Chapter 3
The Buildup
Coco
I love Marín’s room. That’s why, when I wake up, I stay in bed luxuriating in it.
I don’t have many chances to do this. I don’t like invading his privacy, and when he’s in here, I can’t deeply inhale his scent, grinning like an idiot riffling through all his shelves and calculating how many records, CDs, books, and tchotchkes in them were gifted by me.
I like being part of his “den.” I like that it’s always so clean and organized inside the chaos of music in all forms and devices he listens on.
I hear noise in the kitchen. The sound of dishes clinking together and Marín padding around barefoot.
I’m used to my days starting with his sounds.
With him clearing his throat when he turns off his alarm clock and lingers there for a second.
Most mornings, even though he gets up an hour earlier than me, I follow his every move from my bed, wide awake and staring at the ceiling, while I fantasize about him bringing me breakfast, giving me a kiss that tastes like toothpaste, and saying to me, “I love you. Have a good day.” Other times I’m less innocent, and I think about getting in the shower with him and burying my nose in his back while I fumble around in front until I grab his cock and hear him moan.
Watching him fog the shower door with his moans like the windows fogged in that scene in Titanic.
You know the scene I’m talking about. I watched it at an impressionable age too.
But…if I did that in real life, Marín would die of a heart attack and his last words would be “What the hell are you doing, Coco?” Well, I’m grabbing your cock, Marín.
Babe, sometimes it feels like I have to explain everything to you.
I’m turning into a pig. I’m going to stop. I’m in Marín’s bed, and I can’t masturbate here, tangling myself up in his sheets and the smell of his cologne embedded in them. I can’t? Right? I’m going to meditate on it for a second. No, I can’t.
My right hand moves down without permission, but the left is faster and grabs my phone from the bedside table.
According to the experts, that simple, automatic gesture condemns the rest of your day: If our first contact with reality is through our phones, we’re setting ourselves up for a shitty day. Stress, anxiety, bad moods, hypersensitivity… Sounds familiar.
I push that all aside and open Instagram.
The first thing on my feed is Gus’s latest post, which I look at before I can stop myself.
Somehow, the poems, phrases, and photos Gus posts flavor the day with a poetic justice that surprises me.
Sometimes he writes things that stun me because it’s like he had access to everything I feel about Marín.
I should probably tell him… He would understand.
He’s the most intense person I know, the kind who wants to know everything.
No. I can’t tell Gus, who has a mouth like a mailbox.
But…why the hell haven’t I told Blanca either? Because I feel ridiculous. That’s why.
I turn my attention back to Gus’s poem:
Sometimes I jerk off hoping that,
when I come
you’ll disappear.
Maybe I think you’ll leave the way you came in,
through fucking me,
swimming in my desire,
moaning in my mouth.
And I’ll instantly forget
everything I unlearned
with you.
Come the fuck on. This is what I’m talking about. Now I’m going to spend the whole day thinking about nothing else but Marín mounting me like a stallion.
It’s time to get out of bed. His bed. But before I get around to it, the door creaks open slowly. I’m tempted to pretend I’m asleep, but I smile when I see him come in.
“Did I wake you up?”
His expression is the same as always. Every day I hope that something in him will change when he looks at me: that his eyes will shine more, he’ll bite his lips, nervously tousle his messy hair…any of those tics he had all the time when he was with Aroa. But they never come.
“What time is it?”
Marín sits on the bed and tugs my phone out of my hand before he answers.
“It’s nine thirty, early for a Saturday, I know, but Gema’s going to be here any minute, and if she sees you in my bed, she’ll go off again about how we’re hooking up and don’t want to tell her.”
I nod and make a move to get up, but he gently pushes my shoulder back onto the pillow. An invisible cloud of his scent wraps around me.
“Stop doing that,” he says seriously.
“Doing what?”
“Stop running to see what he’s posted the second you wake up. It’s not healthy. It’s hurting you.”
I realize that my screen didn’t lock and Gus’s poem is still there, like a smoking gun. I groan and close my eyes.
“If you really think it’s over, stop doing that. But if you actually want him, go balls to the wall for him. This in-between stuff doesn’t make sense. It’s been more than a year.”
If he knew… If I followed his advice, I’d have to leave this house, find another apartment, and get out of his life. And I love Marín too much to do that.
The buzzer rings, and he stands up; he’s wearing cotton shorts and messy hair.
Nothing else. I should be used to it by now; I’ve lived with him for years, but starting a few months ago, the feelings it provokes in me have been getting worse.
If Blanca knew what I felt, she would tell me to stop wallowing.
“That’ll be my sister. Hop out of my bed.”
“Did you sleep okay on the couch?” I ask as I climb out.
“Convincing the landlord to buy that couch was the best idea ever.”
He drags a smile out of me as soon as he starts talking. I have to control myself to stop it spreading and splitting my face in half.
* * *
I make Marín’s bed in the time it takes Gema to get up the elevator and scurry off to my own room. I come out to say hi in my pajamas and messy bun.
“Holy mother, look at those tits!” I yelp before I can stop myself.
