Come As You Are (6 page)

Ian heard a car pull up, followed by footsteps and a knock at the front door. He turned on the porch light and answered the knock to find a girl with flaming red hair standing there, arms and chest covered with tattoos.

“Hi,” she said, a puzzled look on her face. “Is Molly here?”

“Yeah, but she’s asleep.”

“Oh.” More thought. “Is she staying here?”

“Yeah, she moved back today.”

“I’m Rose. Her roommate. Well, I was her roommate until today.” She held out her hand, he took it, and they shook. She had a grip like a wrestler. “And you are…?” she asked.

“She didn’t tell you?”

Rose shook her head.

“I’m her brother.” At her shocked reaction, he corrected. “Stepbrother. Half brother. We had the same father.”

Rose looked even more puzzled. “How’s that possible?” He could see she was trying to figure it out. “I didn’t think Molly ever looked for her real parents.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m adopted too so we talked about that stuff. I’m trying to find my mom, but Molly said she was okay with not looking for her birthmother.”

“Molly’s adopted?” Jesus. Now things made a little more sense. And why the professor’s will was even more disturbing than ever.

“Yeah. So Mr. Young’s your birthfather?”

“Yeah, he left my mother when I was a baby.”

“Wow. So what are you doing here? I don’t get it. And why have I never heard of you?”

“I think you’d better talk to Molly about that.” He already worried that he’d said too much. And why did he feel this sense of euphoria to know that he and Molly weren’t blood relatives? And why had she kept that from him? Then he thought about how she was always calling him brother, rubbing in what had happened. Tormenting him.

“Can you wake her up so I can talk to her?”

“She was pretty exhausted. I think maybe you should wait until tomorrow.”

“How do I know you’re not some wacko who’s holding her captive? Or worse?”

“Wanna come in?”

“Yeah, I do.” She didn’t even wait for him to step back; she just pushed her way inside. “Wow,” she whispered when she saw the mess.

She knew where she was going and took the stairs, moving on her tiptoes, looking back down at him so he could see she was being quiet. He followed.

On the second floor she turned the knob, opened the door, and stuck her head inside Molly’s room. Satisfied, she closed it, gave Ian a nod, then tiptoed back downstairs.

“Not a psychopath,” Ian said.

“You never know. I mean, the good-looking ones are sometimes the craziest,” Rose said. “I used to date this guy—” She stopped and waved her hand in the air. “You don’t want to hear about that. Let’s just say he was insane.”

“You must be a good friend,” Ian said.

Rose got a strange look on her face and shook her head. “I just kicked her out right after her dad died. What kind of friend does that? I suck. I’m a self-absorbed asshole, that’s what I am.”

He should invite her to have a drink or something, but he just wanted her to leave so he could think about this new information.

“Okay,” she said, seeming to pick up on his anti-social mindset. “Tell Molly I stopped by.”

“Will do.”

She left and he closed the door and turned off the porch light.

Not his sister.

Every moment I wasn’t in school or studying or at Mean Waitress we worked on the house. My bedroom was first. The purple walls became a pale, serene blue, and the dark trim was painted a shiny white. We ripped up the carpet but held off sanding the floors. The Kurt Cobain poster went back up, but everything else was put on Craigslist or in the Dumpster.

On Saturday, a week after I moved back, we were painting the living room walls a pale lemon. The floor was covered with plastic drop clothes, and Ian and I were both in paint-splattered clothes. I wore a black tank top and jeans that were ripped in several places. My hair was wrapped in a pink bandana. Ian wore jeans that threatened to fall off his hips, and a faded T-shirt with holes in it. Both of us barefoot. It was a warm fall day. Windows were open and the radio was tuned to Radio K, the college station.

I climbed down the stepladder, poured more paint into the aluminum pan, picked up a brush, and re-climbed the ladder to finish off the edges. My heart felt light.

I was in the middle of darkness, and my heart felt light. Like some dog sticking its head out the window. Just happy in the moment. Music and open windows and the smell of paint and the solid and weird feel of the wooden ladder against the arches of my bare feet.

I glanced over at Ian. When he reached high with the roller, his shirt exposed his flat stomach. I’d been able to admire that stomach a lot the past several days.

It was like we were married and this was our first house. I thought it would be weird, shopping for paint with a total stranger, but he had a way of making me feel comfortable. He just kind of gave off this calm, together vibe.

