Believe: (Intermix) (True Believers) (9 page)

With that I climbed in and slammed the door shut behind me. I was thirsty and hot and annoyed.

“Wow. You really like her, don’t you?” Tyler started the car. “You sound about as rational as I did when I met Rory.”

“Nothing I just said was irrational. And it’s fucking hot as balls in this car. Don’t you have air-conditioning?” I kicked off my shoes and stuck my arm out the window.

“Oh my God, your feet smell horrible, man. Look, if you really like Robin, then I can’t say anything about that. It’s just that something is clearly going down with her, and if you were just looking to hook up, I don’t think I can be okay with that. She’s a nice girl.”

“It’s never been my style to go after a chick. They usually come to me. So the fact that I am should tell you something.”

“Yeah, that you’re an arrogant douche bag.” Tyler scoffed, amused.

It wasn’t meant to be arrogant. But it was the truth, like I said. Girls wanted to get a reaction from me, so they flirted hard-core.

“Just you know, maybe take it slow or something, that’s all I’m saying.” Tyler was fumbling in his dash trying to pull a cigarette out of his pack. “Dude, light a cigarette for me.”

“No.” I wasn’t putting that poison to my mouth even for ten seconds.

He made a sound of exasperation. “I forgot, you’re a purist. I respect that about you, but right now it’s not helping my personal addiction.”

“Robin is the only person I’ve ever met who is as clean as I am,” I told him.

“Yeah, about that. She wasn’t always that way. She was a regular on the party scene last year. So maybe it will last and maybe it won’t. Just FYI.”

“I know. She told me that.” But it had me thinking. What had changed?

When we got back to the house, I showered and borrowed more clothes from Riley. I took all the dirty laundry from his and the boys’ room downstairs and put it in the washing machine. Since I was bumming clothes off everyone, the least I could do was wash them. Though I wasn’t sure who the Sexiest Bearcat tank top belonged to. It came out of Tyler’s room, but I couldn’t picture Rory wearing that, but what did I know?

Apparently not much. I sat out on the back patio where there was a decent breeze and I started doing some poking around on the Internet on my phone, checking out Robin’s social media sites.

Tyler was definitely telling the truth. There were dozens of pictures of Robin posing with friends at parties with a glass in her hand, or sometimes a beer can. It didn’t even really look like the girl I had met. She had big hair and lots of makeup on, and in every picture she was wearing tight and tiny clothes. Jessica and Kylie were with her a lot, and they were smiling and laughing and doing sexy poses. Douchey guys were photobombing half the shots or had their arms around the girls. There was only a picture or two with Rory in it, and she never dressed like her friends. They would be towering in high heels and miniskirts, and she would be wearing a floral dress with a lacy collar, looking out of place.

Robin definitely looked the party girl part in these pictures.

Interesting.

So which one was the real Robin?

I knew which one I liked better. The one I knew. The one who wore easy and loose clothes and who never had a single speck of makeup on her beautiful face. Those fake eyelashes crawling above her eyes in some of the pictures made me want to reach through my phone and yank them off. That wasn’t her. I didn’t think.

Where was the girl who studiously painted and sketched, her face a calm lake of concentration? Where was the girl who laid on the blanket beside me and quoted Thoreau to the sky?

It was disturbing and after half an hour I felt tense. There was only one recent picture of her up and it had a July date and had been posted by Jessica. Robin was wearing some kind of uniform and they were in a restaurant. The description was “We need tips, bitches!” written by Jessica. Robin was sitting down at the bar, bottles behind her, and she was leaning on her hand, like she was exhausted. The smile she gave the camera was lukewarm and forced, and there were circles under her eyes. I knew this face. Not the other ones.

Tossing my phone down on the picnic table, I tried to process what I was feeling. It was weird, but I already missed her.

And now I wanted to know what had changed in her life. What had happened.

