Twenty-One
‘YOU’RE LATE,’ I GRUNT, AS I RIP OPEN THE FRONT door of my step mother’s condo approximately one millisecond after knuckles wrap against it.
‘Hello to you too, my dear.’ Breezing inside, Heath brushes a kiss on my cheek, the flowers cradled in his arms tickling my midriff. ‘It’s one minute past.’
‘Which is late.’ I grunt again. ‘What are those?’
‘These are flowers, Daniela. For your stepmom.’
I grunt a third time. Great. Can’t wait to hear how Marisol turns dahlias into a shortcoming on my part. Bad daughter. Why didn’t you bring me flowers?
I jolt as a thumb smooths over the skin between my eyebrows, a valiant attempt to iron out the wrinkles there that only ends in failure – that only makes them worse, really. As does a cautious ‘You okay?’
I’ve been in the presence of my stepmother with only my brother as back-up for an entire hour. Of course I’m not okay. ‘Fine. Can we get this over with?’
‘Hey.’ Heath catches me by the wrist before I can start down the hall. Tattooed fingers tug on the hem of the stupid, pretty dress I wore for stupid, petty reasons. ‘You look pretty.’
I sniff – and then I sniff again when I catch a whiff of something unfamiliar, something distinctly un-Heath. ‘You’re wearing cologne.’
‘God forbid I actually want to impress my mother-in-law.’
‘Do I need to remind you that this is fake?’
‘No, Daniela. I’m well aware. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Dani.’
I shoot him a look.
He shoots me one too. Soft and curious, and as concerned as a repeated, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Just peachy.’
‘You nervous?’
‘No.’ I scoff. Nervous requires a certain amount of ignorance, of blissful oblivion, of uncertainty about what’s about to unfold. I, however, know exactly how this dinner is going to go. Well, I know it’ll be one of two outcomes.
She’ll love him, and it’ll make my life miserable in the near future when our arrangement inevitably ends. Or she’ll hate him, and it’ll make my life miserable right now.
‘C’mon.’ I bat his hand away and jerk my head down the hall. ‘She’s waiting.’
He stops me again. ‘Hey.’
‘Jesus, what?’
A thumb and a forefinger pinch my chin, holding me in place while eyes hold mine captive, sea-green on dark brown. ‘You look really pretty, Daniela.’
‘You already said that.’
‘Wasn’t sure you heard me.’
‘She doesn’t listen.’
Heath’s hand abruptly drops as my head whips toward the other end of the hallway, to the kitchen doorway that was empty a minute ago, but sure isn’t anymore. ‘Never has,’ my stepmother muses, laments, and chastises all at once. ‘Unless someone’s talking about swimming, of course.’
‘Marisol.’ As if a steel bar has replaced my spine, I stand ram-rod straight as I clear my throat. ‘This is Heath. Heath, this is my stepmom.’
Flashing that smile, Heath hands over his floral offering as he greets Marisol enthusiastically, and is either completely oblivious to or pointedly ignores the stiff way she returns it. The tight smile. The dry way she insists he call her Mari.
He doesn’t.
Wise boy.
He does, however, wrap his fingers around mine and holds tight as he all but drags me down the hall of the one-bedroom house my stepmom’s lived in since we moved here, but I never did.
I went straight into dorms before finding my studio.
This isn’t a home to me – it certainly doesn’t feel like one, and I wonder if Heath can feel that too.
If he does, he doesn’t show it. That sunny exterior doesn’t falter even a little bit, and it only expands when we enter the kitchen and Seba hollers an exuberant greeting.
Heath lets go of my hand to indulge in a bro-hug, and I actively fight the urge to grab him again, to maneuver myself into that hug and the conversation that follows, because those two being occupied with each other leaves me free.
Vulnerable. Susceptible to a maternal attack that comes in the form of fingers wrapping around my forearm and squeezing, of not-that-quiet Spanish sing-songed in my ear, marked by the accent of someone who grew up speaking a different dialect than the one I know.
‘Es muy guapo.’
‘Baste.’
‘Qué? I can’t say your boyfriend’s handsome?’
‘Stop.’
‘Too handsome for you.’ An elbow jabs my ribs. ‘Lucky girl.’
‘Soy el afortunado.’
Marisol squeaks, her wide eyes flitting to Heath. ‘Dani didn’t tell me you speak Spanish.’
I grumble, ‘Dani tried to.’
