Chapter 9 Maurice
The late December evening on the island was beginning to cool, but Maurice couldn’t tell. He would surely combust, leaving only an ash pile where he stood.
But he couldn’t find it in him to worry. He wanted more of this feeling. Of her body near his.
Walking beside her would have to be enough.
Holiday lights strung across the plaza glowed against the increasing darkness. The air was thick with the aroma of frying dough and sugar.
Monique smiled as she snapped pictures of things that his eyes could not immediately see. They wandered past men at café tables playing dominoes and sipping from tiny cups. Shouted conversations tangled with music, laughter, and colored lights.
This had to be magic.
They turned a corner and the bay opened before them, vast and blue and glittering. A cruise ship sat anchored in the distance, its decks strung with lights.
Monique stopped. Raised her camera. Took shot after shot—the water, the mountains in the distance, the ship with its lights.
“Look at that,” she said, voice full of awe.
Monique pulled her cell phone out and snapped a few pictures of the green hills behind them.
She held up two fingers and snapped a selfie.
“I gotta send this to my girls.” Her voice was light with laughter as she took more pictures and sent several text messages.
“Do you know what it’s called?” she asked him, looking up at him from her phone.
“El Yunque,” Maurice said, nodding toward the peaks catching late sun.
She smiled big and returned to her texting. “I knew you’d know. You seem like the research type.”
Before he could say anything else, something made her laugh loud and strong. She looked up from her phone at him, eyes big. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I swear.” She waved her phone between them. “These heffas are bad influences.” Another notification made her laugh more.
He liked it. Her laugh. A lot.
Maurice leaned against a short stone wall, watching her tap into a sensation he couldn’t remember knowing for himself.
She scrunched up her face. No longer laughing.
He was at her side in two strides. “What is it?”
She turned her phone to him, but all the names and emojis moved too fast for him to catch on.
“They want me to send them a video.”
“And that’s bad because?”
She shoved his shoulder and sucked her teeth. “Whatever.”
This time, he laughed. The warmth in his chest and cheeks that Monique inspired had quickly become an addiction.
It took less than thirty seconds, but Monique turned in a slow circle with her phone before she gasped. “Mo, look at that!” She took off toward a narrow cut of a walkway that led to a watchtower.
He moved fast after her as her dress whipped in the wind like a kite, her laughter the string he was desperate to hold onto.
“Hold on. Are you still recording?” he called after her.
“Oh shit,” she said, turning the lens on him. “Isn’t this cool?” She pocketed her phone and looked at him like his opinion mattered.
“Very cool, Monique.”
Her smile faltered there within the dark cover of the small watchtower. He stepped closer, his body filling the doorway and blotting out the bustling Paseo de la Princesa behind him.
She was silhouetted by deep blue sparkling waters. Her short curls bounced in the salty wind.
She stepped forward. So did he.
So, the sea breeze smelled like her. His mind was quiet for the first time in decades. Was it the island or was it Monique? How could he hold onto this feeling? He couldn’t stay in Puerto Rico, but could he and Monique…
Looking up at him with the stars and sea in her eyes, he struggled to speak. “I…” he finally began again, “would like to get to know you more.”
She took another step toward him. “Okay.”
Both their phones pinged with text alerts, staunching whatever was flowing between them.
Glancing at her phone, Monique swore under her breath and fumbled with the device. “Didn’t stop the video. Dammit.”
The rapid shift to frustration didn’t surprise him. Monique was just vocal while he had never dared.
With his lips pressed in a tight line, Maurice read the string of texts. “They’re asking if we’re linking up for dinner.”
Monique looked up at him with an unspoken plea. Her right hand went to a spot near her left shoulder and rubbed.
“I’m content with whatever you want to do, though.” His answer was enough to still her hand. He didn’t know her story yet. But he knew she had one.
Whatever she carried, it lived in her body the same way his history lived in his. Not visible to most people. But there. Always there.
And for the first time, Maurice found himself wanting to know someone’s story not to help them, not to fix them, not to fulfill some duty.
Just to know them. To understand. To see and be seen.
A street vendor pushed a cart past, calling out: “?Pasteles! ?Coquito! ?Feliz Ano Nuevo!”
Music swelled from a nearby bar.
Maurice’s phone buzzed again. The 1800 alert. Thirty minutes until another group meal. He silenced it and typed a message in the group chat. He and Monique would not join them.