When Tyler came and sat next to me to smoke a cigarette, I asked him, “Where’s Jessica?” I knew she didn’t know anything, given the conversation I’d heard between her and Robin, but I was curious what else she might be able to tell me.

“She and Riley took Easton to buy school supplies. Half an hour they’ll be back and Riley will be bitching about how much paper costs and Easton will spend an hour rearranging his pencil case. Mark my words.”

“Things seem good here, cuz.” It did. They looked to have settled down into a life that was working for all of them.

“It is. Sad it couldn’t really happen until after Mom died, but there it is. You know how it goes.”

“I do.” I propped my head with my hand. “I give it a month before my mom comes around looking for me or you to bum money off of. Just be prepared for it.”

“I know.”

“So what happened to Robin?” I asked, straight out. “Because something obviously did.”

Tyler just shook his head. “I don’t know. You said it yourself—if she wants to tell anyone, she will.”

That wasn’t good enough for me. Because I had a sneaking suspicion that despite what she had told Jessica, this was about a guy making her uncomfortable. And I also thought I knew who it was. “Was Nathan at that party? The one Jessica was talking about, back at the beginning of the summer?”

“Yeah.” Tyler blew out a stream of smoke.

“Was Kylie?”

“No, she’s been back home all summer.”

“Who else was there?”

“I don’t know. Bill, Nathan’s roommate. Fifty other people. Robin was hanging around with some guy Jessica knows.”

I didn’t want to know what that meant. I could already feel the beginnings of jealousy. Frustrated, not sure why, I went to send a text to Robin. My first instinct was just to say “hey,” but then I knew that wouldn’t give me the response I wanted. So I started surfing for a kitten picture as Tyler watched me.

“Phoenix.”

“Yeah?”

“If Robin isn’t in a good place, if she isn’t, you know, emotionally healthy or whatever, is that really the best person for you to be involved with? Don’t get pissed. I’m just asking because we’re blood. And I care.”

He looked uncomfortable with what he had just said, and I appreciated the effort. “I don’t know, man. But when has that ever stopped anyone for falling for a girl? Logic’s got nothing to it with it.” I shook my phone. “Hell, I’m searching for kitten pictures for her because she likes them. I mean, what the fuck does that tell you?”

“That you’re whipped.”

I gave my cousin a rueful look, not at all offended. “Exactly. Ty, you know what we did yesterday? We had a picnic in the park. A picnic. Who does that for me? No one.”

“A girl who likes you.” He shot me a grin. “Though God knows why.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Did you shower?” He made puckering lips at me.

I recoiled. “Dude.”

Tyler laughed so hard he started coughing. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Dick.”

“Pussy.”

Quality family time. That’s what we were having. It felt good.

Jayden came out of the house with an unholy grin on his face. Then we got drenched with water as he let loose with a water gun. It actually knocked Tyler’s cigarette out of his hand. I shook my hair out of my eyes and tried not to laugh.

“I’m going to kill Jessica for buying him that.”

Tyler didn’t really look mad. But he did leap off the picnic table and go after his brother, who screamed and ran into the kitchen, pulling the door shut behind him.

Wiping my now wet phone on my jeans, I sent Robin a picture of a cute and fluffy white kitten. I typed “you” in the message. Then I sent her a grumpy cat image. “Me.”

Having saved two pictures of her off her page, the one of her at work looking so tired and an earlier one of her wearing a clinging red dress, spray tanned and arms up in the air as she danced, I was studying them side by side when she responded.

It was an image of two adult cats leaning shoulder to shoulder on each other. “Us,” was all she had written.

Fuck me. I wanted that.

Despite what everyone seemed to think, I did have emotions other than anger.

I just didn’t know what to do with them.

Chapter Six

Robin

I wasn’t playing it cool with Phoenix. I knew that. I just didn’t care. What did playing head games with guys get me ever? A boyfriend who cheated and a lot of casual dates. There was no flirt left in me. She seemed to have disappeared with the vodka. So I was just being honest with Phoenix and he seemed okay with it. Maybe in another three days he would get bored with me, but then whatever. It was better than pretending that I was too busy or too in demand to spend time with him.