Heath laughs. ‘I spent the last few summers surfing in Sayulita.’
Me and Seba exchange a look. Of course he did.
‘Dani told me you’re from Seville,’ Heath adds, and as Marisol brightens at the mention of her Spanish hometown, my brother roll his eyes and mouths kissass at me.
Sidling a step closer, Seba stoops to murmur in my ear. ‘Did you make him study before this?’
‘No.’ I didn’t tell him anything about Mari – I don’t know how the fuck he knows that.
‘How did you go from a drunken make-out to meeting the mother in a couple of months?’
‘I told you, I’m charming.’
‘Like a grizzly bear fresh out of hibernation.’
My elbow is halfway to my brother’s gut when a throat clears, overly loud and exceptionally pointed.
‘Here you go, Heath,’ our stepmother coos, her saccharine tone a stark contrast to the look she shoots us. ‘Since you’re the only one who’s hungry.’
Like two naughty kids, Seba and I smile sheepishly as we sidle toward the new best friends over by the kitchen counter. My mouth is quick to flatten, though, when I catch sight of Heath’s heaping plate of food, a stifled groan rattling my bones. ‘You don’t have to eat all that.’
‘Daniela.’ Marisol tuts. ‘He’s a growing boy.’
A growing athlete, who, like me, prefers not to load up on greasy food the night before a hard practice. God, it’s like she made the worst foods she could think of. ‘We’ve talked about this, Mari. We’re in season.’
Huffing, she waves me off.
‘It’s okay.’ Cupping my elbow briefly, Heath flashes a smile on his way to sit at the kitchen table.
‘It’s not.’ She does this every year. Every single year. It’s been, what, a decade of me adjusting my diet when the swim season rolls around to maximize my performance, and, still, she can’t wrap her head around it.
‘So uptight.’ Marisol tuts again. Passing me a plate that’s piled just as high, she shakes her head and moves to join Heath at the table, guiding him into one seat before dropping into the one beside him. ‘How do you manage her?’
A bemused noise parts Heath’s lips. ‘Manage her?’
Marisol waves dismissively. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t think—’
Taking a leaf out of my stepmother’s book, I exaggerate a cough. Leave it, I mouth, as I take the seat opposite Heath, my brother beside me. And though Heath grimaces a little, he listens.
Slumping with relief, I avoid his gaze, focusing on pushing my food around my plate as if I might actually eat it.
A record-breaking sixty seconds passes before Marisol clucks her tongue. ‘I made that for you, Daniela.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re not doing that again, are you?’
My spine damn near cracks with how abruptly I stiffen. ‘No.’
‘You remember what happened last time, hm? You looked terrible. All boney.’
It isn’t funny, but I find myself stifling a laugh of sorts. That’s her concern. Not my health. Not my wellbeing. My fucking bones protruding was a little too unsightly for her – that’s what she remembers. ‘I have practice in the morning. I can’t eat all of this.’
‘Who says? Your father?’
Seba’s fork hits the table with a clatter. ‘Marisol. What the fuck?’
‘Don’t swear at me,’ she chides. ‘Am I lying? What am I saying wrong?’
What am I saying wrong? Haven’t I asked that before? God, didn’t I ask that just the other day, when Heath was so perplexed as to why I didn’t want him witnessing something just like this? Is this how I make people feel when suffering my social ineptitude?
Fuck. What a horrifying thought.
Even if I wanted to, I can’t eat now.
Beneath the table, a foot nudges mine. Cloying bile burns my throat as I force my gaze upwards, flinching when it meets a furious one. Tongue running over his teeth, Heath jerks his head toward the door. I shake my own. Leaving will just make things worse.
Bright, narrowed eyes shift to my stepmother, and the tip of my socked feet connect with Heath’s shin, another shake of my head forbidding him from opening his mouth. That won’t help either. It won’t change anything. Nothing will.
One of these days, I’ll grow the fuck up and stop hoping otherwise.
We drive in uncomfortable, nauseating silence for just long enough to escape my stepmother’s neighborhood before Heath pulls over.
We’re on the outskirts of town. It’s dark.
It’s cold. It’s a long walk home. I don’t even want to go home, yet still, I consider it.
Anything to escape this . . . this. This is beyond description.
I am beyond description, I’m so many things right now, there isn’t a proper word to encapsulate it all.
‘Humiliated’ doesn’t even begin to cut it.
As if the man behind the wheel can hear my thoughts, the passenger side lock suddenly engages.
