Chapter 22 Hands Full of Problems
Hands Full of Problems
Marín
“Is this the street?” I ask Gus, whose head is drooping against the window.
“No. It’s the next one, I think.”
I know exactly where I need to turn, but I was trying to break the silence somehow. Gus is very quiet. He’s submerged in one of those thick silences, probably mentally swimming butt naked through big-lipped muses.
Maybe…and I’m just saying maybe…I feel the need to break this false calm because I feel weird too. I can even feel my damp boxers under my black jeans. Jeez. What am I doing with Coco? What was that? Why did I act like I would with a girl in a bar? A girl I want to sleep with, to be specific.
It’s nuts.
I look over at Gus, who’s still slumped against the glass, looking out at the street, which is oddly empty for the middle of summer.
“Are you tired?” I ask.
“No.”
“Well, you’re really quiet.”
“You too.” He side-eyes me, and for the first time since we got in the car, he shoots me a half smile.
“What’s going on with you? Are you okay?”
“Dudes don’t talk to each other like that.” His smile widens.
“We’re friends, right? It’s normal for a friend to ask if something’s happening with you.”
“Are we gonna talk about feelings now?” he teases. “Make me a hot chocolate with marshmallows and I’ll open up like a flower while we have pillow fights.”
I snort. “That twisted idea of masculinity is pretty fucking annoying,” I admit. “What are we trying to prove? How manly we are?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs, as if he actually has no interest in finding out.
“Dude…you’re a poet.”
“Well, I guess I’m only capable of expressing feelings on paper.”
“What a load of bullshit.”
“Fine…you go first.” He challenges me with his eyes.
I sail right past the motel, and Gus opens his mouth to protest, but he shuts up when he spots the neon sign at the end of the street: “Bar.” From the look of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a front for a brothel, but I don’t care.
I don’t want to go up to our room yet. I’ll lie down in bed, and I’ll start going around in circles in my head and…
I park and look at him. “Get out of the car. I’ll buy you a drink.”
“That’s right, you dog. Get me drunk first.”
The place is almost empty. Two locals who seems like regulars are sitting at the bar, but they’re not talking to each other. They’re both smoking, yes, inside the bar, and they’re polishing off their drinks in rocks glasses, staring vacantly at the bottles collecting dust behind the bar.
A couple is making out in front of the foosball table.
There’s a dartboard on the wall and a slot machine in one corner.
The sofas are made of pleather and covered in cigarette burns.
It’s the most desolate place on earth, but we stake out one of the corners for our own.
Before I sit down, I go to the bathroom and take off my damp boxers.
I don’t know what to do with them, so I just chuck them in the trash.
A waitress who reminds me bitterly of my mother (blank stare, undefined age but aging badly because of alcohol abuse; fried, bottle-blond hair with thick black roots speckled with gray) puts a glass ashtray on our table and takes our order.
Gus orders a whiskey. I’m sticking to my sobriety more than ever, so I order a bottle of cold water.
Gus gives me an incredulous look, but when I ignore it, he says, “You start.”
Gus settles in his chair with one ankle propped on his knee and his arms stretched out over the back of the couch. He’s wearing a kind of sleepy look of concern.
“You’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.” He flashes a smile, the commercial one, the kind he gifts left and right when he’s signing books.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why don’t you start? Because you’ll have to excuse me, but it seems like you’re the fucked one here.”
“I’m not wearing underwear. How do you expect me to be?”
He raises one eyebrow and laughs. He takes advantage of the waitress arriving with our drinks to add, “Let me get this straight. You’re not wearing boxers under those very tight jeans.”
“You’re an idiot.” I laugh watching the woman heading back to the bar, not before taking a glance at my pants…right around my fly.
He smiles and takes a sip of his drink that, judging by his grimace afterward, isn’t exactly fifteen-year-old scotch.
“Yum, hydrochloric acid,” he concedes. “Come on, Marín.”
“Come on, what?”
“Clear something up for me: Are you freaked out about telling me because I’m her ex or because she’s your roommate?”
I raise one eyebrow. I can’t stop my heart from pounding faster than I’d like. Did he see us? What could he have seen? Did we do something?
“I don’t understand,” I reply.
“You’re cuckoo for Coco Puff.” He points at me and leans back on the couch. “It’s so obvious.”
I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, and give him a confused look. “Excuse me?”
