Chapter 29 Cardinal Sins #2
“We used to know how to make each other feel good,” he mutters. “Remember?”
“Yeah. We knew.”
“It didn’t cure it, but…”
Gus was hot. I remember the heat that came off his body after fucking.
It was nice. When I would sit naked on top of him, my thighs still a little wet, and make him laugh as I stroked the hair on his chest. Gus always made me feel good.
He never lied to me, never made me any promises he couldn’t keep.
Marín, who are you? Where are you? Do you love me?
“If he doesn’t pick up, I’m going to do something stupid, Gus. So if you don’t want to participate, you’re gonna have to be very firm.”
He knows me. He knows me well. Memories, kisses, poetry, sadness and feelings wash over his face, and it scares me knowing that I don’t recognize all of them. These things he lived through, without me, have been the most intense emotions of his life.
The fifth ring hurts. The sixth feels like a slap. The seventh is straight-up pathetic. But I keep going. I want him to pick up and tell me he couldn’t find me, he’s coming to get me, to make something up, I don’t know.
“Hang up,” Gus says.
What happened after is both our faults, but more mine than his.
* * *
He’s the one who takes off his shirt. I unbutton my romper as fast as I can, but it’d be easier if I work on his pants while he takes off my clothes. He’s less drunk, and he was always more nimble.
My clothes fall to the floor in a black puddle, and I pull my feet out just in time as he lifts me up and balances me on his hips.
His unbuckled belt digs into my thigh, but I don’t say anything. As soon as we’re in bed, I push it away.
“Take those off.” I pull his pants down, helping with my feet.
He sits up, takes them off, and then lies down next to me. I’m touching him. He’s not fully hard, but he’s reacting to my caresses. Meanwhile, he’s kissing my neck—he knows I love that. I don’t kiss his—I know he doesn’t like it.
He unclasps my bra, and his teeth close over my nipple.
I arch with a moan that’s more pain than pleasure.
He answers with little licks and his right hand inside my panties.
He doesn’t seem to be able to find the place he knew so well when we were together.
Of course, there have been so many ports, and each one has its own lighthouse.
“There.” I guide him to it. “It’s right there.”
“Do you have condoms?”
“No. Don’t you?”
“I think I have one in my wallet.”
The wallet is in his pants. There is a condom in there. Neither of us bothers checking the expiration date. Knowing him, it probably hasn’t been there long.
“Coco…” he says before he opens it.
“Don’t even think about asking me if I really wanna do this.”
“I wasn’t going to ask that. I was going to ask you to keep this between us. I… I’m screwing up too, okay?”
“But…do you really wanna do this?”
“Now you’re the one asking?” He raises his eyebrows in surprise.
Gus yanks off his boxers unceremoniously, and standing next to the bed, lined up with my open legs, he focuses on opening the condom.
I pull off my underwear. I don’t think I’ve ever had more mechanical sex.
My heart is racing, and I wonder if it’s worth it, getting my friend involved in this, when he’s nothing more than poorly digested anger.
“Gus, I don’t want to give you any problems.”
“Let’s come, Coco. Then we’ll see.”
Gus licks his hand, touches himself with it, puts the condom on the tip, but…he grimaces as he unrolls it. He looks at it, frowning even deeper. It won’t roll all the way down. He tries putting it back on the top. As I look down, the problem is obvious: He’s not very hard.
I sit up and stroke it, wrapping my fingers around it, hard, how he likes it. I know he feels bad, his pride is wounded, but I keep going, looking at it, putting my mouth on his chest and biting it.
“Do you want me to suck it?”
“No. I don’t like blow jobs with a condom on.” He looks at it, makes another face. “This is the only one we have. Lie down…”
I do. He climbs on top of me. It’s like someone ordered us to have sex. I don’t think either of us really wants to do this.
“This is a fuckup,” I moan when I feel him pushing into me.
“A big one. Ah…”
He tightens inside me, between my thighs. He’s in, but it feels…weird. He pushes again. I moan. He does too. I feel pleasure but…
He pushes again and twists a little—he’s still not hard. It seems like he’s getting limper with each thrust. I grab his ass and dig my nails into it; he always liked that. I hold his gaze as his thrusts get even weaker. This isn’t working.
“Fuck…” He pulls out. He touches himself violently. “Now this too?”
“Am I doing something…?”
“No, no. Coco…give me a second.”
He tries again. He pushes in, gets the tip in, and then a few centimeters—the latex feels like its clinging to my walls tooth and nail.
I’m not turned on, I’m not wet, and that doesn’t help.
The friction is anything but gentle. He penetrates me again.
It’s not going in right. I’m about to tell him to stop, but he gives a few more shoves. Nothing.
“Gus…”
“Fuck!”
He crumbles. I know him. And I know why.
I know his defense mechanisms falling onto the bedside table alongside the wrinkled condom.
This is his sex, it’s his pride, it’s the tool he’s always used to make us believe he was a little bit of all of ours.
He gets naked and he fucks us, but he doesn’t give us anything.
He was always cocky. But now he’s not. Just because of a lost boner?
