Chapter 1 #2
And the simplest answer is usually the correct one, anyway.
Ash probably worked the summer months up here, and now that the season’s over he’s taking his money and moving on.
Common enough. Nothing inherently suspicious about it.
Plenty of young people make this sort of pilgrimage every year, though usually in the opposite direction.
I watch Ash finish the rest of his food and quickly mirror him, draining the rest of my beer. “Why Miami?” I ask him.
“Why not?” he counters, wiping his hands on his jeans.
“Just for fun, then? No family, friends?”
He opens his mouth and then hesitates. Turns back to his water glass, his long hair curtaining his face and hiding it from me. “Yes,” he says softly. “I have a friend.”
I wonder if that’s really true. “You have a place to sleep tonight?”
“Tonight?” He jerks his head up. Confusion flits across his features. “Why tonight? Aren’t we going tonight?” Already he and I are a we, though I’ve yet to accept his request.
“Fuck no, it’s almost midnight. I’m totally wiped.” And since I’ve already paid for the damn hotel, I’m gonna sleep in it whether he comes along or not.
“I mean…” He trails off, and I hear him say shit very softly under his breath. His fingers go to his mouth, teeth worrying at the edge of a nail.
“Does that mean you don’t have anywhere?
” I ask. He doesn’t answer, face still scrunched.
“Look, I’m not judging. But if we’re going to be spending many, many hours in a car together, I think it’s best if you clean yourself up and have a good night’s sleep beforehand. It’ll make both of our lives easier.”
We’re back to the naked suspicion, his eyes narrowing and his face becoming pinched. I wonder what he’s thinking, wonder why he’s like this at all. He is strange, but I don’t find it off-putting, necessarily. It merely fuels my curiosity.
“Okay. So.” I give him my best, most disarming smile, or at least the smile that seems to work on everyone else.
“Since you don’t seem to have anywhere else to go, you can come back to the room with me.
There’s two beds, so it won’t be weird. You can shower and clean yourself up and we can get started bright and early in the morning. ”
“I can pay,” he mumbles. A little anxiety leaves his face, but not much.
“So you keep saying.” I slide off my stool. “Come on, let’s go.”
He fishes through the depths of his worn backpack until he produces a wad of cash I estimate to be enough to cover food, drinks, and tip, and leaves it on the counter. So I guess he’s good for that much.
And then we walk out together into the sultry summer evening, and only after I step into the street do I realize that I am leaving with a boy, instead of the girl I have been working over all night.
The hotel is just down the street, within easy walking distance.
A crisp breeze has cropped up, bringing with it the scent of the nearby harbor, and I take a deep inhale as we stroll along the sidewalk.
I’m suddenly so homesick. I would do anything to magically wake up back in my own bed, the merciless Florida sun streaming through my blinds and searing the insides of my eyelids pink.
I never did understand why it was so important for Adriana to come up all the way up here for graduate school. Okay, sure, Yale is Ivy League, but there’s plenty of good schools in the south. Closer ones. Like Emory, or Duke. Auburn. I don’t fucking know.
That’s probably why she’s dumped me, though. Because I don’t understand.
“Are you from around here?” I ask Ash.
He gives me a noncommittal half-shrug that could mean literally anything, and I don’t even bother to push. Thinking about Adriana has soured my mood.
We step beneath the hotel’s portico and I offer him a cigarette from the squashed pack in my pocket. “Smoke before we go in?”
“Sure.”
I lean down to light it for him, cupping my hand around the flame as a gust of wind assaults us both. It whips his hair across his face, and for a moment I fear I might singe a strand with the flame. His gaze flicks up towards mine and holds it.
The moment is strange, suddenly.
Because his eyes are so blue, and his lashes are so long, and in this light, at this angle, and the way he looks up at me is so…intimate.
He’s just so...pretty, and I think that’s why I feel so weird. It’s an undeniable fact, staring down into a face that’s highlighted, flatteringly, by the lighter flame.
I think all of this in the few seconds it takes for me to light the cigarette for him before he turns away, blowing smoke into the wind where it dissipates almost instantly.
His free hand sweeps his hair back from his face.
He glances up at me, and from where I stand I gauge him to be just a few inches shorter than me.
Five-ten, maybe, give or take. He’ll clean up nicely, I think, after a hot shower and fresh clothes.
Ones that fit, if he keeps any in his bag.
Why the fuck am I thinking about that?
Goddamn. I’m in sore need of sleep. That’s the only explanation for anything. Too many hours on the road, too much disappointment, not nearly enough alcohol to drown everything out.
I notice, as he shifts his weight to fold one arm beneath his elbow, that he carries himself in a way that suggests he’s in pain.
His face doesn’t blanch, but he’s stiff, almost like he has a stitch in his side.
He moved like that back in the bar, too, those hitching steps that aren’t quite a limp.
I hadn’t thought much of it then—another eccentricity among many—but now I wonder.
Like maybe he’s been kicked in the ribs or something.
“You okay?” I ask him.
“Fine.” He exhales smoke. “What’s it like in Florida?”
The question comes out of nowhere. “Uh, well. It depends where in Florida. It’s a pretty big state, ya know.”
He just looks at me, eyes glittering in the light of the hotel’s sign, without answering.
So I go on. “It has a lot of different types of people and climates. Like, even Miami is huge, so it’s kinda hard to describe neatly.
” Or at least do it any justice. “But it’s…
y’know, vibrant, diverse, kinda crazy. There’s always something going on.
The people are chill, if rude as fuck. Think salad bowl instead of melting pot. ” I pause. “Guess you’ve never been?”
“Miami? No.”
