Chapter 41 It’s Not Good for Me
It’s Not Good for Me
Coco
The reflection looking back at me in the mirror is terrible. My lips are swollen; my eyes are red; my hair is tangled; my skin is gray. I’m the spitting image of a person in mourning. I spent the whole night crying.
I rub myself dry with a towel and put on the clothes I brought into the bathroom: ripped boyfriend jeans and a white T-shirt with a drawing on the back.
I’m going to my parents’ house for lunch.
It’s not even eleven yet, but given my dire mood today, I thought a visit to the bookstore near Opera would be good for me.
I’m coming out of the bedroom, with my shoes on, barely any makeup, and my bag in my hand when I hear the door close and the familiar sound of Marín jingling his keys.
I turn to stone, right where I am. I can barely even blink.
He’s the one who takes two slow steps over to me.
Serious, keys in hand, disheveled, in desperate need of a haircut, so handsome it makes me sick.
I wasn’t expecting him. When Marín says no, it means no.
I don’t know if the fact that he’s here is good news or bad news for us.
He drops his keys onto the table in the entrance, which, by the way, we dumpster-dived when the kids of the widow downstairs emptied her apartment when they moved her in with them. Memories of better times, like the ones haunting every corner of this apartment.
He doesn’t say anything—he just looks at me, rubs his chin and his mouth, and leans against the doorframe to the kitchen. He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. His eyes are glistening so much…
He puts his bag down with a sigh, and I stifle the urge to cry.
This silence is much more powerful than words, but I don’t know how to interpret it.
The house is full of bleak energy. He takes a step.
I take a step. We look at each other. I wonder for a few seconds if I want to kiss him first and then talk after or if the opposite would be better for us, but he seems to have decided already.
His right arm loops around my waist, and he pulls me to him.
He closes his eyes, and I look at him… I look at his eyelids, the cover for those vibrant eyes…
His straight, elegant nose, his lips. He presses his forehead into my shoulder, and I feel his chest swell as he takes a deep breath.
I want to tell him so many things, but I don’t understand anything.
We both twist, silently searching for each other’s eyes; we seem to be interrogating each other about what this means.
But for now it can only be translated into a kiss.
We kiss.
It’s a sweet kiss, innocent, mouth against mouth, almost childish. Kissing him still feels strange to me. It’s an uncanny feeling, like when you step into a city for the first time but you’ve seen it a thousand times in the movies. I guess I’ve spent too long imagining it.
I stroke his cheeks, and he wraps his arms around me.
We look at each other again and sigh, our lips still brushing.
We poison ourselves with the carbon dioxide from each other’s lungs, and we kiss again, this time a little more wet, nipping and tasting with timid tongues that still don’t know whether this is out of place or welcome.
My back is up against the wall, and Marín presses into me.
The memories of a house where we have been so happy, pushing us against each other, looking for corners that aren’t full yet.
We smell each other, we hug, our hands slide under each other’s clothes, and suddenly we’re kissing again.
There’s no more fear, no more barriers, and this kiss is so intense that it becomes an exercise in restraint.
“Wait…” He pulls back a little and brushes the tip of his nose across my cheeks. “I didn’t come here to do this.”
“I know. Let’s stop.”
“Okay.”
But we kiss again, and we need more air. I can taste his spit, which is filling my mouth. I savor the air he’s breathing. I want him to hold me tighter, and I press my thighs, my breasts, my belly button against him—I don’t want any sliver of him to be untouched by my body.
“Fuck…” he pants against my open mouth.
“Stop…” I say.
He licks my lips and grabs my waist, and his hands climb up under my shirt, cupping my breasts. “Stop me, for God’s sake,” he begs.
But I don’t have the strength when he kneads my tits and pants into my neck. Marín’s hands digging their fingers into my flesh paralyze me. I’ve wanted him for too long.
“I didn’t come here for this,” he says again.
“I know.”
“Let’s go to my room.”
“No,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want breakup sex.”
