Lie to Me (26 page)

Me? I was reckless. Alex just smiled.

I said, “What the fuck do you want today?”

I guess I hadn’t forgotten he ran book against me on my Manny Dolan fight. That still pissed me off.

He said, “We should talk.”

He took me to a bar, bought me whiskey. I still remember that. Don’t know why. But now every time I smell whiskey, I think of Alex Wolfe calmly telling me that he was my natural father.

I think about the way that one piece of information made my entire life make sense.

I think about the way I wanted to beat Alex Wolfe until he was bloody and broken for not telling me sooner.

He just kept talking, like he didn’t have a care in the world, while I sat there and slowly boiled over.

He said, “I’ve arranged for your mother to go down to Florida with her sister for a while, Marcus, and I’ve paid the rent on your apartment in the meantime. You’ll have it to yourself. And I will pay for the funeral arrangements.”

“Fuck no, you won’t,” I said to him, finally looking up from my glass of whiskey. I was going to pay to put that man in the ground.

I remember that Alex smiled.

“You’ve earned enough from your fights?” he asked me.

The man knew everything. And he told me more. Told me how my mother had been his side piece for twenty years, how my father—Juan, I mean—had known about it for fifteen. How my mother never wanted to have kids. How I was her guilt, and Juan’s humiliation.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to real violence borne of anger before. I hope I never am again.

Alex just shrugged and said, “I made a promise to your mother. But Juan Roma is dead now, and you are my son, Marcus.” Then he looked at me like this was real important. “You are my son.”

With everything else that happened that day, with all the messed-up angles to this damn secret that had ruled my life, this was the thing that stood out to me the most: My mother was ashamed of me, the man I knew as my father hated me, and the only man who wanted to claim me as his son was Alex Wolfe.

But that came later, when I could think like a normal person. I left the bar not thinking much, just feeling. Everything too new, too jumbled for thoughts. I went and picked up Harlow and I took her to the illegal card room where I was going to fight.

Here’s the thing: I don’t remember much about that fight.

Normally I was a controlled fighter. The adrenaline spike never overwhelmed me; I never lost it, I just stayed calm and deadly. That night? All I remember is that I was aware of where Harlow was in the room at all times. Like my damn reference point, a north star, whatever. I remember that the guy I was fighting wore this bullshit armband with his club’s logo on it, like something straight out of The Karate Kid. I remember getting up off his chest, my hands bloody, looking for Lo.

That’s about it. I know I destroyed him. I won enough money to cover the funeral and then some.

But later? When Harlow took me home? I remember all of that in crystal clear detail. I remember how she patched up my hands, so careful with the rubbing alcohol that it made me smile. I remember how when I told her about Alex Wolfe, sitting on my bed, suddenly feeling dead tired, she got up from where she was sitting and stood right in front of me, threading one hand through my hair, stroking my forehead. I remember feeling bad about it, like I should be the one taking care of her, but also realizing that Harlow was the only person on the planet who could take care of me. She was the only person I would let get that close.

I didn’t cry over it. I just hugged Harlow close to me, buried my face in her stomach, breathed her in. I remember that she was the one who pushed me back on my bed. I remember that she climbed on top of me, eyes shining like she was going to cry, but smiling softly at the same time.

And then I finally kissed her, because I understood that maybe I had been good enough the whole damn time.

***

I’m thinking about all this, and how because of all this crap I don’t know how to be any kind of father, and how Alex Wolfe sure as hell hasn’t shown me in the years I’ve been working for him, and how Harlow is sitting there, grateful to Alex for Dill, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in. But I have Harlow next to me. We pull into this grassy lot in the back of this camp all the way up in the Catskills, and I have Harlow, and that makes most things all right.

I get out of the car before Harlow’s even done parking it, and I walk around the front, keeping my eyes on her, until I get to her door. I open it for her, but I can’t wait for her to get out on her own. I help her out and then I push her against that car and kiss her. I take her face in both of my hands and kiss her gently, kiss her hard, kiss her all the ways I know she likes to be kissed, until her arms are curling around my neck and my hands have found her waist.

I nip at her bottom lip and pull away, looking at her to let her know I’ll finish this later. She’s flushed and breathless.