“Ah, this is a great song.” He paused to reload his roller before continuing on the wall.

“What is it?” I asked. “I’ve heard it before.”

“Magnetic Fields. ‘All My Little Words’.”

“Ah. The song felt like the yellow on my brush.

“It was on
69 Loves Songs
. Came out in 1999 I think.”

A music geek.

Over the past week I’d never asked Ian about his personal life. I didn’t know if his mother was still alive. I didn’t know if she’d remarried and if he had a stepfather and siblings. I didn’t ask him what he’d majored in. I didn’t ask him what kind of music he liked. All I knew was that he liked vegetarian burritos—and he’d been back to Mean Waitress three times just to prove it.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know any of those things about him. I did. But this could go two ways. One, I didn’t want to be disappointed in who he turned out to be. Or two, I didn’t want to find out he was wonderful. Both would be bad for me because if I ended up disappointed in him…then this time right now would lose its magic. And if he was wonderful…then it would hurt more when I had to leave.

Because I never stay. Rose was the longest relationship I’d ever had with anybody, and that was because she was a little like me. She didn’t want to know. If conversation turned sad, she’d say she had to go somewhere. And she’d leave take off. If you were her friend you learned to never let conversation get serious. Not even the adoption stuff. Just a drive-by conversation.

For me the crack always came down to the time when the guy wanted to know more—and I didn’t want to share more. I didn’t want to share the deepest me. With anybody. Things would start to get weird, and I’d begin to pull away because the act wasn’t working anymore. And he’d begin to pull away because he felt my distance. He’d reach the point where he finally understood he could only know the surface me.

So I learned not to ask. And I tried not to care. And I tried not to think about the past or the future and just enjoy the moment we were in.

But now I knew he liked good music. Burritos and good music. What else didn’t I want to know about him?

“I love this color.” I looked at the wall instead of looking at him. I couldn’t look at him anymore. “It’s so happy,” I said, trying to redirect my thoughts while feeling myself getting sucked into the dark place.

My comment must have seemed like an invitation, because he put down his roller and crossed the room to admire my handiwork. “I wasn’t sure about it when we picked it out,” he said, “but I like it. It looks good with the dark trim.”

I nodded, and my eyes took in the pale yellow and the dark trim, then I looked at him even though I was trying not to look at him.

“You’ve got paint all over your face,” he said with a smile.

“What?” I felt my cheek but my fingers came away clean.

“Like a spray of freckles. I couldn’t see it from across the room, but up close—” He laughed. And God, he had the greatest laugh.

He pulled a scrap of cloth from his back pocket—a towel I’d cut up earlier—and with an earnest expression he began wiping my forehead.

One of his hands was on my arm, holding me while he gently erased the spray of pale lemon freckles. “It’s even in your eyebrows.”

Then he touched my cheeks.

“It’s even on your mouth.”

Then he touched my mouth
.

He stroked the cloth across my bottom lip with an easy tugging motion…then paused. And the hand on my arm tightened just a little.

He was so close. I could see the shots of brown in his green irises. I could see every pore in his jaw line. I could count every dark whisker.

He smelled like cotton, like something that had been dried outside. His hair looked soft and I wanted to touch it, see if it felt as soft as it looked. He didn’t smell like other guys. Not like the guy who’d driven the tow truck. Not like perfume pumped out of the stores at the Mall of America. And he didn’t stink like the dirtsters—that specific model of hipster who didn’t take a shower or wash his clothes. He smelled clean, like skin and hair and natural fabric.

I think I was still holding the brush, because I heard drips of paint hitting the plastic drop cloth. And now another song was playing, this one sad and haunting and beautiful and happy, something I’d heard before but couldn’t place.

So many times over the past week I wished he hadn’t stopped me the night we first met…

I dropped the brush and latched my fingers into the belt loops of his jeans and I hung on. Just hung on.

“I’m not really your sister,” I whispered.

“I know,” he whispered back.

“You know?”

“Rose told me.”

“She has a big mouth.”

“It just came up. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I wanted to torture you.”

“That’s what I figured.”

I wanted to tug him down, but the floor was covered in plastic and we were standing in front of a huge window. Instead, I took his hand and led him up the stairs. He started to move past my bedroom, in the direction of his, but I shook my head and pulled him inside my soft blue room with the shiny white trim. I smiled at him as I unbuttoned his jeans.

He pulled in a kind of shuddering breath, and I felt his belly go taut. “We aren’t drunk,” he said.