No, of course not. The lost boner isn’t the reason; it’s the consequence.
Gus let someone touch him how he never had before, and… that changed him.
I want to hug him, I want to hold him, I want him to tell me what happened, but I can’t. I’ve never felt close enough to him to do that. It wasn’t just him. It was me too. I was never interested in getting below the surface; that’s the truth. Not like with Marín. Not like when it’s love.
Gus doesn’t put his boxers back on. He just flops back on the rumpled bed, which we didn’t even pull the sheet back on, covers his eyes, and snorts.
“In the fucking bed I’m sharing with him, for fuck’s sake.”
“I know,” I say. “It… It never happened, okay? Nobody has to know.”
“Are we insane? What were we thinking?” He seems so angry. “God…Coco…fuck. What did we expect?”
I put my underwear on, he quickly puts on his own, and we embrace with real intimacy for the first time, an embrace that shows how ridiculous everything we did when we were a couple was: sex, caresses, confidences, all of it.
This is the real intimacy we share. We’re two friends, and the truth is we’ll never be anything more.
“I’m sorry,” he says, pushing himself away, suddenly uncomfortable with my naked breasts against his chest.
“It’s fine. It’s normal,…”
“No. That’s not it, Coco.” He sits on the edge of the bed, rubs his forehead, and lets his arms fall by his side, defeated. “I would’ve been able to do it.”
“Yeah. I’m not saying you wouldn’t. I just…”
“Coco,” He looks at me, seriously. “It’s a dick. It doesn’t have that many secrets. I could’ve done it, I could’ve gotten it up. I know how to do it. But I didn’t want to. I…didn’t want to. All it would’ve taken was…was thinking about…”
“What?”
“Her.”
“Her?”
“Her, Coco. Everything is about her.”
I put on his shirt and go over. I slide my fingertips over his back.
“So there is a her,” I confirm.
“Of course there is. You’ve always known that.”
“Since when? I mean… Was it when you and I…?”
“No, no.” He shakes his head vehemently. “I was faithful to you, Coco. She… It started something like…I dunno, nine months ago.”
“But…”
“I’m not going to tell you her name, Coco. Don’t ask. Don’t make me name her now after…well…what I was about to do with you.”
“Okay,” I nod. “But were you two…?”
“No. We’ve never been… No. I don’t know what we were doing. At first… At first it was just for fun. For both of us, seriously… I was honest. She was too. We just wanted to fool around, spend some time together, do something crazy. It wasn’t premeditated—it just happened.”
“But it turned into something else?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs and rubs his forehead.
“I have no idea what it is. But I’m… I’m bitter, Coco.
I write too much about it. I carry it around everywhere with me.
Some days I blame it all on her. Others I just miss her.
There are nights when I want to hurt her with my poems, others I want to ask her forgiveness.
Sometimes I just want to get under her skin, make her think about me, not forget me so fast.”
“Gus,” I say tenderly. “How do you know it’s so fast? That girl’s probably trying to get you out of her head and can’t.”
“I know. She told me.”
“She…told you?”
“Yes. She told me everything. She told me we needed to end it, that she knew me too well and she couldn’t do it anymore, that she felt awful, that she didn’t know what she wanted but she wanted it to be with me. But I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? But you just said you only write about her.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want her. I don’t want to love her. I love her wrong.”
“Fuck…”
I lean toward him and hug him. I wonder if he’s okay, if I can do anything, if I know her, if… Thousands of words, hypotheses, ideas zipping through my head, and I’m stammering but he isn’t. He doesn’t want to talk anymore.
“Coco, I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but…can you leave me alone?”
I don’t even answer. I’m sad.
I have a lump in my throat because I have a suspicion about who she is. It can’t be, but…it would fit. Everything would fit. The problems, the long faces, how long he said they’ve been seeing each other, the complication, his fear…Aroa?
I have to go.
“I’m leaving, Gus, but…you can count on me. You know that, right?”
“I know. But you shouldn’t say that. You’re not going to be that happy with me either when you find out. I’m the master of fuckups. I spread my shit all over everyone.”
If Aroa explodes, we’re all going to be in deep shit. Isn’t that what Loren said?
Yes. I have to go.
I don’t hear any footsteps. There’s no warning. I haven’t even found my romper yet when the door to the room opens. Of course, it’s a hotel. They have two keys. I didn’t even think about it.
I’m holding my bra in my hand, and Gus is only wearing his boxers. The bed is messed up. There’s a condom that looks more used than it is on the bedside table. You’d have to be blind to think anything but that we did it and we really did it.
I could say that the look he gives us is worse than a scream, worse than an insult, a slap, but it’s not true. Actually, it’s like we just punched him. Marín takes a step back, not taking his eyes off us.
“Marín,” I say in a tiny voice.
“It’s not what it looks like, right?” He gives a dry laugh and rubs his forehead. “Motherfucker.”
Nothing else. Motherfucker. Liquid rage pooling in his mouth. Hot ire in his throat. The sound of a door slamming. The silence of two people who have no fucking clue what they’re doing with their lives.
Fear. Ah, it’s true. This silence is fear. That’s what it sounds like.