“What did I do to deserve that?” she says.

“You’re you.”

I tug at the waist of her skirt, knowing we’re late already, but she looks up at me, blushing.

“I think I need a minute,” she says.

“We stay out here another minute and I’m going to take you in the backseat of that car,” I tell her. She bites her lip and it makes my cock jump. “Jesus, I might do it anyway.”

We stand there like that for too long, and I think about it. I do.

But damn it, I’m going to show her I can be good for Dill.

“C’mon,” I say, and take her hand. “Dill is waiting.”

chapter 16

HARLOW

It takes my brain more than a minute to start fully functioning again after that kiss.

I let Marcus lead me, in a kind of haze, through the parking lot to a tree-covered, sun-dappled lane leading up to the camp’s main building. I don’t know if it’s the beauty of this place, the bliss of this past week with Marcus, or just that intoxication I’ve learned to expect whenever I’m with him, but I’m having trouble believing that any of this is real.

I mean, I do. I know it’s really happening, and not just some fantasy I’ve cooked up for myself. But there’s a part of me that won’t trust my own senses. Not when it feels too good to be true.

Ever since that night someone tried to break in, and I let Marcus back in, things have been different, somehow. They’ve felt less chaotic, more settled. Like finally telling him how bad it was really did exorcise it from my life. Not entirely, obviously, but enough—I don’t constantly vacillate between lust and anger anymore. I feel calmer. And I feel like I’m able to
see
Marcus better.

And it looks too good to be true.

I had that once before, after all, a life that was too good to be true. Twice, before, really, though I didn’t fully appreciate how good I had it with my parents until they were gone. I have to tell myself no one appreciates what they have until it’s gone, but I still feel guilty about it. The second time I had it so good was when I finally had Marcus. And then, of course, he left.

That’s still the thing that haunts me, the thing that keeps me from falling fully for this, like every fiber of my being wants me to: he might do it again. He might leave me again.  So that hasn’t changed. I still have like this sober, rational Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder, warning me not to forget.

I just hate that little cricket.

Well, no, some things have changed. That’s why Marcus is here today, I guess. Or I don’t know, maybe that’s a rationalization? When it comes down to it, I wanted him here.

I wanted to see him with Dill.

Which: sober Jiminy Cricket is freaking out about that, let me tell you.

So I decided to drive Marcus up here to see my little brother, to get an idea of What That Might Be Like, telling myself the whole time that I’m not falling for it, that I know it’s not that serious, because it can’t be. Because Marcus still hasn’t told me what happened, still hasn’t shown me that I can trust him not to just decide to leave again. But I asked him to come up here with me anyway, and naturally I’m thinking about Dill, and that starts to make me think about what Marcus would be like as a dad-type figure for Dill, and…

Well, then that kiss.

And that kiss makes me think of the first time Marcus kissed me.

And that makes me think about Marcus’s dad and Marcus’s father, who turned out not to be the same person at all.

***

In retrospect, it might have been a little messed up to finally let Marcus know how I felt about him on the same day as his dad’s wake. I mean, if I had thought about it, probably even seventeen-year-old me would have recognized that to be inappropriate, and might have tried to respect a boundary I knew probably existed even if I didn’t know exactly where it was.

I’m glad I didn’t think about it too much. I’m glad that, at that point, it didn’t seem like there were many boundaries between Marcus and me.

I’m glad that I recognized that he needed me as much as I needed him.

Marcus didn’t let me go to the wake. At first I was pretty determined, because after all, Marcus had been right next to me at my parents’ funeral. But I was approaching it as a point of principle, not as an actual experience that I was going to have in the real world, and Marcus knew me well enough to point this out. He zeroed in on the concrete details.

“There’ll be a coffin.”

“I know there’ll be a coffin.”

“Everyone will be in black, crying.”

“I know.”

He kept going like that, until I had to picture it in my mind, and I could feel the shape of what it would feel like to be in the middle of that. And, damn it, he was right: It would send me right back to where I was during my parents’ funeral, which was, to put it lightly, not a good place. Marcus would have ended up taking care of me at his own dad’s wake.

Is that fair? No. It just…it was what it was. I felt terrible about it, but Marcus didn’t. He just kept telling me: it was different with his family. With his dad in particular.