But I did feel a twinge of embarrassment that maybe I had overreached with the cat picture. His response came right away, though, and had been to ask me if he could see me later, so I felt reassured. More than that. I felt pleased. Excited.

The way he had kissed me . . . like I was precious, fragile. Like he wanted to meld us together into one person. Like he genuinely liked me, like he looked at me and saw me and wanted
me
. It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t what I had ever experienced.

Then Kylie and Nathan had shown up and I had immediately felt guilty. Not only did I feel guilty about Kylie, but I felt guilty that Tyler knew and that Phoenix didn’t. Plus I felt a little sick to my stomach at seeing Nathan, who had acted weird about Phoenix being there. I hadn’t seen Nathan since that morning in his room, and I hadn’t been with a guy since then, but here he had to go and see me in bed with someone? I knew he was thinking I was a slut and I didn’t really blame him. There was no point in telling him the truth. I didn’t want to talk to him and it didn’t really matter what Nathan thought of me.

It couldn’t be good. Not in the ways that mattered.

Having dinner with my parents tonight,
I texted.
Classes start 2morrow but maybe we could do something 2morrow nite?

I start work. 3 to 11. Lunch?

That was disappointing. I had wanted to see him tomorrow night and have him spend the night again. I liked having him there with me, especially with my roommates around. I was becoming resigned to the fact that I couldn’t move out without causing huge drama. I was stuck. But it would be easier to see Nathan around the apartment with Phoenix there.

Which sounded so pathetic. And unfair. I hated myself for even thinking about it in those terms.

Maybe I didn’t deserve to see him. Yet that didn’t stop me from texting back.

I only have an hour free. 12:45 to 1:45.

I’ll be there. Where should I meet you?

On campus. University center. Text me when you get there.

I wanted to add something. Like an x or an o, or a heart or a smiley. All of which seemed too much.

K. See ya then.

K.

He didn’t respond, because uh, why would he? And then I felt like a jerk.

Damn it. I decided right then and there that I was going to continue to do and say whatever I wanted with Phoenix. That this was my chance to have a totally pure experience with a guy, in the sense that I wasn’t going to censor what I said or did. I was going to treat him exactly the way I would one of my girlfriends.

So I went for the smiley.

And he sent me back, get this, a rose. Swoon. Seriously, of all the guys I had ever dated, no one, not a single sucky one, had ever done that. It was simple. It was nothing much. Just a tiny graphic that required nothing more than him tapping it on the screen and hitting Send.

Yet it meant everything to me that the guy who was supposed to be such bad news was actually kind of charming. He reminded me of the Beast in the Disney version of
Beauty and the Beast
. Rough around the edges, a little bit grumpy, but well meaning. Sweet.

When I went off to my parents’ house for dinner, I smiled as I sang along in the car to some Taylor Swift. The lyrics didn’t suit my mood, but the upbeat tempo did.

The smile lasted even through my grandmother starting in on me about eating more.

“Skin and bones, it’s disgusting. Men don’t like a woman who looks like a chicken,” she said to me, scooping more rice onto my plate.

“No thanks, I’m full,” I told her, knowing I was offending her and, in her mind, offending my mother as well by refusing her cooking. But I was going to burst if I ate anything else.

She clucked. Her hair had gone gray before I was born and she refused to dye it. She also refused to say how old she was, but by my father’s best geusstimation, she was eighty-nine, having had him at twenty-seven or thereabouts, because she had left Puerto Rico to come here for college and had married immediately. But whenever you asked her about any of it she gave vague responses and said things like, “Age is a state of mind. And muscle tone.”

“I’m going to die before any of you are married,” she said, looking tiny and forlorn in her chair at the foot of my parent’s enormous and very traditional dining room table.

“Probably,” my brother Eric said, which earned him a slap on the back of the head from my dad.

