Pinky Promise
Maribel
Mateo’s already up when I come out.
I stood inside my door a long time working out what to say when I passed his. I didn’t need it. He’s at the counter with the pot in his hand, and he pours me a cup and slides it across before I get there.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
Hendrix is at the table with his leg up on a chair and a plate of eggs he’s not eating, so nothing else gets said. Mateo drinks his coffee standing. When I reach past him for the sugar, he steps back from the counter so fast his hip hits the stove, and he covers it by looking for a spoon.
He doesn’t sit by me. He doesn’t put himself between me and anything. He asks if my feet are okay. I say yes. He nods, and that’s the whole conversation. He’s easy. He’s polite. He’s a man being decent to a guest.
I did that. I put my hand on his chest in the dark and told him nothing could touch me, and then I ran from him with my hands up and said sorry until I got the door shut. Now he can’t look at me longer than it takes to pour.
I ruined everything. Me. Just like I always do. Maybe I never should have come here when I escaped. But I had nowhere else to go.
“Shop needs me,” he tells Hendrix. “Bay’s short a man. Back this afternoon.”
“Bring back something to eat that isn’t eggs.”
He takes his keys off the hook. He stops with his hand on the door, and for one second I think he’s going to say it, whatever it is. He says, “Rook’s on the lot,” instead.
He doesn’t look at me on the way out. The door shuts. I stand there with a full cup. The only thing I know for sure is that I drove him out of his own building.
“He’s fine,” Hendrix says, to his eggs.
“I know.”
“You don’t know. But he’s fine.” He pushes the plate across the table at me. “Eat. He’ll ask me if you did.”
I eat. It’s terrible. Even though he noticed the strain, Hendrix doesn’t say another word about it, and I could kiss him for that.
Steel is in the mat room with the door open, waiting for me, and he shuts it when I’m in.
“Wrist,” he says.
I show him what he showed me yesterday. He grabs. I turn out through the thumb and step back and get my hands up.
“Again.”
He grabs harder. I get out.
“Again.”
We do it until my forearm burns. He goes to the other wrist. Then both, and my hands are too small to break both at once, so he shows me how to go for the weak thumb and take one hand with me.
Then both again. Then from behind. I make space with my hip and go for where he told me to go and stop short. He lets go.
“Good. Again.”
I don’t go again. I stand there with my hands on my knees, breathing, and I make myself say it before I can decide not to.
“Can I ask you something.”
“No.”
I ignore that. “Do men get hard when they don’t want to?”
He goes completely still. I’ve seen him hit the bag so hard the chain sang, and I’ve never seen him hold that still.
Then he looks at the door. “No.”
“No, they don’t?”
“No. I’m not having this conversation.”
“I’m not asking about you.” My face is hot. I make myself keep going. “The storm. I was scared and I went to his room. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything at all, and I—“
“Stop.” He puts a hand up. “I know who. It’s all over his face. I don’t want to know the rest. Not your past. Not your future. Not what you did in his mother’s basement.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I was seven, Steel! And I’m not going to tell you the rest. I’m not asking for pornographic details. I just want to know if it means something.”
He rubs his jaw with his wrapped hand. He looks at the bag. He looks at the ceiling. He looks at anything in the room but me, and I stand there and wait, because I’ve waited out worse men than Steel for less than this.
“Bodies do things,” he says finally. “Doesn’t mean anybody asked them to.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay.”
“Again,” Steel says, and grabs my wrist.
I get out. Somewhere in the repetition, it settles in me. He didn’t ask me for anything. I didn’t do anything wrong by lying down next to him.
Now I see the bed the way it actually was—his hips easing back before I felt it, not toward me. He was trying to give me room, and I got away first.
His body did a thing. It doesn’t mean he asked for anything. Maybe it had nothing to do with me.
That makes me sad. But I don’t think he’s angry. I think he’s embarrassed that I curled into him and said something I never should have said to a man who doesn’t want me.
He’s taking care of me because he feels like he should. And this is a place where women don’t get hurt.
“You’re not breathing,” Steel says.
“I’m breathing.”
“Breathe better. Again.”
When he finally lets me go, he unwraps his hands and doesn’t look up. “Same time tomorrow.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“He’s not going to hear it from me.”
“Pinky promise,” I say. We lock little fingers.
He tucks the wrap in. “No one in this club hears about any of it. And for the record, Ortiz’s dick is my least favorite topic of conversation.”
I mime zipping my lips shut.
Mateo comes back when the sun’s going low. I’m on the bottom stair, where I waited for him before. He’s got a paper bag from somewhere that smells better than eggs.
He stops in the door the way he did that first afternoon. Then he says hey and hands the bag off to Hendrix. He goes past me toward the back hall, wide, so his arm doesn’t come near mine.
This morning I thought that was him not being able to stand near me. It isn’t. He thinks I want room. He thinks he scared me, so he’s giving me the whole building. He’ll keep giving it to me until I say otherwise.
I’ve spent a long time not saying otherwise to men. I’m done with it.
“Mateo.”
He stops. He doesn’t turn around right away. When he does, his face has nothing on it, the way the boy version did when a thing mattered. That’s how I know I don’t matter anymore either.
I don’t say I’m sorry. I said it enough last night for a lifetime. I don’t say anything about his bed, or mine, or the storm. He doesn’t either. He stands there with the back hall behind him and waits to see what I need, because that’s what he’s been doing since the step.
“I’m homesick. Will you take me to Little Havana?”
He looks at me. It goes on a while. I watch it land, all of it. I’m asking to leave this building. I’m asking to go there. I’m asking him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll tell Torque.”
Steel comes out of the mat room behind me with the wraps hanging from one hand.
“Same time tomorrow,” he says.
Mateo looks from him to me. “Same time for what?”
“She asked me to teach her how to get out of a man’s hands.”
Something closes in Mateo’s face.
Steel sees it. “She asked.”
“I heard you.”
“Your face didn’t.”
Mateo looks at me. “You want to keep doing it?”
“I asked.”
He nods once. “Then learn everything he’ll teach you.”
Steel goes past us toward the bar. “She’d be here until she’s eighty.”