Chapter 12 Don’t Try to Escape Your Destiny
Don’t Try to Escape Your Destiny
Coco
I have to confess that my more chill side took comfort knowing that Marín couldn’t just sign on for this bachelorette trip.
Even someone as crazy in love as me appreciates some time lying fallow, a space without the other to think clearly.
Feelings colonize you. Everything turns into data to be analyzed.
Anything that can ostensibly be broken down into a sliver of hope will just make your anxiety spike.
So these days were supposed to be a peaceful sanctuary, the camping equivalent of going to Tibet to meditate with a bunch of Buddhist monks who if asked the question “What should I do about my feelings for Marín?” would answer “Ommmmm.”
But no. Of course not. Because Noa broke her neck and now Marín is on vacation. And Gus is acting like a high-key weirdo.
I answer Marín’s message:
Coco:
Yay, Anchovy, you’re on vacation! Now all you have to decide is…what to do with the time that is given to you. Gandalf said that, not me.
He didn’t answer, but I can hear the cogs of the universe turning behind me. Even the sky has a weird sheen to it. Or maybe it’s just me, riddled with anxiety, nerves, and chills.
The waves roll steadily onto the shore, rhythmically breaking on the sand and making a kind of music.
There’s a muggy but pleasant breeze for one of those summer nights that would be suffocating in Madrid.
While everyone else is pulling on jackets, organizing the disaster of their suitcases strewn across every surface in the camper, and planning what to drink, I’m sitting on the sand.
And thinking. Thinking about Gus. Thinking about Marín.
And ultimately, I realize I’m not even considering myself.
My feelings for my best friend have eaten my life and vomited up something that resembles me.
Someone sits down next to me, and I’m not surprised to see that it’s Loren.
He has a cigarette dangling from his lips, and he raises his eyebrows expectantly.
He knows something’s going on, even though I haven’t said a word because I don’t want Aroa to catch on and I need time to transform my goofy, loved-up smile into something that looks more like friendship.
“What’s going on?” he asks. “Is it about Gus?”
“No. It’s about Marín,” I whisper back. “He sent me a message. The girl he’s chaperoning ate shit and she must’ve broken all her teeth.”
“What?” he laughs.
“She fell off the stage. Marín is off work.”
“And he told you he’s coming?” Loren doesn’t even try to hide how worrying he finds that prospect. “Please tell me he didn’t.”
“He didn’t say it, but I think he’s expecting us to call him all excited and tell him he has to come.”
“That’s exactly what’s gonna happen.” Loren rubs his eyes. “Aroa’ll be all over it. You know you’re gonna have to see them…?”
“Yes.” I cut him off. “That’s why it made me really happy when he first said it, but now…”
“Now what?” Blanca’s voice startles both of us.
We didn’t hear her walking across the sand toward us. She’s barefoot and smiling.
“Marín’s girl is busted,” Loren tells her.
If someone gave me that little information, I’d have no idea how to reconstruct it, but Blanca smiles like she understands.
“Don’t tell Aroa,” she says with an enigmatic smile.
For a minute I’m sure she knows, but I suddenly figure out she’s saying that because she’s so pragmatic.
Aroa’s enthusiasm about the reconciliation must’ve seemed a little extra to her.
Actually, I think Blanca’s been harboring a little grudge against her ever since we realized she only cares about our friendship if it involves Marín, but Blanca will never say anything because she doesn’t want to make a scene.
Blanca is really into chewing things over by herself and being very discerning about situations.
I’m guessing she doesn’t get where all this hope for them getting back together comes from.
Aroa seems pretty sure it’s just a matter of time, and she keeps droning on about it. I hear her, and…I believe it.
When Aroa reaches us, she’s doing that happy walk that makes her look like she’s dancing. She’s graceful, elegant… She deserves Marín. “Anyone thirsty?” she asks with a grin.
“Let’s get drunk,” I say.
“And tell embarrassing stories,” Loren pipes up, holding up a plastic glass that makes the red wine look like a black hole.
“Yeah? Well, let me start.” Blanca rubs her hands together. “Did I ever tell you how this one time, at the office, I sneezed so hard I farted?”
* * *
Blanca’s phone lights up a few times in the night, when we’re all in bed.
I only notice because she’s sleeping next to me, in the bed in the roof of the camper, right above the driver and passenger seats.
I’m half-asleep, and I feel like that mixed with the cocktail of wine and the shots we took as we giggled over every fart story has left me in kind of a daze.