Dinner at my parents every Sunday was a thing. You went unless you were vomiting from the flu or were recovering from major surgery. My aunt and uncle and cousins were there every week too, and my brother Marco had brought his girlfriend, Rebecca, for the first time, which was basically a sign of commitment. You didn’t bring just anyone to Sunday dinner, but they both looked uncomfortable with the reference to marriage and who could blame them? They’d only been dating a few months, but my grandmother had been sighing and giving them meaningful looks all afternoon.

For some reason, I’d been seated to the right of her at the table since I was about six, and it was a dubious honor. She was always overfeeding me and always criticizing me. My eyebrows were too thick, then too thin once I waxed them. I was too fat, too thin. Too outspoken, too quiet. I was silly to focus on my art, then silly to want to work in an office. She hated my clothes, no matter what they were. Yet I knew she would murder a man with nothing but her attitude and her handbag if he ever tried to hurt me.

“Robin Bernadette,” she said, using my middle name like she always did, because it was a saint’s name, whereas Robin was too English and pagan in her opinion. “You look like a girl who has had her heart broken. Tell your
abuela
who this rotten boy is.”

Unfortunately, while Nathan might have proven himself rotten, it wasn’t his fault. Not really.

“Mama, I think that’s old news,” my dad said. “Haven’t you noticed she keeps sneaking looks at her cell phone under the table? And she’s smiling today. There’s a new boy.” He tapped his temple, looking smug. “Trust me.”

Well, since they had me all figured out, there wasn’t much for me to say.

I wondered then about how we are raised, how it shapes us. Tyler and Phoenix had grown up with addicts, Rory without a mother, Jessica with a father who ran a huge church, while Kylie and I grew up in the so-called ordinary nuclear family. How had that made me who I was? Was it so very ordinary that I was ordinary?

I do know that when I applied to college I stressed over that damn entrance essay because what did I have to say? I couldn’t outline how I invented an app for family members of cancer patients or did missionary work in Africa or was the daughter of a senator or had to navigate gang warfare to get to the community center where there was one teacher who believed in me. I lived in a middle income multicultural suburb of white, black, and Hispanic families where both parents worked as teachers, bank tellers, warehouse managers. Nothing other than ordinary people doing ordinary things.

My mother wanted me to milk my Latina heritage in my essay, but it felt like bullshit to me, so I didn’t. I wrote about expressing myself through art. My twelfth-grade English teacher gave me a C and suggested a rewrite. I didn’t. But I got in to the design school and that was all I ever really wanted, so I figured it didn’t matter.

Yet then I guess I fell off the rails, even though it didn’t feel like that at the time. It just felt like a party. But now, it didn’t feel like me.

Was it because I didn’t have a strong identity or a real sense of myself? Was that what my high school boyfriend had meant? That I had a quasi sense of self?

I didn’t know.

But I did know that today my father was right. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling just a little. Despite my grandmother’s comments about my disappearing breasts and my chicken wrists. Despite knowing that it was going to be hard to have Kylie and Nathan around the apartment.

“Leave her alone,” my aunt Marguerite told my grandmother. “She looks beautiful, as usual.”

“Actually, she looks hungover,” Eric said.

That had me sitting up straighter. “I’m not hungover. I don’t drink.” That was one thing I did know. I wasn’t going to be accused of doing something I was determined to stay away from.

The look he gave me was so skeptical that I made a face back at him.

My phone buzzed in my lap. When I glanced down I saw that Phoenix had sent me a text. Glancing down and up in the ridiculous hope that no one would guess what I was doing, I read the text.

Ink I want. What do u think?

It was his sketch of the snake from the park. I couldn’t imagine where that was going to fit on his body, but I guess there were parts I hadn’t seen yet. Yet? I felt my cheeks grown warm and when I raised my eyes I felt the beady-eyed stare of my grandmother. She said something in Spanish and I had no clue what it was.

