Bodies Do Things
Ortiz
She picks the movie. That’s the rule now. She stands in front of the shelf in the common room with her head tipped sideways, reading covers, and she picks the dumbest one on it, a car movie with no plot that Mess bought for the explosions.
“This one.”
“That one’s bad.”
“Good.” She pushes it at me. “I don’t want to think.”
Hendrix limps through with a bag of ice on his shoulder and looks at the two of us, at the couch, at the bag of microwave popcorn I’m holding. His mouth starts to go. Then he looks at her face, and whatever he was going to say turns into a yawn.
“I’m going to bed,” he says. “Don’t burn the building down.”
“It’s popcorn.”
“I’ve seen you cook, brother.” He goes down the hall on the good leg. His door shuts.
So it’s the two of us on a couch that’s seen better years, with the lights off and a movie about cars. She sits at one end. I sit at the other. That lasts about as long as the first explosion.
She laughs at the wrong parts. She always did. A man drives a car off a building and she laughs so hard she puts the bowl of popcorn down. I’m not watching the car anymore. I’m watching her mouth. It’s the first time I’ve seen it open all the way.
She catches me and goes back to the movie. I go back to the movie. Neither of us moves.
Then she pulls her feet up under her, and her knee ends up against my thigh.
That’s all it is. A knee. She doesn’t move it. I don’t move mine. A car blows up. I know exactly how much of her weight is leaning on that one point of contact, and I sit there with my hands on my own legs and let it be there.
“You’re not watching,” she says.
“I’m watching.”
“You’re watching me.”
“You’re better than the movie.”
She throws a piece of popcorn at my head. I let it hit me. We both reach for the bowl at the same time and my hand closes over hers, and she doesn’t pull it back. She looks at our hands. Then she looks at me.
Here’s the honest thing. I’d have taken a beating for the younger version of this woman. I fed her and walked her home and waited for her light. Nothing about that has changed. Nothing about that is this.
This is a grown woman with her knee on my leg and her hand under mine and her hair down, looking at me in the dark, and I want her in a way I have never once wanted anything that wasn’t a fight. It’s new. It’s got nothing to do with asking Rook for me or the feathers. It’s her.
She takes her hand back. She takes a handful of popcorn with it, so it looks like that’s why.
“We should stop watching this,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a terrible movie.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us gets up.
We make it to the end. The last car blows up. The credits roll. She sits there with her knee against me. I sit there wanting her. I’m the one who stands up first. I have to. If I don’t, I’m going to put my hand on her face. She’s going to let me.
And I don’t know yet what it costs her to let me. The cost won’t be zero, but it can’t be too much either.
“Bed,” I say.
She looks up at me for a long second. Then she nods and stands.
Her door is at the end. Mine is two down. We walk the hall not touching. She stops at her door with her hand on it. I stop at mine.
“Goodnight, Mateo.”
“Night.”
The bolt slides. I’ll never not listen for the click. I go in and shut my door. I stand there in the dark with my hands open, because they want a thing they can’t have. Then I take my boots off, lie down on top of the covers, and listen to the wind start.
The storm comes in hard after midnight.
Torque goes down and chains the doors. The roof does its talking. The lights brown out and come back and brown out again, and then they don’t come back. Rain hits the plates sideways.
The knock is so light I almost miss it.
I get the door open. She’s standing there in a T-shirt and Beth’s sleep shorts with her arms wrapped around herself. A flash from the window shows me her face. She’s not crying. She’s white.
“Can I stay?”
I step back. She comes in and stands by the bed. Then she pulls the covers back on the side by the wall and gets in. I get in on the other side. For a while we lie there on our backs while the building shakes.
“You used to sit with me on the step,” she says. “When it stormed.”
“You’d put your head under my arm.”
“I was seven.”
“I know.”
She turns onto her side. She puts her head where she used to put it. I bring my arm around and rest it on her shoulder, not holding, just there, and she lets out a breath I can feel through my shirt.
“There,” she says. “That’s it.”
“That’s it.”
“I feel like the world can’t touch me right now. When I’m tucked into you.”
Her hand comes up and lies flat on my chest. Her leg comes over mine. She’s warm all along my side. Her hair is against my jaw. She smells like Beth’s shampoo and the storm. She goes soft against me a little at a time, the way you do when your body decides before your head does.
I don’t go soft. I lie there in the dark with a woman against me that I’ve wanted since the moment I saw her face on this side of the border, and my body does what bodies do. There’s no stopping it. I try to ease my hips back from her without moving her, and I’m too late.
She feels it.
She goes still. All of her, all at once, the way she went still on the step. Then she’s out of the bed, off the far side, and on her feet. The words come out of her before she’s upright.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t do it on purpose, I’m sorry.”
“Pluma.”
“I’ll go. I’m going.” She’s at the door. She’s got it open. “I’m sorry, Mateo.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Fuck. I scared her.
Her bolt goes home down the hall. I lie there with the covers still warm where she was.
A minute ago she had her hand on my chest and her leg over mine, telling me the world couldn’t touch her. Then she was off the bed with her hands up, saying sorry to me. Over and over.
Sorry.
Santo taught her that. I want him in front of me so bad my jaw aches.
It doesn’t help, because I’m the one who scared her. I didn’t do a thing but lie there. My body did the rest. She was safe in my bed. Now she’s behind a door in the dark.
I’m lying here still hard, still wanting her. I want her the way I wanted her on the couch. That didn’t go anywhere when she ran. I wish to God it had.
I got her back and I lost her in one second. I don’t know how a man fixes that.
The rain keeps hitting the plates. In a few hours she has to walk past my door to get to the coffee, and I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to be when she does.
I want to go to her. I want it so bad I have to lay on my fucking hands.
She wanted me. I felt it in her before she ran. Every inch of her went soft against me, and that’s the part I can’t put down.
But I’ll go without touching her for the rest of my life before I ever make her afraid of me.