“Who said anything about a breakup?”
I smile in spite of myself. “You, even though you said it with your mouth closed.”
“Coco…I need to say things to you, but please.”
We stumble through the house devouring each other, open his bedroom door, and rush past his desk, next to the bed, full of music equipment, framed vinyl covers, and a poster from a seventies concert I bought for him in London.
We tumble onto the mattress with me on top, and his striped sheets give us a cold embrace.
He pulls off my T-shirt, and his mouth runs down my stomach, my sides…
full of desire. We’re avoiding even saying any words because they would all be lies.
I unbutton his pants and do the same to my own, and he pulls my jeans and my underwear down.
We don’t take off anything else. I’m still wearing my bra, and he’s completely dressed, but we maneuver through his boxers until suddenly he’s inside me.
I’m wet but not soaked. It’s all moving so fast.
Marín thrusts between my thighs with his head buried in my neck; I hear him gasping and sucking in air.
He whispers a word every once in a while, slowly and softly, in a low voice.
And while his body is doing what it knows, what the animal inside him learned, my mind is traveling.
I’m thinking how I’ll miss it…him, the apartment, the memories.
The obsolete music junk he collects so carefully, the songs we discovered together, the dinners sitting on the floor, he and I, like there’s no one else in the world.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about that while we’re doing this thing I don’t know what to call because it’s not fucking, but it’s not making love either.
I feel pleasure, but…what kind of sex is this?
It’s not sex, I guess; it’s a physical way of trying to feel closer before we distance ourselves completely.
I weave my fingers through his tangled hair, and I feel relief, physical relief; there’s something narcotic about that gesture that makes me feel connected to him because I know he loves when I do it.
“Where are you?” he asks me, still inside me, looking at me with raised eyebrows.
“Thinking about us,” I mumble.
“About us…when?”
“Keep going…” I say.
He moves, and I settle my hips for one more charge. I’m going to come… I have to. So I touch myself, I stroke myself slowly while I look at him, and I hear him saying sorry he didn’t even take his clothes off.
“I needed this.” He sighs. “But I didn’t know it.”
“Keep going… Keep going…”
One of my hands is digging into his behind, under his unbuttoned pants and boxers, while the other speeds up, rubbing my finger against my clit. I’m not going to take long. I writhe, forget that this will be the last time we do it, and use my body to encourage him to let go too.
The orgasm is good, but it doesn’t say anything about us.
I get the feeling that he feels the same way when he finally lets go with a furrowed brow.
I feel the heat of his semen filling me, and Marín opens his mouth to let out a soft moan that hitches in his throat.
He pulls out and then pushes back in, like he’s cold and seeking shelter.
It’s not pleasure—I’m more clear about that now.
It’s a matter of loneliness. Even with the person you love, sex can be mediocre sometimes.
We stay lying there in bed, staring at the ceiling. I don’t want to move even to put my underwear back on, but I have to, so there’s no moment of calm and postcoital affection, just a breath that is followed by the sound of clothes being put back in place.
“Should we go to the living room?” I ask.
“No.” He shakes his head as he buttons up his pants. “Let’s talk here.”
He’s standing up, leaning against the closed door. I’m sitting at his desk after a brief stop in the bathroom.
After a long silence, Marín clears his throat and starts talking:
“I feel like I won a prize,” he says. “But I also feel like I cheated, like I was just handed it without actually competing. I’ve never done anything to, I don’t know, seduce you…
but I’m aware that I’ve always put you first in life ever since the beginning without really knowing why.
I guess some things are too much, Coco, to understand and to hold.
” He pauses and looks at me, crossing his arms over his chest. “Interrupt me whenever you want.”
“I will when I have something to say.”
“You’re my world, Coco. You have been since you moved into this apartment. Everything that matters to me is tangled up with you: my family, my house, my friends, my work. In a way everything leads me back to you. And that might sound really good, but it’s not healthy.”
“We’re not healthy, Marín?”