“Florida,” I say. “Anywhere.”
“No.” He ashes onto the pavement. “And no.”
“So you must be from here. If you’ve never been anywhere.”
Ash isn’t looking at me anymore. His gaze roams off into the distance with a faraway quality to it, as if he’s not really seeing anything tangible here. The wind blows his hair askew once more and this time he does nothing to tame it back. “No,” he says. “Not here.”
Right. Cool. Really informative.
There’s a vague sort of melancholy about him that makes me want to poke fun at him, tease him a little. I’ve got this tendency to make jokes out of anything that seems too serious or sad, make light of situations when they get uncomfortable.
This time I employ restraint. I simply toss my half-finished cigarette to the sidewalk and grind it out beneath my sneaker. “Whatever you say, man. Let’s head up.”
The concierge doesn’t give us a second glance as we stroll through the lobby, and we take the elevator up to the third floor without seeing another soul. Everyone must be out and about, still, eating and seeing the sights or whatever it is families do with their student kids.
I show Ash around my small suite, not that there’s much to see. Not much beyond the two beds and coffee machine. I offer to take his clothes down to the laundry if he leaves them outside the bathroom door, and he agrees.
He takes his backpack into the bathroom with him, and the lock snicks shut. I wouldn’t have snooped. I’m not that curious—okay, lie. I am. But I wasn’t planning on going through his things; I don’t think there’s much to discover in that ratty bag of his anyway.
I go to the bedside telephone, pick up the receiver and debate which family member I want to inform of my failures.
My parents are out of the question—they were both utterly bewildered by my quest—and my abuela will be asleep by now.
I decide on the younger of my two older sisters, Camila.
I’m closer to her than I am to Olivia these days, and she’s a better shoulder to mope on.
She answers after a few rings, and we exchange hellos. I can hear the running tap in the background, the sound of dishes clattering in the sink. A late-night kitchen clean-up. We always had been a pair of night owls as kids.
“Are you still in New Haven?” she asks me.
“Sure am.”
“And how’d it go? How’s Adriana? Come on, out with the dirty deets. I assume that’s the whole reason you’re calling, anyway.”
“The opposite, actually. We broke up.”
My sister makes sympathetic noises, as I hoped she would. “Oh, Sam. What happened? I thought you guys were supposed to be having a romantic rendezvous or whatever. You must be crushed.”
“I dunno.” I plop down on one bed, picking morosely at a loose thread on the comforter.
“Like yeah, I dragged my sorry ass up here but like…yeah. I guess neither of us were all that excited to see each other. Too much time and distance, I guess? I think she’s been enjoying college life and letting her hair down and whatever. You know?”
Camila is quiet for a minute. Her sink, too, is equally silent. “You don’t sound super upset.”
I tuck the receiver between my shoulder and my ear so I can rub my eyes. “What am I supposed to say? I guess the relationship ran its course.”
“So why on earth did you go up there in the first place if you weren’t even feeling it?”
I tilt my head back and stare up at the textured ceiling. There’s an old water stain near the air conditioning vent. “Because,” I say. “I’m her boyfriend. I’m supposed to do stuff like that. It was supposed to be this romantic surprise.”
“Hmm.” It’s a pointed noise. “It’s an awfully long trip to take for something you just felt that you’re supposed to do. I’m sure she was thrilled to be an obligation for you and it didn’t factor in your impromptu breakup at all.”
“The worst part was the fact she kinda just humiliated me in front of her friends and roommates. Like, she tolerated my presence for a whopping thirty minutes before telling me I needed to go away. And after that she was all, we’re done Sam, get it?
” I mimic her voice. “She wasn’t even nice about it. After I drove this whole friggin’ way!”
“You did just drop in on her,” Camila points out. “She was probably overwhelmed.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” I mutter. “I called you for support and here you are ragging on me. What gives?”
“Aw, don’t pout. I am on your side. But as your sister, I am obligated to rag on you.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Besides, we were all kind of surprised when you went up there, anyway. You didn’t seem to like her that much.”
I’m not touching that. It’s yet another thing I haven’t been letting myself think about too much.
“It’s the principle of the thing,” I argue.
“I’m supposed to be a good boyfriend and go visit her.
And, y’know, she’s supposed to be a good girlfriend and not dump me to fuck half the guys at her college instead. ”
“Samuel Javier Rivero, I know we didn’t raise you to talk about women like that,” my sister snaps. “So what if Adriana wants to let her hair down? She slaved away at UM for four years so she could get into Yale for graduate school. And anyway, that’s rich coming from you.”
I groan. “That’s besides the point.”
“Yeah, right. Shouldn’t you be getting to bed? It’s late. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you.”
We say our goodbyes and I replace the receiver in its cradle.
I don’t feel much better than I did before the call and since I’m sobering up I’m feeling all the shit I’d been trying to numb in the first place, the embarrassment and the loneliness and the fact that somehow I managed to pick up some hitchhiker.
What even possessed me to do that? I don’t know.
Stupid impulsive drunken me.
My thoughts drift back to that final conversation between Adriana and me before she moved away. Had I really been that dense? Maybe she had been a little pointed in her words, her expressions, but I tried not to read into that shit. Because whenever I did I tended to make the wrong assumptions.
Why the fuck are you here? Man, that’d hurt.
Well, whatever. Fuck it. It’s pointless. We’re done for real, no ambiguity there, and that’s that. Why bother with the post-mortem? Or why I’m even here. Which is to prove certain things to myself. Well, I guess I failed big time in that respect.
Well, at least I did pick up a traveling companion of sorts. I won’t be stuck with my thoughts alone the entire way home.
Now that would really fucking suck.