“I kinda wish we were.”

“We know how well that worked out.” He unsnapped and unzipped my pants, and we both shucked them off and stepped away. Boxers. He was wearing boxers.

I tugged off my T-shirt and he did the same. It was so bright in the room. Too bright. I suddenly felt self-conscious. I’d never done this in the daylight. Only at night. And usually drunk. I felt a sense of panic and I turned to the bed, pulled down the covers, and dove under a sheet.

He laughed. “You might not remember, but I’ve seen you,” he said.

“This is all so strange,” I said breathlessly, holding the sheet to my chin, staring at his face, his beautiful face.

“We can go back to painting.”

“Would you call me a tease?” I teased.

“I’d call you…coy.”

“Coy? That’s awfully old-fashioned.”

“Then exasperating. Sweet.” He was thinking.

“Quirky?”

“Sad. Funny. Secretive. But not a tease. Not quirky.” He held out his arms. “So what’s it going to be?”

“You aren’t going to woo me?”

He smiled. “No.”

“You aren’t going to beg?”

“No.”

As he stood there, I found myself wanting to know all about him. I wanted to see the places he’d lived, and I wanted to experience his life at Berkeley. Had he been poor? Rich? Had he worked his way through college? He was smart. He’d probably gotten a full ride, but even with a full ride you had living expenses. Did he have a stereo? Did he have a record collection? What bands had he seen? Had he been to Coachella? Did he play an instrument? If so, what? Guitar? Piano? He seemed more like a piano guy. Did he draw? Did he write? Did he like good movies, or shitty movies? Had he ever had a pet? Did he like dogs? Or cats? Did he ever cry? Would he cry when this was over?

Stop. Don’t think about that. Why are you thinking about that? You don’t want to know any of that. You don’t need to know any of that.

I tossed away the sheet and I got out of bed and went to him, pulling down his shorts until they dropped around his ankles. And there it was, every bit as big and as beautiful as I remembered. I would never think of painting in the same way again.

I cradled him and stroked him, then I pushed him back. He took a couple of stumbling steps out of his shorts to fall into a wooden chair. He didn’t reach for me. Instead, he held the sides of the chair like he was hanging on for dear life.

“Close your eyes,” I said.

With his face turned toward me like someone welcoming a cool rain, he closed his eyes. And waited. I could see the pulse beating in his neck, and I could see a flush across his cheeks. His chest rose and fell, his breathing carrying a sense of expectation.

He was going to make me do all of this.

I slipped off my bikini panties, then unhooked my bra and dropped it to the floor before placing my hands on his knees, bending over, and kissing the soft velvet tip of his penis. He pulled in a deep, shuddering breath but didn’t open his eyes. And didn’t reach for me.

I straightened and straddled his thighs. And because I knew he wasn’t yet completely in the game, and I knew he could change his mind at any second, I guided him to me and slowly lowered myself until he stretched and filled me.

No foreplay, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to claim him. For now. Just for now.

He was breathing harder.

I placed my hands on his shoulders and began to work my hips. I caught a flash of movement and saw us both framed in the oval mirror attached to the dresser. I must have made a surprised sound, because his eyes flew open. In the reflection I saw his head turn until we were both looking at the image of us. Erotic, but also strangely innocent and beautiful.

“You carried that mirror in here,” I whispered.

“I never thought I’d see us in it.” His voice was tight and breathless. “Not like this.” He let go of the chair and his hands moved up my thighs and my arms, caressing my breasts, lifting my hair back, spreading it over my shoulder so it hid nothing.

I’d never brought a boy into this house. Not like this. Not for sex. I never thought it would ever happen. I’d never wanted it to happen.

It was my turn to close my eyes as I pressed myself into him, wrapping my arms around him, feeling his young, firm skin, smelling his young sweet scent.

He finally, finally took control. With his hands on my hips he lifted me from him and followed me to the bed as I walked backward and he walked forward. Pressing me into the mattress, the weight of him on top of me, he kissed me. And I realized it might have been our first kiss, because I had no memory of another.

“You taste like flowers,” he said in a hushed voice.

“It’s lavender.”

His lips were soft and they moved slowly over mine, nipping and gently sucking. Time ticked away as he explored my body, and when I thought I might scream and beg him to come inside me, he did just that, moving with sure and deep strokes.

The city faded and the neighborhood faded and house faded and the rooms faded until it was just us.