“Yes, yes, we are, but throwing myself into this now wouldn’t be. I…think it would be better if we can keep being friends, Coco, at least for now.”
“Okay.” I nod and look down at the ground. “I was expecting that.”
“I love you. I wasn’t lying when I said that, but…
maybe our relationship has always been so intimate that we got confused.
I know, I’m clear on you not being one of those girls that you can ‘try out and see if it works.’ With you it’s either ’til death or not at all.
You’re the ultimate girl, Coco, and I don’t know what to do with that. ”
“It scares you.”
“Yes. I don’t know if I can live up to it.”
I lick my lips and take a deep breath before I look at my watch.
“This shouldn’t have happened…” He closes his eyes, rubs his face with both hands, and then points at the bed. “It was a moment of weakness.”
“For both of us.”
“I…would rather have you forever, Coco. If I have to choose, I’d pick how we were, because any other way I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be.”
“Right. It’s fine.” I swallow.
His face transforms into a confused mask. “It’s fine?”
“Of course.”
“Are you saying that to be nice or because you came to the same conclusion?”
“No.” I smile against my will. “Neither. It’s because you didn’t take me into account when you made your decision, so I should only think about myself when I make mine.”
“What are you trying to say? If I don’t want to risk our friendship, that’s for you because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“No. It’s for you,” I assure him gravely.
“If it were for me, you would have asked yourself how we can keep living under the same roof with everything you know I feel for you. You’ve made a decision, and, well, I can’t do anything about it.
But don’t say it’s for me. It’s for you because you don’t want to leave your comfort zone and I scare you. ”
He doesn’t answer. He looks down at the ground.
“I don’t know if you were expecting me to cry or beg, Marín.
Maybe you thought I would be the one to drag this forward, so then, if it ended badly, it would be both of our faults because maybe you didn’t know how to be my partner, but I insisted when you warned me.
Whatever it is, I’ve learned that we idealize other people, and we tend to underestimate ourselves.
I never thought you’d choose to be half in with me, just like I never thought I’d take care of myself the way I’m going to. ”
I take a few steps toward the door.
“Coco…” he begs. “I don’t know how to do it any better.”
“Of course you know, but you don’t want to take the risk. You know taking a risk isn’t the only way to lose? Sometimes just doing nothing is enough. Go back to your sister. When you get back, the room will be empty.”
“Don’t do that…”
“Of course I’m going to.” I nod. “And if you love me, you’ll understand.” I take a deep breath. “I’d say goodbye now, I’d say thanks for all the years we’ve lived together, but I’m sure I’ll break down, and I’d rather do that when I’m alone.”
“I won’t know how to live without you. Don’t do this.”
“You will know, even though we’re going to miss each other a lot, Marín.
The good thing is that we’re going to learn a lot.
You’ll learn that life doesn’t always fit into your plans.
This whole ‘your way or the highway’ thing…
doesn’t always work. I’ll learn that, look, in the end I didn’t love you more than I love myself.
Good luck, Marín. Tell Gema I love her. And you—I love you too. But I love me more.”
I grab my bag from the table and leave the house without looking back.
I know. Deep down, I’m dying for him to run after me, to stop me, to tell me he was wrong, that he sees everything clearly now, that the future simply doesn’t exist if we’re not together, but…
they’re just wishes. Nobody’s following me.
Nobody’s running. Nobody’s saying anything.
And I keep walking.
* * *
I’m stoic for a little bit, seemingly calm, on the subway, but right before we get to Nuevos Ministerios, three stops from where I have to transfer, I burst into desperate, uncontrollable tears.
And even though I try to cover them with my hands, the other passengers start looking.
I’d be embarrassed if anything mattered to me right now.
I just feel empty, a pain that feels like a sandcastle crumbling inside my chest, leaving me even emptier.
A stranger sits down next to me, hands me a tissue, and squeezes my shoulder.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” she says.
Her eyes tell a story, her own, one I don’t know, but I know it didn’t kill her. I would smile, but all I can do is cry.