“We weren’t so close,” he said.

The understatement to end all understatements, right there.

So I compromised. I said I wouldn’t go to the wake, as long as he promised to come get me right afterwards, and then we’d go to the fight he had scheduled, and I wasn’t going to leave his side after that.

About the fights—I mean, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t think they were a great idea, but it was in that way that you know some things aren’t great ideas, but you still find them exciting? Now, being older, having responsibilities, I’d probably be a lot more cautious. They weren’t safe. I mean, I wasn’t worried about Marcus’s safety, because he was so damn good, but at the same time, of course I was worried about Marcus’s safety. He was fighting. Illegally. Seeing him get hit—it was not a good feeling.

Good thing it didn’t happen often.

What did happen often was that Marcus won. All the time, actually. He had a perfect record. And every time, here was the guy that I came with, the guy who at the time I thought would stand by me through anything, shirtless and ripped and sweating and owning the ring in front of a crowd of screaming strangers.

Call me crazy, but I did find it…exciting.

And frustrating. Because at that point, Marcus still hadn’t touched me sexually. And I didn’t know how to touch him. One day I’d be sure he wanted me as bad as I wanted him, the next I’d be sure he saw me as some kind of little sister, and crossing that line would irrevocably damage the most important relationship in my life. And the one thing I couldn’t afford to lose, ever, was Marcus.

That was my greatest fear, actually, besides losing Dill. Losing Marcus. It was just easier to manage because Marcus was always there for me.

So he came by the Mankowskis’ in his dad’s car—I guessed now he’d inherited it—to pick me up for that fight, and I could tell immediately that something was different. I could tell that something had happened. I just assumed, maybe understandably, that it was about his dad’s death, and the way that would bring up all of Marcus’s feelings about his family. I knew better than anyone how grief can take you by surprise, how you’ll never know what form it will take until it’s upon you, and then you just have to figure out a way to deal with it.

So Marcus comes to pick me up with this expression on his face like I’ve never seen. He was usually so present with me, so attentive, and that day he wasn’t even looking at me. It was like he was looking far ahead in the future, or far back in the past. His big hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, boxer’s knuckle evident on all of them, and I could see the corded muscles in his neck twist with tension.

“You ok?” I asked him.

“Don’t know.”

That was fair.

“You ok to fight?” I asked.

That’s when he finally looked at me, and when he did it was like being in a spotlight. He looked at me and smiled, kind of slow, kind of sad, kind of sweet.

“Yeah,” he said. He reached out one of those hands and cupped my face with it, his thumb brushing along my bottom lip.

I gasped so slightly, I’m not sure he heard. He just put the car in gear and drove on.

After that, I gripped the rough fabric of my seat the whole way to Queens, with my blood pulsing in my core, my skin heating under my shirt, my whole body extremely aware of the man next to me, and my mind telling it to shut up, his dad just died.

It was a confusing trip.

Truthfully, it was incredibly important to me to be there for Marcus like he’d been there for me. So I was going to support him no matter what he felt like he needed to do, underground fighting included. And I tried very, very hard to keep thinking about Marcus and what he actually needed, rather than what I wanted, every time he fought.

But that night, it was almost impossible.

I know Marcus doesn’t remember much about that fight, but I do. First, the guy he was fighting was an ogre. I mean, I think they actually got him from some enchanted forest somewhere. He was huge. He was one of the only men I’ve ever seen who was actually bigger than Marcus, though he was softer, his muscle covered in a layer of fat. And he was bald, with scars all over his scalp, one on his cheek, and tattoos I couldn’t decipher all over his body. They were the kind of unfinished, rough, messy tattoos that you know didn’t happen in a tattoo parlor. And the one arm that wasn’t tattooed was covered in this dumb red armband that had this black logo on it of a snarling wolf, something that I think was supposed to be super intimidating in a kind of racist way? I mean, the only places I’d ever seen armbands even remotely like that was in history books on the arms of Nazis. And Marcus was known as a Dominican fighter, even if nobody could ever place his ethnicity when they met him. I doubt the idiots with the armbands were unaware of the implications. Especially since I heard a few of them shout out “spic,” which, really?