“You’re cuckoo for Coco. Sorry, Marín, but it’s pretty fucking obvious. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Does she know? Are you…you know, sleeping together? That’s probably why you don’t want to get back together with Aroa, I guess.”
I can’t believe it. I take a few seconds longer than normal to gather my thoughts and figure out a response that doesn’t seem too freaked out.
“I’m not cuckoo for Coco, Gus. Coco and I are just friends. Best friends. She’s…like my sister.” A flash of apprehension makes my stomach clench, and I hurry to clarify that. “Not like my sister. It’s…like she’s a cousin.”
“Kissing cousins. That’s an expression, by the way.”
“Seriously, Gus. That’s not it.”
“When I was with her, you were always giving me dirty looks.”
“That’s because you were a dick.” I laugh.
“That’s not true! It’s just that we have different perspectives about relationships. Plus…have you seen the way you look at her?”
“She’s my best friend. I look at her like that because I love her, for fuck’s sake.”
“You see!” he teases. “You love her!”
“Loving her doesn’t mean I wanna marry her, Gus.”
“Who said anything about marriage? What you wanna do is bang her.”
I open my mouth, but then I freeze, like a dope, until a wave of anger takes over. “Are you fucking nuts? She’s my roommate, my best friend, my fucking right hand!”
“Look, you’re right-handed, aren’t you? So that means Coco jerks you off?”
I grab a coaster and hurl it at him so hard it hits his forehead and bounces off. He gives a muffled complaint, and I grumble. I sound like a repetitive song from a nineties band, but all I can hear is myself saying, “No way, no way, no way…”
“These things go through phases,” he says, rubbing between his eyebrows, where the coaster left a red mark. “You’re in the denial phase.”
“Gus, seriously. I don’t like Coco. She’s my best friend.” He rolls his eyes and leans back again, glass in hand. He gestures for me to keep talking. “What’s going on is… Exactly what’s been making my head explode is that I’ve been acting like an idiot for two days and…I don’t want to.”
“An idiot with…Coco?”
“An idiot in general, and Coco just happens to be next to me. And I can’t see. I swear I don’t mean to, and then I go there, all riled up, like a dog in heat.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Did you hook up?” And he starts to smile.
“No,” I deny firmly. “But I’m getting stupid, dude. And you wanna know the worst part? You were right. This would never have happened if I had just gotten laid.”
“I’m always right.” He looks at his nails proudly. “I’m very wise, but you think I’m just a circus monkey.”
“All right already!” I groan.
“So why didn’t you just sleep with Aroa?”
I look at him like I don’t understand. “With Aroa?”
“With Aroa,” he repeats. “She’s hot, she’s up for it, and…she’s your ex. Who hasn’t slept with their ex just to…?”
“Just to nothing. Aroa and I are not ‘Aroa and I’ in any way anymore.”
“But why?”
“Because our thing ended and…”
My phone starts to vibrate in my pocket, and since I’m not wearing underwear, the movement feels too risky to leave it there, doing its thing. Ten seconds more and I’d be hard all night.
When I take it out, I raise my eyebrows, surprised. It hadn’t even occurred to me how late it is and who could be calling at this hour. I’m so caught up in my shit I didn’t even think to worry if something had happened to Gema. But no. It’s Aroa.
“You know, maybe she really is descended from elves and has powers,” I ruminate. “It’s Aroa. I’m gonna go outside for a sec.”
Gus waves his glass of bad whiskey in the air and singsongs that I should fuck her.
I wish life were that easy. I wish I could just get laid without having to worry about two hundred thousand implications I invent the second there’s a chance that could happen.
That fucking poet… He doesn’t even like whiskey.
I pick up. “Is something wrong?”
“Were you asleep?”
“No. Gus and I stopped for one last drink.”
“It’s impossible to have a last drink when you never had a first.”
“Did you call at this hour to correct my grammar?” I ask, a little annoyed without even really knowing why.
“No. Can you come here?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, but can you come here?”
“It’s two in the morning, Aroa. What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Can’t we talk tomorrow? We’re meeting at twelve thirty at the campsite gate.”
“With everyone else. I want to talk to you…alone.”
I suck my teeth and grip my hair with my right hand.
“It’s important,” she insists.
“Can’t we talk on the phone?”
“Is it that hard for you to get in the fucking car and come?” she complains, taut, tyrannical, demanding that I bend to her will.
I really doubt anyone in the group, even Coco, who was her friend before we started dating, knows this side of her. She reserves this for the two of us. For the people who she lets see it.