In the end, I figure it must be Ruben, trying to say good night to her.
All I know is she answers concisely, and she’s wide awake because Blanca never sleeps much, and she puts the phone back on top of the cupboard… face down.
Loren snores like a freight train.
Aroa looks like a nymph floating in the water on the bottom bunk. A few strands of her hair have slipped over the edge and fall in a cascade, pale, soft… All she needs is a few lotuses floating around her.
We left all the RV’s hinged windows open with the bug screens in, but there isn’t enough air flow in the morning to prevent it from being hot despite us all sleeping uncovered on top of our sleeping bags.
There isn’t even a hint of last night’s slightly humid, refreshing, almost chilly breeze.
Blanca isn’t next to me, and I find her outside.
She’s tidied up the stuff we left last night on the table, too drunk and tired to worry about a few scraps.
She’s sitting in a sliver of shade and smoking a cigarette peacefully; the smile she gives me when she sees me appear through the door is a gift.
“Coquito,” she whispers. “Tell me you want a coffee.”
“Just one? I want a tanker truck full of coffee. Should we wake them up?”
“Them? You mean ‘him.’ Aroa’s on the beach doing yoga.”
I peer into the distance and spot her figure contorting into impossible positions. If I tried to imitate her, I’d have to be transported to a hospital in a helicopter.
We get the coffee maker boiling, and we put everything back in its place to clear space before Loren wakes up.
“Tomato toast?” Aroa asks when she walks up, barely ruffled, her skin just tinged a little pink from the exercise. “I’m going to take a shower and then I’ll help. Come on, Loren, out of your hibernation! I know beauty sleep is important, but you can make up for it by drinking water.”
“Water is for mermaids,” he mumbles, still not very coherent.
I sit in the tiny living room while the coffee bubbles away. Blanca is in the seat opposite, and we’re both clutching our phones. I’m sure she’s checking her email while I open Instagram.
Poem. Of course. The photograph above it is a table full of manuscripts. The only words one can make out on one of the papers, much larger than the rest and in much more striking handwriting, are “I fell first.”
Will you think about me?
Will you miss me?
Will you wonder too if everything went wrong because we tugged too hard?
Maybe you’ll think,
like I do,
about when was the moment it all turned.
I think about you,
sometimes more than I’d like.
I’d like to banish you,
but you anointed your forehead with my fluid
and now you are the mistress of this empty wasteland
that dreams of you.
I miss you too.
I yearn for the crumbs of time we scraped up
with excuses and fear.
I yearn for the mood swings,
the nerves (your nerves),
the faint scent of your perfume on my clothes,
lingering from our farewell embrace,
sometimes with a kiss,
mostly just wishing we could.
You wouldn’t believe it, but
I ruminate on my mistakes all the time,
I question my certainties,
I make holes in my memories,
until I find that corner,
that one,
and curl up in it.
In the sound of your voice,
in the raspy notes,
and the thick words you would speak to me.
In the surprise of your mouth,
making me feel so young,
Frolicking in bed,
in the smell of spit,
sex
and drama.
In the end I always wind up believing
that the first place it went wrong was in my head.
I fell first.
I look at Blanca out of the corner of my eye, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed that I’m freaking out. She’s still absorbed in her screen until her phone starts vibrating in her hand and she jumps.
“Fuck, that scared me.” She laughs. “It’s Marín.”
“Why do people have to call at the crack of dawn? Why do you all have to be awake? Why me?” Loren whimpers from his bunk before he dramatically swishes the curtain shut, trying to keep sleeping.
“Tell me she broke a tooth.”
Blanca smiles and then cackles.
Is he coming? Of course he’s coming. I can picture his clear eyes, his tousled hair, which is actually strategically designed to look natural, biting his bottom lip as he smiles.
I’m sure the hand that isn’t holding the phone is fidgeting with his messy hair and he’s leaning on a table, in some random coffee shop, while his coffee cools down a little.
“Huh?” Blanca’s tone catches my attention. She seems kind of alert, uncomfortable. “You think so? I mean…” She looks at me slyly as she stands up. “You know better than me, but…don’t you think that could be a little…?”
Blanca is far enough away that the sound is fading.
“Is it Marín?”
Next to me, drenched and half-naked, is Aroa.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to think about having an affair with you,” she jokes as she dries her hair in a towel even smaller than the one wrapped around her…so basically a napkin.
“Sorry. It’s just you look amazing and I hate you with a burning passion.”