A flurry of quick replies followed as Maurice pocketed his phone.
They started walking again, following the waterfront. The promenade was decorated for the season. Nativity scenes in some alcoves, lavish Christmas trees wrapped in lights in others. A banner overhead announced a New Year’s Eve concert.
“What do you do?” Monique asked, her camera raised toward a weathered fishing boat bobbing in the water. “Back home, I mean.”
She’d asked him twice now. What could he say that wouldn’t smother this thing blooming between them?
His teeth clenched and his jaw ticked as he searched for the right words.
I spent decades in prison and now run a reentry job program with your aunt’s wife. Saying that would nullify these hours they’d spent together, making their meeting, their connection, feel like more of a setup than it already was.
“I work in—” he started. Swallowed his words. Started again. “Construction.” This was true, but not the whole truth.
Monique looked at him for a minute. Then she sighed and walked farther down the cobblestone street.
He was used to people walking away.
He found her two streets over at the kind of place most people would have walked past. Wobbly tables, plastic chairs, fluorescent lights, hand-painted menu on the wall only in Spanish. She looked mostly relaxed at the counter as she completed her order.
“I got enough for both of us,” she said, not really looking at him as she placed two paper cups on a table near the window.
“Thank you,” he said, lowering himself into the chair that groaned under his weight.
She shrugged, still not meeting his eyes. Instead, she picked up her cup and looked out the window at nothing.
Outside, bass boomed from passing cars, children laughed, and elders fussed. But between Maurice and Monique, the silence grew uncomfortable and sharp. A woman with a placid face and grease-spotted apron sat plates of steaming fried dough on their table.
Maurice had always been good with silence, but this one had a sharp edge that he didn’t know what to do with.
He watched her and then mimicked her movements.
Monique wrapped a napkin around an alcapurria and blew on it before taking a bite.
He took a napkin and picked up a fritter. “These look good.”
She looked at him. He put his food down.
“So,” she said, her voice flat, “you want to get to know me more.”
“Yes.” He picked his fritter up again.
“But knowing you isn’t allowed.”
His jaw tightened, and he sat his fritter back down on the plate.
“You asked me what I did. Asked me about my pictures. I told you.” She sat her food down and wiped her hands. “I asked you twice, and you act like I’m fishing for state secrets or something.”
“But you didn’t tell me what you did.”
“Have you ever heard a joke before? Sarcasm? I thought I was pretty obvious. And you even shit-talked back at lunch.” Her voice had risen, and pain pinched at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She rubbed just below her left shoulder.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me.”
“And you think it’s a cakewalk for me?” She let out a laugh filled with bitterness. “I’m out here, Mo, thousands of miles outside of my comfort zone. And I thought…” Monique sucked in a quivering breath. The lights outside the window shimmered in her now wet eyes.
She shook her head and sat up taller. “I’m not gonna do this.” She stood. “Enjoy the food. We’re done here.” She grabbed her camera bag from the empty seat between them and stood, her back to him.
Why did everything have to be so complicated?
All the hours of counseling and training he’d had, but at the moment, he couldn’t recall any of it.
“God, I was so stupid. I knew better.” Although she was talking to herself, the words hit Maurice like fists. “I don’t do half-truths and whatever the fuck he does whenever I open my goddamned mouth.”
The fluorescent lights above them flickered, and everything around him pressed in. His fingers went into his beard. He scratched and tugged. Think. Speak. Do something real, something honest, or she walks away.
He counted his breaths. Name the feeling. Shame. Name the trigger. Being seen as a liar, a manipulator, an abuser. Name the response. Deflection. Silence. Withdrawal.
How about responding with the truth? his therapist persona challenged. It was the same system he used with his team. The same tools used on him.
“You’re right,” he finally said.
She turned around, blinking at him sitting there with his head hung low. Like she wasn’t expecting that response, or much of a response at all.
“I’m right about what? About being an idiot?”
His attention whipped to her face. “Of course not. You’re right about me asking you to let me in and me not reciprocating.”
Her laugh was rueful. “Whatever this game is, I’m done playing. I’ve had enough people take from me and give nothing back. I’m tired.”
He watched Monique step out into the night, her head high. In less than twenty-four hours of meeting her, he’d made a mess of things.