‘Dani,’ he starts, and I flinch. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Pressed close enough to the door to feel the chill leaking in from outside, I knuckle my dry, itchy eyes. ‘Why?’
‘I should’ve said something. I just didn’t wanna make it worse.’
‘Not your responsibility.’
‘Yeah, it is. I’m your— We’re friends. That wasn’t okay, Dani. The way she talks to you isn’t okay.’
‘It’s just the way she is.’
‘That doesn’t make it—’
‘Okay?’ I finish for him roughly. ‘I know. I know, Heath. But I don’t really have the luxury to be picky when it comes to family members. I don’t have anyone else, and I barely fucking see her anyways so it doesn’t really matter.’
‘Of course it matters, Daniela. What she said—’
‘Don’t,’ I snap and beg in equal measures.
For once, he ignores me. ‘You had an eating disorder?’
‘No,’ I sharply correct. ‘I had disordered eating habits. There’s a difference. My dad had me on a pretty strict diet for a while. It caused me some problems, but I got over it.’
An understatement, maybe, but, fuck, I don’t want to get into it.
It’s not exactly something I yearn to relive.
It was a dark spot, born of my sudden emergence from puberty, of my weight naturally rising and some parts of me filling out – all detrimental to my burgeoning career, according to Dad.
All completely unavoidable, thanks to genetics, but, God, that didn’t stop him from trying to fix it.
It was the worst I’ve ever swum in my life. The worst I’ve ever felt in my life. I was lethargic and weak and slow, and I hated it. It was the one time I can remember feeling like my stepmom was on my side.
The memory is slightly tainted by her grievance mostly lying with how terrible I looked, but hey. Beggars can’t be choosers.
‘I got over it,’ I state again firmly – I remind myself as much as I do anyone else. ‘I’m okay now, I swear. I went to therapy and I got a nutritionist, and I don’t need a fake boyfriend to psycho-analyze me too, okay?’
‘Hey, I’m your real friend, Dani, and I fucking care about you, and just because you got better doesn’t mean it’s okay for anyone to throw that shit at you like that. Family or not, that’s fucked up.’
‘I know,’ I say again, but it doesn’t even sound like real words anymore.
‘It’s fucked-up that you let her.’
‘Hey—’
‘I’m not finished,’ he cuts me off, firm and stern and so damn serious. ‘There is no one in the fucking world that is owed the right to talk to you like that.’
‘She helped raise me, Heath.’
‘That was her choice. You didn’t choose to lose your parents, but she chose to be one.
And if she regrets it, then that’s her cross to bear, not yours.
That’s her loss, and it’s such a fucking loss, you hear me?
Jesus, Dani, I mourn the twenty years I didn’t know you.
You don’t deserve to be looked down on like that.
Not by your stepmom, not by your coach, not by yourself—’
I flinch. ‘Heath—’
‘And not by Ben either.’
‘What does Ben have to do with this?’
‘Everything, Dani. You let him treat you like shit – don’t look at me like that, baby, you know you did, you said it yourself – because it was easier. Because you were lonely. Because you thought you didn’t have anyone else.’
‘There was no thinking, Heath. I didn’t have anyone else.’
‘Well, you do now. You have people who care about you. People who would lose their fucking minds if they’d heard that tonight.
I’m losing my mind. I feel fucking insane because I don’t get how you, you, can just sit there and take it.
You . . . you are so fucking wonderful, honey.
Anyone who treats you otherwise does not deserve you. ’
I . . . gape. Heath breathes heavily, he breathes anger, and I just gape at him silently, because while I’m more than familiar with people being mad at me, somebody being mad for me is completely new.
I don’t know what to do with it. How to process it.
How to ease it, to make it better, and, God, do I want to.
Swallowing roughly, I breach the gap between us, my hand hesitant as it finds his nape. Squeezes. Offers comfort, and finds it tenfold when he slumps into my touch. I don’t know what to say other than ‘Thank you.’
I don’t think it’s enough, but, for now, he lets it be. He shifts until his mouth finds the delicate skin of my inner wrist, a hot breath warming my veins. ‘Please don’t ask me to leave you alone right now. I can’t do it.’
Honestly, for once, I can’t imagine anything worse. My pinky tapping a thoughtful rhythm against the dainty match inked behind his ear, I drag my thumb over shorn, blond hair as I try to piece together exactly what I want right now.
I think I surprise both of us by blurting, ‘I need a drink.’