She sucks her teeth with a smile and sits down across from me. “Is it Marín?”
“It’s Marín,” I confirm.
“He’s coming sooner, I’m telling you.”
She’s excited when she says it, giddy, and I suddenly want to die because Gus’s poem pops up in my mind. I stand up in time to hide the internal torture on my face, saved by the burbling of the coffee maker on the stovetop.
“The coffee smells so good!”
“Please shut your mouths for once in your lives, you gaggle of whores.” Loren always likes to mix politeness with insults.
“Call your boyfriend and tell him you’re alive, lazybones,” I order him. “Poor Damian is left without a partner every time you go out with us. He’s going to be so sick of us by the end of all this.”
“Now?” he whines childishly.
“Now. Come on.”
He mutters something, but I hear him rustling around in his sleeping bag and then whispering, “Memels…,” which in their love language means “baby.”
I take advantage of him being occupied to get Aroa’s attention. “Listen, Aroa,” I whisper, but not because I don’t want to disturb Loren.
“Talk to me.”
“Did you see Gus’s poem?”
“No!” she exclaims. “Is that it? Show me!”
I lift my chin toward my phone and go over to the small but hardworking fridge to pull out a package of turkey slices and a small can of crushed tomato.
“Oh, God, Coco.” She rests her chin on her elbow looking dreamy. “You must be on cloud nine right now.”
“That’s not for me,” I assure her.
“How can it not be? What other girl could it possibly be about?”
“It could be about other girlssss,” I emphasize the plural, still speaking softly.
“This is for you. Missing you, reconsidering his mistakes, sad that it ended… I think it’s super obvious he wants to get back together with you.”
“To me it sounds more like he fucked it up with someone and instead of saying, ‘I love you’ to her face-to-face he’s spreading his pain around social media.”
I get nervous and push my hair off my forehead.
“You’re mad,” she declares with her doll-like face. “And that’s normal. Breakups make anger build up. Even the most microscopic detail in the world can turn into drama between two people who can’t figure out how to function, but there’s no reason to throw in the towel at the first chance.”
I stare at her, and I know she’s talking about herself and Marín.
“Write to him. Tell him it’s a beautiful poem. Ask him if he’s less of a sad poet than last night. I don’t know… Start a conversation. Don’t make him shoulder all the weight.”
I swear I’m starting to consider it when Blanca comes back into the camper, and when she does, the air fills with tension.
“Aroa, can you open more of the blinds?”
“Of course.”
She hops up half-naked, and Blanca rolls her eyes and sighs.
“Jesus, you’re so hot. Sometimes I question whether you and I are from the same planet.”
“You’re a dumbass.” Aroa gives a flattered laugh. “What did Marín say? Is he okay?”
“Yeah. Listen…” She pulls back the curtain of the bunk where Loren is clutching his phone in the fetal position. He’s in a stupor, talking to his boyfriend. “Hey! Can you come back from the dead for a minute? Thanks.”
“Of course, sweetie, of course. It’s just that you’re such a drag,” he says into the phone. “I’ll let you go. Blanca thinks she’s Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”
Aroa and I stifle our laughter.
“Are we having breakfast inside or out?” I ask.
“Outside, right? It’s not that hot yet, and that way we’ll get a little sun. We all need more vitamin D, my loves,” Aroa points out.
“Ladies…and gentleman. Um, Marín called,” Blanca says.
“He’s coming, right?” I pipe up.
“Yes. He’s on the way.”
My heart pounds in my chest. Boom, boom, boom, boom…like a Viking war drum. I feel like everyone can hear it, and the vein in my temple is throbbing like a neon sign on the fucking Vegas strip. I’m holding my breath.
“He’s on the way to the station to pick up Gus. I don’t know what you have planned, so I told them to ask you for the location of the campsite we’re going to. I do know we’re going to a campsite because he let it slip, but don’t get mad at him, the poor thing.”
I hear Loren snort. He’s trying to be discreet, but he can’t. And I get it. Marín here. With Gus. Good thing Marín is the only one who can get Gus to be less intense than normal, but…the two of them. Here.
The poems.
The melancholy.
Romantic ideas.
The possibility of being wrong, confused.
A round of applause breaks my confused, chaotic stream of consciousness. It’s coming from Aroa, who’s clapping euphorically and endlessly. She adds in a few little jumps, which makes her micro-towel slip to the floor and leaves her butt naked in front of us in all her glory.
Great. Gus and Marín here…
With Aroa.
Why does that bother me so much?