She touches them proudly and nods. “I filled them out a little.”
“Take those socks out of your sweater right now,” her brother scolds her as he passes by.
“You take out the one in your crotch. You’re not fooling anyone.”
I laugh silently and subtly slap her hand.
“I’m gonna go down and talk to Auntie for a second,” her brother says.
I stand there staring at Gema with my arms up and smile.
“It’s pretty early, cutie. You’re going shopping?”
“You’re not coming?” She makes sad puppy eyes at me.
Of course I want to go. Gema cracks me up. I’m the youngest with five brothers, and I’ve always wanted to mentor someone on a shopping spree so they don’t make the same mistakes I did… Not to mention how much I like spending time with her brother. But it’s her day.
“I wish,” I say. “I have a lot to do today. Next week is Blanca’s bachelorette party.”
“I wish you’d take me with you.”
“There are things I’m not ready for you to learn about life, at least not yet,” I tease. “You don’t need to rush into knowing how depraved human beings can get. Bachelorette parties are an apocalypse.”
“Will there be naked dudes there?”
“Does Loren count?”
Gema bursts out laughing, and from her expression I would say…no. Loren doesn’t count as a naked man according to her. He babysat her too many times.
Marín still hasn’t come back up, so I take Gema into my room so she can pick out a book.
While her brother is off on tour with that Noa girl (mental note, I still need to find her on the internet in case she’s a goddess and I’m not dying with jealousy yet), her aunt and uncle are taking her to see her grandparents and there aren’t many people her age there, so at least she’ll have something to keep her busy.
I’m trying to reorganize a few things when she asks me if she can take “this.” When I turn around, I see her holding Gus’s first book of poetry, the one he published with a tiny publishing house right when I met him.
I smile remembering the inscription he wrote on the first page: “Stay by my side forever, Coco Puff. And forever will be as long as you decide.”
“You want to read Gus? I thought you didn’t really like him.”
“No, I do like him, but… He’s kind of a drag,” she says, her lips pursed.
“You don’t have a crush on him, do you?” I ask her.
She wouldn’t be the first girl to fall prey to his disdainful attitude toward life, his sparkling eyes, and his dirty poems about love and sex. I did the same thing. I wouldn’t blame her, but… She’s staring at me totally freaked out.
“What? No! He’s so old!” Blessed fifteen-year-old. “Plus, he’s your ex-boyfriend. A girl never falls in love with her friend’s ex.”
Take note, Coco. Even teenagers can see how obvious that is.
I sigh and grab the copy she’s holding. It’s a good book; he says he’s not especially proud of the poems that fill its pages, but I think they’re littered with real stuff.
They’re like shotgun blasts of life… Now he shoots more accurately.
In two years, I know he’ll write an intimate, sensitive, and heartbreaking novel that will stun us all, but essentially, he’ll never divert from the truth he defended inside here.
“This book is beautiful,” I tell her. “It’s full of swear words and expressions that your aunt won’t want you repeating. I don’t know if you’re getting me, but he says real things.”
“About love?”
“About love.” I sit down on the bed and look up at her from there. “About sex. About yourself. About fear. About ego. About life in your twenties, I guess.”
“So do you believe love exists and lasts forever?”
Oy. The little munchkin has gone and fallen in love on us. I don’t know who it is, but it’s obvious Gema is experiencing her first love.
“I think it exists and it’s for forever because if we really love someone, even if it ends, we’ll always keep loving them a little, right?
For what we were.” I clear my throat when I see her making a face like she doesn’t understand me.
“Love exists, munchkin, and you wanna know something? It’s beautiful and all that, but above all, it’s free. ”
A rustle alerts me to Marín leaning against the doorframe, listening to us. When our eyes meet, he smiles proudly. But no. His eyes aren’t shining and he’s not biting his lips or tousling his hair with his fingers, nervously.
“Look, here’s your brother. Go on, get outta here. I have a life to get to.”
Marín winks at me and whispers a “thanks” for entertaining her while he talked to his aunt. The truth is I love being with Gema. It keeps me young and reminds me of when life was all intensity and a constant passionate drama.
Before they leave the room, I catch Marín eyeing the book his sister is holding. He furrows his brow and then heads after her but quickly doubles back into my room.
“Do you have plans today? Don’t you wanna come with us?”
“I’m going to see Blanca.”
“To warn her about the bachelorette week?” He smiles.
“She’s nervous. Someone showing up at her door with white wine and sushi will cheer her up.”
“Sounds like a girls’ afternoon,’” he jokes in a la-di-da voice.
“Later we’ll watch a few tutorials on how to do our own French manicures and how to French kiss.”
“Idiot.” He rolls his eyes. “Listen, I can feel a disturbance in your force. All good?”
If we put my urge to kiss you at a ten in the “good” category and how impossible that ever happening is at a zero on the same scale, then no, Marín, nothing is good.
I blink slowly. Then I smile with my teeth, which, thanks to years at the orthodontist, are perfectly straight.
So it’s pretty clear who wins first place in this tournament of lies. Now we just need to find out who’s going to be runner-up.