees. He doesn’t seem very happy, hovering just a few feet away from us, like he’s too afraid to move. I say a quick goodnight to Alice before rising to cross the cobbled pathway. He looks grateful he doesn’t have to interrupt my conversation with Alice or interact with her any more than he has to. The pain is clear in his expression, in the unmasked longing in his eyes. I’m unsure how to comfort him, but I desperately want to do something.
“Hey.” He won’t look at me, even when I take his hands. I fold my arms tentatively around his neck instead, and he finally responds by wrapping his around my back.
“I’m sorry for leaving you.” He takes in a deep breath. “I just had to get out of there.”
My hands sink into his hair. He sighs into my skin. “I don’t blame you. I didn’t think it’d be that bad. How naive of me.”
When we return to the car, Theo doesn’t start the engine right away. There are too many questions buzzing between us, even though I’m sure I know some of the answers by now.
“You probably want some kind of explanation,” Theo says rather than asks. I tilt my head as I look up at him. Before now, I thought he’d told me everything I needed to know about his relationship with Alice. Or, at the very least, that he would willingly tell me what I wanted to know. But even if that’s true, I didn’t know the right questions to ask.
“Alice knows you love her,” I say. He nods, but he still won’t look at me. “And your brother knows it, too.”
“Yeah.” His voice isn’t much more than a puff of air.
“How long have they known?”
“I never made my feelings for her a secret, even if I never acted on them.” The words come steadily as he looks forward, out at the near-empty shops. “I’m not the type of person to pine in secret.”
Not like me.
I don’t know how I didn’t put two and two together sooner. He’s a terrible liar, which would make him an even worse secret-keeper. If he’s loved her his entire life, there’s no way he would’ve been able to keep that to himself. Definitely not for this long. It makes sense that Ben and Alice would already know. But what doesn’t make sense is what he tried to do the night of the engagement party.
“She always knew how I felt about her, but I never really knew how she felt,” he continues. “It never bothered me, though. We both had different goals in high school. She was still my best friend, and neither of us wanted anything to get in the way of that. But when she got with my brother…”
“What?” I prompt.
His eyes shudder closed. “He knew how I felt about her, too. Everyone did, except maybe our dad. Ben knew I’d take it as a betrayal, but it still didn’t stop him.”
There it is. Now their feud makes perfect sense.
“That was just the cherry on top of a shitty year,” he says. “From my knee injury to the NFL rejection, to finding out my little brother was dating the love of my life. And instead of talking about it like grown adults, he used you as a buffer.”
Another puzzle piece clicks firmly into place. My eyes snap up to him in realization. “That was the first night we met.”
He nods slowly. “I was a mess. We were a mess, and he never should’ve dragged you into it.”
I remember how small Ben looked that night, crowding himself into a corner as he watched his brother fall apart. I never would’ve guessed it was partly Ben’s doing in the first place.
“He knew how you felt about her, and he went after her anyway,” I repeat, almost unable to believe it. But I do, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. Even though it’s a side of Ben I’ve never seen, vindictive and undermining. Or maybe just a side of him I never wanted to see. “If Alice already knew, why were you planning to confess at her engagement party?”
“Because I wasn’t sure if she still knew,” he says. “Our friendship was never the same after I graduated. We had different obligations, even if she always made it a point to reach out to me. I wanted her to know those feelings never went away, and I wanted to know, once and for all, how she felt about me. If we could’ve changed our history, not that I can do anything about it now. Not without hurting a whole bunch of people.”
A beat of silence follows his explanation. His eyes fall away from my face, as if realizing he’s said too much. I can’t look him in the face either, not when I realize he’s including me in that list. But the scariest revelation of all is he might be right.
“Ben most of all,” I say to break the tension, my mind racing. “Is that why you hate him?”
“He hates me more,” Theo says, expression turning icy. “Believe me.”
“What reason could he possibly have?” I ask, but he just shakes his head.
“I don’t know. Petty shit from our childhood,” he says, but there has to be more to it than that. He confirms my theory when he says, “There was a lot of unhealthy competition between us growing up, and a lot of half-buried resentment between us now. So, when he started dating Alice…” He trails off, but I get his meaning loud and clear. I wonder if that’s really the way Ben sees her. As nothing more than a prize to be won.
“I’m sorry you’re getting pulled into it again now.” Theo finally meets my eyes. “I get it if it’s too much for you.”
“Too late for that,” I say, mouth pulling up slightly. He doesn’t return my wry grin, and instead manages to look grimmer than before. “Hey. I’m not going anywhere,” I assure him, reaching over for his hand. “I knew what I was getting into. Nothing’s changed.”
“Really?” he asks hesitantly.
“We’re in too deep to go back now,” I tell him. “And… I wouldn’t want to.”
I’m not sure why confessing this feels like I’m giving part of myself away, but the way his eyes sear through me sends heat throughout my entire body. When he kisses me, his mouth is scorching against mine. My hands curl into his hair as he fists the fabric at my sides, pulling me in closer.
“Let’s get out of here.”
I sit back in my seat as he puts the car in drive, laughing when he guns the engine. He’s not the only one in a hurry.