Chapter 18 What the Fuck? #2
He’s so freaked out he doesn’t even notice the hovel we’ve just walked into. The sheets are faded; there’s a worn armchair in the corner. The curtains are crocheted, and the bedspreads folded at the foot of each of the narrow beds are a blood maroon that exposes how much dust they’ve accumulated.
I peek into the bathroom nervously. Fine. It’s clean. We’ve crashed in worse places.
“That really got under my skin. Maybe my grandfather has an evil twin.”
“Or two. That guy looked like you.”
“Me? Ha! You’ve got some balls!”
“Balls… Ask him to show them to you. It’ll be like time traveling and seeing how your nether regions hold up after so much use.”
The good thing about Gus is that he has a great sense of humor, so he answers with an echoing cackle. He stretches out on the bed, kicks off his shoes, and stares at the ceiling.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I inform him.
“I’ll go next. The whole putting-the-same-clothes-from-yesterday-on-after-I-took-a-shower-at-the-campsite thing didn’t have the desired effect. I feel dirty. Did we make a plan to meet back up with them?”
“No.” I shake my head. With all my cluttered thoughts, I hadn’t even thought about it.
“Well, we should, right? I’m gonna message them. We’ll bring a rotisserie chicken or something like that.”
“Who are you going to text?” I’m curious.
“Well…Coco, for example.”
For example? Ever since I found out what I know now, it’s become very clear that Gus doesn’t do things randomly.
He doesn’t miss a beat. If he’s messaging Coco, it’s because he’s hoping to set off a domino effect.
If I was at least okay with what he’s doing and who he’s doing it with…
I’m not saying you shouldn’t fight for what you want, but you should always be up-front about it.
Honest. Although… Well, who am I to judge?
I swallow. God, what a shit show. At least no one’s inside my head right now, because they wouldn’t understand a single thing and they could misinterpret what I feel.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I repeat.
* * *
I undress in front of the mirror, which doesn’t even fog up because I turn the knob until it comes out lukewarm, bordering on cold.
I stare at myself in the reflection, and when I blink, I can almost see myself and the pleasure on my face when I felt Coco’s fingers wrapping around my cock.
I wince, and when I look down, I see that my blood flow is starting to head in a certain direction. It starts swelling like magic.
“No, for God’s sake.”
Jerking off now wouldn’t exactly be a sin, let’s be honest. The thing is…
Thinking about…Coco? It’s been a crazy few months, I’ve been under a lot of stress, and I guess deep down I’m still waiting for my boss to call to tell me I can come pick up the shit I left in my desk and return my employee card.
It’s stress; that’s what’s making me lose my head.
I look at myself in the mirror again. I have huge bags under my eyes.
I need a haircut. I haven’t even gotten a tiny bit of sun, and I still have that spring complexion: halfway between the paleness of winter and the toasted color of summer.
Under the fluorescent light in this bathroom, I’m yellow.
I’m halfway down every path… It’s a good definition.
Halfway to getting over my breakup with Aroa, halfway to accepting that I need to get laid without falling in love or even promising to call the next day, halfway to understanding what makes people keep secrets…
or tell lies. I’m halfway to really understanding the foundation my relationship with the world is built on. Coco is half the world for me.
I look down. My dick is still swollen, but I’ve battened down the horniness with a barrage of dark thoughts.
The water is cascading over me pleasantly, cooling my skin, which immediately gets goose bumps; my nipples stiffen up, and when my hands pass over them as I lather up with soap…
boom. I’m in the bunk, I’m feeling Coco’s skin, I’m holding her round breast, and her nipple is between my fingers.
I saw her in her bra once, accidentally, but I never thought touching her tits would feel like that.
So…soft. Her tits are extreme, but not because of their size.
They’re soft, perfect in my hand, and crowned by nipples that I picture as dark, to go with her olive skin, and so hard.
I would have fucked her, to be honest. In that moment, if we had been alone, I wouldn’t have pretended to be asleep.
She was going to kiss me, I’m sure of it.