But I didn’t really want to know.

When I got back to the house around seven, Rory and Kylie were watching TV and they waved to me. “Sit.” Kylie patted the couch next to her. “We totally need to catch up.”

I should. I knew I had to. But I panicked. I couldn’t sit there and pretend nothing had happened. I wasn’t ready, or strong enough, and the scene from that morning was still fresh in my mind. The embarrassment I had felt when I had seen Nathan.

“I actually feel sick,” I said. “I have super bad cramps. I need to lay down.”

“Oh, bummer,” Kylie said. “Take some Midol.” She didn’t look the least bit suspicious because Kylie never believed anyone had ill intention. It was a gift she had, of pure happiness, all the time. Happiness I would destroy if she found out the truth.

Rory was eyeing me like she knew there was more to it than that, but she would never ask. She would think about it, analyze, study me. The one person I really had to avoid, truthfully, was Jessica. And, of course, Tyler. He knew almost all there was to know, but even he didn’t know it went way beyond just making out in a car. Obviously Nathan wasn’t going to tell, though I didn’t want to see him either.

“Thanks. Glad you’re both back,” I said, forcing a smile.

Then I went down the hall and shut the door firmly to my little room. Sighing, I fell onto my bed and answered Phoenix.

We texted back and forth for three hours, about everything, about nothing, until the TV in the living room went off and the line of light under my door disappeared. I felt safe in my room and relieved when Rory and Kylie went to bed. Classes started the next day, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for the pressure of schoolwork, but at midnight, in the dark, with Phoenix distracting me, I thought I could deal.

He was funny, in a sly, side door kind of way.

He was also clearly interested in keeping the conversation going, and maybe it was me, maybe it would have been anyone who would talk to him, but I was grateful.

And even as I worried that developing feelings for a guy I felt grateful to was seriously pathetic, I couldn’t stop myself.

Nite
, I finally texted him when my eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore.

See you tomorrow.

I closed my eyes, but I wished he was lying next to me, his quiet, steady breathing soothing me the way it had the past two nights.

It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.

I knew I should cancel lunch with him. I knew I should pull away. That I couldn’t let myself get pulled into a friendship I wasn’t ready for, because I was still too raw, still holding on to my secret.

But I couldn’t pull away.

Just the opposite.

***

When I saw Phoenix walking across the food court in the university center the next day, I bit my lip to keep from smiling too broadly. I was sitting at a table with plastic chairs around it, my backpack on the floor next to me. I had decided to wear another sundress again because they were so comfortable. My leg stubble was starting to grow back in, which meant I was on the edge of being a hippie, but the skirt was long enough that I had decided I didn’t care. Phoenix was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, nothing weird, but without a backpack, he did look a little unusual. But what mostly struck me was the way he moved through the crowd, looking neither right or left, with a confidence and an aggressive walk that made people shift out of his way, probably without even realizing they did it.

He was swinging car keys around his finger, which meant he was ignoring his lack of a license again. I wondered why he didn’t worry that if he got pulled over, he would wind up back in jail. When he got closer to me, the corner of his mouth turned up, and he was doing what I was doing—trying not to smile too much. We were both like a couple of middle schoolers making eye contact at a dance.

Flipping his hair out of his eye, he dropped into the chair next to me, his legs sprawling out. “Hey.”

“Hey. You found me okay.”

He smiled. “I have good tracking skills. You know, and the texts with the specific instructions like ‘Next to KFC in the food court’ helped, too.”

“Good.”

“Though I don’t think you needed to point out what you’re wearing. I’m pretty sure I’d recognize you whether your dress was floral or solid.”

I wasn’t sure why I had done that. He was right. We didn’t recognize people based on their clothes, so why would I think he needed a description of my sundress to find me? “I overexplain. Sorry. What do you want to eat? I have a ton of points on my meal plan and I never use them all, so lunch is on me.”

“I can pay for myself,” he said, even though we both knew he couldn’t.