Coco always says that sex without good kissing is like going to the movies without popcorn.
She was going to put her tongue in my mouth, and I…
was going to lose control. To yank off her pajama bottoms and panties, do the same with my boxers, and push into her wet pussy without thinking.
It would’ve been a mistake. It would’ve been the end. Just fucking like that, out of nowhere, with my best friend. A recurring mistake for others that I swore to myself I’d never make.
But first I need to accept the truth: I would have fucked her. Like crazy. With me on top. Thrusting and breathing in the scent of her neck and her sex. With me on top? Wait…
Gus told me once, drunk, that the thing he missed most about Coco was the way she would fuck him.
“She fucked me. She devoured me. She would get on top, and she liked pretending that I was the one in control. She wanted me to grab her hard, to shake her, but it was her, dude. She was the one fucking me, and I was the submissive one just pushing. It was a quite a show, having her on top.”
I turn the shower a little colder.
At the time, I was uncomfortable having this information.
Blanca would always tell me that Loren and I shared a defect: Something about our faces says, “Come and tell me all your shit.” If we both started blabbing, I don’t know where this group would end up.
People’s lies tend to create a tangled mess that brings them closer to their loved ones and tears them apart.
When my body has gotten used to the temperature, I turn the tap again, searching for a more intense shock.
I want the blood to stop pumping into my penis.
I want to make it so small that I have to lift it gingerly between my thumb and my finger.
I don’t want to even have a dick when I’m thinking about Coco.
It’s…disgusting. Right?
Well, not disgusting. She’s a woman. I’m a man.
We’re not blood related. I’ve always thought she was beautiful.
I mean… She’s cute, she has style, she’s fun and chaotic.
She’s the kind of woman who’s always on some wild-goose chase, who doesn’t need to follow the rules to be good, who doesn’t need to break them to be bad.
She’s… She’s super tender. She rips through your life like a fucking hurricane and then never leaves.
Any guy would want to be with someone like that. Even Gus should count his blessings.
“We broke up because I’m trash and she’s a queen,” he told me that day, drunk, in the midst of other confessions.
It’s hard to know what Gus means when he talks like that.
A week later, he posted a poem on Instagram titled “Queen without a crown.” It was a farewell to Coco, and there was no doubt about it.
It was a pretty bad poem, but it was the last. Somehow, for him, Coco was his anti-muse, I think because nothing he wrote could live up to her.
She has too many nuances, and that frustrated Gus.
Then he spent a few months writing like crazy about drinking and fucking because I think that’s what he did once he “got over” that breakup that didn’t seem to have affected either of them that much at first glance.
Then he started writing about something else, and Coco started crying at night.
I always thought one thing was a consequence of the other. Now I’m not clear on anything.
“Are you showering or doing some kind of tantric masturbation?” Gus bangs on the bathroom door, and I’m yanked out of my reverie. My hair is all foamed up with shampoo, but I don’t even remember lathering up.
“I was touching myself thinking about you. And your sister.”
“If we start talking about sisters, we’ll end up beating the shit out of each other in the plaza.”
I crack up. “I’ll be right out, you jerk.”
The towel feels like sandpaper, but it still dries me quickly.
My dripping hair is creating a mosaic of tiny tiles of water on my shoulders.
Gus hurtles into the bathroom as soon as I come out and spouts off one of his curse words that have nothing to do with poetry, more about physiological needs.
His excuse that “I need to shit like a hoopoe” doesn’t hold water.
He’s in a hurry. He wants to take another shower, douse himself in cologne up to his eyebrows, put on a flowery shirt, and get back to the campsite.
Now, finally, I’m starting to get it. I don’t explain it to him.
I think he’d just make everything more complicated.
I have no idea what he’s up to, what he’s attempting, what he’s doing, or why, but at least now I know that everyone, every single one of us, is keeping a secret on this trip.
Unfortunately for Loren, his is knowing everyone else’s.
Mine… They’re piling up, Blanca’s is driving me crazy, and, somehow, they all have four letters in the middle of them: Coco.